Hmm, maybe there's a simple legislative fix for this problem. Basically vendors that want to make you "rent" devices would have to allow termination for convenience at any time by customer including repayment of any fees paid by the customer for the device.
Termination for convenience is a standard term in contracts, hence well-understood by corporate lawyers. The repayment could be reduced using a depreciation schedule so the longer the device is in your hands the less that's returned.
I think this would work. The legal machinery is already there. The market would work out the details.
Already done! You agreed to it in the Terms and Conditions - you did read them, right?
But yeah I agree with you, there needs to be a way for people to get away from ads without relying on the existence of some benevolent alternate company
Terms and conditions can't just force anything on the buyer. like, you can't enslave people and point at the terms and conditions. It should also be outlawed to enshittify products with terms and conditions.
Despite what the average multinational will have you believe, terms and conditions usually don't hold up in court. If they write some illegal bullshit into it, it's just that, bullshit.
Sure, but that depends on the thing actually being illegal first. Genuine question - how often in practice are terms and conditions successfully challenged? My thought is that companies like that would be able to drain plaintiffs out before it getting that far very often
That may be true but doesn't help if not accepting the terms prevents you from using the device.
On a practical level you then at best have a battle to get a third party (the retailer) to give you a refund and most people faced with the option of removing and returning a huge expensive device like a fridge with no guarantee of a refund are going to just leave it.
It does need some stubborn and tenacious people to make a stand and set a president - perhaps backed by a consumer rights group but it's an uphill battle.
Outlawing this specific scenario sounds pretty hard. I can see only two reasonable options:
* Ban all advertisements. (I'm all for it, at this point.)
* Make sure smart-devices make extremely clear that they can be used to show ads, and include trivial instructions to disable ads
Forcing ads onto stuff we pay money for is not okay. Ads to fund free content is probably unavoidable, but even then, it needs to be clear up front what you're subjecting yourself to. Unexpected ads on devices you don't expect them from, can be confusing and disorienting for many people. For people with schizophrenia, it can clearly be dangerous.
And I think this is not just true for smart fridges, but also for those billboards at bus stops that seem stationary at first until they suddenly start to move or talk to you. Ban those please. Or make it clear upfront that they're video. Don't spring this on unsuspecting people.
On Reddit? It should...
These were historically almost always made up after people looked into it.
To be clear, the picture is likely real. The backstory to it probably not.
The people that actually feel like they've had the episode would almost certainly not go on social media with it.
The venn diagram of people sharing such content, having the money to buy such a gigantic smart fridge and suffering from schizophrenia is miniscule
I did now and am even more certain it's made up now.
I'm not sure how anyone can honestly think this is a person talking about their family. This is like a textbook made believe story people have been doing since Reddit got popular in early 2010s.
For this story to be real, you'll have to add a fourth and fifth circle to the diagram with a family member being close enough to the person suffering from the illness to be confided in and being so karma hungry to utilize their personal story which is likely shameful to them for going viral on Reddit.
Yeah so this hypothetical sister doesn’t work, lives by themself, is severely disabled by schizophrenia but at the same time can afford a £2000 fridge. That’s a crazy amount of money to splash for someone who doesn’t work. Especially as amazing fridges are sold for £600-800. Oh, on top of all that, the persons name is Carol. It wouldn’t have worked with any other name.
I don’t think the story is real. But people who want it to be true are easily convinced.
I read [Unauthorized Bread (exerpt) by Doctoro](https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-...) this year which was pretty approachable read on the topic. Not severely interesting or mind blowing if you're already here hopefully but did make me wonder how I could sneak it into my mums reading list.
"I just saw something incredibly cool! A big floating ball that lit up with every color in the rainbow, plus some new ones that were so beautiful I fell to my knees and cried."
"Was it out in front of Discount Shoe Outlet?"
"Yeah..."
"They have a college kid wear that to attract customers."
"Well, sure, but not in our dreams. Only on TV and radio. And in magazines and movies and at ball games, on buses and milk cartons and T-shirts and bananas and written on the sky. But not in dreams. No, sir-ee!"
Open source, as in corporate outsourcing software maintenance to free labour? No. Free software, as in four freedoms? Yes, because you could install your own firmware that doesn't show advertisements.
That's what the whole GPLv3 debacle was about after all.
Stallman may have not imagined this specific scenario, but he absolutely did conceive of owner-hostile software that could not be replaced.
You could, but would most people? Most people voluntarily subject themselves to garbage adware-ridden SmartTVs even though this is a problem you can solve with a £12 dongle and no software installation at all. If the humble HDMI cable defeats the average person’s technical ability, what difference would it make if they could technically install their own firmware?
I knew using ad blockers is good for your mental health but this is plain creepy and unfair. Especially when advertisers know more and more about you as more and more everyday items are spying on you and serve you ads without any additional core functionality. Appliances don't get better, they are getting creepier to increase the return of investment for the manufacturers. The schizophrenics are just more sensitive to this enshittification of everyday items because they are quick to assume deliberate agency in chaotic events where there is none. But this is changing, for everybody.
The problem is today you can't really tell anymore whether this "Carol" the ad was addressing is the advertiser knowing that it's your name or just a random "clever" reference to a character in the TV show, I mean even after getting the resolution that it's the latter, nobody can be sure if this excludes the former, like the algorithm decided to send Carol an ad about a show with a Carol in it. It's not good to have to make up your mind about it even when you are not suffering from schizophrenia.
It's annoying, it's intrusive, it wastes your time and ruins your day. And it makes you hate your new tech, makes you hate tech in general, because it's a big "fuck you we can do what we want with you now" towards the customers. No wonder Luddites are making a come back, that's just self-defense.
If modern ad tech and future holographic display technology makes schizophrenic symptoms indistinguishable from regular waking consciousness in our Bitchun society...does that make us all crazy? or all sane?
If there is one appliance in my house that does not need a LCD screen and «smart» features, it’s my fridge. It was installed maybe 6 years ago, I adjusted some temperature settings and I’ve never touched the dials again.
When I first saw somebody complain about the Pluribus smart fridge ad I immediately knew something like this was going to happen. How did Apple/Samsung not think this through?
if you read the entire reddit thread, OPs sisters name actually was Carol. That's why it wigged her out so much and triggered her schizophrenia to kick in I suppose.
As an aside, having scroll that thread, Reddit is a shambles. There's more deleted comments and related justification comment than actual comments. Make for a jarring experience.
It's a legal advice subreddit; they tend to have stricter moderation because their primary goal is to get the OP an answer to their question or advice on how to consult a legal professional about their issue. Posts like the one linked here tend to be a magnet for people more interested in the drama than the actual legal principles, so they end up being a wasteland of removed comments.
Exactly. There are reasons for those many deleted comments. It's specific to this subreddit for very good reasons and not something you can use to disparage all of reddit. Many subreddits have their own rules and culture.
Absolutely- I can't understand why it still has such a loyal base considering how low the quality is- I see more insightful discussion on facebook half the time
Because Reddit != Reddit and each subreddit has their own audience and moderation style. Most of Reddit might be a cesspit, but that doesn't mean all of it is.
I can't understand why cigarettes have such a loyal fanbase. They're smelly and expensive. Costing roughly 4k a year, I can't understand why someone wouldn't buy a nicer car or massive TV or something.
Whenever a platform is popular these days I just assume it is more addictive.
Every time I see an article on HN about a "smart" device doing shitty things, my first thought is why would someone (especially from this crowd, who's supposed to be enlightened about the state of enshittification of tech) buy any IoS device in the first place ?
What good could you expect from an appliance that's permanently communicating with its non-giving a f*ck about users, profit driven, immoral and unethical mothership ? Would you really expect your life to be better after buying such a product ?
There's an old joke that a tech enthusiast will have "smart" everything in their house, while someone who works in tech keeps a shotgun in case their 10 year old laser printer makes a funny noise...
The gut reaction of too many geeks is "I can't believe you'd install a smart fridge in your home". But we need to think about this differently. Imagine if vehicles had no mandatory safety checks. How many people know anything about car safety? You'd get people barrelling down the highway with broken suspension, bald tyres or worse. We are the professionals. It's our responsibility to keep the public safe and stop shit like this happening. The software engineers who implemented this at Samsung should be struck off. Well, we could start by having something to be struck off from. I'm done with assuming individual developers will be scrupulous. We need real consequences to come from higher up. It's way past the point that this is fucking with people's lives.
It also falls apart over when more and more products become "smart" to the point where you can't really even buy one without things like this, like TVs now or cars for that matter. I'm dreading the day where I end up forced to watch an ad before starting my car.
I do think some kind of ethics training/education/licensing/organization is long overdue for software devs.
Real consequences from higher up... for ads on a fridge? Corporate execs only care about money. Engineers aren't going to get themselves fired every time someone asks for a feature they don't agree with. Government? We don't need more nanny laws.
What we need is for people to think for themselves. The powers that be aren't going to save you from all the bad things. Call out the bad things to educate people, and vote with your wallet.
> You'd get people barrelling down the highway with broken suspension, bald tyres or worse.
You have this in most of the US, and people rail against any attempt to bring it in because they're frightened that garages will not give them their cars back if they think it's got something wrong with it.
I've seen people driving cars in the US that you wouldn't even be able to get a scrapyard to take in the UK, they'd tell you to just sweep it into a bag and put it in the recycling.
We really need some legislation that outlaws this sort of control over devices we buy.
If someone wants to install an advert app on their fridge (I assume in exchange for money) then fair enough.
If I buy a tv I shouldn't just have to accept that, now or in the future, the manufacturer will sell advertising on it.
> If someone wants to install an advert app on their fridge (I assume in exchange for money) then fair enough.
No, it should be illegal even when done willingly. Because this worsens the bargaining position of everyone else.
Hmm, maybe there's a simple legislative fix for this problem. Basically vendors that want to make you "rent" devices would have to allow termination for convenience at any time by customer including repayment of any fees paid by the customer for the device.
Termination for convenience is a standard term in contracts, hence well-understood by corporate lawyers. The repayment could be reduced using a depreciation schedule so the longer the device is in your hands the less that's returned.
I think this would work. The legal machinery is already there. The market would work out the details.
Already done! You agreed to it in the Terms and Conditions - you did read them, right?
But yeah I agree with you, there needs to be a way for people to get away from ads without relying on the existence of some benevolent alternate company
Terms and conditions can't just force anything on the buyer. like, you can't enslave people and point at the terms and conditions. It should also be outlawed to enshittify products with terms and conditions.
Despite what the average multinational will have you believe, terms and conditions usually don't hold up in court. If they write some illegal bullshit into it, it's just that, bullshit.
Sure, but that depends on the thing actually being illegal first. Genuine question - how often in practice are terms and conditions successfully challenged? My thought is that companies like that would be able to drain plaintiffs out before it getting that far very often
That may be true but doesn't help if not accepting the terms prevents you from using the device.
On a practical level you then at best have a battle to get a third party (the retailer) to give you a refund and most people faced with the option of removing and returning a huge expensive device like a fridge with no guarantee of a refund are going to just leave it.
It does need some stubborn and tenacious people to make a stand and set a president - perhaps backed by a consumer rights group but it's an uphill battle.
Outlawing this specific scenario sounds pretty hard. I can see only two reasonable options:
* Ban all advertisements. (I'm all for it, at this point.) * Make sure smart-devices make extremely clear that they can be used to show ads, and include trivial instructions to disable ads
Forcing ads onto stuff we pay money for is not okay. Ads to fund free content is probably unavoidable, but even then, it needs to be clear up front what you're subjecting yourself to. Unexpected ads on devices you don't expect them from, can be confusing and disorienting for many people. For people with schizophrenia, it can clearly be dangerous.
And I think this is not just true for smart fridges, but also for those billboards at bus stops that seem stationary at first until they suddenly start to move or talk to you. Ban those please. Or make it clear upfront that they're video. Don't spring this on unsuspecting people.
Although adverts on the fridge are absolutely terrible, is this genuine? Here's a reddit post some time before that suggesting the scenario: https://old.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/1ow6cpu/appa...
Just because someone suggested a possible scenario could happen and it then did happen isn't all that suspicious to me.
On Reddit? It should... These were historically almost always made up after people looked into it.
To be clear, the picture is likely real. The backstory to it probably not.
The people that actually feel like they've had the episode would almost certainly not go on social media with it. The venn diagram of people sharing such content, having the money to buy such a gigantic smart fridge and suffering from schizophrenia is miniscule
> The people that actually feel like they've had the episode would almost certainly not go on social media with it.
Did you read the post? It's somebody talking about what happened to their sister.
I admittedly did not, initially.
I did now and am even more certain it's made up now.
I'm not sure how anyone can honestly think this is a person talking about their family. This is like a textbook made believe story people have been doing since Reddit got popular in early 2010s.
For this story to be real, you'll have to add a fourth and fifth circle to the diagram with a family member being close enough to the person suffering from the illness to be confided in and being so karma hungry to utilize their personal story which is likely shameful to them for going viral on Reddit.
Another circle for the Venn diagram is that the schizophrenic sister's name happens to be Carol, the same as the name in the ad shown on the fridge.
Obviously made up.
It’s anti-tech rhetoric so it works well here in HN. That’s the entire purpose of it.
Not to say ads on fridges aren’t stupid. But they are stupid enough by themselves; they don’t have to make up stories about them.
Yeah so this hypothetical sister doesn’t work, lives by themself, is severely disabled by schizophrenia but at the same time can afford a £2000 fridge. That’s a crazy amount of money to splash for someone who doesn’t work. Especially as amazing fridges are sold for £600-800. Oh, on top of all that, the persons name is Carol. It wouldn’t have worked with any other name.
I don’t think the story is real. But people who want it to be true are easily convinced.
Of course it might be genuine, but there's also a history of r/LegalAdviceUK getting a number of creative writing exercises. See this post: https://old.reddit.com/r/LegalAdviceUK/comments/1loyctr/rage...
Why use the “creative writing exercise” euphemism that obscures the dishonesty? Call them liars, fakes, frauds, or whatever.
I've seen a photo floating around on Twitter at least: https://x.com/KlonnyPin_Gosch/status/1997179871467094177
No idea if it's not photoshopped though.
I read [Unauthorized Bread (exerpt) by Doctoro](https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-...) this year which was pretty approachable read on the topic. Not severely interesting or mind blowing if you're already here hopefully but did make me wonder how I could sneak it into my mums reading list.
I borrowed from the library last month. It was thought provoking and I think it's aimed at younger people than myself.
"I just saw something incredibly cool! A big floating ball that lit up with every color in the rainbow, plus some new ones that were so beautiful I fell to my knees and cried."
"Was it out in front of Discount Shoe Outlet?"
"Yeah..."
"They have a college kid wear that to attract customers."
"Didn't you have ads in the 20th century?"
"Well, sure, but not in our dreams. Only on TV and radio. And in magazines and movies and at ball games, on buses and milk cartons and T-shirts and bananas and written on the sky. But not in dreams. No, sir-ee!"
Stallman was right.
Sometimes you don’t need a Stallman to be right.
Yet there is a Stallman anyway.
Stallman didn’t even conceive of this threat. Would it be any better if it was an open source dystopian mind-control machine?
Open source, as in corporate outsourcing software maintenance to free labour? No. Free software, as in four freedoms? Yes, because you could install your own firmware that doesn't show advertisements.
That's what the whole GPLv3 debacle was about after all.
Stallman may have not imagined this specific scenario, but he absolutely did conceive of owner-hostile software that could not be replaced.
You could, but would most people? Most people voluntarily subject themselves to garbage adware-ridden SmartTVs even though this is a problem you can solve with a £12 dongle and no software installation at all. If the humble HDMI cable defeats the average person’s technical ability, what difference would it make if they could technically install their own firmware?
Theoretically, yes, but in practice almost everybody would just run their Ubuntu Fridge in a stock configuration.
I knew using ad blockers is good for your mental health but this is plain creepy and unfair. Especially when advertisers know more and more about you as more and more everyday items are spying on you and serve you ads without any additional core functionality. Appliances don't get better, they are getting creepier to increase the return of investment for the manufacturers. The schizophrenics are just more sensitive to this enshittification of everyday items because they are quick to assume deliberate agency in chaotic events where there is none. But this is changing, for everybody.
The problem is today you can't really tell anymore whether this "Carol" the ad was addressing is the advertiser knowing that it's your name or just a random "clever" reference to a character in the TV show, I mean even after getting the resolution that it's the latter, nobody can be sure if this excludes the former, like the algorithm decided to send Carol an ad about a show with a Carol in it. It's not good to have to make up your mind about it even when you are not suffering from schizophrenia.
It's annoying, it's intrusive, it wastes your time and ruins your day. And it makes you hate your new tech, makes you hate tech in general, because it's a big "fuck you we can do what we want with you now" towards the customers. No wonder Luddites are making a come back, that's just self-defense.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they are not after you.
In fact, they're after you for being so paranoid.
I don't understand why people willingly pay thousands for these fridges. Just buy a regular fridge without the screen.
While you still can..
If modern ad tech and future holographic display technology makes schizophrenic symptoms indistinguishable from regular waking consciousness in our Bitchun society...does that make us all crazy? or all sane?
Everyday we take one step closer to a PKD envisioned future.
> “I’ll sue you,” the door said as the first screw fell out. Joe Chip said, “I’ve never been sued by a door. But I guess I can live through it.”
From Ubik
One of my favorite PKD novels. Thanks for the reminder of it!
That scene is exactly what I had in mind :-)
Such a wonderful book.
Better tip the smart door, never know what’ll happen if there’s a fire someday.
Speaking of, better tip the toaster.
The Internet of [spiteful] Things.
If there is one appliance in my house that does not need a LCD screen and «smart» features, it’s my fridge. It was installed maybe 6 years ago, I adjusted some temperature settings and I’ve never touched the dials again.
When I first saw somebody complain about the Pluribus smart fridge ad I immediately knew something like this was going to happen. How did Apple/Samsung not think this through?
if you read the entire reddit thread, OPs sisters name actually was Carol. That's why it wigged her out so much and triggered her schizophrenia to kick in I suppose.
I know, that's what I originally thought.
They probably do not care if they're not legally liable.
An edge case of "smart" tech...
As an aside, having scroll that thread, Reddit is a shambles. There's more deleted comments and related justification comment than actual comments. Make for a jarring experience.
It's a legal advice subreddit; they tend to have stricter moderation because their primary goal is to get the OP an answer to their question or advice on how to consult a legal professional about their issue. Posts like the one linked here tend to be a magnet for people more interested in the drama than the actual legal principles, so they end up being a wasteland of removed comments.
Exactly. There are reasons for those many deleted comments. It's specific to this subreddit for very good reasons and not something you can use to disparage all of reddit. Many subreddits have their own rules and culture.
Absolutely- I can't understand why it still has such a loyal base considering how low the quality is- I see more insightful discussion on facebook half the time
Because Reddit != Reddit and each subreddit has their own audience and moderation style. Most of Reddit might be a cesspit, but that doesn't mean all of it is.
I can't understand why cigarettes have such a loyal fanbase. They're smelly and expensive. Costing roughly 4k a year, I can't understand why someone wouldn't buy a nicer car or massive TV or something.
Whenever a platform is popular these days I just assume it is more addictive.
This is obviously reddit fiction.
Every time I see an article on HN about a "smart" device doing shitty things, my first thought is why would someone (especially from this crowd, who's supposed to be enlightened about the state of enshittification of tech) buy any IoS device in the first place ?
What good could you expect from an appliance that's permanently communicating with its non-giving a f*ck about users, profit driven, immoral and unethical mothership ? Would you really expect your life to be better after buying such a product ?
There's an old joke that a tech enthusiast will have "smart" everything in their house, while someone who works in tech keeps a shotgun in case their 10 year old laser printer makes a funny noise...
The real fun one - most rental places, the landlord buys/provides the fridge.
Are we at ad-supported rental apartments yet? “Sorry, it’s in the rental contract that we’re not allowed to turn off the TV or cover it up.”
On the double-plus-good side there's often a corner of the room where the TV can't see you . . .
Careless people
IANAL, but could the ADA [1] or equivalent laws be applied to such a situation?
If it was up to a jury, the creepy ads might not get much sympathy.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans_with_Disabilities_Ac...
Given the situation occurred in the UK, I doubt it.
I think The Equality Act 2010 would be the UK equivalent. No idea whether it would cover this - might be a stretch.
there hasn't been a single schizophrenia diagnosis for a born blind person
whoa, that's a really neat and cool fact. I never knew this.
for the curious, https://www.healthcentral.com/condition/schizophrenia/blindn...
Wonder why (I don't wonder why)
I remember when borderline/schizoid fren saw some stuff made by one of the first generative models released to the public, Deep Dream.
I hadda smack that laptop shut, my fren froze catatonic from looking at those dog-shaped landscapes
it should read, "Schizophenic correctly diagnoses societies ongoing pschcotic episode through the phenominon of refrigerator advertising"
The gut reaction of too many geeks is "I can't believe you'd install a smart fridge in your home". But we need to think about this differently. Imagine if vehicles had no mandatory safety checks. How many people know anything about car safety? You'd get people barrelling down the highway with broken suspension, bald tyres or worse. We are the professionals. It's our responsibility to keep the public safe and stop shit like this happening. The software engineers who implemented this at Samsung should be struck off. Well, we could start by having something to be struck off from. I'm done with assuming individual developers will be scrupulous. We need real consequences to come from higher up. It's way past the point that this is fucking with people's lives.
It also falls apart over when more and more products become "smart" to the point where you can't really even buy one without things like this, like TVs now or cars for that matter. I'm dreading the day where I end up forced to watch an ad before starting my car.
I do think some kind of ethics training/education/licensing/organization is long overdue for software devs.
Real consequences from higher up... for ads on a fridge? Corporate execs only care about money. Engineers aren't going to get themselves fired every time someone asks for a feature they don't agree with. Government? We don't need more nanny laws.
What we need is for people to think for themselves. The powers that be aren't going to save you from all the bad things. Call out the bad things to educate people, and vote with your wallet.
> You'd get people barrelling down the highway with broken suspension, bald tyres or worse.
You have this in most of the US, and people rail against any attempt to bring it in because they're frightened that garages will not give them their cars back if they think it's got something wrong with it.
I've seen people driving cars in the US that you wouldn't even be able to get a scrapyard to take in the UK, they'd tell you to just sweep it into a bag and put it in the recycling.
sexy fridges https://store.steampowered.com/app/1035840/Cold_Hearts/