It's still annoying and it's unacceptable for my fridge to have a screen I can't control the content of.
Also, and more importantly IMO, is the risk of the fridge getting hacked. I really don't want to have to worry about keeping my fridge updated, and having to throw it out after 7 years or whenever support ends.
Thinking "alright, here's this beautiful screen to brag about, and here's this cutting edge internet connection to feel connected to the progress, nothing can go wrong, it's developed by a well-intentioned for-profit corporation, get lost, tinfoilhats" is enough of a malicious mindset to warrant the blame.
And this is not some fictional attitude, it's the one I heard from a multitude of people on many occasions.
yes, there's some level of expecting to be screwed by a vendor based on past experience, but we should never shift the blame away from the people actually Doing The Bad Thing and we should always hold their feet to the fire before we say "you should have known better, dummy who needs to keep their food and medicine cold and thinks the shiny screen is neat".
It's not morally or ethically wrong to think the shiny screen is neat.
Your premise will only become true if people on mass agree with it.
Take for example the Kohler poo cam announced a few weeks back that has no screen but maybe they secretly included a small speaker that after a firmware update will plop ads on bowl users if management is not seeing the profits from selling only the hardware. Won't that be some funny sh!t?
Or how about brain implant computers, so I ask where will the line be drawn when more and more profit at any cost appears to be the M.O.
Exciting times as connected technology that can see and hear gets smaller and smaller while battery power to weight ratio increases allowing these devices longer and longer life in secluded places.
Unless that fridge is given to me and installed in my home free of charge, and I get a monthly retainer for allowing the fridge to advertise to me.
I'm not paying for the privileged of being advertised to.
If there's enough money in doing this kind of thing, you may no longer be given that choice by the market. It is under no obligation to provide the choices that are best for you.
All the manufacturers are responding to the same incentives, and if the CEO of one has the morals to resist shoving ads in all the things, it's only a matter of time until he's replaced by an MBA who doesn't. That's capitalism.
THAT'S fairy tale capitalism. Sometimes it works that way in real life, but it very, very frequently it does not.
As soon as cost of adding a screen to a refrigerator becomes less than the ad revenue that screen can generate, you'll be hard pressed to find a refrigerator without one. They'll just be careful to avoid making it so annoying at first that it alienates customers, then do a frog-boiling exercise to slowly increase consumer tolerance for annoyance. That's where the incentives are, and the industry will follow the incentives.
and they're now even putting freakin apps into washing machines. It's a disaster. It's getting harder and harder to find appliances that don't have all this nonsense in it.
Shoving ads in my face and killing babies. Those are my two lines in the sand.
caminante•3mo ago
[0] https://www.theverge.com/report/806797/samsung-family-hub-sm...