Samsung Confirms Its Smart Fridges Will Start Showing You Ads
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Samsung is introducing ads on its smart refrigerators, sparking outrage among HN users who discuss the implications of invasive advertising and the loss of control over personal devices.
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Sep 18, 2025 at 11:46 AM EDT
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I don't get how that gets through the usual meetings and there's no sense of "people won't like this, they will associate our products with obtrusive ads".
Ever turned on a Samsung TV?
We only saw that attitude towards COVID because it affected people for a relatively short amount of time, and majority of them suffered relatively minor symptoms.
People not caring about others isn't exactly noteworthy. People not caring about themselves is different.
Government regulation is the only way to stop this.
So such competitors exist. I can't imagine that they will cease to exist.
Our Miele dishwasher... no internet connection.
Our GE range / stove wants an internet connection and a phone app to use it's broiler features (I think). They're actually gated behind internet connectivity. We do without it.
Our home thermostat was installed with wi-fi everything... Which we promptly disconnected when the installers left. The same for the irrigation system. We want to use the device to control it, not have to connect to some server on the internet to manage our heat, A/C, or watering schedule.
Don't get me started on looking for "dumb phones" for our child.
There is no such thing, every big corporation adds greedier and greedier practices over time.
One, I don't think people mind it too much. By too much, I mean two things: actually stating that they don't give a damn (even though they are just as susceptible), or grumbling about ads, but still doing nothing against them.
Two, price is everything. People put up with ads ever for a pittance. They listen to an ad every 15 minutes for hours a day, just to not pay $5 for the ad-free tier. That is how low this barrier is.
So ads not not much a problem PR-wise. You'd think, you'd hope, but it isn't.
Sadly, I can imagine it easily. I've been in a few such meetings across a few past jobs, and often found myself the ONLY advocate for sanity. Counter arguments were often usage count goals or "our userbase is sticky and switching costs are high. It'll be OK, quit worrying." One leader honestly said "KPIs - up now, blowback - after i switch teams"
I currently have a Samsung fridge/freezer and a delonghi espresso machine in the list in nmcli dev wifi.
My friend has recently moved and bought a new Samsung fridge/freezer for her new home.
I did a quick wifi scan on my phone and there it was. The new samsung fridge/freezer waiting to be connected to the internet via the app you have to download.
It works fine without connecting to the internet.
I told her not to install the app or connect it. So she hasn't.
Maybe in the future, if you are obese, or struggle with food, the manufacturers will be able to monitor the contents of your fridge, how often the door was opened, how much food is eaten, take a quick photo of you each time you open the fridge to monitor your weight, and, if it has become a problem, lock the fridge so you cant eat any more food.
The fridge then contacts all the local fast food restaurants and supermarkets you use, to prevent you from buying any more food until you lose a few pounds.
The new wegovy-ai-fridge.
cool!
That may be how it works in other countries, but I can assure you in America, it will target ads towards those things you consume the most and related items so you consume more.
Where’s the money in that? They’ll tell them to bombard you with weight loss adverts for expensive products that don’t work well or at least require you to keep buying them for life.
The Pedestrian Short Story https://xpressenglish.com/wp-content/uploads/Stories/The-Ped...
Blind Man Arrested for Walking with Cane https://www.youtube.com/shorts/3UOccxRHCYw
Man Arrested for Walking Home in Snow https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gawzO3afNKw
“I think otherwise,” the door said. “Look in the purchase contract you signed when you bought this conapt.”
In his desk drawer he found the contract; since signing it he had found it necessary to refer to the document many times. Sure enough; payment to his door for opening and shutting constituted a mandatory fee. Not a tip.
“You discover I’m right,” the door said. It sounded smug.
From the drawer beside the sink Joe Chip got a stainless steel knife; with it he began systematically to unscrew the bolt assembly of his apt’s money-gulping door.
“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.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pj2bZCwJeVc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foT2kCByOgs
> soon toilets will be photographing your butt to fingerprint your anus, while data brokers sells your poop data
Life imitates art: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJklHwoYgBQ
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Also they both allow to easily remove the ads unlike any fully proprietary software.
Then the TV got annoying, slow, pestered with ads and new Privacy updates every month; our oven has some bugs that need a software update and the clock resets without Wi-Fi; and god knows when the washing machine will do something similar.
Samsung is a massive company, it really doesn't need to be doing this. Extremely rich is rich enough, shareholders!
Just refuse to pay for fancy crappola.
What if they develop an iconic fridge and dial up the brand recognition to 11 via an intensive and prolonged ad campaign.
Introducing...
No embedded ads yet. Then they wait for the reviews in all the usual places to be released.After the dust has settled, they push the ad update remotely.
You don't connect your fridge to the internet, like some kind of Luddite?
No worries, they thought of that and bundled a sim card with it.
There isn't really a good reason for appliances to be online-capable and in some cases it puts homes at risk. If you have that and like it, cool - good for you, but that's "innovation" for the sake of having a reason to sell a new product... a product that can be hacked to break or shutdown via a firmware update.
In other words, advertising is a form of mind control. By hijacking your attention, it hijacks how you think about the world and changes what sorts of things you focus on every day, pulling your mental cycles into products when maybe without seeing that ad you'd instead be thinking about family.
I really think the social and societal cost of advertising is immense, and that it should be strongly regulated. Especially because most people greatly under-value their own attention and under-estimate how much seeing ads in their kitchen every day is going to disrupt and hijack their normal thinking patterns.
How we fix, I have no idea. Personally, not many ads make it into my private life. Other than this, I got nada.
There is no reason on earth my toothbrush needs to alert me of something.
When you hire people to "innovate" they will whether its a good idea or not.
Imagine submitting a PR to fix your toothbrush.
- Does this give corporation and government control over cooling temperature?
- Is there telemetry?
- Could devious people replace the ads with porn; or worse, AI generated content at some point?
You know the ones that won't? The ones without a display.
Wherever there is a display, there is software. Whenever there's software, there will be updates. Whenever there are updates and a screen, ads will show up - and consent will be trampled. We will just see the different iterations of this, ad infinitum.
Like $100 fridge with nice amenities cheap... And even then it's hard for me to imagine this making the cut.
I was fully invested in Alexa & Echo devices to have a voice-activated computer agent in every room, but each new "feature" was launched enabled-by-default, and every interaction started including "follup-up" prompts....which is all just ads.
I know that such devices are another sales channel (funnel?), but when you compromise the customer experience in the name of increasing sales that's a failure of the product.
The Kindle doesn't inject ads into the books you're reading because it's a successful product that already drives increased book sales by good at what it does.
There's an ad-supported Kindle, but that's opt-in for a discounted device price, and the ads are non-intrusive while reading a book - unlike Alexa/Echo where the ads get in the way of using the product :(
They have interesting hardware but their software is so egregious I never want anything to do with them.
I had never connected the machine to the Internet since it was purchased. It always defaulted to Heavy Duty for the wash cycle. After connecting it to the SmartThings app and updating the firmware it now defaults to Normal for the wash cycle, which has a shorter run time and less energy usage I assume.
I can't prove it was intentional, but I know myself and what I might brainstorm in a product development or executive conference room. It's cynical, but I can see a company pushing online connectivity and using these kinds of "accidental" "post-manufacturing" issues as reason why. It's not quite Greenwashing but it is exploiting environmental stewardship.
I know this could bite me in the future, but I also want the knowledge out there regardless of who benefits or doesn't.
[0]https://www.theverge.com/news/780757/samsung-brings-ads-to-u...