[narmiouh]

Samsung the same with their display on fridge, I'm not sure how is this legal and why someone thinks this is ok.

These decision makers are meant to be educated people with may be at least a tiny bit of values in their lives...

[cautiouscat]

I agree that it’s abhorrent. However the doomer in me can’t help but think they do these things because consumers still buy them. You’d expect GE to go “Oh yeah well we don’t put ads on OUR fridges.” but it seems like in every industry they all just follow suit.

[microtonal]

A fridge is one of these devices where I wouldn't know why I would even want a screen. So, I would never buy a fridge with a screen or a washing machine/dryer with anything more than a simple segmented LCD.

For me the biggest annoyance are pushing ads (and the pervasive monitoring that comes with it) to devices where screens are integral to the device and therefore unavoidable, like TVs, smartphones, computer displays, etc. We haven't connected our TV to WiFi (like any TV nowadays you have to be very careful that it doesn't enable a service like Samba that screenshots what you are viewing), but I'm sure these people will do anything to get their hands on analytics and screen time by embedding cellular modems and whatnot.

Similarly, at least on Android phones, you can git of a lot of crap with adb. But Android 17 removes the possibility to uninstall apps from the 'user partition' (you can only disable), I wouldn't be surprised if they also remove disabling in the future, so there will be no way to get rid of all the spyware and crap ware. Yes, alternative ROMs do not have this issue, but they get increasingly blocked out with Play Integrity.

This is not the future we should want.

[jaredhallen]

I suppose they've determined the revenue from the ads outweighs the potential competitive advantage.

[polotics]

Or they know it's a race to the bottom where as long as every brand's doing it, consumers have no choice...

[quickthrowman]

If I have to buy a consumer fridge and they all have screens, that’s when I’ll call up a refrigeration company and buy a commercial refrigerator.

[dfxm12]

It's not like they're showing ads on fridges/cars in the commercials or the display units in Lowe's/the dealership. By the time you see the ad, it's too much of a hassle to return it, even if you can...

[DanOpcode]

On my Samsung TV recently on the start page some ad has started to show up, years after I bought it. No idea if I can get rid of it. I barely watch TV though, so I don't really care about wasting time trying to get rid of it. But I will for sure avoid Samsung in future TV purchases.

[tootie]

No coincidence, BMW and Samsung did product placement in the movie too. Very conspicuously.