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.
Everything on the internet is fake. That is as true now as it always was.
For every real post, I can make up a fake one that's more agreeable to the hivemind and therefore will be more upvoted. Since you see a limited amount of posts in a session, you will only see fake posts and the real ones will be hidden forever.
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
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.
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 most incongruous part of the story to me is the fact that someone like Carol in this post would have such an expensive fridge in the first place - aren't those relatively expensive?
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
> Ban all advertisements. (I'm all for it, at this point.)
What would that actually look like though?
Take something that could be considered an ad, but probably most people agree is a good thing. Say you post on here that task X is such a pain in the butt to do all the time as a general gripe, then I say hey, I built a cheap subscription webapp to solve task X easily that you might want to check out. You sign up for it and use it and like it. Seems like everybody wins - you get a problem solved for a small amount of money, I make a little money and get my project used and my work validated etc. But it's still technically an ad.
Lots of stuff like that could be considered an ad. Every "Show HN" could be considered an ad. Suggesting people vote for candidate X or party Y could be considered an ad too - plenty of organizations do pay for actual ads just like that already. Product placements is a type of ad, but it's pretty hard to not do. I don't know how you even make a movie or TV show with people driving cars without showing a particular model of car.
I don't expect that's the kind of ad that everybody is complaining about. Okay, but then how do you legislate the difference? Can you, or anyone, actually write down a definition of the ads you want to ban and the ads you don't? And how will people distort or abuse those definitions? There's billions of dollars in advertising (maybe trillions?), it's not going to all just go away because somebody passed a law. What happens when all of that money gets poured into attempting to abuse such individual personal recommendations? That's already happening on Reddit now, though at small scales for now.
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.
At this point I'm convinced that ad spending has nothing to do with sales, revenue or any real business principal. It's about power and influence. Advertisers control the culture, news and the public discourse by always paying more than any self funded model would pay. They don't care how much it costs, the control over society is always worth more.
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.
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
At least with the pharma commercials they don't get "real" about living with a given disease. It's like stock footage of old people canoeing in slow motion and stuff.
You're right that most pharma are generic korean karaoke parlor videos, but a few of them show really gross sores, rashes that I don't want burned into my brain by an 85'' screen
The timing is just unsettling like i'm having a laugh and then subliminally the next frame is a raw skin lesion
Google TV showing ads on the home screen convinced me to buy an Apple TV. Had to go back to a set-top box - to use the same apps I have built into the TV - just because Apple won't spam me with this shit.
It's a good tip, I may end up doing that. I'm hoping that Apple has better standards for third party streaming apps (just yesterday I made a Ask HN post about how terrible they are)
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).
Yes it was made up. A post from two weeks earlier [1] showed a fridge ad saying 'We're sorry we upset you, Carol.' That post now has an update:
> EDIT 2: Hello, I am the original poster of the carol AD image from a month ago. I am a male from America and my name is not Carol. The story about a Schizophrenic woman named carol was most likely fabricated from the 3rd top comment on this post. Thanks!
Actually thinking a bit more, this doesn't prove anything. The ad was showing on many fridges, and apparently it said 'Carol' everywhere (it wasn't actually personalized).
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 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?
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.
There needs to be serious reform or just abolition altogether of advertising on things like Smart TVs
We bought a TV for my grandfather in his nursing home as he was dying from Alzheimers. All TVs available now are Smart TVs, which are already difficult to work for the elderly.
I'm visiting my grandmother now and watching the TV we had provided him, and it inserts ads into everything available to watch from the most accessible menu. The last ad block was 8 ads long, during which one of those was repeated twice, and had all the subtlety of a row of slot machines at a casino (I think it was for some silly tablet game which I assume has in-app purchases)
Straight up cruelty that should result in some serious fines or even arrests.
I bought a Sony OLED a couple years ago. I was able to set it up in “dumb” mode and all the default apps could be manually removed. It acts like a monitor and shows nothing but our Apple TV at powerup.
The home screen’s just a nice static background with a settings app and nothing else. I never see it unless I press the appropriate button, but it’s nice to know there isn’t an onslaught of junk waiting for me if I do.
YMMV but other brands with Google TV may have similar “dumb” capabilities.
I pretty much make it standard practice to get an apple tv or whatever streaming device for all tvs and not allow internet access to the tvs. You have zero control over the tv, so why subject yourself or others to it instead of getting a $50 to $150 device.
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.
It isn’t commoditised. It’s priced to a tee. If you can afford to keep your attention, you do.
The problem is we’ve let sociopaths like Zuckerberg and Mosseri convince us that we’re born into their servitude. That the natural order for our kids is for their attention to be stolen. That their parents have to then pay and work to buy it back.
> Distracting people cannot be allowed to be one of the main drivers of our economy.
Sure it can. Apple, Google and Microsoft get millions of impressions every day and everyone accepts it. Just because it's uncomfortable for you to think about doesn't mean that it's not happening, at-scale, this very minute.
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.
The main arguments I hear against banning all ads is that it will hurt small businesses, a better solution might be to ban all adds for companies making above X amount per year, or even better: create systems where users pay for ads themselves, then the incentives would switch to be in favor of consumers.
In any case, totally agree, ad companies are out of control, I'm hoping more Kagi like services start appearing soon.
Banning companies above a size still allows a unhappy medium where only "small businesses" BUY the same horrible ads and we drop one or two Army or IBM ads from the lineup.
My parents were architects and my sister and I lived our first few years in Honolulu before moving to the SF Bay Area. There were no billboards in Hawaii, and I recall distinctly the first drive from SFO the the East Bay. I was unable to avoid reading and staring at every billboard next to the freeway and it literally made me throw up. I didn't understand what was happening.
Of course, I was quickly conditioned off of that response to billboards, which I consider natural.
I think a decent middle ground would be to allow contextual advertising and ban personalized advertising. That is, it would be fine to show you ads based on where you are, what you are doing or what you are searching on the internet, but not based on what you did on another website or where you had lunch yesterday.
Of course this would add friction for finding the appropriate targets but it would still allow pretty decent business for adtech. it just would be a bit different.
(I'm pretty sure that the line between contextual and personalized ads is blurry, but I leave that to be solved by lawmakers and judges. Its kind of their core competence. And to be clear, what I personally think should be done would be much, much stricter ban, but this is a compromise proposal I think should be agreeable by all parties who are the slightest interested in the harm current adtech is doing)
Taxing them is an option. Disallow advertising and marketing as a deductible business expense. You can still advertise, but it comes out of the bottom line. This encourages putting more money into product value and less into promotion.
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
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.
The word for software that intentionally subverts the owners intent is called malware, and it's already illegal in the United States. We don't even need any new laws, we just need to be brave enough to enforce them.
I tend to think that banning things is almost never the right answer. Who gets to decide what counts as an ad? What's stopping governments from designating speech they don't like as an ad?
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.
My own hypothesis is that our lives will become so saturated with ads that they will completely lose their effectiveness, advertisers and platforms will finally be forced to acknowledge that they aren't effective, and a monetization crisis will follow. Subscriptions everywhere.
It’s more like drugs in that they will be less effective , but not completely, so we will continue to get more exposures as advertisers compete for attention
They won't lose effectiveness because once in a while you will actually find something you want, click on the ad, and buy it. The reason there's ads everywhere is because they actually do work. It's not a hypothesis.
The harm they cause is so massive compared to the small amount of benefit. Everyone got along just fine when they had to go look for the things they wanted (like with a search engine!), or they did without.
> Time to ban all adverts everywhere. I'm not the only one who is fed up with ads.
This is a terrible idea. Users should have choice & control.
I'll say something that on the surface level seems controversial, at least to HN: Some users prefer ads. And those users should be allowed that choice.
Ads are part of a value exchange. It's disingenuous, imho, to frame the question as "Do you want 'X' with or without ads?" Absent any other criteria most people would naturally say without ads. But I feel it's disingenuous because it overlooks the value exchange.
A better example: Would you prefer Netflix with ads for $7.99/month with ads, or $17.99/month without ads?
A lot of people are choosing the ads tiers. It's the fastest growing tier. Personally, I have the ads-free tier, but I can make that choice for myself. The people wanting the ads tier should be able to make that choice too. I don't see the value in taking it away from them.
I don't deny there are bad experiences. I do think Samsung is making a mistake & damaging customer trust with the refrigerator thing. I likely won't be buying one in the future.
Like anything, advertising can be done well or it can be done badly. I don't use Instagram myself, but I have a lot of friends who love fashion who do & say they're on their to follow brands & find deals. They find the ads a good way to discover some new fashion product & snag a good discount.
Likewise Amazon sent a catalog to my house. My kids are using it to think of what they want to ask Santa. A catalog is basically a book of ads.
Freedom from ads seems like a fundamental human right, and necessary for freedom of thought. "Unskippable" ads seem incompatible with freedom of thought.
> "Users should have choice & control."
Given that people currently are not able to choose to be free from advertisements in any practical way, even if abstaining from luxuries, some sort of severe regulation seems necessary.
This is one of the major political problems of the 21st century, convincing people that many of the problems they see in society are in fact free choices made by individuals, and not necessarily something that needs to be fixed from the top down. The human tendency to impose one's own preferences on others is strong, and it seems every generation needs to learn the lesson anew.
Then there needs to be stronger campaigns against addictive advertising (ironic) but we also need to enforce education about malicious advertising and marketing. People need the knowledge of how to defend themselves against advertising weapons. The current status quo is everyone for themselves. Even the too few volunteer shepherds (you) have no pull against giant money machines.
I think that is too much, but it should be almost entirely banned, with only very limited exceptions. Advertisements which you are specificailly looking for, such as catalogs for those specific things, could be one of those exceptions.
However, even regardless of these exceptions, there will need to be limits, such as: do not be dishonest, do not emit light, do not waste power, do not spy on you, do not block the view of other things, do not try to prevent you from seeing them, they cannot pay you or give you discounts for seeing the ads, etc.
> The time to negotiate a "middle ground" is long past.
I think it will need to be a "nearly banned" ground rather than the "middle" ground, though.
> Ad companies need to be reined in. They cannot control themselves.
This part I agree with.
> The only solution is [...] to make sure that anyone who gets that idea will never get it again.
But, this part, I think that won't work. Even if it does work (which it won't), it is bad for freedom of speech and freedom of opinion.
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).
Ads exist because options are available. There exists the need to stand out and differentiate the moment there are more than one choice for the consumers. Commercial ads didn't exist under communism for a reason.
Your resume is ad. Cover letter is ad. Think about different word choices you made when creating your resume?
If explicit advertising doesn't exist then implicit one will. Which one is worse? I'm sure you've seen all of the product placements on movies and shows.
Product placement is already illegal unless explicitly signposted (a specific state mark being shown on the screen while it is happening) in certain types of shows, in the EU at least.
Of course we all know that submitting a list of things you can do to places that have explicitly requested such lists is the same thing as blasting your crap in front of the eyes of everyone you can. No difference at all.
I agree that we should also ban other forced and unannounced updates to appliances and other consumer devices, especially ones that change the UI flows, yes.
I think Advertising is the issue where I have the most radical views. I don't think it is a terribly controversial view anymore.
In the past when taking to people about this I have asked them to come up with an example of something funded by advertising that has not been corrupted by it. In recent years nobody even wants to take up that challenge, it is far more common for them to concede I'm right on that point.
It's a definite shift 8n public opinion but I'm still a bit wary when people change their views to agree with me when much of their world view seems unfounded. I don't really accept the us vs them narrative. I don't think billionaires are necessarily evil, I certainly don't think the solution to hyper-capitalism is to abandon all elements of society (which seems to be a growing belief), or that socialism an capitalism are fundamentally incompatible. I'd like people to agree with me about the properties of a thing rather than by whether proponents of it are on you tr8be or an opposing tribe.
I'd like a free society where that freedom is limited only by the harm you can do to others. Prevention of harm should be through robust and evidence based regulation.
I think there is a good case to be made that all advertising is harmful to some extent. There are certainly examples that are clearly harmful evading any form of regulation. When people break the rules that currently exist, what motivation do the6 hav3 to mitigate their behaviour? This is a failure of government. I'm not sure if adding more rules that can be broken with impunity would help.
Regulators need the power to inflict punishment that rule breakers actually feel. Enough that it is logical for even an amoral entity to obey the rules. That doesn't seem like a complicated thing, but I feel like it would go a long way healing society.
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.
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.
> A world without ads does not seem possible. The internet mostly works only because of advertisements.
Wow you were fed that lie and you swallowed it right up. It's actually scary that you've been so thoroughly convinced that you've fallen into learned helplessness as a result. Of course it isn't impossible to have a world without ads (at least not intrusive/unwanted ones). The internet didn't have ads when it started and doesn't need them now. No, we don't have to surrender ourselves to constant abuse by adverting, or abandon entire mediums of communication just to rid ourselves of them.
No, ads are not the same thing as free speech at all. "Free speech" is the right to say anything to anyone *who is willing to listen*. You don't have a right to come into my home and tell me your ideas about immigration policy - though you do have a right to talk about immigration policy in other places!
The government has to guarantee that there are places for people to say things. But the government does not have to guarantee that there are places for people to say things *in my own home*. And similarly, I think most public spaces should be free from ads and other 'attention pollution'. If a company wants to write about their own product, that's fine, but they must do so in a place where other people are free to seek them out, as opposed to doing so in a way that forces the writing upon others without consent.
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.
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.
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.
Companies should have more limited speech than individuals. Nerfing the concept of “corporate personhood” will be a key part of fixing our problems IMHO.
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.
So the US government can't punish you for speaking, and they can't punish someone else for speaking on your behalf. They can, however, punish you for speaking in exchange for money, speaking words you don't believe (advertising, lying). They can punish you for trying to brainwash people (the difference between advertising and propaganda is who is speaking and what they get from it, and why). They can punish you for forcing others to listen to your words (my neighbor playing music at night). They can punish you for making unfair deals. Most of this is not usually applied to private speech, but the right to free speech does not prevent it. You cannot be punished for attempting to speak in general, however there are absolutely limits.
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.
PolyBrute 12 is the most expressive synthesizer ever. With a FullTouch® keyboard, unrivaled sonic palette and advanced software companion - it offers more sonic possibilities than any other analog synthesizer.
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.
Readit News
https://venturebeat.com/ai/reddit-fake-users
For every real post, I can make up a fake one that's more agreeable to the hivemind and therefore will be more upvoted. Since you see a limited amount of posts in a session, you will only see fake posts and the real ones will be hidden forever.
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
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 the other hand, I don't trust a company that puts ads on their fridges.
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.
No idea if it's not photoshopped though.
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it is interesting to consider that at any point the thoughts in one's skull are not necessarily their own
I find it plausible at least.
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.
No, it should be illegal even when done willingly. Because this worsens the bargaining position of everyone else.
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.
The device that immediately springs to mind is the Kindle. You can choose to buy a version without ads, or save ~10% and accept ads.
That seems like a reasonable compromise.
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
Why didn't you read the EULA is like asking a roofie victim why didn't they have a chemist analyze their drink first.
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.
* 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.
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)
What would that actually look like though?
Take something that could be considered an ad, but probably most people agree is a good thing. Say you post on here that task X is such a pain in the butt to do all the time as a general gripe, then I say hey, I built a cheap subscription webapp to solve task X easily that you might want to check out. You sign up for it and use it and like it. Seems like everybody wins - you get a problem solved for a small amount of money, I make a little money and get my project used and my work validated etc. But it's still technically an ad.
Lots of stuff like that could be considered an ad. Every "Show HN" could be considered an ad. Suggesting people vote for candidate X or party Y could be considered an ad too - plenty of organizations do pay for actual ads just like that already. Product placements is a type of ad, but it's pretty hard to not do. I don't know how you even make a movie or TV show with people driving cars without showing a particular model of car.
I don't expect that's the kind of ad that everybody is complaining about. Okay, but then how do you legislate the difference? Can you, or anyone, actually write down a definition of the ads you want to ban and the ads you don't? And how will people distort or abuse those definitions? There's billions of dollars in advertising (maybe trillions?), it's not going to all just go away because somebody passed a law. What happens when all of that money gets poured into attempting to abuse such individual personal recommendations? That's already happening on Reddit now, though at small scales for now.
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.
https://www.mozillafoundation.org/en/privacynotincluded/cate...
If you're advertising me milk on a fridge I paid full price of, send me a full sized sample of the product.
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
The timing is just unsettling like i'm having a laugh and then subliminally the next frame is a raw skin lesion
Rumors are that Apple Maps advertising is incoming soon
Dead Comment
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.
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
https://x.com/tbpn/status/1996352945710117030 / https://archive.fo/lTFWl
https://x.com/loganforsyth_/status/1995966653461623049
> EDIT 2: Hello, I am the original poster of the carol AD image from a month ago. I am a male from America and my name is not Carol. The story about a Schizophrenic woman named carol was most likely fabricated from the 3rd top comment on this post. Thanks!
Come in Hacker News, we're better than this!
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/1ow6cpu/appa...
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...
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.
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".
Also cost-cutting to increase those margins. The ads are a natural extension of that.
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?
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.
We bought a TV for my grandfather in his nursing home as he was dying from Alzheimers. All TVs available now are Smart TVs, which are already difficult to work for the elderly.
I'm visiting my grandmother now and watching the TV we had provided him, and it inserts ads into everything available to watch from the most accessible menu. The last ad block was 8 ads long, during which one of those was repeated twice, and had all the subtlety of a row of slot machines at a casino (I think it was for some silly tablet game which I assume has in-app purchases)
Straight up cruelty that should result in some serious fines or even arrests.
The home screen’s just a nice static background with a settings app and nothing else. I never see it unless I press the appropriate button, but it’s nice to know there isn’t an onslaught of junk waiting for me if I do.
YMMV but other brands with Google TV may have similar “dumb” capabilities.
or just all of the TVs you can pop over to Best Buy or Walmart and toss in your car?
Plenty of non-smart displays out there.
Dead Comment
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.
It isn’t commoditised. It’s priced to a tee. If you can afford to keep your attention, you do.
The problem is we’ve let sociopaths like Zuckerberg and Mosseri convince us that we’re born into their servitude. That the natural order for our kids is for their attention to be stolen. That their parents have to then pay and work to buy it back.
Sure it can. Apple, Google and Microsoft get millions of impressions every day and everyone accepts it. Just because it's uncomfortable for you to think about doesn't mean that it's not happening, at-scale, this very minute.
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.
Good org on the other side of the issue: Scenic America: https://www.scenic.org/why-scenic-conservation/billboards-an...
I even saw a "you should be looking at the road" ad on one of those billboards.
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.
In any case, totally agree, ad companies are out of control, I'm hoping more Kagi like services start appearing soon.
Vermont bans billboards on high ways. It's so nice.
Of course, I was quickly conditioned off of that response to billboards, which I consider natural.
Deleted Comment
Of course this would add friction for finding the appropriate targets but it would still allow pretty decent business for adtech. it just would be a bit different.
(I'm pretty sure that the line between contextual and personalized ads is blurry, but I leave that to be solved by lawmakers and judges. Its kind of their core competence. And to be clear, what I personally think should be done would be much, much stricter ban, but this is a compromise proposal I think should be agreeable by all parties who are the slightest interested in the harm current adtech is doing)
Taxing them is an option. Disallow advertising and marketing as a deductible business expense. You can still advertise, but it comes out of the bottom line. This encourages putting more money into product value and less into promotion.
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.
However, their ads are crazy "in your face." They haven't given up, at all. They doubled down.
This is a terrible idea. Users should have choice & control.
I'll say something that on the surface level seems controversial, at least to HN: Some users prefer ads. And those users should be allowed that choice.
Ads are part of a value exchange. It's disingenuous, imho, to frame the question as "Do you want 'X' with or without ads?" Absent any other criteria most people would naturally say without ads. But I feel it's disingenuous because it overlooks the value exchange.
A better example: Would you prefer Netflix with ads for $7.99/month with ads, or $17.99/month without ads?
A lot of people are choosing the ads tiers. It's the fastest growing tier. Personally, I have the ads-free tier, but I can make that choice for myself. The people wanting the ads tier should be able to make that choice too. I don't see the value in taking it away from them.
I don't deny there are bad experiences. I do think Samsung is making a mistake & damaging customer trust with the refrigerator thing. I likely won't be buying one in the future.
Like anything, advertising can be done well or it can be done badly. I don't use Instagram myself, but I have a lot of friends who love fashion who do & say they're on their to follow brands & find deals. They find the ads a good way to discover some new fashion product & snag a good discount.
Likewise Amazon sent a catalog to my house. My kids are using it to think of what they want to ask Santa. A catalog is basically a book of ads.
> "Users should have choice & control."
Given that people currently are not able to choose to be free from advertisements in any practical way, even if abstaining from luxuries, some sort of severe regulation seems necessary.
I think that is too much, but it should be almost entirely banned, with only very limited exceptions. Advertisements which you are specificailly looking for, such as catalogs for those specific things, could be one of those exceptions.
However, even regardless of these exceptions, there will need to be limits, such as: do not be dishonest, do not emit light, do not waste power, do not spy on you, do not block the view of other things, do not try to prevent you from seeing them, they cannot pay you or give you discounts for seeing the ads, etc.
> The time to negotiate a "middle ground" is long past.
I think it will need to be a "nearly banned" ground rather than the "middle" ground, though.
> Ad companies need to be reined in. They cannot control themselves.
This part I agree with.
> The only solution is [...] to make sure that anyone who gets that idea will never get it again.
But, this part, I think that won't work. Even if it does work (which it won't), it is bad for freedom of speech and freedom of opinion.
Your resume is ad. Cover letter is ad. Think about different word choices you made when creating your resume?
If explicit advertising doesn't exist then implicit one will. Which one is worse? I'm sure you've seen all of the product placements on movies and shows.
In the past when taking to people about this I have asked them to come up with an example of something funded by advertising that has not been corrupted by it. In recent years nobody even wants to take up that challenge, it is far more common for them to concede I'm right on that point.
It's a definite shift 8n public opinion but I'm still a bit wary when people change their views to agree with me when much of their world view seems unfounded. I don't really accept the us vs them narrative. I don't think billionaires are necessarily evil, I certainly don't think the solution to hyper-capitalism is to abandon all elements of society (which seems to be a growing belief), or that socialism an capitalism are fundamentally incompatible. I'd like people to agree with me about the properties of a thing rather than by whether proponents of it are on you tr8be or an opposing tribe.
I'd like a free society where that freedom is limited only by the harm you can do to others. Prevention of harm should be through robust and evidence based regulation.
I think there is a good case to be made that all advertising is harmful to some extent. There are certainly examples that are clearly harmful evading any form of regulation. When people break the rules that currently exist, what motivation do the6 hav3 to mitigate their behaviour? This is a failure of government. I'm not sure if adding more rules that can be broken with impunity would help.
Regulators need the power to inflict punishment that rule breakers actually feel. Enough that it is logical for even an amoral entity to obey the rules. That doesn't seem like a complicated thing, but I feel like it would go a long way healing society.
Dead Comment
It was different, but it was great. I would absolutely go back.
Wow you were fed that lie and you swallowed it right up. It's actually scary that you've been so thoroughly convinced that you've fallen into learned helplessness as a result. Of course it isn't impossible to have a world without ads (at least not intrusive/unwanted ones). The internet didn't have ads when it started and doesn't need them now. No, we don't have to surrender ourselves to constant abuse by adverting, or abandon entire mediums of communication just to rid ourselves of them.
Deleted Comment
The government has to guarantee that there are places for people to say things. But the government does not have to guarantee that there are places for people to say things *in my own home*. And similarly, I think most public spaces should be free from ads and other 'attention pollution'. If a company wants to write about their own product, that's fine, but they must do so in a place where other people are free to seek them out, as opposed to doing so in a way that forces the writing upon others without consent.
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.
Companies should have more limited speech than individuals. Nerfing the concept of “corporate personhood” will be a key part of fixing our problems IMHO.
Ultimately its just another manipulation to part you with your money in other ways than you intended, nothing more and nothing less.
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.
> But who decides what is legal then?
Laws and judges.
Deleted Comment
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.
This is an ad in someone's kitchen in their home. How can it get more invasive?
Ads absolutely are that bad
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.
Hopefully OP's sister gets her mental health under control...
Not: Hopefully we get control over risking OP's sister's mental health
PM me if interested.