“This is getting ridiculous and I’m about to just toss the whole thing and move back to Google,” one Redditor said of the “full-volume” ads for Alexa+ on their Echo Show.
Oh sweet summer child, Google is NOT going to be any better at this. That will just be changing one corporate evil for another.
I don’t think I’ll ever buy any product that advertises itself as ‘smart’. They seem to be anything but.
Edit: I do have a 14 year old ‘smart’ TV, but it’s basically only a monitor for my PC.
It’s so predictable
“Honey, you know what would really tie this room together? A giant electronic advertising billboard!”
“That giant electronic advertising billboard really tied the room together.”
“And he peed on it.”
JFC
Advertising is a small part of the experience, and it helps customers discover new content and products they may be interested in. If customers don’t like a suggestion, they can swipe to skip to the next screen card or directly provide feedback by tapping the Information icon or pressing the screen.
No fucks given, we’re gonna shove em down your throat.
If they give you a “no ads for me at all, thanks” option, it’d be fine, but I highly doubt that this would happen.
I regret ever getting mixed up with Amazon in the first place. I canceled Prime, stopped ordering from Amazon’s website, found a Kindle alternative, pulled the plug on my IoT crap, and unplugged my Echoes. No regrets. YMMV.
People regret buying …
They will continue to support …
My pet pony keeps shitting on the floor.
I am very frustrated and did not expect it.
I should sell it off and buy a horse instead.
Ponies are supposed to shit. It’s more like if the pony came strapped with ill-fitting saddlebags that leak toxic chemicals.
Yeah that was kinda my point :) A cloud controlled device from a tech giant is supposed to
shit on the floorstart doing ads and invade your privacy. It’s what they do. Like ponies pooping, you should expect it on purchase.No. It’s more as if you had to pay for the pony to get it, and then:
If you want to ride the pony, that’s $2. The saddle has a coin slot to pay. It also has spikes poking both you and the pony if you don’t pay. Any time you get off, the spikes relock, requiring another payment to unlock.
This is the exact same situation minus the animal cruelty part and with money being swapped with time.
Yeah, but it’s like you bought the ponies at Shit-R-Us
Advertising…helps customers discover new content and products they may be interested in.
Someone needs to coin a word to describe this type of infuriating corporate statement. They make astonishingly piss-weak arguments in a patronising tone, as if to insist that reality must be whatever they say it is because they’re a successful company.
It’s the kind of statement that’s not technically a lie, but still seems dishonest for them to present as though it were a sane response, almost like an attempt at gaslighting.
I think the person who wrote that response should be forced to wear it around their neck so that everyone can see what sort of person they are.
“Bullshit” still works wonders.
That sounds right to me. Maybe “spin” if I want to be a bit more neutral, but it doesn’t look like they deserve the benefit of the doubt.
Theyre putting a happy spin on some bullshit.
Spin is bullshit’s little brother. It’s mostly the truth, but viewed from an angle that favors a specific point.
It’s not just companies. Amazon started pushing ads to subscribers who pay for ad-free Prime video content. Some idiot here on Lemmy actually insisted it wasn’t an ad at all, but a “promotion.”
Companies are getting their customers to make infuriating, ridiculous corporate statements for them.
Corpospeak?
I guess? Someone also said “rhetoric”, and although it counts as both of these, I’m specifically thinking about these kinds of statements you get in press releases that obnoxiously try to paint the world the way that the company needs it to be in order to justify what they’re doing.
Things like “Customers don’t like regulations that stop us giving them the best service”, “Our users are clear that they want the freedom to choose what subscription models work for them”, you know? Those kind of weaselly shit on my pie and tell me it’s a blueberry statements, where they dishonestly attempt to pose as the good guys wanting to do best for the world. They clearly must know that nobody actually falls for it, but they say it anyway because they need it to be out there in order for their paid-off politicians and useful idiots to have something to support deregulation.
There’s a certain amount of advertising I’ll accept. If I go to see an action movie, 1 to 3 previews of other action movies that are coming out in the next few months is okay.
Of course, because they tried to force a Mission: Impossible movie down my throat, I might never go see an action movie made after 2014 ever again.
Rhetoric?
Removed by mod
The key is to tell your audience something they wish would be true.
deleted by creator
Installing spyware and wire taps in my home was never appealing to me.
AND not even being paid for doing so. But paying for instead. that’s the most bizarre part of it.
it doesn’t take much critical thinking to conclude that smart tvs are bullshit, but apparently too much for most people
Even worse than not-really-understanding-any-of-it is the wilful ignorance shown by some. “I have nothing to hide” is the epitome of obedient worker-ant stupidity.
“ok. tell me your account and routing numbers then”
What are you going to do, send them money? That information isn’t private, people have to give it up all the time to receive money…
ok. tell me your account and routing numbers
7826391786239 and 121000248
That’s from the ancient banking system designed in the 1940s that is still lurching around. The protection on a check isn’t cryptographic - it relies on the issuing bank to confirm the authenticity by examining heuristics on the paper check like paper type, ink and font used, check number, issuing address and the person’s signature. It used to be that you would deposit a check at your bank and then it would be mailed to the issuing bank to be cleared for transfer. You wouldn’t just deposit it and get your money instantly, it would take up to 10 days.
Honestly it is bewildering to me that they haven’t changed the system to issue cryptographically secure deposit-only numbers and unique withdrawal numbers that at least verify the authenticity of the check itself.
Ha! Try that with a german boomer. It’s one of the most well guarded secrets to them.
In the case of smart tv’s it’s obvious why it works. It’s way cheaper to buy a smart tv vs a dumb tv now, and It’s all companies make for consumer side, which only leaves business grade TV’s/advertisement boards which cost more. Even if this isn’t the case though, with how streaming oriented most people are, the general public won’t buy a dumb tv because they would still need to buy some sort of device to allow them to access their stuff. It’s just convenient to have it in the same device rather than buy a tv then spend another $25+ on a device that can allow access to streaming, when one device can do it all.
I upgraded to a “decent” Smart TV for my den (my previous one was an early stage Phillips smart TV that the store was basically deprecated on), and it converted 3 devices I had for my dumb tv, into that one device. It’s just convenient.
I personally think that people should be focusing more on not buying slop-ware, and working on implementing legislation of what companies are allowed to do to consumer purchased products before trying to revert back to dumb tv’s and spending 3x as much. The future is going to happen regardless, and people are going to take the easy way out, the easier way is going to be preventing the annoyances from being allowed in the first place.
I’d far rather have a dumb TV/monitor and a cheap, easily upgradable smart device connected to it, but I’m on Lemmy so that shouldn’t come as a surprise.
you do you. enjoy your convenience. for my part, i will continue to spend $0.00 for the privilege of being the product.
all of these brands can take their smart devices and go fuck themselves with it. “convenient” GTFO
I still have the first Google Home speaker I got for free via Spotify subscription years ago, and it’s as far as I went, wouldn’t have put money on this
People regret buying skunks after being sprayed by skunks.
I turned off ads on mine.
By turning it face down.
Wait until your smart TV starts playing adds every 10min no matter what your watching, or even if the TV is “turned off”
“Drink a verification can to continue”
Or use eye tracking to automatically pause the ad if you look away from it and hold up everything until you actually watch it
The only ads I’m watching are the previews 💪
Kudos on the N64. What game is loaded? I bought me a Retro-Bit Tribute64 controller and got Rosalina’s mupen64 Emulator going on. Oh my sweet sweet Perfect Dark…
Its subscription is 4 dollars cheaper, though!
Ambient display ads.
This is a real “the scorpion stung the frog” situation.
There was never any other way for this to go. Is in the scorpions nature to cram ads and tracking into your devices. That was always the strategy even with their Fire lines of devices.
Ring will be next. It’s already giving them your address, neighbourhood, routine, device types, etc. That data gates correlate to census income data, network traffic, etc. to build a profile of who you are as a consumer.
I believe there was just a post the other day arguing that Ring was beginning to collect biometric data on anyone that passed in front of it.
[Edit] It was A Boring Dystopia post from 6 days ago https://lemmy.ml/post/37147235
Not just who you are as a consumer, who you are as a person.
This week Amazon starting pushing ads to customers paying extra for ad-free Prime Video.
Corporations are now so powerful they don’t have to abide by reasonable norms, contracts, or laws any longer. Any fines are just a cost of doing business and are a small fraction of the profits they generate.
What are customers going to do anyway? Go to other businesses that are doing the exact same things on different days?
People should give up streaming subscriptions. How long would it take to learn how to get movies another way, from a friend who is already doing it.
People dont even own their media anymore and it can be removed at any time. And they are paying for that. Lols.
Its for families mostly. I dont want my small children coming up to me all the time asking for a different show downloaded that they heard about from school, and Erica’s parents actually HAVE Disney+ and says anyone who cmdoesnt must be a loser omg etc etc.
I taught my brother how to do it years ago, and he got his shit virused so fast. I’m not sure if hes colossally stupid or just plain unlucky.
Just get Real Debrid with Stremio/Kodi.
Real Debrid + Kodi + Bingie theme = Everything available on torrents, instantly streamable in a netflix-like interface.
There are extremely idiot-proof solutions like Stremio.
I think you are severely underestimating how computer illiterate most people are. Many people I know struggle to use their Iphones. Not long ago a friend asked me to help him turn on subtitles on a streaming service on his smart TV.
I learned how to sail in 5 mins from a friend the other day. It’s stupidly easy.
This is clicking buttons on your device. How did people install Instagram and use that without a degree?
I think people are just afraid of it.
The shittiest apps come pre-installed.
We’ll kick piracy into high gear.
Then they’ll make any ISPs suspecting people of piracy to be forcibly shut off.
The real question is what will we do then?
After your internet is shut, you’ll be forced to buy Google Prison Internet, where you’re surveiled 24/7 and you’re only allowed to download ads.
What are customers going to do anyway?
Convince themselves that it’s necessary.
… and all the actual tech nerds who told everyone they should avoid smart devices like the plague laugh and laugh…
And the pro tech nerds who told everyone to use local-only, non proprietary smart devices so they can still have a secure, ad-free smarthome laugh as we walk through the house without ever touching light switches.
Exactly. It’s not the smart part of a device that is the problem. That’s an extreme overreaction.
The problem with most smart devices today is that they are proprietary, non-fully libre and open source, for-profit, cloud-connected, corporate committee designed spyware, adware, and bloatware.
Devices that are fully FLOSS (firmware, hardware, software) and based on open and free standards and protocols are awesome, but they get easily forgotten.
The Internet and your technology can be so much better. Demand it.
Can you recommend some light switches like that?
Z-wave or zigbee. They use an alternative to wifi.
User in tandem with a open source system like home assistant.
There is plenty of information on !selfhosted@lemmy.world and !homeassistant@lemmy.world if you’re looking for more than the most basic motion- or remote-controlled light switches.
Yes but I have done zero maintenance on my light switches in over 30 years. No downtime either or updates.
To be fair I put in all my smart lights once 7 years ago haven’t touched them a single time in that entire span. Took an hour to set up.
And now my alarm turns on lights which helps me wake up :D
I literally don’t believe you. Wi-Fi? Zigbee? Z-Wave? Not a single reset or re-pair because you changed some password or bridge or the power went out and one of them needed a little encouragement?
I have done zero maintenance on my light switches in all my life, and I never had any smart home stuff, lol
My smart switches have zero downtime. If I attack my server with an hatchet I lose smart functionality but pressing the switch still works, just like yours.
It doesn’t take much to avoid the bullshit devices.
Oh, you own a house, I see, ok, that explains that.
I’ve been wanting to set up something like this for a while. Have any guides or a good place to start?
I really don’t. I can find no joy about being right about the state of our world. Quite the opposite.
You think “actual tech nerds” don’t like smart devices? I don’t think you know what a “tech nerd” is.
Actual tech nerds love the tinkering to make it work again until the moment they are tired of it and just want something that works. I’m in the tinkering phase.
