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Comment by yellowfish | Hacker News Reader

there's nothing wrong with ads on stuff like this; televisions aren't sacred ground.

There's nothing wrong with it, if you are told about this up front and it's part of your purchasing calculation.

Retroactively adding ads to an ad-free device after the customer has purchased it, sometimes buying it specifically to avoid competing devices with ads, is inexcusable bullshit.

If you subscribe to cable/satellite television, you expect there to be advertising. I'm not certain, but i suspect the agreement you sign while signing up for cable or streaming services, would include some sort of advertising clause.

Ie, u less a service explicitly promotes am ad-free experience, there should be no expectations of such.

I guess I can come to your house tomorrow and paint some ads on the walls, or were you promised an ad free experience?

How about their car’s infotainment system? Can we start showing them ads when stopped at a light or were they promised an ad free experience there as well?

You’re late to the game, Ford is working on that already.

I mean, it's been the new hotness at gas stations for a minute now. Which is something childhood me never would have expected.

"Once screens and connectivity costs fall below a threshold, advertising is guaranteed to follow."

This isn't about a service, it's about devices. The Google TV launcher is the de-facto UI for Android TV devices (like my Nexus Player, which is...7 YEARS OLD and now gets ads) and Google/Android TV-powered TVs, which are made by a bunch of different manufacturers. While my Nexus Player is rooted and I could theoretically install a different launcher, many of these TVs can't be modified. So if you purchased a TV thinking that it's smart capabilities were like a dumb OS UI into services like Netflix or Hulu (which may or may not have ads in their service agreement, as you point out), now they're getting pushed Amazon Fire-esque ads that prioritize spending money with Google from the UI over the services that you want to use.

There is a huge problem with selling something and then making it worse after people buy it.

Super wrong. Google sold one product then removed functionality after sale. That's very illegal.

A good parallel is the recent Peloton Treadmill update (as a result of the CPSC suit). You used to be able to use the treadmill without video content, it worked as a treadmill; you only had to pay for a subscription if you wanted Peloton content on the screen. This seems fairly obvious to anyone buying the device, and makes sense. I buy a treadmill, I can use the treadmill forever, but if i want content, I pay a monthly fee.

When they push a software update that makes the treadmill unusable without the subscription, now you're tied to not only paying for the service (at whatever price they decide that week), but you're also tied to the company itself continuing to exist and OFFER content.

A bunch of lawsuits have been filed, I'm sure it'll be reverted to 'the way it was' soon. (I honestly believe it was a largely clumsy move in trying to quickly tie a PIN code to the software to keep kids/unauthorized users from turning it on).

But it's a parallel here. My Google TV device might show ads on the TV network, but you pay for the device to not get ads on the home screen like the awful Fire Stick I have. (every time you hit 'play' to try to unpause a program, you are actually hitting 'play' on the terrible ad they gave you).

A lot of "innovation" in consumer tech is really just turning previously-standalone devices into subscription platforms and/or billboards. I'm sure the engineers who build these are proud of their contributions to society.

This is a bad take on Peloton. Peloton made it subscription only because the default user experience had bad design in that treadmills can be pin locked only if the customer is subscribed. In order to compensate for the bad design peloton has offered 3 months of subscription for free and has promised to add the pin lock feature to non subscribers soon.

Not that I agree with anything Peloton has done in this situation, but you make it sound much worse than it already is.

How is it a bad take on Peloton? If anything, your comment is more critical ("default user experience had bad design"). It seems clear to me that they'll end up replacing it with a pin lock that works even without a subscription, but it was probably easier to quickly implement in existing code that required a subscription. And, now that I re-read your comment, you say the same thing -- "has promised to add the pin lock feature to non subscribers soon".

I don't see how a single word of my comment makes it sound much worse than it is. I pointed out what they did as a result of CPSC, and indicated that they'll likely reverse course, which you confirmed.

I'm not super well-versed in how it works at the moment. I've got a Tread, but can't use it due to knee surgery, so I've been watching the CPSC uproar / PIN requirement from afar, and generally think it's pretty silly.

If I know about it, then yes. Like Amazon putting ads on their Kindle lock screens unless you pay an extra $20.

I bought my Shield as a premium device, not expecting the launcher to change substantially - much less to put ads on the screen.

Nothing wrong. But I and many others have migrated away from google products because of actions like this.

The constant bombardment of expectations that you'll spend more money is normalized, but it is not ok.

Of course it is not. We shall have ads, microfones and cameras everywhere.

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