[ellius]

I'm not sure this is a counterargument, but if a company did this in an open way I could trust, I would buy EVERYTHING from them. Fridge, washer, dryer, dishwasher, televisions, small electronics, cars, whatever. You name it I'd buy it. I don't have enough information to determine how many people are like me, but the profit you could make on me as a customer would be ridiculous. You'd get the kind of platform loyalty that Amazon and Google dream of. I'd probably even be happy to share some personal information with you in a way that I controlled that you could turn around and sell. The sense of autonomy, privacy, and control is that valuable to me.

[TeMPOraL]

100% this. I would be another loyal customer buying everything from such a company.

I place high value on not fucking over fellow human beings, and I'd happily put the money where my mouth is, but the market seems essentially devoid of ethical companies these days. I'm sure there is many more people like us - perhaps enough to sustain a company.

(FWIW, if you extend this past issues of ads and privacy, and into making good products and just selling them for money - I'm not sure how long such a company would last these days. Being ethical means no planned obsolescence, or otherwise churning out new variants of the same thing to keep sales up. It could have a problem with a continued revenue stream - but then again, I'd probably happily pay an extra subscription to an ethical company that cut away all this bullshit, just for the privilege of being able to then buy products from them.)

[monoideism]

Have you purchased one of Purism’s products (phone, laptop, etc)? That’s their entire shtick. I could see them developing into the kind of company you describe with a wide range of privacy respecting products.

[amelius]

> Being ethical means no planned obsolescence, or otherwise churning out new variants of the same thing to keep sales up.

If you buy "TV as a service" instead of as a product, the effect is basically that the company providing the service will do the opposite of planning for obsolescence.

Perhaps this is the kind of company you are looking for?

[TeMPOraL]

That's a fair point, and arguably a good side of products-as-serivces. I'm still generally against them, though, for two reasons.

One: in practice, -as-a-Service businesses tend to quickly devolve their business models to include user-hostile, unethical aspects. Requiring Internet access, telemetry, ads, remote bricking, etc.

Two - and this is more of a gut feeling than a properly thought-through objection: I don't like the risk curve. Services require a steady cash flow. Have a financial hick-up, and you have to start sacrificing some of your services. Whereas with ownership, you can keep using the goods you own regardless of how much money you have - and with proper care and maintenance, you can get a lot of mileage out of the things you buy. Poorer people tend to be good at it by necessity. The same poorer people would end up trapped if they depended on everything as services.

I also like the fact that, if for some reason you prefer monthly installments to lump-sum purchase, you can turn almost any product into service by getting a bank involved. It has a nice, Unixy feel to it.

But, as I said, I haven't really made up my mind about this just yet.

[tksb]

This is my only argument for "subscription culture" in much better words.

[lonelappde]

There are dozens of people like you, maybe even thousands or tens of thousands. In other words, not do worth paying attention to.

Also, you're probably not telling the truth to yourself, since you get your news from HN instead of paying for journalism.

[signal11]

As of now, in the UK, LG’s TVs are fairly up front about automatic content recognition, and it’s off by default.

But I agree, we need a consumer-electronics company that uses privacy as a competitive advantage the way Apple does for phones.