cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/51856491
Here’s how to opt out.
Archived version: https://archive.is/20251027141201/https://www.theverge.com/report/806797/samsung-family-hub-smart-fridge-ads-opt-out
Opt out is idiotic. Don’t buy this shit! You to not own it. What fuckwit dumbass rents a fridge someone else controls for $2k. I bet it has a camera inside to sell grocers a list of what to mark up for your custom pricing nonsense because you bought a billboard that screams I’m a gullible moron with more money than sense.
I need my refridgerator to be a box.
A box that gets cold inside.
Thats it. Just a cold box.
I just wish I could buy a cold box, a hot box, a spinny-arm water box and a spinny-drum water box without computer chips in them at all.
I also want it dispense cold water. That’s not a requirement, just nice to have.
If you eat like shit, that info can be sold to health providers, insurance for that sweet sweet premium increases too.
Here’s what they look like on my fridge:
I would not buy appliances with ads,
I would not buy them, Sam-I-Am.That’s the main issue here. This fridge didn’t show ads when people bought it.
So buying things that don’t show ads isn’t enough. You need to only buy things that don’t get updates.Yeah, that just makes this so sinister.
What I mean is that my fridge doesn’t have a screen. So if Panasonic decided to show me ads on a fridge where the most complicated feature is the ice maker, that would be a neat trick.
Receives a letter at home from Panasonic containing a message, a color printed sheet and a fridge magnet.
Message reads: “Dear costumer, please use enclosed fridge magnet to hang provided advert sheet on your Panasonic refrigerator”
Funny you say that, in Japan it’s common to get business magnets in your junk mail. Stuff like cleaners, in-home therapy, etc.
We did too… Like 10 years ago. I haven’t seen that nonsense in a while. The closest thing is a coupon calendar.
I would not buy them here or there. I would not buy them anywhere. I do not like appliances with ads. I do not like them Sam-I-Am.
I can’t think of a single thing on a fridge that needs to be smart.
Nothing needs to be, but I do like to monitor door status and temperature for my fridge and deep freezers with home assistant.
Have these functions actually proved useful? I think I’ve had maybe one fridge failure in my entire lifetime that resulted in a complete loss of contents. And many dumb fridges these days have open door alarms.
The door monitor mostly helps when a kid walks off leaving it open thinking they closed it.
The freezer temperature monitoring has saved the contents several times. A breaker had tripped once and I didn’t notice, it let me know that I needed a generator during a power outage, and one of the kids snuck an ice cream and left the lid wide open.
So yeah, it’s been useful. It’s not needed 99% of the time.
An alarm that beeps when the door is left open more than X minutes (say, 5 minutes) only requires a stupidly simple circuit and about $5 in parts.
No smarts needed (though it’s probably cheaper to make it with a microcontroller than have the timer circuit be done with discrete parts).
Hmm, my fridge is in my kitchen, which is in the middle of the house. I’ve never been in a situation where the fridge door has been open more than a couple minutes without me noticing, and I have three kids.
I’ve had two fridges die (well, the same one twice), and that sucked, but there’s not much I could do about it even if I knew a few hours earlier, and I use the fridge enough I’ll notice within a few hours. Refrigerator deliveries often happen after a few days, and I’m not going to keep stocking ice during that period, I’ll just consume what I can and move the important stuff to the mini fridge or chest freezer.
It would be cool, sure, but it’s not worth having it connected to the internet.
deleted by creator
To Home Assistant! The cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems. 🍻
I was ready gawk at what ads on my fridge would look like, and then this. I don’t know what I expected.
Archived link for you.
Thank you
Guess what they look like on my 250 Dollar dumb fridge.
I can even keep my food chilled with it. Plus I can freeze stuff. Even has a light when I open the door. Super practical. You guys should come see it!
This is an amazing article. I’m serious. Very well written. This is my favorite part:
I asked Higby why they were bringing ads to the fridges. He said via email, “This pilot further explores how a connected appliance can deliver genuinely useful, contextual information. The refrigerator is already a daily hub, and we’re testing a responsible, user-controlled way to make that space more helpful.”
This is similar to the justification Panos Panay, Amazon’s head of Devices & Services, made to me last month when I asked him about advertising on its Echo devices. He said it was looking to be “elegantly elevating the information that a customer needs.”
Do these people actually believe this? Do they see advertisements in their own lives and think, “ah yes, that was useful and contextual. That was a helpful ad, elegantly elevating my information.” I’ve seen some delusional people in executive-level roles, but that would be a special new class of delusion. Nobody likes ads. I recognize that some people have higher and lower tolerances for them, but nobody is actually grateful for them. Right?! I need to believe this is true.
Both companies claim they want to offer “curated,” “relevant” ads that might “enhance the experience.” I can buy that to some extent when it’s ads for features that your smart fridge or smart display offers. This tech is complicated and capable, and most people only tap into a fraction of what their devices can do.
That’s generous. But ok, maybe I can grant the premise.
But there is no future where third-party advertisements will ever be welcome in people’s homes like this — even if they happen to show me a brand of pet food right when my dog is looking at me with hungry eyes.
Right. Exactly. No matter what, I can think of no situation in which an ad is serving the customer’s interests. Maybe in the case of a coupon? But even then, I think it’s dubious.
Unfortunately, it is paywalled. Can you copy the text for the rest of us?
There’s an archive.is link in the original post: https://archive.is/20251027141201/https://www.theverge.com/report/806797/samsung-family-hub-smart-fridge-ads-opt-out
I’m wary of running afoul of copyright laws to literally paste it here, but I think you should be able to get it there.
No they won’t, because I’m not stupid enough to buy a ridiculously overpriced fridge.
can’t wait for the ice dispenser dlc
It’s already a subscription model called a water filter.
Unless you build it and code it yourself, do not get a smart device at any cost. Even if they’re on sale for $5. (Unless you’re just planning on reselling them I guess)
Cool, they’re giving me a free $2,000 fridge? Because there’s no way I’d have that fridge otherwise.
The irony of this article being paywalled is the chef’s kiss.
No that’s what the front of my fridge will never look like, no matter my net worth. I will never buy a smart refrigerator, certainly not this model from Samsung!
imagine paying 2k for a fridge just because it has a screen and stupid smart shit. basic fridge please and thank you.
Worth pointing out that that “Target figured out a girl was pregnant before her father did” story is almost certainly untrue: https://www.predictiveanalyticsworld.com/machinelearningtimes/target-really-predict-teens-pregnancy-inside-story/3566/
I agree with the article that getting ads on a device you’ve already paid for with no hint that there would be ads is intrusive and a sad sign of how tech is going (in the same week that it was announced that Apple are going to be adding ads to Maps, too). But I also can’t help but wonder - who the fuck wants a smart fridge? Like, legitimately, what is the advantage over a normal fridge?
Not a “smart” fridge per se, but I can see the use of a screen on my fridge; something where we can see our family calendar, leave notes for each other, and maybe also be able to access the grocery shopping list. Weather would be nice too, though you can keep the news widget (yikes). Something in a visible location in our house, where we go every day.
I’m not sure what other features they advertise with a smart fridge, but those few would be nice; especially if I could just plug a raspberry pi into it and skip all of the Samsung nonsense entirely.
We already do all of that (except the weather) why would I need a screen?
We’re a family of six, and the kids don’t have phones. It’s tough to coordinate schedules already and it’s only going to get worse.
I recognize that I’m an edge case.
You’re not an edge case. My family isn’t that large but we still have challenges with this exact thing.
There’s a screen device that my wife gets incessantly advertised to her that is probably a better option than it being built into a fridge that has been engineered to last 3 weeks longer than the warranty.
I was trying to say there is paper. That’s what we always did.
And still do for that matter.
We’ve tried paper. And dry-erase. The problem is that we keep our calendars and todos and schedules on our phones, which don’t automatically update the paper; and by the second week, we tend to just stop manually updating it. There’s a paper calendar in my office that I just flipped to October last week (from August).
The only way that really seems to work, where we don’t forget an event, is having a single digital shared calendar.
and the kids don’t have phones.
So just the two of you?
Also, if you do end up sharing a digital calendar on a device you already have, what is the fridges for?
My wife and I have phones where we keep our shared calendars, yes. But we have four kids who also have their own lives and schedules, and they often want to know what’s going on, what our plans are, etc. They would value being able to see the day’s upcoming events, too; when the play dates are, when the dentist appointments are, when the days off of school are, what we’re eating for dinner, all of that. Currently, their only access to that information is through our phones.
Having a screen in the kitchen that only shows calendars and a couple of other pieces of data would be useful. We wouldn’t want to be able to watch videos or browse websites on it, though.
Normal fridges are dumb. Smart fridge smart.
“Smart” fridges are the dumbest shit ever; given that, pi hole or some ad blocking DNS? Block access to Samsung servers?
Don’t understand people who are willing to let all that data pass through 3rd party servers
