Technology

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.

Installing spyware and wire taps in my home was never appealing to me.

Any ads is a no-go for me.

... and all the actual tech nerds who told everyone they should avoid smart devices like the plague laugh and laugh...

"Advertising is a small part of the experience".

Well great Amazon. Nobody is asking for this 'experience'.

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?

I get that we should expect shit like this from Amazon but at the same time, they bought something and the maker completely changed how the device worked after they bought it.

I’d be pissed too. We have to hold these companies accountable.

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'm about to just toss the whole thing and move back to google.

... Ah yes. Here we see that, while frustrated, the consumer remains largely undeterred from fitting into the boxes outlined by our fearless corpo overlords.

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.

I mean…. Hasn’t been this with Amazon products forever? I had a Kindle Fire in 2012 and had to root it just to stop ads from showing up on the locked screen

People seem to never learn. Same behavior for decades now from these companies but people are shocked. :)

Google is NOT going to be any better at this. That will just be changing one corporate evil for another.

Personally, I disagree with the first and agree with the latter. I have a Nest Hub, and there are no ads on that. But I would still urge the redditor and myself to get acquainted with Home Assistant instead of bothering with the offerings from Google and Amazon.

Never saw this coming (said no one ever).

This is a simple problem. Destroy it and end your Amazon prime subscription. Now, your Samsung fridge that shows ads is a different problem.

"Honey, you know what would really tie this room together? A giant electronic advertising billboard!"

Fucking ads, even on Netflix and at gas stations now. So offensive

Amazon garbage is literal ewaste as soon it leaves the factory.

People regret buying ....

They will continue to support .....

Isn't there a saying about this? "Leopards ate my face" or something like that?

It's like TVs... Google TV, Android TV, Chromecast, Fire TV... it's all ads, all the way down. Apple TV though? Just a grid of apps. Certain apps on the dock (the top shelf as it's called) could display ads because they're allowed to display content in the top half, but I haven't seen it done. Video apps typically just show what's up next in your queue and maybe something suggested. But you can control what goes on the dock.

Can't block ads on it and YouTube is fundamentally broken for it (despite there being no ad blocker between the app and the service). I'm looking into getting a gently used M1 Mac Mini for my TV, and wiring one of those Bluetooth keyboard/mouse things up to it. That way I can just run Firefox with uBlock Origin and call it a day.

Fuck all these "smart" devices. Can't win with any of them. Meanwhile you can get a Raspberry Pi and be running Linux on your TV. That might introduce some challenges, but hey, you got Plex (/Jellyfin/whatever) anyway.

Wait until your smart TV starts playing adds every 10min no matter what your watching, or even if the TV is "turned off"

Haha. Are people even supprised? I mean come on.

The best thing you can do, is just DIY your own display with a microcontroller and have some fun in building it. Maybe run Linux on it and voila.

I'm now reading Helen Philips' Hum and it feels so disturbing that the dystopian world depicted in the book is so real. Like all of those things actually exist already, we just don't think about them too often.

People regret buying skunks after being sprayed by skunks.

Oh sweet summer child, Google is NOT going to be any better at this. That will just be changing one corporate evil for another.

The track record for people using that condescending phrase while not understanding what's happening continues...

The smart TVs operate on Android TV, made by Google.

Amazon uses their own version of Android, and that's where all the shitty stuff comes from.

I've got a nice name brand android TV, the only ads are "this movie is on streaming" or "this show premieres in a week".

I got a cheap Amazon TV in another room, in the same place for ads on the home screen, it has ads for random products

There is a marked difference. They are "better" at this. Obviously no one in 2025 thinks google is "good"

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.