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Comment by Beltalowda | Hacker News Reader

I always wonder about these things; at least dozens – if not hundreds – of people were involved developing this: managers, designers, programmers, marketing, that sales guy with his ridiculous "features that benefit viewers" piece of spin, etc.

And no one seemed to have thought "wait, I'm being a complete cunt here – every user who will have this 'feature' inflicted upon will hate it!"

Sorry-but-not-sorry for the strong language, but I've taken to hold people individually responsible for this kind of stuff. Excepting people in social/financial circumstances where they don't really have a choice, if you're doing this kind of stuff then you're just being a gigantic twat. These people are all fairly well paid, so none of this "just doing muh job" nonsense.

I just don't understand how people can do this kind of thing – I'm not surprised because I've seen it many times before, I just don't understand it.

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As someone who was involved in developing something… let’s say similar… this starts off as something cool, like, voting for American Idle with your remote instead of having to text in, because your panel understands you’re watching American Idle and can support an overlay with the vote choices. Or overlays with history of a syfi show, to enhance the viewing experience. Then when management finds out no one is going to pay a bunch of Bay Area engineer salaries to do that, it slowly becomes something more sinister. Passively recording everything panel owners are viewing, provided it was public TV and could be recognized. Selling metrics as a “better” version of neilsen. And ultimately something like this.

And when you see that happening, you quit. And go do something else

> Bay Area engineer salaries

The Idle Idol. Apt.

So, let's say you didn't want to buy my cheap TV. Market's full of TVs. Hardly a trouble to pick another brand, eh? I just give the consumer what they want, and what they want is a cheap TV. We show ads, that's why the TV's cheap. Best way we've found to cheapen a TV. Don't want ads? Don't buy the cheap TV. And yet, people buy the cheap TV and complain about the ads. We're not responsible for your choice, we just gave you what you voted for with your wallet.

This is kind of unfair given TVs are usually kept for a very long time. You buy the TV, didn’t understand why the price was cheaper than competitors, and a year later regret your decision. It’s not really feasible for most consumers to get a new TV at that point.

Expensive TVs have the same bullshit.

> We're not responsible for your choice, we just gave you what you voted for with your wallet.

you are assuming people make their TV-buying choice with complete information

does the cheap TV have a big "NEW! SHOWS EXTRA ADS!" announcement on the outside of the box, or in any of its promotional material? no, of course not.

also: "Vizio TVs are now showing banner ads over live TV" means they didn't use to do this. people bought these TVs not knowing they would receive an update to show ads at some point in the future.

this free-market "consumers made an informed decision about the trade-offs of a cheaper TV" argument is absolute hogwash.

I mean in this case the TV didn't start with ads, the feature got patched in via firmware updates. That's pretty crappy.

How many people actually believe in the culture of their executive leadership at their employer?

I've worked for about 9 different tech companies in my career and I only truly believed in maybe 2-3 leadership teams after a year working there. Execs are politicians at the end of the day, the only difference is that they're chasing profit instead of votes.

> These people are all fairly well paid, so none of this "just doing muh job" nonsense.

Changing jobs is time-consuming and stressful, and there's a lot more to a job than just total comp. Flexible hours, company culture, etc. also play a role. The reality is that if you've been around this industry long enough, there's a semi-decent chance that you have a company on your resume that you might not be proud to admit working for, either due to public or internal knowledge.

"Jump Ads represent yet another step in VIZIO’s ongoing mission to unify the smart TV experience with features that benefit viewers, content providers and advertisers," said Adam Bergman, VP of sales, Vizio Ads

Fortunately, in this case we know exactly who to direct the complaints toward.

Seems like you're insinuating the public should blame the individual peons doing the shitty corporation's bidding rather than the shitty corporation itself. What do you want to do? Do you want to dox a bunch of engineers and middle managers and "cancel" them or something? How about just not buying Vizio products anymore? You can also spread the word and tell others not to patronize companies that do this sort of thing, as well. No need to start mobbing up on a bunch of low level schleps.

This is displaying an interactive ad over the non-interactive version of the same ad. It's not targeted and it's not a net increase in ads or anything.

> These people are all fairly well paid, so none of this "just doing muh job" nonsense.

The most logical explanation I can come up with is that there are compensation incentives tied to financial performance (or even just project completion), and this sort of thing will probably boost the financials enough to trigger those payouts. When enough money's on the line, I'm sure it's easy to wave away any feelings about the end user.

Or you could be someone building this TV saving “this is great! By adding advertising now even low income people can afford a big screen TV!”

Why do you think anyone in that chain has the power to stop it? Every competitor in the consumer TV market is doing ads somewhere in their smart TV UI; even if none of the underlings want to make this feature, the executives were probably the ones to give the order. These people could leave the company but even in the current competitive labor market, it isn’t hard to find someone willing to compromise their moral code for the position.

When your ability to eat, maintain shelter and healthcare, and what society considers your worth as an individual is, I’d linked you your continued employment you don’t speak out. Many people cannot afford to be fired or resign without another job lined up. Capitalism has made activism unaffordable.

These folks aren't flipping burgers for minimum wage, or working in industries with a huge oversupply of labour. I betcha a significant number could find a different job if they wanted to without too much effort.

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