Time to ban all adverts everywhere. I'm not the only one who is fed up with ads.
I don't see ads, thanks to ad blocking tech in browsers and smartphones. Any time that happens to fail and I get to endure an ad, I am amazed that regular people without ad blocking tech can endure this onslaught.
The time to negotiate a "middle ground" is long past. Let's not even entertain that idea.
An acceptable middle ground could have been designated areas for ads, which you have to seek out to see them. Think of the Yellow Pages.
Ad companies need to be reined in. They cannot control themselves. They are lobbying against all limits and controls. The only solution is to eradicate ads entirely and to make sure that anyone who gets that idea will never get it again.
The fundamental problem here is a little broader than ads, but "ads" mostly cover it. The problem is the commoditization of human attention. The incentive to catch and sell attention is poisonous to all human endeavors. Some things need to grab your attention to fulfill their purpose, I'm not against the idea of something directing a person's attention. Where it becomes a problem is the murky line of that direction of attention being something that is bottled and sold, or otherwise used in the interest of the distracter rather than the distracted.
So ads that someone seeks out of their own volition? Fine. That's just marketing material, and falls in the same category as every product announcement, press release, etc. What if a product catalog is mixed in with coupons or other rewards? Not fine anymore, you've mixed up reward-seeking and information-seeking.
If someone means to direct their attention and gets distracted by an important notice, like "I mean to drive down this road, and the stop sign grabbed my attention," that's also fine. The information is relevant to the human and important for augmenting their intention. But if you download an app and try to do something, only to be met with a banner/popup/whatever informing you of other products on offer by the company? Well, they're not selling your attention to third parties, but they are monetizing it by taking your intention to use one product and attempting to redirect it into a potential purchase of another, so that's out. If you want, you can include a clearly-labelled "our other offerings" section in the app, out of the way, somewhere it would only be encountered by someone seeking it out.
Distracting people cannot be allowed to be one of the main drivers of our economy.
One that is really insane to me is Ads when driving on the highway. I can’t recall seeing that in Europe, but now in Canada when I take the highway there’s Ads everywhere. Some of them rotate.
Ironically they also have a sign that changes, one of the updates is “don’t drive distracted”… and like, I wasn’t distracted until the sign flashed at me lol.
What you are observing is the trick the industry used to get approval for changing LED billboards— they “donate” say fifteen hours per month to public service announcements. This kind of concession is gold to an ambitious public servant, the old prohibitions never stood a chance. The PSA could be “stop electronic billboards” but that was the way they got through high-friction public processes.
Europe has billboards too. Perhaps not everywhere, and not as bad as some other places, but it does exist, and it is infuriating. I don't think I've seen them flash intentionally, but nobody seems to be too interested in fixing broken LED bulbs.
I even saw a "you should be looking at the road" ad on one of those billboards.
Legal ads in product catalogues only. Product catalogues are actually useful and nobody is subjected to them unless they chose to seek one out and pick it up willingly.
Wait, what? I'm confused. Is the entire product catalogue considered an ad? Or do you mean parts of a product catalogue can contain adverts? I'd argue a product catalogue is not advertising at all.
Anderton's (a music retailer in the UK) has an enormously popular YouTube channel (1M subs) which is basically just them demoing their stock while shooting the breeze. It's 100% an advertisement, but it's the sort that most people (including myself, who otherwise hates ads) is fine with because you have to seek it out.
I consider each product listing in a catalogues to be ads, or perhaps the whole catalogues is one big aggregate ad. Either way, I'm fine with them. Product catalogues are mostly innocuous and usually provide more empirical product information than other forms of advertisement.
Of course it's advertising. It's telling you about products you can buy, pushed by people who want you to buy those products, and they can pay money to be on an earlier page (we should probably ban that). But the general idea of a product catalogue shouldn't be illegal even if ads are illegal, because it's actually useful and non-invasive.
If you change words in a text then the meaning changes. Even if all ads are speech (I don't think they are, but I don't need to argue that), not all speech is advertisement. You can say your piece in one of many other forms that doesn't hijack my attention.
There is no need to be a puritan against any form of pornography to expect consensus against having most addictive/eye-catching porn ostensibly displayed everywhere in the public sphere. And it’s perfectly clear that it’s actually possible to be simultaneously fine with people watching all the porn they want in their private sphere if they are warned willing adults.
Time, place, and manner restrictions already exist on speech. I'm not an anti-ad absolutist, but it would be perfectly fine by me, and most people not financially incentivized otherwise, to place time, place, and manner restrictions on ads. I'd love a blanket ban on billboards, for example.
The term free speech is misleading. It is really freedom of speech. I.e. someone who says something doesn't have to be afraid of prosecution because of what they said.
It isn't the speech that is being protected it is the person who says it.
Using the term "free speech" creates those weird scenarios where now we have someone argue that the US Constitution mandates ads to be everywhere.
Nope. Something only a person benefiting from such cancer that ad business is would say that (and there are tons of those here on HN lets be honest, better half of faangs has ad-paid ultra high salaries and bonuses).
Ultimately its just another manipulation to part you with your money in other ways than you intended, nothing more and nothing less.
Unfortunately, the whole point is that along with the fridge/whatever tech you purchase a billboard and willingly bring ads into your home. Of course ads on purchased devices should be mandatory AND we customers will soon be expected to pay a "subscription fee" to temporarily unsubscribe from the ads. What kind of company would possibly make ads opt-in? IMO allowing the owner to turn off ads is a problem (for the company), not a solution
That's fine. They can simply charge for the product what it costs to make, like they always did before, and if they find that nobody uses the "enable ads" button (because why would they?) they can save some maintenance effort by removing that button. They might even find the fridge doesn't need a wifi chip and can be cheaper.
It's not as easy with some digital devices (even TVs these days), but fridges are a category where I can decisively say people who don't want ads can just buy a version without ads.
If a fridge maker wants to sell you a cheaper fridge subsidized by ads, I don't think that's a problem as long as tracking is optional.
That’s true as long as there are options that don’t have ads.
There used to be TVs that don’t have ads or tracking, but that’s not the case anymore (or so I’ve heard; haven’t bought a TV personally yet). I don’t see why fridges would be immune to that.
At least with fridges a screen is extra cost to be built in.
On other hand with TVs unless you are doing just a monitor, you need something to control it. And I mean like digital TV, selecting input, possibly show some overlay or controls. And at that point just slapping a computer in it is lot faster development cycle. And then you might as well support streaming services as general population seem to want those.
No there aren't. There are not billions of people motivated for the total elimination of all advertisements everywhere. The vast majority of humans do not care one way or another, and most of those who dislike advertising probably wouldn't support banning them entirely.
You must own shares in Google. The vast majority of humans are motivated against inequality. Advertising creates a larger wealth gap. The fact that you're annoyed by me says a lot more about the type of person you are than anything else. And no I'm not "trolling". Grow up and reconsider your insane position.
The vast majority of humans don't consider advertisement to be as fundamental a form of inequality as you seem to.
The fact that you can't comprehend my disagreement in good faith demonstrates that there's no point in continuing this conversation. No, I don't own shares in Google, nor am I insane. I think you're the one who needs to broaden their horizons a bit. Good day.
Back in the day, I chose to buy the Kindle with ads to save a few dollars. (I think it was $10 cheaper; looks like it's $20 now[0].) I 100% found this a worthwhile trade-off, and so did thousands of other consumers.
I think, if given the conscious choice, people would choose to not have ads as they are now. The point is, that choice is not given, and most people don't know how to eliminate them from their lives, or that they even have a choice
A lot happens in the world because people are passive, or prioritize their attention on other things, not that they are "okay" with it. If it was made easy for them, they'd choose it.
Lobbying ensures such choices are taken away from people, outside of the envelop of actionability by most people.
My wife also likes ads. It drives me crazy. Half of the time she’s on instagram, she’s paging through ads. At least we have agreed to minimize our children’s exposure to ads. For example if there’s an educational show only on YouTube I will download it and they watch it offline. We will never buy a kitchen appliance with ads on it.
I love the idea, but our whole world is built on advertising. A world without ads does not seem possible. The internet mostly works only because of advertisements.
I would not go back. YouTube is a wonderful thing that I can't afford to pay for, and I don't want to live without. There are so many creators I love that would not be able to create and share beautiful things if they didn't get ad money. It's not all bad.
But if I had to choose one or the other, I'd choose no ads.
And that's only comparing "then" to "now". I'm confident that "now" will get worse in the future, making "then" all the more appealing!
I'm all for the idea of small content creators being able to afford to create their work. I wish content creation did not attract so many people who only do it for money, though. Maybe this would be achievable if the rewards were lower. Advertising sucks all the air out of the room for alternative funding mechanisms. If ads were eliminated, there would be other mechanisms.
However, back in reality, I'll concede that (e.g.) Google's massive ad revenue has given them the ability to try a thousand other things, a handful of which will be long-term valuable to the world. But the cost is immense.
I agree with you on the total ad ban, but this has more about schizophrenia than ads. I've had to care for someone with schizoaffective disorder and she would tell me the smoke detectors were spying on us because of the red light in it, so we had to cover it with electrical tape or she would become too distressed. She told me the cats were spies with CIA microchips in them. The fridge ad is incidental -- if weren't the fridge it would have been something else.
I agree, ads are inserted everywhere, also hidden, and has surpassed the physiological threshold and brain barriers for a more healthy life (e.g. attention and feelings).
To be clear, Dems are about as unlikely to do this as the Trump administration is. This is the sort of generational reform that requires a redefining of a political party.
Ads really aren't that bad. Targeted ads may even help you discover products you'll enjoy.
The ad in the article is pretty obviously an ad to anyone that can read the words, "New Series. Start Watching".
Ads like these that randomly display during idle is hardly what I consider invasive.
Hopefully OP's sister gets her mental health under control, but I wouldn't immediately raise pitch forks to ban an entire industry vital to the economy and business-consumer communication.
Why should one have to endure the intrusion? Why does every product need adverts as it seems to be the place society is going? They are that bad and their place is only potentially in the places that people are looking for said products.
When every product has adverts, is it a choice any longer? Even finding devices, like TV's without ads is more difficult( no on is advertising them :) ) and paying more is often not an option.
And a banner ad may display on a laptop in your home, what's your point? Location or device type matters not. This ad doesn't interrupt the user or demand any attention.
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I know this isn’t Just a Samsung problem, but it’s sure not Not a Samsung problem either. Samsung’s taken the early-00’s Sony crown of most anti-consumer company out there - don’t buy Samsung.
That might sound strange at first, but we've seen enough now to know that this will inevitably mean that a lot of manufacturers will follow this model.
I can imagine deals where you get a huge 'rebate' if you permanently enable the ad-feature (the on-screen wizard will blow one of those tiny fuses as its final step, locking the device to that setting). That effectively mandates that the price for the device is its selling price minus the huge rebate, and the whole market will adjust to that.
"Telly" [1] is a real 55" TV that is available for free. It is designed to always, constantly be running advertisements.
> To reserve a Telly, you must agree to use the device as the main TV in your home, constantly keep it connected to the internet, and regularly watch it. If the company finds that you violate these rules, Telly will ask you to return the TV (and charge a $1,000 fee if you don’t send it back).
Also because just because something is done "willingly" doesn't mean they fully understand that it may not be in their best interest, long-term. This is why drugs are illegal.
From another posts recently, just the fact some of the greatest minds in our planet are mostly working in advertising and trying to squeeze the most out of consumers just tell us everything. Our society is so rotten. This time of the year it gets even worst.
Hmm, maybe there's a simple legislative fix for this problem. Basically vendors that want to make you "rent" devices would have to allow termination for convenience at any time by customer including repayment of any fees paid by the customer for the device.
Termination for convenience is a standard term in contracts, hence well-understood by corporate lawyers. The repayment could be reduced using a depreciation schedule so the longer the device is in your hands the less that's returned.
I think this would work. The legal machinery is already there. The market would work out the details.
Already done! You agreed to it in the Terms and Conditions - you did read them, right?
But yeah I agree with you, there needs to be a way for people to get away from ads without relying on the existence of some benevolent alternate company
Terms and conditions can't just force anything on the buyer. like, you can't enslave people and point at the terms and conditions. It should also be outlawed to enshittify products with terms and conditions.
Despite what the average multinational will have you believe, terms and conditions usually don't hold up in court. If they write some illegal bullshit into it, it's just that, bullshit.
That may be true but doesn't help if not accepting the terms prevents you from using the device.
On a practical level you then at best have a battle to get a third party (the retailer) to give you a refund and most people faced with the option of removing and returning a huge expensive device like a fridge with no guarantee of a refund are going to just leave it.
It does need some stubborn and tenacious people to make a stand and set a president - perhaps backed by a consumer rights group but it's an uphill battle.
Sure, but that depends on the thing actually being illegal first. Genuine question - how often in practice are terms and conditions successfully challenged? My thought is that companies like that would be able to drain plaintiffs out before it getting that far very often
If ignoring them is your only option, and challenging them would fail, we would expect to see a lack of challenging them. Which we do.
Unless there's a solid track record of people consistently challenging them and winning, we can assume, based on bayesian priors, that most people cannot.
Outlawing this specific scenario sounds pretty hard. I can see only two reasonable options:
* Ban all advertisements. (I'm all for it, at this point.)
* Make sure smart-devices make extremely clear that they can be used to show ads, and include trivial instructions to disable ads
Forcing ads onto stuff we pay money for is not okay. Ads to fund free content is probably unavoidable, but even then, it needs to be clear up front what you're subjecting yourself to. Unexpected ads on devices you don't expect them from, can be confusing and disorienting for many people. For people with schizophrenia, it can clearly be dangerous.
And I think this is not just true for smart fridges, but also for those billboards at bus stops that seem stationary at first until they suddenly start to move or talk to you. Ban those please. Or make it clear upfront that they're video. Don't spring this on unsuspecting people.
> Make sure smart-devices make extremely clear that they can be used to show ads, and include trivial instructions to disable ads
The other way around — make it clear that the devices are capable of showing ads, and provide instructions on how to opt-in to them (and no cookie-like prompts either)
Can we talk about billboards too? As in, giant, increasingly bright ads intended to catch our attention while we're supposed to be carefully operating giant speeding hunks of metal?
And are only the visible part of the iceberg. The part you don't see is the collection of personal data. That is linked to habits - and to deviations from habits - and that is shared with third parties.
I'm going to keep this sort of on topic and this will not be a popular opinion.
No, this does not need legislation. If you don't wants ads on your refrigerator, how about not buying a refrigerator with a screen built in, it's not necessary.
People said the same thing about cars. People said the same thing about smart TVs. Do you know any cars currently being manufactured that respect your privacy?
Try to buy a new TV without « smart » features. It’s nearly impossible and all of them will come with some kind of ads on it.
I fear it will become impossible to buy a fridge without screen and ad if we don’t find a way to stop this. It’s pure profit for manufacturers and the consumers are fucked since fridge are basic necessities.
My last two televisions both came from the "Sceptre" line at Walmart which seemed to be the last holdout of non-smart TVs. I don't know if they're still holding the line; the model I checked just now says it has "V-chip" but doesn't say anything about a "smart TV" operating system or any of that nonsense. It's not very well-advertised but it's still around. I don't know of any way to find a normal TV that isn't from Walmart or a thrift store, though.
No one can force you to watch ads, they're your eyeballs. There will always be a solution to this problem; if it's in your domicile then no one can stop you from spending time coming up with solutions
And what if the manufacturers decide to sue you for disabling the screen? Or decide to simply disable your fridge? This isn't a far out scenario either, the whole right-to-repair movement was based on a company not allowing you to do things with the tractor you bought.
I've long wondered what would happen if, say, NYT sued me for blocking their many ads (despite being a paying subscriber). My argument would be that I'd never click on the ads anyway out of principle, so the ad blocker is just me delegating the ignoring of ads that I would've done myself regardless. Also that if I couldn't turn off ads, I wouldn't have subscribed and they'd make even less revenue.
That said, I doubt these companies would sue because of the risk of setting a precedent in favor of the consumer. Scary legal letters (e.g. cease & desist letters) perhaps. But given enough customers, at least one will have the resources to hire a good lawyer and fight it all the way to court.
If a company intentionally spoiled my food out of spite I would sue them. If they did it to all of their customers that becomes class action. They cannot force their customers into a contract which would include allowing them to spoil your food out of spite, that contract would not be legally binding.
It would be with merit, because it would be part of the contract you signed when you bought the damn thing. We already live in a world where any attempt to bypass DRM on things you've bought is tantamount to a potential legal battle if they really wanted to be assholes about it. Where you don't really own the things you buy.
Drm is one thing, taping construction paper over a screen is another. That contract would be unenforceable. Shit is dystopian lately, but you're being hyperbolic.
It's a bit trite, but also true -- a significant portion of reddit is totally made up. It's worse than it was a few years ago, but I have no way whatsoever to measure it. Occasionally I bump into youtube videos which are just narrations of reddit posts which tell some interesting or controversial story. They all really sound fabricated. There's no way for me to know with certainty, but I think extreme skepticism is the safer assumption for any large reddit.
On Reddit? It should...
These were historically almost always made up after people looked into it.
To be clear, the picture is likely real. The backstory to it probably not.
The people that actually feel like they've had the episode would almost certainly not go on social media with it.
The venn diagram of people sharing such content, having the money to buy such a gigantic smart fridge and suffering from schizophrenia is miniscule
The ads for this TV show are real and do look like that.
Honestly, a trigger for paranoia in someone of the same name as the show's protagonist, or stealth marketing, are equally likely scenarios to me. We don't know.
I did now and am even more certain it's made up now.
I'm not sure how anyone can honestly think this is a person talking about their family. This is like a textbook made believe story people have been doing since Reddit got popular in early 2010s.
For this story to be real, you'll have to add a fourth and fifth circle to the diagram with a family member being close enough to the person suffering from the illness to be confided in and being so karma hungry to utilize their personal story which is likely shameful to them for going viral on Reddit.
> the schizophrenic sister's name happens to be Carol ...
Obviously made up.
Why? because no-ones' sister is ever called "Carol" ? Or because people of that name don't get schizophrenia?
I consider myself sane, but if I saw a billboard addressing me by name, I would do a double-take at least. I can easily understand how it would have an impact and look like a schizophrenic symptom.
The TV show advert with that text actually does exist, I've seen it.
Given that, what are the odds that some day a) it is seen, b) by someone called Carol, c) who is susceptible to being affected by it. I would say substantial.
Somehow it all happened just in time to coincide with the release of this big show: Samsung rolling out ads(a big story in its own), Pluberis (or whatever the name of the show) from the creator of the Breaking Bad on Apple TV, schizophrenic sister that is named Carol.
Totally NOT made up.
Not related at all, but I have this very exciting business idea – you can make billions, can you contact me via email in my bio? Not a scam, 100%.
Name matches will happen regardless of the name chosen for a fictional person. "named Carol" specifically vs other names is an irrelevance. You put too much on it.
> Totally NOT made up.
Once more for the hard of reading, I refer you to what I said earlier, "We don't know the truth of this at all."
> but I have this very exciting business idea – you can make billions,
It looks to me like you want to rant people you have invented, who hold positions that I do not. I'm sorry that you can't parse nuance, but I think I'll keep the sceptical lack of faith in your position that I used earlier.
Carol is a very uncommon name, it was last popular in the 40s and 50s so almost every Carol you find today will be in an old folk's home. The odds of two truly independent instances of somebody named Carol appearing in this manner of circumstance is extremely small.
Also, it came from reddit therefore it is fake. Reddit is a dumpster fire, if we're being generous it's a website for playing around with creative writing exercises. The not so generous interpretation is that reddit users are deranged internet point addicts who habitually lie to get their fix.
This level of simple assurance is for simpletons. You and I don't know the truth of it and can't be sure based on "it's from reddit". I'm sorry that not being sure is hard for you.
> The odds of two truly independent instances of somebody named Carol appearing in this manner of circumstance
What on earth are you talking about? There there are not "two people named Carol appearing in this manner." The first is the protagonist of a sci-fi show. You know, a fictional person. There is 1 - count them, one, supposed victim appearing in this manner. Which is possible regardless of the name chosen for the show and ad.
> "This level of simple assurance is for simpletons. You and I don't know the truth of it and can't be sure based on "it's from reddit". I'm sorry that not being sure is hard for you."
I respectfully disagree with your dismissal. Reasonable heuristics are necessary to get through life without getting lost in hours of deep dives into any random shit you hear. Anyway, the mere fact that the fridges have ads of any sort at all is reason enough to never buy one, I don't need to also believe some redditor's karma seeking tall tale.
> Reasonable heuristics are necessary to get through life without getting lost in hours of deep dives into any random shit you hear.
And I respectfully disagree with that.
Firstly, I have my own opinions on reddit and I don't find your simplistic ones persuasive. It's not monolithic.
But more importantly, you make a leap from "We don't know the truth of it and can't be sure" to "getting lost in hours of deep dives" (to establish certainty) which IMHO just does not follow.
You can decide that you don't know, that you do not need to have an authoritative opinion on the topic, and leave it at that. There are a lots of things that you and I don't have certainty on, and never will. Most of them are not important to us.
Deep dives might or might not be worth it, but you present choosing a side as the only alternative and it is not.
Again, I'm sorry that not being sure is hard for you. But it's a useful thing to do.
> I don't need to also believe some redditor's karma seeking tall tale.
I don't think I ever said that I believe it as certainty. But if the only options that you understand are binary, then not picking one as a certainty seems to be be misread as picking the other one. Which it is not.
The amount of "black or white", all or nothing, no-nuance, no doubt, no open mind, "if you say you're not convinced of x, then you must be trying to convince everyone of not-x" thinking here is frankly pathological.
FYI, I find the arguments that have come up that "Ads on Samsung fridges don't look like that" more substantive than "no one has that name" or "reddit always lies". Those last are guesses masquerading as information.
Yeah so this hypothetical sister doesn’t work, lives by themself, is severely disabled by schizophrenia but at the same time can afford a £2000 fridge. That’s a crazy amount of money to splash for someone who doesn’t work. Especially as amazing fridges are sold for £600-800. Oh, on top of all that, the persons name is Carol. It wouldn’t have worked with any other name.
I don’t think the story is real. But people who want it to be true are easily convinced.
It's also true that illness and disability can come to any of us. Carol could have been a software developer who made a good bit of money before being unable to work anymore.
> is severely disabled by schizophrenia but at the same time can afford a £2000 fridge.
The fridge has been on sale for a few years and schizophrenia can come on very suddenly. People's lives can change in a day because of it. You and I don't know the truth of it and can't reasonably jump to conclusions like that.
I recently had an obviously disturbed man come to the window of my Tesla asking for help. He did not specifically say money, but that's what he wanted. Long story short, he sees that the Tesla has identified a human standing next to the car, but the Tesla showed four people. The man asked how does the vehicle know there are people there, I told him that the Tesla has eight cameras around it. He then asked how does it know there were four people, I explained that the Tesla does not know there were four people, rather the Tesla has a hard time figuring out where something as small as a human is - it is designed to detect larger things like other vehicles. The man was obviously extremely affected, and walked away without another word.
Only later did I understand that the Tesla may have just confirmed what he had suspected all along - that there are in fact four people in the place where he is standing.
When a million doomers post their predictions in response to something, a few are bound to be correct. Doesn't mean it's real, fake, or manifested by the hivemind. Just monkeys with typewriters.
I used to follow a few personal finance and FIRE subs. Pretty much all of them had surprising number of creative writing exercises too:
"I just inherited $10 million from a dead relative I never knew, what should I do?"
Or:
"I sold my online business for $37 million, is this enough to retire on?"
These daydreamers always create fresh throwaway accounts and usually never come back to answer clarifying questions. If they do, their answers are vague and unhelpful.
Because it's internet + social media. You should assume 60% of it is made up, every time. People are either saying things they know to be untrue, or things they think are true but or not.
It’s not genuine. The fridge doesn’t show full-screen ads, the original Reddit post and image of the ‘Carol’ ad is staged. At best, this is a parable about the slippery slope our ad-ridden society is sliding down.
Update 11/14: Samsung has commented on the image posted to Reddit, noting that the ad format shown on the smart fridge display is not one that would appear over the cover screen. Any ad shown would be limited to the cover screen widget, which displays news, weather, and calendar events. Those slides rotate every 10 seconds or so, and an ad is looped in around every 40 seconds.
It appears that the ad shown in the Reddit photo is of the fridge’s Samsung Internet app. Through that, an ad seems to have shown up organically through a third-party website.
Samsung notes that full-screen ads do not appear as part of these recent software updates, and users shouldn’t expect to see ads that take up the entire display.
‘Shown up organically’ seems like a very generous interpretation to me - it seems far more likely that someone viewed it deliberately for the purposes of staging the photo.
On one hand I wouldn't cheer for spreading lies, but if this specific post got Samsung to lay down where the ads appear and at which frequency, I'd see the positive side of it. In particular they're that less likely to actually silently move to full ads in the near future even if they planned to, now that they officially commented on it.
On the other hand, this was traditionally the role of art and fiction. Black Mirror was based on the premise of getting people to react to this kind of future, and it looks like it's either not working (anymore?) or we're past the point where hypothetical situations would grab our attention and we can do something about it.
On the third hand, I have no intention to buy a fridge with a screen on it, but if it becomes the mainstream offering will I be forking 10% or 20% to not have th screen, or if those will have significantly better features (better temperature management etc.). I also wished I wasn't looking at ads, but in practice the best educational content right now is sponsored by S**space.
the technology to directly transmit audio without the need for headphones has been around for a while , for a recent implementation one could search up soundlazer
it is interesting to consider that at any point the thoughts in one's skull are not necessarily their own
I'm no prude, but I'm finding horror, pharma & sex ads to be incredibly disturbing in how they are presented. Google TV takes over my wall with moderately graphic horror movie ads. My family members aren't comfortable with horror and they have no way to use the TV otherwise. It's unsetting in the middle of the night. And graphic pharma ads for stomach turning skin disorders and other inappropriate disorders play even during casual, family content. And most of the sexual content is not family friendly -- even I find it awkward to have on the wall, especially when my parents visit.
These devices used to be ours with some level of control, and now they are all remotely managed to present awful content at all hours
I inherited a Samsung fridge when I moved to a new place, it was a terrible fridge with serious mechanical flaws. The deicer broke, causing a constant stream of leaking water in the fridge. The French door middle component hinge was cheap plastic that broke and I had to replace it, then it broke again and I had to replace it again, then it broke again. I finally gave up and replaced the fridge.
Recommendation threads on Reddit usually begin with "anything but Samsung". They seem designed to be made cheap and hit the lowest price point with consumers that don't want to spend a lot more on something they don't really care about, so I'm not surprised to learn that ads are a part of their strategy.
But also, why do fridges need to connect to the internet?
Been there and absolutely can see this happening, it is sometimes a prodromal symptom called a 'sign of reference' [1].
I recall during my first psychosis episode thinking a TNT logistics van contained a bomb and was being used as a terrorist vehicle to blow up a building (or maybe at the time I think it could have been targeting myself directly).
Also, in that same episode, the train stations in Sydney were being plastered on every possible space and surface with high contrast white on blue posters that said "HEY TOSSER!" [2]; it was an anti littering ad campaign bringing some levity to the situation. My mind was overwhelmed by both its alerting nature and the fact that everywhere I would turn I'd see a poster, and in my infirmity it felt like someone was pointing a finger an inch from my forehead arresting me to say I should stop being a tosser in the derogatory (Australian slang) sense (though my mind was contending with the many multiple meanings).
On one hand you're correct, but on the other hand Carol is a very common name and this is a very reasonable reaction. I'm split, and I think this is plausible enough to take seriously.
Manufacturers for 100 years didn’t try to wrap their fridges in ads, or tune the compressor sound to a commercial jingle. They sold mostly honest products to cool your food efficiently.
But when they add an LED display and Internet connection, suddenly they forget about cooling your food and impulsively add a bunch of adversarial functionality, meaning functions that monetize the consumer rather than keeping the food cool.
It’s like the Internet advertising ecosystem is a virus intent on infecting anything and anyone with an Internet connection, making them do bizarre customer-hostile things they never would have done otherwise.
You are way off: it's just about money. For a long time, making appliances was an ok business, making good stuff, selling them, factories running, employment, margins ok, ... and there was progress/innovation to do.
Now that there is not much to update or innovate with, and companies have already squeezed workers in Bengladesh to the max, the only current innovation and additional money source are "connected" and "ads".
I don't see any contradiction between the two takes; I suspect capital pressure will force us into an inhumane dystopia where baseline existence is miserable, and quiet rational thought is a luxury.
I read [Unauthorized Bread (exerpt) by Doctoro](https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-...) this year which was pretty approachable read on the topic. Not severely interesting or mind blowing if you're already here hopefully but did make me wonder how I could sneak it into my mums reading list.
If you have a router you control, many routers allow you to take away internet access from a device while keeping it on your local network. Some (all?) Asus routers can do this from their UI.
This won’t help with devices that require 24x7 internet access, but it’s great for things you want to access the local network but don’t trust not to send info to a third party. (TVs, music amps with built in streaming, home surveillance systems [1], etc.)
Also handy for briefly turning on Internet access for software updates or one time activation.
[1] while making a surveillance system available online safely and with software you control isn’t hard, it’s not trivial. Turning Internet access off for your cameras without a plan will mean you can’t monitor your home or get alerts when away from your local network.
"I just saw something incredibly cool! A big floating ball that lit up with every color in the rainbow, plus some new ones that were so beautiful I fell to my knees and cried."
"Was it out in front of Discount Shoe Outlet?"
"Yeah..."
"They have a college kid wear that to attract customers."
"Well, sure, but not in our dreams. Only on TV and radio. And in magazines and movies and at ball games, on buses and milk cartons and T-shirts and bananas and written on the sky. But not in dreams. No, sir-ee!"
These targeted ads are incredibly harmful when you have to take care of someone with psychosis. They think that someone who is listening to them is sending them "messages" through ads and that feeds into paranoia. Unfortunately it is not possible to reason in such situations with the person and any attempt to explain tracking is met with hostility.
I really wish regulators stopped being corrupt, naive or both and outright made it illegal.
There is no upside for tracking of any kind for consumers.
As an aside, having scroll that thread, Reddit is a shambles. There's more deleted comments and related justification comment than actual comments. Make for a jarring experience.
It's a legal advice subreddit; they tend to have stricter moderation because their primary goal is to get the OP an answer to their question or advice on how to consult a legal professional about their issue. Posts like the one linked here tend to be a magnet for people more interested in the drama than the actual legal principles, so they end up being a wasteland of removed comments.
Exactly. There are reasons for those many deleted comments. It's specific to this subreddit for very good reasons and not something you can use to disparage all of reddit. Many subreddits have their own rules and culture.
It's not disparaging to point out a fact. The whole delete comment content but keep the comment and then add a reply comment with wordy reason for deletion of comment content is a shambles. And irrespective of whether it's on every subreddit or not, doesn't make it less so. It's basically just spam at this point.
My solution would be to simply delete the comment and PM the OP. If another user had already replied, replace the original content with a *short* reason for deletion, and PM the OP, leaving the replies in place unless they needed deleting.
Another example: r/AskHistorians is so heavily moderated almost every comment gets deleted.
Their standards of quality are very high. It's not a sub to push your views or argue, it's a sub for historians or people who can back an answer with academic references. So most comments and answers will get modded.
It's oddly refreshing. No flamewars, no junk comments, no "everybody knows the reason X did Y is Z" because that won't be accepted by the mods.
AskHistorians is far and away the best moderated sub on the site, but it relies entirely on guidelines that you can understand and agree with. Moderation on other subs (no clue about this one) is so heinously biased it makes them unusable. Very common on political and news oriented subs....
Absolutely- I can't understand why it still has such a loyal base considering how low the quality is- I see more insightful discussion on facebook half the time
Because Reddit != Reddit and each subreddit has their own audience and moderation style. Most of Reddit might be a cesspit, but that doesn't mean all of it is.
I can't understand why cigarettes have such a loyal fanbase. They're smelly and expensive. Costing roughly 4k a year, I can't understand why someone wouldn't buy a nicer car or massive TV or something.
Whenever a platform is popular these days I just assume it is more addictive.
I know this is the sort of story HN would love to be true (and to be clear, I think ads on appliances are Black Mirror level stuff), but this — like most things on Reddit — is made up. [1]
This story, while fun to discuss, should be flagged, and not on the FP of HN.
That thread goes into how Samsung has confirmed that this ad can’t show up like it did [1]. There are many comments in that thread debunking this. Which is why I linked the whole thread, not a single comment.
When something posts something on Reddit that sounds far fetched (fun to believe, but unlikely), we (the HN community) should default to skepticism/critical thinking, rather than assuming it’s true without evidence that it is.
>has confirmed that this ad can’t show up like it did
While this certainly may be true, I trust companies to tell the actual truth about this when it's been verified by an independent 3rd party.
So much of the "This can't happen", "We didn't scan and save all your wireless network names", "We didn't copy all the contacts in your address book" quite commonly break down later when it is realized that some sub-group doing an A/B test or keeping their work somewhat hidden actually did the thing in question.
> When something posted on Reddit that sounds far fetched (fun to believe, but unlikely), we should default to skepticism/critical thinking, rather than assuming it’s true without evidence that it is.
That's my point. This doesn't sound at all far fetched if you've spent time with people recovering from psychosis with visual hallucinations.
I'm normally a very skeptical person, and while I both agree claims require evidence. I don't find the comment thread from before very compelling evidence.
Fake or not, I do believe that an ad with the text from the troll image would show up on a smart fridge, I don't trust Samsung to tell the truth^1, and importantly the minimal description from the linked post describes an experience similar to one I've seen before working with a patient. (But from a print ad.)
Even if this exac is fiction, this kinda stuff actually happens. Perhaps I'm wrong, to believe it's plausible, but dismissing it outright is a mistake. You don't want to acknowledge hallucinations are real, but more important than that, you don't want to tell someone that they're lying without positive proof.
edit ^1: I read that exactly prior to reading your reply, and yes I do agree that explanation seems to be correct; that wasn't what I was basing my take on. i.e. true or not it's less important to my original objection. Or I find it plausible than even a small advert would result in the same event.
> Fake or not, I do believe that an ad with the text from the troll image would show up on a smart fridge, I don't trust Samsung to tell the truth^1
I trust them more than some reddit post. Samsung has at least some incentive to tell the truth (they don't want to piss off consumers). What's the penalty for lying on Reddit?
I knew using ad blockers is good for your mental health but this is plain creepy and unfair. Especially when advertisers know more and more about you as more and more everyday items are spying on you and serve you ads without any additional core functionality. Appliances don't get better, they are getting creepier to increase the return of investment for the manufacturers. The schizophrenics are just more sensitive to this enshittification of everyday items because they are quick to assume deliberate agency in chaotic events where there is none. But this is changing, for everybody.
The problem is today you can't really tell anymore whether this "Carol" the ad was addressing is the advertiser knowing that it's your name or just a random "clever" reference to a character in the TV show, I mean even after getting the resolution that it's the latter, nobody can be sure if this excludes the former, like the algorithm decided to send Carol an ad about a show with a Carol in it. It's not good to have to make up your mind about it even when you are not suffering from schizophrenia.
It's annoying, it's intrusive, it wastes your time and ruins your day. And it makes you hate your new tech, makes you hate tech in general, because it's a big "fuck you we can do what we want with you now" towards the customers. No wonder Luddites are making a come back, that's just self-defense.
Because their old fridge died and they need a new one now, and this is all that's in stock.
Because they didn't buy the fridge, their landlord did.
Because the fridge is installed at a workplace, or community centre, or other location at which the individual has no effective choice.
Because there are no new fridges with other desired features which don't have screens.
Because, at some future date, absent legislation or crushing litigation, no non-screen, ad-free fridges exist.
Substitute for "fridge" and "ads" any of number of other consumer / general appliances: stoves, washing machines, dishwashers, phones, televisions, thermostats, doorbells, petrol pumps, etc., or features: cameras, microphones, speakers, iris scanners, thumbprint readers, facial recognition, etc., etc.
I recently tried this for a new TV - buying a regular “non-smart” TV without the internet features without being “AI-enabled” (whatever the fuck that means).
It wasn’t possible - there was literally no TV available that didn’t have a small computer built in to connect to the internet and send all my usage data somewhere.
I probably have to find a second hand one somewhere or just continue to live without one.
Not saying that it’s the same with fridges - but who knows a few years down the line it might be…
Open source, as in corporate outsourcing software maintenance to free labour? No. Free software, as in four freedoms? Yes, because you could install your own firmware that doesn't show advertisements.
That's what the whole GPLv3 debacle was about after all.
Stallman may have not imagined this specific scenario, but he absolutely did conceive of owner-hostile software that could not be replaced.
You could, but would most people? Most people voluntarily subject themselves to garbage adware-ridden SmartTVs even though this is a problem you can solve with a £12 dongle and no software installation at all. If the humble HDMI cable defeats the average person’s technical ability, what difference would it make if they could technically install their own firmware?
Fine, but I don't care about the average person. _I_ do not want this junk in my life. I don't deserve to be treated this way. If everyone else want to be manipulated by their fridge, thats one's on them, but count me out. It doesn't matter _if_ you install your own firmware, but _if you have the right to do so_. I don't own a gun, but I still believe that owning a firearm is a human right.
As a schizotypal person, I'm unsure how more people aren't exhibiting paranoid schizophrenic symptoms in this wildly untrustworthy digital age.
Yesterday a good friend reached out to me on a new phone number to wish me happy holidays, she shortly afterwards asked me to donate to a fund to help her sick cat.
Even though this person had a similar typing style, the unrecognized phone number made me feel paranoid that it may be an LLM attempting to get money from me in an automated scam, so I made the choice to call my friend to get more evidence via voice.
It turned out to be my friend(or an even more elaborate ruse using voice capture and mass data-mining tech, but that seemed extremely unlikely, at least for another couple years).
My brother had full on shizpphrenia, and would often call family members asking them to provide evidence that they are who they say they are and not government robots. It was an obvious delusion when he was alive, but now that we're in a world where that sort of evidence-gathering is no longer extreme, paranoia is the new normal.
Our usual safeguards of identity are breaking down, and you can bet that large corporations with an eye on the coin are going to swoop in to establish new, more secure methods of identification.
Society, in a sense, is highly dependent on trustworthy interactions. Credit, ownership transfers, banking, etc. all depend on trust. If we go back to only being able to trust in-person interactions, we'll be stepping back to a financial system from over 100 years ago.
Because of this, I believe that solutions will be developed. Nothing is 100% fool-proof, but the government depends on a solution being found.
If there is one appliance in my house that does not need a LCD screen and «smart» features, it’s my fridge. It was installed maybe 6 years ago, I adjusted some temperature settings and I’ve never touched the dials again.
If modern ad tech and future holographic display technology makes schizophrenic symptoms indistinguishable from regular waking consciousness in our Bitchun society...does that make us all crazy? or all sane?
When I first saw somebody complain about the Pluribus smart fridge ad I immediately knew something like this was going to happen. How did Apple/Samsung not think this through?
if you read the entire reddit thread, OPs sisters name actually was Carol. That's why it wigged her out so much and triggered her schizophrenia to kick in I suppose.
Every time I see an article on HN about a "smart" device doing shitty things, my first thought is why would someone (especially from this crowd, who's supposed to be enlightened about the state of enshittification of tech) buy any IoS device in the first place ?
What good could you expect from an appliance that's permanently communicating with its non-giving a f*ck about users, profit driven, immoral and unethical mothership ? Would you really expect your life to be better after buying such a product ?
There's an old joke that a tech enthusiast will have "smart" everything in their house, while someone who works in tech keeps a shotgun in case their 10 year old laser printer makes a funny noise...
I work in the IoT industry and delight in making things work automatically.
I live in a log cabin in the back woods with minimal technology and drive an older car with actual knobs and physical switches for controls because I've seen how the sausage is made.
If you want to put an end to this you’ll either need to boycott products, make your own, or get something serious passed to abolish a good chunk of ads. This industry is loaded with money and they reinforce their own (see: ads on fridges) so good luck. It’s a tough battle.
FYI, the slogan ""WE'RE SORRY WE UPSET YOU, CAROL" on a yellow background is from the Apple TV Show "Pluribus" (Or "PLUR1BUS"). It would be an ad for that show. It is indeed creepy at times.
The main character is called "Carol". As also, it seems is the person who saw it here.
Back in the day we asked webmasters to run their web sites through Bobby for accessibility checks.
I am curious if any LLM work like this is being done. If it were really a smart fridge, it would moderate its users content appropriately. Eg I don’t want haram ads, don’t freak me out, I’m color blind.
this post is a meme (or an attempt to shed light at the problem) referencing a video by louis rossmann who foreshadows that something like this could hypothetically happen
Don’t buy appliances with anything but a small screen. Any large screen on any appliance will be used to show ads. If not now then eventually.
It’s also a gimmick, and gimmicks on things like appliances and cars are red flags for poor quality. Appliances in particular are best when simple and designed for their function. “Feature” means “thing that will break.”
1/2500 .. What is the probability of being born blind?
1/100 .. What is the probability of having schizophrenia?
1/250000* .. What is the probability of both?
1/250000* .. What is the probability of both + having resources to have it diagnosed?
[*] Assuming genetic blindness (born this way) and schizophrenia (elevated genetic risk) are not somehow inversely linked.
So, in the US:
340MM people -> 1360 born-blind people who would develop schizophrenia
Reduce that by half or so, since schizophrenia tends to emerge in or after adolescence. And since it may be confusable at older ages with other brain health issues (is this true?).
So call it 700 people in the US alone. If it is in fact zero, that is significant!
I chose the US because 100% people will have adequate access to this level of medical care. A formal diagnosis is not the same thing as access, but a born-blind person either has parents/family, or has a state warden with access to care. This is also true in many many other countries, but certainly not all.
The US has 4.1% of the world population. Figure 50% of the world does not have this level of medical access. It's probably less than that, but maybe not.
This suggests about 10,000 people worldwide, living today, who would be affected, and in an environment where they would be diagnosed.
The gut reaction of too many geeks is "I can't believe you'd install a smart fridge in your home". But we need to think about this differently. Imagine if vehicles had no mandatory safety checks. How many people know anything about car safety? You'd get people barrelling down the highway with broken suspension, bald tyres or worse. We are the professionals. It's our responsibility to keep the public safe and stop shit like this happening. The software engineers who implemented this at Samsung should be struck off. Well, we could start by having something to be struck off from. I'm done with assuming individual developers will be scrupulous. We need real consequences to come from higher up. It's way past the point that this is fucking with people's lives.
It also falls apart over when more and more products become "smart" to the point where you can't really even buy one without things like this, like TVs now or cars for that matter. I'm dreading the day where I end up forced to watch an ad before starting my car.
I do think some kind of ethics training/education/licensing/organization is long overdue for software devs.
It's the smug superiority too many "tech smart" people have.
"Why would you buy HP? Everyone knows that it stands for Horrible Product."
"Serves you right for getting a TV with built in Netflix, everyone knows that it's a backdoor to botnet!"
I don't think it's apologetics for dogpoop corporate behavior, directly. But it has that effect because those of us with knowledge enjoy being smart asses or belittling those whose ignorance rewards trends we disagree with.
People should be able to go into a store and buy a thing without researching how evil it has become in the decade or two since the last time they did. Or move into a house pre-furnished. That is a failure of legislatures, not of average Joe.
Real consequences from higher up... for ads on a fridge? Corporate execs only care about money. Engineers aren't going to get themselves fired every time someone asks for a feature they don't agree with. Government? We don't need more nanny laws.
What we need is for people to think for themselves. The powers that be aren't going to save you from all the bad things. Call out the bad things to educate people, and vote with your wallet.
There's a whole growing class of people that do not have the ability to vote with their wallet. Fridges, TVs etc will all be at their cheapest because they're subsidized by ads. Or worse, if you're a renter then there's a big incentive for apartments to put up smart fridges in every room both as a selling point and for ad revenue.
How would you propose to deal with apartments having every fridge be a smart one?
> You'd get people barrelling down the highway with broken suspension, bald tyres or worse.
You have this in most of the US, and people rail against any attempt to bring it in because they're frightened that garages will not give them their cars back if they think it's got something wrong with it.
I've seen people driving cars in the US that you wouldn't even be able to get a scrapyard to take in the UK, they'd tell you to just sweep it into a bag and put it in the recycling.
>Any ad shown would be limited to the cover screen widget, which displays news, weather, and calendar events.
>The ad shown in the Reddit photo is of the fridge’s Samsung Internet app. Through that, an ad seems to have shown up organically through a third-party website.
Here's the docs that talk about ads on the cover screen:
Time to ban all adverts everywhere. I'm not the only one who is fed up with ads.
I don't see ads, thanks to ad blocking tech in browsers and smartphones. Any time that happens to fail and I get to endure an ad, I am amazed that regular people without ad blocking tech can endure this onslaught.
The time to negotiate a "middle ground" is long past. Let's not even entertain that idea.
An acceptable middle ground could have been designated areas for ads, which you have to seek out to see them. Think of the Yellow Pages.
Ad companies need to be reined in. They cannot control themselves. They are lobbying against all limits and controls. The only solution is to eradicate ads entirely and to make sure that anyone who gets that idea will never get it again.
The fundamental problem here is a little broader than ads, but "ads" mostly cover it. The problem is the commoditization of human attention. The incentive to catch and sell attention is poisonous to all human endeavors. Some things need to grab your attention to fulfill their purpose, I'm not against the idea of something directing a person's attention. Where it becomes a problem is the murky line of that direction of attention being something that is bottled and sold, or otherwise used in the interest of the distracter rather than the distracted.
So ads that someone seeks out of their own volition? Fine. That's just marketing material, and falls in the same category as every product announcement, press release, etc. What if a product catalog is mixed in with coupons or other rewards? Not fine anymore, you've mixed up reward-seeking and information-seeking.
If someone means to direct their attention and gets distracted by an important notice, like "I mean to drive down this road, and the stop sign grabbed my attention," that's also fine. The information is relevant to the human and important for augmenting their intention. But if you download an app and try to do something, only to be met with a banner/popup/whatever informing you of other products on offer by the company? Well, they're not selling your attention to third parties, but they are monetizing it by taking your intention to use one product and attempting to redirect it into a potential purchase of another, so that's out. If you want, you can include a clearly-labelled "our other offerings" section in the app, out of the way, somewhere it would only be encountered by someone seeking it out.
Distracting people cannot be allowed to be one of the main drivers of our economy.
One that is really insane to me is Ads when driving on the highway. I can’t recall seeing that in Europe, but now in Canada when I take the highway there’s Ads everywhere. Some of them rotate.
Ironically they also have a sign that changes, one of the updates is “don’t drive distracted”… and like, I wasn’t distracted until the sign flashed at me lol.
What you are observing is the trick the industry used to get approval for changing LED billboards— they “donate” say fifteen hours per month to public service announcements. This kind of concession is gold to an ambitious public servant, the old prohibitions never stood a chance. The PSA could be “stop electronic billboards” but that was the way they got through high-friction public processes.
Good org on the other side of the issue: Scenic America: https://www.scenic.org/why-scenic-conservation/billboards-an...
I saw many billboard ads on Portugal (Europe) highways. As a Canadian, it seemed like a lot.
Europe has billboards too. Perhaps not everywhere, and not as bad as some other places, but it does exist, and it is infuriating. I don't think I've seen them flash intentionally, but nobody seems to be too interested in fixing broken LED bulbs.
I even saw a "you should be looking at the road" ad on one of those billboards.
Honestly. Premier Ford you listening?
Legal ads in product catalogues only. Product catalogues are actually useful and nobody is subjected to them unless they chose to seek one out and pick it up willingly.
I'm glad to hear someone else come to this as the solution for ads.
Wait, what? I'm confused. Is the entire product catalogue considered an ad? Or do you mean parts of a product catalogue can contain adverts? I'd argue a product catalogue is not advertising at all.
Anderton's (a music retailer in the UK) has an enormously popular YouTube channel (1M subs) which is basically just them demoing their stock while shooting the breeze. It's 100% an advertisement, but it's the sort that most people (including myself, who otherwise hates ads) is fine with because you have to seek it out.
I consider each product listing in a catalogues to be ads, or perhaps the whole catalogues is one big aggregate ad. Either way, I'm fine with them. Product catalogues are mostly innocuous and usually provide more empirical product information than other forms of advertisement.
Cool, I'm fine with them too. As long as they're not mailed out without consent.
Of course it's advertising. It's telling you about products you can buy, pushed by people who want you to buy those products, and they can pay money to be on an earlier page (we should probably ban that). But the general idea of a product catalogue shouldn't be illegal even if ads are illegal, because it's actually useful and non-invasive.
This could happen with anything when someone has a mental illness. Should anything triggering also get banned?
Ads are speech. Replace all mention of "ads" in your post with "speech I don't like" and see how it reads.
If you change words in a text then the meaning changes. Even if all ads are speech (I don't think they are, but I don't need to argue that), not all speech is advertisement. You can say your piece in one of many other forms that doesn't hijack my attention.
Also porn is related to free speech.
There is no need to be a puritan against any form of pornography to expect consensus against having most addictive/eye-catching porn ostensibly displayed everywhere in the public sphere. And it’s perfectly clear that it’s actually possible to be simultaneously fine with people watching all the porn they want in their private sphere if they are warned willing adults.
Time, place, and manner restrictions already exist on speech. I'm not an anti-ad absolutist, but it would be perfectly fine by me, and most people not financially incentivized otherwise, to place time, place, and manner restrictions on ads. I'd love a blanket ban on billboards, for example.
Not all speech should be allowed.
> But who decides what is legal then?
Laws and judges.
There needs to be a distinction between "free speech" and "bought speech".
The term free speech is misleading. It is really freedom of speech. I.e. someone who says something doesn't have to be afraid of prosecution because of what they said.
It isn't the speech that is being protected it is the person who says it.
Using the term "free speech" creates those weird scenarios where now we have someone argue that the US Constitution mandates ads to be everywhere.
Ads are speech until they are intrusive, until they track you across websites, until they violate your privacy.
It's one thing to have a block of HTML dedicated to ads, and another to have YOUR shit running on my machine WITHOUT my consent.
It is with your consent.
You continue to visit these websites.
If you don’t want their code running on your machine, simply don’t send a GET request.
Nope. Something only a person benefiting from such cancer that ad business is would say that (and there are tons of those here on HN lets be honest, better half of faangs has ad-paid ultra high salaries and bonuses).
Ultimately its just another manipulation to part you with your money in other ways than you intended, nothing more and nothing less.
Ads are not speech. Money is not speech. The map is not the territory.
I need people to give this sort of idea more serious thought.
I honestly don't think it's an insane proposition and we've let ad companies go too far. Anything they stick their hands in gets worse, full stop.
Relevant read (not my own): https://simone.org/advertising/
A simpler solution is to allow the device owner to turn off ads. Ads on purchased devices should be opt-in, not default and not mandatory.
Unfortunately, the whole point is that along with the fridge/whatever tech you purchase a billboard and willingly bring ads into your home. Of course ads on purchased devices should be mandatory AND we customers will soon be expected to pay a "subscription fee" to temporarily unsubscribe from the ads. What kind of company would possibly make ads opt-in? IMO allowing the owner to turn off ads is a problem (for the company), not a solution
> What kind of company would possibly make ads opt-in?
Amazon has for years: Kindle with ads on the lock screen is $20 cheaper than without: https://www.amazon.com/All-new-Amazon-Kindle-Paperwhite-glar...
That's fine. They can simply charge for the product what it costs to make, like they always did before, and if they find that nobody uses the "enable ads" button (because why would they?) they can save some maintenance effort by removing that button. They might even find the fridge doesn't need a wifi chip and can be cheaper.
It's not as easy with some digital devices (even TVs these days), but fridges are a category where I can decisively say people who don't want ads can just buy a version without ads.
If a fridge maker wants to sell you a cheaper fridge subsidized by ads, I don't think that's a problem as long as tracking is optional.
That’s true as long as there are options that don’t have ads.
There used to be TVs that don’t have ads or tracking, but that’s not the case anymore (or so I’ve heard; haven’t bought a TV personally yet). I don’t see why fridges would be immune to that.
At least with fridges a screen is extra cost to be built in.
On other hand with TVs unless you are doing just a monitor, you need something to control it. And I mean like digital TV, selecting input, possibly show some overlay or controls. And at that point just slapping a computer in it is lot faster development cycle. And then you might as well support streaming services as general population seem to want those.
The problem isn't just "ads exist", it’s that ads have become a business model that rewards being as intrusive and manipulative as possible
This has always been the case though. They just got better tools over time.
There are billions of dollars motivated against this outcome
There are billions of lives motivated for it.
Lives are worth nothing in the kind of economy we find ourselves in right now. Lives are sacrificed for dollars every day.
No there aren't. There are not billions of people motivated for the total elimination of all advertisements everywhere. The vast majority of humans do not care one way or another, and most of those who dislike advertising probably wouldn't support banning them entirely.
Yes. There most certainly are. The vast majority of humans are not benefiting from it and are therefore motivated against it.
Also, they do care. They just might not be consciously aware of the damage it causes.
>The vast majority of humans are not benefiting from it and are therefore motivated against it.
The vast majority of humans don't benefit from most things, but they are not therefore motivated against most things. That's not how motivation works.
>Also, they do care they just might not be consciously aware of the damage it causes.
So the one thing the entire human race agrees on is that advertising is evil, just unconsciously? They don't realize it but somehow you do?
No, sorry. I have assume you're trolling. Good show, you managed to annoy me.
You must own shares in Google. The vast majority of humans are motivated against inequality. Advertising creates a larger wealth gap. The fact that you're annoyed by me says a lot more about the type of person you are than anything else. And no I'm not "trolling". Grow up and reconsider your insane position.
The vast majority of humans don't consider advertisement to be as fundamental a form of inequality as you seem to.
The fact that you can't comprehend my disagreement in good faith demonstrates that there's no point in continuing this conversation. No, I don't own shares in Google, nor am I insane. I think you're the one who needs to broaden their horizons a bit. Good day.
>The vast majority of humans are motivated against inequality
Citation please.
Humans are an apathetic bunch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4Mn2NbjlqU
The only people who like ads are the ones running them.
Back in the day, I chose to buy the Kindle with ads to save a few dollars. (I think it was $10 cheaper; looks like it's $20 now[0].) I 100% found this a worthwhile trade-off, and so did thousands of other consumers.
[0] https://www.amazon.com/All-new-Amazon-Kindle-Paperwhite-glar...
I think, if given the conscious choice, people would choose to not have ads as they are now. The point is, that choice is not given, and most people don't know how to eliminate them from their lives, or that they even have a choice
A lot happens in the world because people are passive, or prioritize their attention on other things, not that they are "okay" with it. If it was made easy for them, they'd choose it.
Lobbying ensures such choices are taken away from people, outside of the envelop of actionability by most people.
I floated an idea past my partner- facebook without ads. They responded without hesitation "but I like the ads!"
My wife also likes ads. It drives me crazy. Half of the time she’s on instagram, she’s paging through ads. At least we have agreed to minimize our children’s exposure to ads. For example if there’s an educational show only on YouTube I will download it and they watch it offline. We will never buy a kitchen appliance with ads on it.
I thought you were being sarcastic at the start.
Vermont bans billboards on high ways. It's so nice.
I love the idea, but our whole world is built on advertising. A world without ads does not seem possible. The internet mostly works only because of advertisements.
The Internet worked before advertising.
It was different, but it was great. I would absolutely go back.
The Internet has had ads since the advent of the world wide web, arguably longer.
I loved Usenet, but I also appreciated being able to have a personal webpage for free as a kid, and that was ad-supported.
I would not go back. YouTube is a wonderful thing that I can't afford to pay for, and I don't want to live without. There are so many creators I love that would not be able to create and share beautiful things if they didn't get ad money. It's not all bad.
I agree that it's not all bad.
But if I had to choose one or the other, I'd choose no ads.
And that's only comparing "then" to "now". I'm confident that "now" will get worse in the future, making "then" all the more appealing!
I'm all for the idea of small content creators being able to afford to create their work. I wish content creation did not attract so many people who only do it for money, though. Maybe this would be achievable if the rewards were lower. Advertising sucks all the air out of the room for alternative funding mechanisms. If ads were eliminated, there would be other mechanisms.
However, back in reality, I'll concede that (e.g.) Google's massive ad revenue has given them the ability to try a thousand other things, a handful of which will be long-term valuable to the world. But the cost is immense.
yeah but what if (just hear me out) we just SELL our content. Money exchanged for goods rendered. Why subsidize this exchange with ads?
I would too. Society would not.
Of course it's possible. We just don't have the courage to make it happen.
I agree with you on the total ad ban, but this has more about schizophrenia than ads. I've had to care for someone with schizoaffective disorder and she would tell me the smoke detectors were spying on us because of the red light in it, so we had to cover it with electrical tape or she would become too distressed. She told me the cats were spies with CIA microchips in them. The fridge ad is incidental -- if weren't the fridge it would have been something else.
I agree, ads are inserted everywhere, also hidden, and has surpassed the physiological threshold and brain barriers for a more healthy life (e.g. attention and feelings).
The current admin will get right on that …
It's a worldwide issue. Even the OP link was to an UK-based subreddit.
To be clear, Dems are about as unlikely to do this as the Trump administration is. This is the sort of generational reform that requires a redefining of a political party.
Ads really aren't that bad. Targeted ads may even help you discover products you'll enjoy.
The ad in the article is pretty obviously an ad to anyone that can read the words, "New Series. Start Watching".
Ads like these that randomly display during idle is hardly what I consider invasive.
Hopefully OP's sister gets her mental health under control, but I wouldn't immediately raise pitch forks to ban an entire industry vital to the economy and business-consumer communication.
Why should one have to endure the intrusion? Why does every product need adverts as it seems to be the place society is going? They are that bad and their place is only potentially in the places that people are looking for said products.
When every product has adverts, is it a choice any longer? Even finding devices, like TV's without ads is more difficult( no on is advertising them :) ) and paying more is often not an option.
Don't want businesses to communicate with me, thanks. So entitled!
We have AI deepfake celebrities selling boner pills on YouTube.
Ads absolutely are that bad
> hardly what I consider invasive
This is an ad in someone's kitchen in their home. How can it get more invasive?
And a banner ad may display on a laptop in your home, what's your point? Location or device type matters not. This ad doesn't interrupt the user or demand any attention.
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PM me if interested.
I know this isn’t Just a Samsung problem, but it’s sure not Not a Samsung problem either. Samsung’s taken the early-00’s Sony crown of most anti-consumer company out there - don’t buy Samsung.
We really need some legislation that outlaws this sort of control over devices we buy.
If someone wants to install an advert app on their fridge (I assume in exchange for money) then fair enough.
If I buy a tv I shouldn't just have to accept that, now or in the future, the manufacturer will sell advertising on it.
> If someone wants to install an advert app on their fridge (I assume in exchange for money) then fair enough.
No, it should be illegal even when done willingly. Because this worsens the bargaining position of everyone else.
That might sound strange at first, but we've seen enough now to know that this will inevitably mean that a lot of manufacturers will follow this model.
I can imagine deals where you get a huge 'rebate' if you permanently enable the ad-feature (the on-screen wizard will blow one of those tiny fuses as its final step, locking the device to that setting). That effectively mandates that the price for the device is its selling price minus the huge rebate, and the whole market will adjust to that.
Just ban advertising on those devices.
"Telly" [1] is a real 55" TV that is available for free. It is designed to always, constantly be running advertisements.
> To reserve a Telly, you must agree to use the device as the main TV in your home, constantly keep it connected to the internet, and regularly watch it. If the company finds that you violate these rules, Telly will ask you to return the TV (and charge a $1,000 fee if you don’t send it back).
1: https://www.theverge.com/televisions/777588/telly-tv-hands-o...
Also because just because something is done "willingly" doesn't mean they fully understand that it may not be in their best interest, long-term. This is why drugs are illegal.
From another posts recently, just the fact some of the greatest minds in our planet are mostly working in advertising and trying to squeeze the most out of consumers just tell us everything. Our society is so rotten. This time of the year it gets even worst.
Their minds aren't that great if they chose to work in ad-tech, let's be honest.
>If someone wants to install an advert app on their fridge (I assume in exchange for money) then fair enough.
If you're advertising me milk on a fridge I paid full price of, send me a full sized sample of the product.
Hmm, maybe there's a simple legislative fix for this problem. Basically vendors that want to make you "rent" devices would have to allow termination for convenience at any time by customer including repayment of any fees paid by the customer for the device.
Termination for convenience is a standard term in contracts, hence well-understood by corporate lawyers. The repayment could be reduced using a depreciation schedule so the longer the device is in your hands the less that's returned.
I think this would work. The legal machinery is already there. The market would work out the details.
Already done! You agreed to it in the Terms and Conditions - you did read them, right?
But yeah I agree with you, there needs to be a way for people to get away from ads without relying on the existence of some benevolent alternate company
Terms and conditions can't just force anything on the buyer. like, you can't enslave people and point at the terms and conditions. It should also be outlawed to enshittify products with terms and conditions.
Yeah, I agree with you on both. I don't see much of a way out though that doesn't basically require dismantling the entire for-profit corporate order.
Despite what the average multinational will have you believe, terms and conditions usually don't hold up in court. If they write some illegal bullshit into it, it's just that, bullshit.
That may be true but doesn't help if not accepting the terms prevents you from using the device.
On a practical level you then at best have a battle to get a third party (the retailer) to give you a refund and most people faced with the option of removing and returning a huge expensive device like a fridge with no guarantee of a refund are going to just leave it.
It does need some stubborn and tenacious people to make a stand and set a president - perhaps backed by a consumer rights group but it's an uphill battle.
> huge expensive device like a fridge with no guarantee of a refund are going to just leave it.
oh I'll fix it with a hammer, or glue a piece of cardboard on it.
I paid extra for devices without WiFi when I moved house this year.
Sure, but that depends on the thing actually being illegal first. Genuine question - how often in practice are terms and conditions successfully challenged? My thought is that companies like that would be able to drain plaintiffs out before it getting that far very often
And how often in practice are terms and conditions attempted to be enforced in the first place? No need to challenge them if you can ignore them
If ignoring them is your only option, and challenging them would fail, we would expect to see a lack of challenging them. Which we do.
Unless there's a solid track record of people consistently challenging them and winning, we can assume, based on bayesian priors, that most people cannot.
Which makes sense: court costs money.
Outlawing this specific scenario sounds pretty hard. I can see only two reasonable options:
* Ban all advertisements. (I'm all for it, at this point.)
* Make sure smart-devices make extremely clear that they can be used to show ads, and include trivial instructions to disable ads
Forcing ads onto stuff we pay money for is not okay. Ads to fund free content is probably unavoidable, but even then, it needs to be clear up front what you're subjecting yourself to. Unexpected ads on devices you don't expect them from, can be confusing and disorienting for many people. For people with schizophrenia, it can clearly be dangerous.
And I think this is not just true for smart fridges, but also for those billboards at bus stops that seem stationary at first until they suddenly start to move or talk to you. Ban those please. Or make it clear upfront that they're video. Don't spring this on unsuspecting people.
> Make sure smart-devices make extremely clear that they can be used to show ads, and include trivial instructions to disable ads
The other way around — make it clear that the devices are capable of showing ads, and provide instructions on how to opt-in to them (and no cookie-like prompts either)
But..... then nobody will opt in to see the ads.... :(
Can we talk about billboards too? As in, giant, increasingly bright ads intended to catch our attention while we're supposed to be carefully operating giant speeding hunks of metal?
And are only the visible part of the iceberg. The part you don't see is the collection of personal data. That is linked to habits - and to deviations from habits - and that is shared with third parties.
The weird part is that this isn't even a technical problem
I'm going to keep this sort of on topic and this will not be a popular opinion.
No, this does not need legislation. If you don't wants ads on your refrigerator, how about not buying a refrigerator with a screen built in, it's not necessary.
People said the same thing about cars. People said the same thing about smart TVs. Do you know any cars currently being manufactured that respect your privacy?
https://www.mozillafoundation.org/en/privacynotincluded/cate...
Mazda is alright. iirc the CEO has expressed disinterest in touchscreens and distractions from driving
Try to buy a new TV without « smart » features. It’s nearly impossible and all of them will come with some kind of ads on it. I fear it will become impossible to buy a fridge without screen and ad if we don’t find a way to stop this. It’s pure profit for manufacturers and the consumers are fucked since fridge are basic necessities.
My last two televisions both came from the "Sceptre" line at Walmart which seemed to be the last holdout of non-smart TVs. I don't know if they're still holding the line; the model I checked just now says it has "V-chip" but doesn't say anything about a "smart TV" operating system or any of that nonsense. It's not very well-advertised but it's still around. I don't know of any way to find a normal TV that isn't from Walmart or a thrift store, though.
That would be a waste of money on the manufacturers part. It will always be possible to disable the screen
No for everybody it won't. Not to even mention the waste.
No one can force you to watch ads, they're your eyeballs. There will always be a solution to this problem; if it's in your domicile then no one can stop you from spending time coming up with solutions
“Ma’am we’re not going to do anything about that flasher. No one can force you to look at him, they're your eyeballs.”
"Officer, take that ugly man away, we don't want to have to look at him"
And what if the manufacturers decide to sue you for disabling the screen? Or decide to simply disable your fridge? This isn't a far out scenario either, the whole right-to-repair movement was based on a company not allowing you to do things with the tractor you bought.
I've long wondered what would happen if, say, NYT sued me for blocking their many ads (despite being a paying subscriber). My argument would be that I'd never click on the ads anyway out of principle, so the ad blocker is just me delegating the ignoring of ads that I would've done myself regardless. Also that if I couldn't turn off ads, I wouldn't have subscribed and they'd make even less revenue.
That said, I doubt these companies would sue because of the risk of setting a precedent in favor of the consumer. Scary legal letters (e.g. cease & desist letters) perhaps. But given enough customers, at least one will have the resources to hire a good lawyer and fight it all the way to court.
The lawsuit you described in the first question would be without merit. The class action lawsuit stemming from the second would be choc full of merit.
If the fridge is in my house and hammers aren't banned yet then that fridge will not be showing me ads.
It might also not be keeping your food cold, if they build it so that a screen failure bricks the thing
If a company intentionally spoiled my food out of spite I would sue them. If they did it to all of their customers that becomes class action. They cannot force their customers into a contract which would include allowing them to spoil your food out of spite, that contract would not be legally binding.
It would be with merit, because it would be part of the contract you signed when you bought the damn thing. We already live in a world where any attempt to bypass DRM on things you've bought is tantamount to a potential legal battle if they really wanted to be assholes about it. Where you don't really own the things you buy.
Drm is one thing, taping construction paper over a screen is another. That contract would be unenforceable. Shit is dystopian lately, but you're being hyperbolic.
And what about ads on gas pump?
In many places, you can't legally buy gas outside of a gas pump that have a strong tendency to show more and more ads.
You don't own the gas pump, and it isn't in your house.
Nah, we don't want these leeches to get a chance to flood the market driving out competitors.
This shows an irrational level of faith in the market
Although adverts on the fridge are absolutely terrible, is this genuine? Here's a reddit post some time before that suggesting the scenario: https://old.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/1ow6cpu/appa...
It's a bit trite, but also true -- a significant portion of reddit is totally made up. It's worse than it was a few years ago, but I have no way whatsoever to measure it. Occasionally I bump into youtube videos which are just narrations of reddit posts which tell some interesting or controversial story. They all really sound fabricated. There's no way for me to know with certainty, but I think extreme skepticism is the safer assumption for any large reddit.
Reddit was originally built using fake accounts, who’s to say it ever really stopped.
https://venturebeat.com/ai/reddit-fake-users
Just because someone suggested a possible scenario could happen and it then did happen isn't all that suspicious to me.
On Reddit? It should... These were historically almost always made up after people looked into it.
To be clear, the picture is likely real. The backstory to it probably not.
The people that actually feel like they've had the episode would almost certainly not go on social media with it. The venn diagram of people sharing such content, having the money to buy such a gigantic smart fridge and suffering from schizophrenia is miniscule
> To be clear, the picture is likely real.
The ads for this TV show are real and do look like that.
Honestly, a trigger for paranoia in someone of the same name as the show's protagonist, or stealth marketing, are equally likely scenarios to me. We don't know.
> The people that actually feel like they've had the episode would almost certainly not go on social media with it.
Did you read the post? It's somebody talking about what happened to their sister.
I admittedly did not, initially.
I did now and am even more certain it's made up now.
I'm not sure how anyone can honestly think this is a person talking about their family. This is like a textbook made believe story people have been doing since Reddit got popular in early 2010s.
For this story to be real, you'll have to add a fourth and fifth circle to the diagram with a family member being close enough to the person suffering from the illness to be confided in and being so karma hungry to utilize their personal story which is likely shameful to them for going viral on Reddit.
Another circle for the Venn diagram is that the schizophrenic sister's name happens to be Carol, the same as the name in the ad shown on the fridge.
Obviously made up.
> the schizophrenic sister's name happens to be Carol ... Obviously made up.
Why? because no-ones' sister is ever called "Carol" ? Or because people of that name don't get schizophrenia?
I consider myself sane, but if I saw a billboard addressing me by name, I would do a double-take at least. I can easily understand how it would have an impact and look like a schizophrenic symptom.
The TV show advert with that text actually does exist, I've seen it.
Given that, what are the odds that some day a) it is seen, b) by someone called Carol, c) who is susceptible to being affected by it. I would say substantial.
We don't know the truth of this at all.
Somehow it all happened just in time to coincide with the release of this big show: Samsung rolling out ads(a big story in its own), Pluberis (or whatever the name of the show) from the creator of the Breaking Bad on Apple TV, schizophrenic sister that is named Carol.
Totally NOT made up.
Not related at all, but I have this very exciting business idea – you can make billions, can you contact me via email in my bio? Not a scam, 100%.
> schizophrenic sister that is named Carol.
Name matches will happen regardless of the name chosen for a fictional person. "named Carol" specifically vs other names is an irrelevance. You put too much on it.
> Totally NOT made up.
Once more for the hard of reading, I refer you to what I said earlier, "We don't know the truth of this at all."
> but I have this very exciting business idea – you can make billions,
It looks to me like you want to rant people you have invented, who hold positions that I do not. I'm sorry that you can't parse nuance, but I think I'll keep the sceptical lack of faith in your position that I used earlier.
> Once more for the hard of reading, I refer you to what I said earlier, "We don't know the truth of this at all."
I’m still awaiting your email, good luck!
> I’m still awaiting your email,
Then you failed to read and understand what I wrote at all. And so there is no point in further written conversation. Good day.
Carol is a very uncommon name, it was last popular in the 40s and 50s so almost every Carol you find today will be in an old folk's home. The odds of two truly independent instances of somebody named Carol appearing in this manner of circumstance is extremely small.
Edit: https://www.babynameatlas.com/name/carol
Also, it came from reddit therefore it is fake. Reddit is a dumpster fire, if we're being generous it's a website for playing around with creative writing exercises. The not so generous interpretation is that reddit users are deranged internet point addicts who habitually lie to get their fix.
> it came from reddit therefore it is fake
This level of simple assurance is for simpletons. You and I don't know the truth of it and can't be sure based on "it's from reddit". I'm sorry that not being sure is hard for you.
> The odds of two truly independent instances of somebody named Carol appearing in this manner of circumstance
What on earth are you talking about? There there are not "two people named Carol appearing in this manner." The first is the protagonist of a sci-fi show. You know, a fictional person. There is 1 - count them, one, supposed victim appearing in this manner. Which is possible regardless of the name chosen for the show and ad.
> "This level of simple assurance is for simpletons. You and I don't know the truth of it and can't be sure based on "it's from reddit". I'm sorry that not being sure is hard for you."
I respectfully disagree with your dismissal. Reasonable heuristics are necessary to get through life without getting lost in hours of deep dives into any random shit you hear. Anyway, the mere fact that the fridges have ads of any sort at all is reason enough to never buy one, I don't need to also believe some redditor's karma seeking tall tale.
> Reasonable heuristics are necessary to get through life without getting lost in hours of deep dives into any random shit you hear.
And I respectfully disagree with that.
Firstly, I have my own opinions on reddit and I don't find your simplistic ones persuasive. It's not monolithic.
But more importantly, you make a leap from "We don't know the truth of it and can't be sure" to "getting lost in hours of deep dives" (to establish certainty) which IMHO just does not follow.
You can decide that you don't know, that you do not need to have an authoritative opinion on the topic, and leave it at that. There are a lots of things that you and I don't have certainty on, and never will. Most of them are not important to us.
Deep dives might or might not be worth it, but you present choosing a side as the only alternative and it is not.
Again, I'm sorry that not being sure is hard for you. But it's a useful thing to do.
> I don't need to also believe some redditor's karma seeking tall tale.
I don't think I ever said that I believe it as certainty. But if the only options that you understand are binary, then not picking one as a certainty seems to be be misread as picking the other one. Which it is not.
The amount of "black or white", all or nothing, no-nuance, no doubt, no open mind, "if you say you're not convinced of x, then you must be trying to convince everyone of not-x" thinking here is frankly pathological.
FYI, I find the arguments that have come up that "Ads on Samsung fridges don't look like that" more substantive than "no one has that name" or "reddit always lies". Those last are guesses masquerading as information.
It's layers of fake!
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46173339
(And yes: the karma farmers are either deranged addicts or warming up accounts for onward sale.)
It’s anti-tech rhetoric so it works well here in HN. That’s the entire purpose of it.
Not to say ads on fridges aren’t stupid. But they are stupid enough by themselves; they don’t have to make up stories about them.
Yeah so this hypothetical sister doesn’t work, lives by themself, is severely disabled by schizophrenia but at the same time can afford a £2000 fridge. That’s a crazy amount of money to splash for someone who doesn’t work. Especially as amazing fridges are sold for £600-800. Oh, on top of all that, the persons name is Carol. It wouldn’t have worked with any other name.
I don’t think the story is real. But people who want it to be true are easily convinced.
Might have wealthy relatives or a trust fund. I agree with you that this is probably made-up anyway.
It's also true that illness and disability can come to any of us. Carol could have been a software developer who made a good bit of money before being unable to work anymore.
> is severely disabled by schizophrenia but at the same time can afford a £2000 fridge.
The fridge has been on sale for a few years and schizophrenia can come on very suddenly. People's lives can change in a day because of it. You and I don't know the truth of it and can't reasonably jump to conclusions like that.
I recently had an obviously disturbed man come to the window of my Tesla asking for help. He did not specifically say money, but that's what he wanted. Long story short, he sees that the Tesla has identified a human standing next to the car, but the Tesla showed four people. The man asked how does the vehicle know there are people there, I told him that the Tesla has eight cameras around it. He then asked how does it know there were four people, I explained that the Tesla does not know there were four people, rather the Tesla has a hard time figuring out where something as small as a human is - it is designed to detect larger things like other vehicles. The man was obviously extremely affected, and walked away without another word.
Only later did I understand that the Tesla may have just confirmed what he had suspected all along - that there are in fact four people in the place where he is standing.
When a million doomers post their predictions in response to something, a few are bound to be correct. Doesn't mean it's real, fake, or manifested by the hivemind. Just monkeys with typewriters.
Of course it might be genuine, but there's also a history of r/LegalAdviceUK getting a number of creative writing exercises. See this post: https://old.reddit.com/r/LegalAdviceUK/comments/1loyctr/rage...
I used to follow a few personal finance and FIRE subs. Pretty much all of them had surprising number of creative writing exercises too:
"I just inherited $10 million from a dead relative I never knew, what should I do?"
Or:
"I sold my online business for $37 million, is this enough to retire on?"
These daydreamers always create fresh throwaway accounts and usually never come back to answer clarifying questions. If they do, their answers are vague and unhelpful.
Many in the personal finance subs are hooks leading users to one scam or another. Mostly some mild and worthless ebook or course you pay for.
Why use the “creative writing exercise” euphemism that obscures the dishonesty? Call them liars, fakes, frauds, or whatever.
Because it’s not that serious.
Because it's internet + social media. You should assume 60% of it is made up, every time. People are either saying things they know to be untrue, or things they think are true but or not.
It’s not genuine. The fridge doesn’t show full-screen ads, the original Reddit post and image of the ‘Carol’ ad is staged. At best, this is a parable about the slippery slope our ad-ridden society is sliding down.
https://9to5google.com/samsung-smart-fridge-ads-how-to-turn-...
Update 11/14: Samsung has commented on the image posted to Reddit, noting that the ad format shown on the smart fridge display is not one that would appear over the cover screen. Any ad shown would be limited to the cover screen widget, which displays news, weather, and calendar events. Those slides rotate every 10 seconds or so, and an ad is looped in around every 40 seconds.
It appears that the ad shown in the Reddit photo is of the fridge’s Samsung Internet app. Through that, an ad seems to have shown up organically through a third-party website.
Samsung notes that full-screen ads do not appear as part of these recent software updates, and users shouldn’t expect to see ads that take up the entire display.
‘Shown up organically’ seems like a very generous interpretation to me - it seems far more likely that someone viewed it deliberately for the purposes of staging the photo.
On one hand I wouldn't cheer for spreading lies, but if this specific post got Samsung to lay down where the ads appear and at which frequency, I'd see the positive side of it. In particular they're that less likely to actually silently move to full ads in the near future even if they planned to, now that they officially commented on it.
On the other hand, this was traditionally the role of art and fiction. Black Mirror was based on the premise of getting people to react to this kind of future, and it looks like it's either not working (anymore?) or we're past the point where hypothetical situations would grab our attention and we can do something about it.
On the third hand, I have no intention to buy a fridge with a screen on it, but if it becomes the mainstream offering will I be forking 10% or 20% to not have th screen, or if those will have significantly better features (better temperature management etc.). I also wished I wasn't looking at ads, but in practice the best educational content right now is sponsored by S**space.
On the one hand, I don't trust reddit.
On the other hand, I don't trust a company that puts ads on their fridges.
Samsung has reputation on the line with millions to lose, unlike fake engagement account on Reddit.
They won't stop till they can transmit advertisements directly into your brain.
the technology to directly transmit audio without the need for headphones has been around for a while , for a recent implementation one could search up soundlazer
it is interesting to consider that at any point the thoughts in one's skull are not necessarily their own
Seeing how it actually looks like: https://i.redd.it/bhlz9ioh121g1.jpeg
I find it plausible at least.
You really think someone would do that? Just go on the internet and tell lies?
I've seen a photo floating around on Twitter at least: https://x.com/KlonnyPin_Gosch/status/1997179871467094177
No idea if it's not photoshopped though.
I don't understand that account. What is Mickey Mouse doing talking about Al-Aqsa?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomorrow%27s_Pioneers
The ad is real. I cannot personally vouch for it appearing on smart fridges, but it's not in the least surprising.
I'm no prude, but I'm finding horror, pharma & sex ads to be incredibly disturbing in how they are presented. Google TV takes over my wall with moderately graphic horror movie ads. My family members aren't comfortable with horror and they have no way to use the TV otherwise. It's unsetting in the middle of the night. And graphic pharma ads for stomach turning skin disorders and other inappropriate disorders play even during casual, family content. And most of the sexual content is not family friendly -- even I find it awkward to have on the wall, especially when my parents visit.
These devices used to be ours with some level of control, and now they are all remotely managed to present awful content at all hours
I inherited a Samsung fridge when I moved to a new place, it was a terrible fridge with serious mechanical flaws. The deicer broke, causing a constant stream of leaking water in the fridge. The French door middle component hinge was cheap plastic that broke and I had to replace it, then it broke again and I had to replace it again, then it broke again. I finally gave up and replaced the fridge.
Recommendation threads on Reddit usually begin with "anything but Samsung". They seem designed to be made cheap and hit the lowest price point with consumers that don't want to spend a lot more on something they don't really care about, so I'm not surprised to learn that ads are a part of their strategy.
But also, why do fridges need to connect to the internet?
Obviously made up...
This ad did the rounds last week and people were talking in the comments about this scenario.
Sure it could've happened, but odds are this is just made up.
Been there and absolutely can see this happening, it is sometimes a prodromal symptom called a 'sign of reference' [1].
I recall during my first psychosis episode thinking a TNT logistics van contained a bomb and was being used as a terrorist vehicle to blow up a building (or maybe at the time I think it could have been targeting myself directly).
Also, in that same episode, the train stations in Sydney were being plastered on every possible space and surface with high contrast white on blue posters that said "HEY TOSSER!" [2]; it was an anti littering ad campaign bringing some levity to the situation. My mind was overwhelmed by both its alerting nature and the fact that everywhere I would turn I'd see a poster, and in my infirmity it felt like someone was pointing a finger an inch from my forehead arresting me to say I should stop being a tosser in the derogatory (Australian slang) sense (though my mind was contending with the many multiple meanings).
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideas_and_delusions_of_referen...
[2]: https://imgur.com/a/wyVDNN4
Could be made up, sure... everything on Reddit might be made up. But dismissing it outright feels a bit too easy
this seems reasonable to me, i don't have schizophrenia but i'm pretty sure i'd start stabbing a fridge if I ever saw it give me an advertisement
Same. I’m pretty stable but just looking at pictures of that ad in the comments I felt my heart-BMP raise.
It isn’t just the fact that it’s an ad. The intense black and yellow is unsettling with strong ‘warning’ vibes.
Here’s a picture for folks wondering: https://www.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/1ow6cpu/appa...
That's a webpage with an ad being viewed in the browser app.
It isn't part of the "cover screen" (home screen) where the Samsung ads show up.
https://9to5google.com/samsung-smart-fridge-ads-how-to-turn-...
https://www.samsung.com/us/support/answer/ANS10007562/
See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46173339.
On one hand you're correct, but on the other hand Carol is a very common name and this is a very reasonable reaction. I'm split, and I think this is plausible enough to take seriously.
Rage bait marketing as some call it:
https://x.com/tbpn/status/1996352945710117030 / https://archive.fo/lTFWl
https://x.com/loganforsyth_/status/1995966653461623049
I recently downloaded an app to use my smartphone screen as a reading light.
So a simple app that lets you control the color and brightness of the screen.
You only find this with adds on the play store and it shares your data with 3. parties as well as permanently showing an add banner.
This isn't progress, it's broken.
I found a couple of ad free apps within seconds.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.wearefamil...
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=jp.co.vixen.ni...
Is there a certain must-have feature you're looking for?
Manufacturers for 100 years didn’t try to wrap their fridges in ads, or tune the compressor sound to a commercial jingle. They sold mostly honest products to cool your food efficiently.
But when they add an LED display and Internet connection, suddenly they forget about cooling your food and impulsively add a bunch of adversarial functionality, meaning functions that monetize the consumer rather than keeping the food cool.
It’s like the Internet advertising ecosystem is a virus intent on infecting anything and anyone with an Internet connection, making them do bizarre customer-hostile things they never would have done otherwise.
You are way off: it's just about money. For a long time, making appliances was an ok business, making good stuff, selling them, factories running, employment, margins ok, ... and there was progress/innovation to do.
Now that there is not much to update or innovate with, and companies have already squeezed workers in Bengladesh to the max, the only current innovation and additional money source are "connected" and "ads".
I don't see any contradiction between the two takes; I suspect capital pressure will force us into an inhumane dystopia where baseline existence is miserable, and quiet rational thought is a luxury.
Exactly. Nobody ever asked for a fridge that doubles as a billboard
I read [Unauthorized Bread (exerpt) by Doctoro](https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-...) this year which was pretty approachable read on the topic. Not severely interesting or mind blowing if you're already here hopefully but did make me wonder how I could sneak it into my mums reading list.
I borrowed from the library last month. It was thought provoking and I think it's aimed at younger people than myself.
If you have a router you control, many routers allow you to take away internet access from a device while keeping it on your local network. Some (all?) Asus routers can do this from their UI.
This won’t help with devices that require 24x7 internet access, but it’s great for things you want to access the local network but don’t trust not to send info to a third party. (TVs, music amps with built in streaming, home surveillance systems [1], etc.)
Also handy for briefly turning on Internet access for software updates or one time activation.
[1] while making a surveillance system available online safely and with software you control isn’t hard, it’s not trivial. Turning Internet access off for your cameras without a plan will mean you can’t monitor your home or get alerts when away from your local network.
"I just saw something incredibly cool! A big floating ball that lit up with every color in the rainbow, plus some new ones that were so beautiful I fell to my knees and cried."
"Was it out in front of Discount Shoe Outlet?"
"Yeah..."
"They have a college kid wear that to attract customers."
"Didn't you have ads in the 20th century?"
"Well, sure, but not in our dreams. Only on TV and radio. And in magazines and movies and at ball games, on buses and milk cartons and T-shirts and bananas and written on the sky. But not in dreams. No, sir-ee!"
These targeted ads are incredibly harmful when you have to take care of someone with psychosis. They think that someone who is listening to them is sending them "messages" through ads and that feeds into paranoia. Unfortunately it is not possible to reason in such situations with the person and any attempt to explain tracking is met with hostility.
I really wish regulators stopped being corrupt, naive or both and outright made it illegal.
There is no upside for tracking of any kind for consumers.
Reads like something out of Philip K. Dick’s writing. Fridges with ads. Talking doors.
An edge case of "smart" tech...
As an aside, having scroll that thread, Reddit is a shambles. There's more deleted comments and related justification comment than actual comments. Make for a jarring experience.
It's a legal advice subreddit; they tend to have stricter moderation because their primary goal is to get the OP an answer to their question or advice on how to consult a legal professional about their issue. Posts like the one linked here tend to be a magnet for people more interested in the drama than the actual legal principles, so they end up being a wasteland of removed comments.
Exactly. There are reasons for those many deleted comments. It's specific to this subreddit for very good reasons and not something you can use to disparage all of reddit. Many subreddits have their own rules and culture.
It's not disparaging to point out a fact. The whole delete comment content but keep the comment and then add a reply comment with wordy reason for deletion of comment content is a shambles. And irrespective of whether it's on every subreddit or not, doesn't make it less so. It's basically just spam at this point.
My solution would be to simply delete the comment and PM the OP. If another user had already replied, replace the original content with a *short* reason for deletion, and PM the OP, leaving the replies in place unless they needed deleting.
Another example: r/AskHistorians is so heavily moderated almost every comment gets deleted.
Their standards of quality are very high. It's not a sub to push your views or argue, it's a sub for historians or people who can back an answer with academic references. So most comments and answers will get modded.
It's oddly refreshing. No flamewars, no junk comments, no "everybody knows the reason X did Y is Z" because that won't be accepted by the mods.
It's not perfect, but it's good enough.
AskHistorians is far and away the best moderated sub on the site, but it relies entirely on guidelines that you can understand and agree with. Moderation on other subs (no clue about this one) is so heinously biased it makes them unusable. Very common on political and news oriented subs....
[deleted]
This reply was deleted because it didn't meet the requirements for this thread. What follows is an overly long comment detailing exactly why.
10 paragraphs later
You are now fully educated on this threads rules, please revisit the top of the thread to remember why to came here in the first place.
Absolutely- I can't understand why it still has such a loyal base considering how low the quality is- I see more insightful discussion on facebook half the time
Because Reddit != Reddit and each subreddit has their own audience and moderation style. Most of Reddit might be a cesspit, but that doesn't mean all of it is.
I can't understand why cigarettes have such a loyal fanbase. They're smelly and expensive. Costing roughly 4k a year, I can't understand why someone wouldn't buy a nicer car or massive TV or something.
Whenever a platform is popular these days I just assume it is more addictive.
Well op is comparing one cigarette to another, expanding your metaphors. And they're both "free".
Free, sure, if your privacy has no value.
I know this is the sort of story HN would love to be true (and to be clear, I think ads on appliances are Black Mirror level stuff), but this — like most things on Reddit — is made up. [1]
This story, while fun to discuss, should be flagged, and not on the FP of HN.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46171868
Someone predicted this exact thing is your evidence it's fiction?
How much meaningful experience do you have with psychosis and mental illness?
That thread goes into how Samsung has confirmed that this ad can’t show up like it did [1]. There are many comments in that thread debunking this. Which is why I linked the whole thread, not a single comment.
When something posts something on Reddit that sounds far fetched (fun to believe, but unlikely), we (the HN community) should default to skepticism/critical thinking, rather than assuming it’s true without evidence that it is.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46173338
>has confirmed that this ad can’t show up like it did
While this certainly may be true, I trust companies to tell the actual truth about this when it's been verified by an independent 3rd party.
So much of the "This can't happen", "We didn't scan and save all your wireless network names", "We didn't copy all the contacts in your address book" quite commonly break down later when it is realized that some sub-group doing an A/B test or keeping their work somewhat hidden actually did the thing in question.
> When something posted on Reddit that sounds far fetched (fun to believe, but unlikely), we should default to skepticism/critical thinking, rather than assuming it’s true without evidence that it is.
That's my point. This doesn't sound at all far fetched if you've spent time with people recovering from psychosis with visual hallucinations.
I'm normally a very skeptical person, and while I both agree claims require evidence. I don't find the comment thread from before very compelling evidence.
Fake or not, I do believe that an ad with the text from the troll image would show up on a smart fridge, I don't trust Samsung to tell the truth^1, and importantly the minimal description from the linked post describes an experience similar to one I've seen before working with a patient. (But from a print ad.)
Even if this exac is fiction, this kinda stuff actually happens. Perhaps I'm wrong, to believe it's plausible, but dismissing it outright is a mistake. You don't want to acknowledge hallucinations are real, but more important than that, you don't want to tell someone that they're lying without positive proof.
edit ^1: I read that exactly prior to reading your reply, and yes I do agree that explanation seems to be correct; that wasn't what I was basing my take on. i.e. true or not it's less important to my original objection. Or I find it plausible than even a small advert would result in the same event.
> Fake or not, I do believe that an ad with the text from the troll image would show up on a smart fridge, I don't trust Samsung to tell the truth^1
I trust them more than some reddit post. Samsung has at least some incentive to tell the truth (they don't want to piss off consumers). What's the penalty for lying on Reddit?
You sure about that?
https://www.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/1ow6cpu/appa...
I knew using ad blockers is good for your mental health but this is plain creepy and unfair. Especially when advertisers know more and more about you as more and more everyday items are spying on you and serve you ads without any additional core functionality. Appliances don't get better, they are getting creepier to increase the return of investment for the manufacturers. The schizophrenics are just more sensitive to this enshittification of everyday items because they are quick to assume deliberate agency in chaotic events where there is none. But this is changing, for everybody.
The problem is today you can't really tell anymore whether this "Carol" the ad was addressing is the advertiser knowing that it's your name or just a random "clever" reference to a character in the TV show, I mean even after getting the resolution that it's the latter, nobody can be sure if this excludes the former, like the algorithm decided to send Carol an ad about a show with a Carol in it. It's not good to have to make up your mind about it even when you are not suffering from schizophrenia.
It's annoying, it's intrusive, it wastes your time and ruins your day. And it makes you hate your new tech, makes you hate tech in general, because it's a big "fuck you we can do what we want with you now" towards the customers. No wonder Luddites are making a come back, that's just self-defense.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they are not after you.
In fact, they're after you for being so paranoid.
I don't understand why people willingly pay thousands for these fridges. Just buy a regular fridge without the screen.
Because their old fridge died and they need a new one now, and this is all that's in stock.
Because they didn't buy the fridge, their landlord did.
Because the fridge is installed at a workplace, or community centre, or other location at which the individual has no effective choice.
Because there are no new fridges with other desired features which don't have screens.
Because, at some future date, absent legislation or crushing litigation, no non-screen, ad-free fridges exist.
Substitute for "fridge" and "ads" any of number of other consumer / general appliances: stoves, washing machines, dishwashers, phones, televisions, thermostats, doorbells, petrol pumps, etc., or features: cameras, microphones, speakers, iris scanners, thumbprint readers, facial recognition, etc., etc.
I recently tried this for a new TV - buying a regular “non-smart” TV without the internet features without being “AI-enabled” (whatever the fuck that means).
It wasn’t possible - there was literally no TV available that didn’t have a small computer built in to connect to the internet and send all my usage data somewhere.
I probably have to find a second hand one somewhere or just continue to live without one.
Not saying that it’s the same with fridges - but who knows a few years down the line it might be…
I never understand this type of refrain. Why connect the TV to the Internet?
I have yet to run into a TV that doesn't work entirely offline at any pricepoint
What is the point of a smart TV though?
I searched for this comment for a long time, it should be the first one.
While you still can..
Stallman was right.
He was right that people would make up fake scenarios on a social media platform for karma points about a device that nobody needs to buy?
Sometimes you don’t need a Stallman to be right.
Yet there is a Stallman anyway.
Stallman didn’t even conceive of this threat. Would it be any better if it was an open source dystopian mind-control machine?
Open source, as in corporate outsourcing software maintenance to free labour? No. Free software, as in four freedoms? Yes, because you could install your own firmware that doesn't show advertisements.
That's what the whole GPLv3 debacle was about after all.
Stallman may have not imagined this specific scenario, but he absolutely did conceive of owner-hostile software that could not be replaced.
You could, but would most people? Most people voluntarily subject themselves to garbage adware-ridden SmartTVs even though this is a problem you can solve with a £12 dongle and no software installation at all. If the humble HDMI cable defeats the average person’s technical ability, what difference would it make if they could technically install their own firmware?
Fine, but I don't care about the average person. _I_ do not want this junk in my life. I don't deserve to be treated this way. If everyone else want to be manipulated by their fridge, thats one's on them, but count me out. It doesn't matter _if_ you install your own firmware, but _if you have the right to do so_. I don't own a gun, but I still believe that owning a firearm is a human right.
Theoretically, yes, but in practice almost everybody would just run their Ubuntu Fridge in a stock configuration.
As a schizotypal person, I'm unsure how more people aren't exhibiting paranoid schizophrenic symptoms in this wildly untrustworthy digital age.
Yesterday a good friend reached out to me on a new phone number to wish me happy holidays, she shortly afterwards asked me to donate to a fund to help her sick cat.
Even though this person had a similar typing style, the unrecognized phone number made me feel paranoid that it may be an LLM attempting to get money from me in an automated scam, so I made the choice to call my friend to get more evidence via voice.
It turned out to be my friend(or an even more elaborate ruse using voice capture and mass data-mining tech, but that seemed extremely unlikely, at least for another couple years).
My brother had full on shizpphrenia, and would often call family members asking them to provide evidence that they are who they say they are and not government robots. It was an obvious delusion when he was alive, but now that we're in a world where that sort of evidence-gathering is no longer extreme, paranoia is the new normal.
Our usual safeguards of identity are breaking down, and you can bet that large corporations with an eye on the coin are going to swoop in to establish new, more secure methods of identification.
Society, in a sense, is highly dependent on trustworthy interactions. Credit, ownership transfers, banking, etc. all depend on trust. If we go back to only being able to trust in-person interactions, we'll be stepping back to a financial system from over 100 years ago.
Because of this, I believe that solutions will be developed. Nothing is 100% fool-proof, but the government depends on a solution being found.
If there is one appliance in my house that does not need a LCD screen and «smart» features, it’s my fridge. It was installed maybe 6 years ago, I adjusted some temperature settings and I’ve never touched the dials again.
It does not need neither screens nor chips, one knob mounted to thermo relay is self-descriptive.
If modern ad tech and future holographic display technology makes schizophrenic symptoms indistinguishable from regular waking consciousness in our Bitchun society...does that make us all crazy? or all sane?
I just hope the sister gets some peace and that her doctors take this as an environmental trigger
This is obviously reddit fiction.
When I first saw somebody complain about the Pluribus smart fridge ad I immediately knew something like this was going to happen. How did Apple/Samsung not think this through?
They probably do not care if they're not legally liable.
if you read the entire reddit thread, OPs sisters name actually was Carol. That's why it wigged her out so much and triggered her schizophrenia to kick in I suppose.
I know, that's what I originally thought.
made an account just to note that when reddit fanfic is reaching the front-page, we might be on the downslope and it's sad
Everyday we take one step closer to a PKD envisioned future.
> “I’ll sue you,” the door said as the first screw fell out. Joe Chip said, “I’ve never been sued by a door. But I guess I can live through it.”
From Ubik
That scene is exactly what I had in mind :-)
Such a wonderful book.
One of my favorite PKD novels. Thanks for the reminder of it!
Better tip the smart door, never know what’ll happen if there’s a fire someday.
Speaking of, better tip the toaster.
The Internet of [spiteful] Things.
Every time I see an article on HN about a "smart" device doing shitty things, my first thought is why would someone (especially from this crowd, who's supposed to be enlightened about the state of enshittification of tech) buy any IoS device in the first place ?
What good could you expect from an appliance that's permanently communicating with its non-giving a f*ck about users, profit driven, immoral and unethical mothership ? Would you really expect your life to be better after buying such a product ?
There's an old joke that a tech enthusiast will have "smart" everything in their house, while someone who works in tech keeps a shotgun in case their 10 year old laser printer makes a funny noise...
It's not a joke, it's just an observation.
I work in the IoT industry and delight in making things work automatically.
I live in a log cabin in the back woods with minimal technology and drive an older car with actual knobs and physical switches for controls because I've seen how the sausage is made.
Steve Jobs + Iphone for his kids.
The real fun one - most rental places, the landlord buys/provides the fridge.
Are we at ad-supported rental apartments yet? “Sorry, it’s in the rental contract that we’re not allowed to turn off the TV or cover it up.”
On the double-plus-good side there's often a corner of the room where the TV can't see you . . .
Yeah… she’s not wrong.
If you want to put an end to this you’ll either need to boycott products, make your own, or get something serious passed to abolish a good chunk of ads. This industry is loaded with money and they reinforce their own (see: ads on fridges) so good luck. It’s a tough battle.
Oh, and there are no roadway ads in Vermont.
FYI, the slogan ""WE'RE SORRY WE UPSET YOU, CAROL" on a yellow background is from the Apple TV Show "Pluribus" (Or "PLUR1BUS"). It would be an ad for that show. It is indeed creepy at times.
The main character is called "Carol". As also, it seems is the person who saw it here.
Next up: <blink> tags on fridge triggers seizures
Back in the day we asked webmasters to run their web sites through Bobby for accessibility checks.
I am curious if any LLM work like this is being done. If it were really a smart fridge, it would moderate its users content appropriately. Eg I don’t want haram ads, don’t freak me out, I’m color blind.
this post is a meme (or an attempt to shed light at the problem) referencing a video by louis rossmann who foreshadows that something like this could hypothetically happen
Don’t buy appliances with anything but a small screen. Any large screen on any appliance will be used to show ads. If not now then eventually.
It’s also a gimmick, and gimmicks on things like appliances and cars are red flags for poor quality. Appliances in particular are best when simple and designed for their function. “Feature” means “thing that will break.”
File suit.
there hasn't been a single schizophrenia diagnosis for a born blind person
whoa, that's a really neat and cool fact. I never knew this.
for the curious, https://www.healthcentral.com/condition/schizophrenia/blindn...
What is the probability of being born blind?
What is the probability of having schizophrenia?
What is the probability of both?
What is the probability of both + having resources to have it diagnosed?
Some quick numbers:
[*] Assuming genetic blindness (born this way) and schizophrenia (elevated genetic risk) are not somehow inversely linked.So, in the US:
Reduce that by half or so, since schizophrenia tends to emerge in or after adolescence. And since it may be confusable at older ages with other brain health issues (is this true?).So call it 700 people in the US alone. If it is in fact zero, that is significant!
I chose the US because 100% people will have adequate access to this level of medical care. A formal diagnosis is not the same thing as access, but a born-blind person either has parents/family, or has a state warden with access to care. This is also true in many many other countries, but certainly not all.
The US has 4.1% of the world population. Figure 50% of the world does not have this level of medical access. It's probably less than that, but maybe not.
This suggests about 10,000 people worldwide, living today, who would be affected, and in an environment where they would be diagnosed.
Wonder why (I don't wonder why)
I remember when borderline/schizoid fren saw some stuff made by one of the first generative models released to the public, Deep Dream.
I hadda smack that laptop shut, my fren froze catatonic from looking at those dog-shaped landscapes
I simply can't fathom why anyone would spend extra money on a "smart" fridge. Let alone one that shows ads. Why would you even want one of those?
Careless people
it should read, "Schizophenic correctly diagnoses societies ongoing pschcotic episode through the phenominon of refrigerator advertising"
IANAL, but could the ADA [1] or equivalent laws be applied to such a situation?
If it was up to a jury, the creepy ads might not get much sympathy.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans_with_Disabilities_Ac...
Given the situation occurred in the UK, I doubt it.
I think The Equality Act 2010 would be the UK equivalent. No idea whether it would cover this - might be a stretch.
the end of HN when reddit fanfic reaches the frontpage
the end of HN when every comment is parroting the same thing
>implying HN was ever good
The gut reaction of too many geeks is "I can't believe you'd install a smart fridge in your home". But we need to think about this differently. Imagine if vehicles had no mandatory safety checks. How many people know anything about car safety? You'd get people barrelling down the highway with broken suspension, bald tyres or worse. We are the professionals. It's our responsibility to keep the public safe and stop shit like this happening. The software engineers who implemented this at Samsung should be struck off. Well, we could start by having something to be struck off from. I'm done with assuming individual developers will be scrupulous. We need real consequences to come from higher up. It's way past the point that this is fucking with people's lives.
It also falls apart over when more and more products become "smart" to the point where you can't really even buy one without things like this, like TVs now or cars for that matter. I'm dreading the day where I end up forced to watch an ad before starting my car.
I do think some kind of ethics training/education/licensing/organization is long overdue for software devs.
It's the smug superiority too many "tech smart" people have.
"Why would you buy HP? Everyone knows that it stands for Horrible Product."
"Serves you right for getting a TV with built in Netflix, everyone knows that it's a backdoor to botnet!"
I don't think it's apologetics for dogpoop corporate behavior, directly. But it has that effect because those of us with knowledge enjoy being smart asses or belittling those whose ignorance rewards trends we disagree with.
People should be able to go into a store and buy a thing without researching how evil it has become in the decade or two since the last time they did. Or move into a house pre-furnished. That is a failure of legislatures, not of average Joe.
Real consequences from higher up... for ads on a fridge? Corporate execs only care about money. Engineers aren't going to get themselves fired every time someone asks for a feature they don't agree with. Government? We don't need more nanny laws.
What we need is for people to think for themselves. The powers that be aren't going to save you from all the bad things. Call out the bad things to educate people, and vote with your wallet.
There's a whole growing class of people that do not have the ability to vote with their wallet. Fridges, TVs etc will all be at their cheapest because they're subsidized by ads. Or worse, if you're a renter then there's a big incentive for apartments to put up smart fridges in every room both as a selling point and for ad revenue.
How would you propose to deal with apartments having every fridge be a smart one?
> You'd get people barrelling down the highway with broken suspension, bald tyres or worse.
You have this in most of the US, and people rail against any attempt to bring it in because they're frightened that garages will not give them their cars back if they think it's got something wrong with it.
I've seen people driving cars in the US that you wouldn't even be able to get a scrapyard to take in the UK, they'd tell you to just sweep it into a bag and put it in the recycling.
HN baited by karma farmers once again.
Here's the /r/assholedesign post: https://old.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/1ow6cpu/appa...
It shows a webpage with an ad being displayed in the browser app.
How do we know?
Full-screen ads don't show on the cover screen (home screen).
Here's the investigation:
https://9to5google.com/samsung-smart-fridge-ads-how-to-turn-...
>Any ad shown would be limited to the cover screen widget, which displays news, weather, and calendar events.
>The ad shown in the Reddit photo is of the fridge’s Samsung Internet app. Through that, an ad seems to have shown up organically through a third-party website.
Here's the docs that talk about ads on the cover screen:
https://www.samsung.com/us/support/answer/ANS10007562/
It's easy for ragebait to short-circuit your critical thinking skills.
Don't let Redditards like /u/Shellnanigans get their fix.