Samsung's $2000 smart fridges are getting ads | Hacker News Reader

Samsung's $2000 smart fridges are getting ads

ghacks.net

54 pointsspeckx33 comments

I'm not familiar with ghacks.net, but it appears this is AI regurgitation (down to photos) from other sources [0]. The post even links to [0].

[0] https://www.theverge.com/report/806797/samsung-family-hub-sm...

There an initiative to try to remove this: https://bounties.fulu.org/bounties/samsung-familyhub-refrige...

There's even a system of governance made to protect consumers. We've just decided to make money a first-class voter.

Related discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45737338

I get the impression that these types of devices are owned by people with a bit too much money and a bit too little understanding of the tech.

I was quite shocked when it became obvious the someone with money loved reading and seeing advertisement. They thought it was product information. Banners needed only to be vaguely appealing for them to purchase it. This behavior was further rewarded by companies sending "sample" products like, here are all 12 of our 100 euro per bottle shampoos, we hope you like them.

There are two aspects to advertising, there's fact and there's opinion. As long as you understand the opinion is biased, the facts can be useful. If a new pizza place opens in my town I'd at least like to know it exists, or else I might stagnate going to only the familiar places.

It's still annoying and it's unacceptable for my fridge to have a screen I can't control the content of.

>It's still annoying and it's unacceptable for my fridge to have a screen I can't control the content of.

Also, and more importantly IMO, is the risk of the fridge getting hacked. I really don't want to have to worry about keeping my fridge updated, and having to throw it out after 7 years or whenever support ends.

Would PiHole work to stop this? Seems like it should be a "easy" fix, although still a distasteful move by Samsung.

Ads will eventually be displayed on anything that has a screen and an internet connection.

I cannot disagree at all with this statement however I ask what about those connected devices that have no displays but still exist in our world "unseen"?

Take for example the Kohler poo cam announced a few weeks back that has no screen but maybe they secretly included a small speaker that after a firmware update will plop ads on bowl users if management is not seeing the profits from selling only the hardware. Won't that be some funny sh!t?

Or how about brain implant computers, so I ask where will the line be drawn when more and more profit at any cost appears to be the M.O.

Exciting times as connected technology that can see and hear gets smaller and smaller while battery power to weight ratio increases allowing these devices longer and longer life in secluded places.

Ads are 'yesterday' on my screens and it's always been thus, and it will always be so.

Your premise will only become true if people on mass agree with it.

Why stop there ? You can display it directly in the brain.

See Demolition Man for the how future will be like.

I’m buying a SSD this morning. Too bad I’m never buying anything Samsung ever again.

Shoving ads in my face and killing babies. Those are my two lines in the sand.

[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45737338

Comparing to daily carrying $1000 iPhone's Apple Maps Ads, it is nothing.

Ah, good old whataboutism.

Companies need to seriously stop with this. I don't care if they make money by selling that ad space, I'm not going to fucking buy a fridge that advertises to me and needs the internet. It's a fridge for god's sake.

Unless that fridge is given to me and installed in my home free of charge, and I get a monthly retainer for allowing the fridge to advertise to me.

I'm not paying for the privileged of being advertised to.

> Companies need to seriously stop with this. I don't care if they make money by selling that ad space, I'm not going to fucking buy a fridge that advertises to me and needs the internet. It's a fridge for god's sake.

If there's enough money in doing this kind of thing, you may no longer be given that choice by the market. It is under no obligation to provide the choices that are best for you.

All the manufacturers are responding to the same incentives, and if the CEO of one has the morals to resist shoving ads in all the things, it's only a matter of time until he's replaced by an MBA who doesn't. That's capitalism.

then the market would be ripe for someone to market a dumb fridge for a premium and undercut the greedy competitors. THAT'S capitalism

> then the market would be ripe for someone to market a dumb fridge for a premium and undercut the greedy competitors. THAT'S capitalism

THAT'S fairy tale capitalism. Sometimes it works that way in real life, but it very, very frequently it does not.

As soon as cost of adding a screen to a refrigerator becomes less than the ad revenue that screen can generate, you'll be hard pressed to find a refrigerator without one. They'll just be careful to avoid making it so annoying at first that it alienates customers, then do a frog-boiling exercise to slowly increase consumer tolerance for annoyance. That's where the incentives are, and the industry will follow the incentives.

Yes, just as it happened with TVs and cars

absolutely!

and they're now even putting freakin apps into washing machines. It's a disaster. It's getting harder and harder to find appliances that don't have all this nonsense in it.

Suck it, jin-yang!

I'm sorry I can't take this article seriously. It's complaining about ads but the ghacks website itself is covered in adverts.

The ghacks website is free. A Samsung fridge is not.

According to another comment this site might be AI slop so I'm not defending it specifically, but in general journalism is traditionally a service expected to be subsidized by advertising, unlike an appliance you spend thousands of dollars on. The danger is that it becomes normalized that appliances work that way too.

Those who support braindead ideas (like fridges with HD displays and internet connection) with their buck, must suffer.

don't blame the victim. nobody asked for this. samsung is taking advantage of their customers.

Nobody bought those at gunpoint.

Thinking "alright, here's this beautiful screen to brag about, and here's this cutting edge internet connection to feel connected to the progress, nothing can go wrong, it's developed by a well-intentioned for-profit corporation, get lost, tinfoilhats" is enough of a malicious mindset to warrant the blame.

And this is not some fictional attitude, it's the one I heard from a multitude of people on many occasions.

Seems like they changed the deal post sale to introduce ads. They should be required to offer a full refund or opt out to users who don’t agree.

look, i'm not comparing people who buy a stupid fridge with crime victims. but those people are not involved with the ability to push invasive advertising onto the stupid fridge -- it's the profit-motivated assholes who work for the corporation producing the fridge, and the shareholders who let them get away with lying about their intentions.

yes, there's some level of expecting to be screwed by a vendor based on past experience, but we should never shift the blame away from the people actually Doing The Bad Thing and we should always hold their feet to the fire before we say "you should have known better, dummy who needs to keep their food and medicine cold and thinks the shiny screen is neat".

It's not morally or ethically wrong to think the shiny screen is neat.

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