Here’s how to opt out.

Samsung warned us last month that ads were coming to the giant Android tablets embedded in its Family Hub smart fridges. I’ve been eyeing mine ever since — and the first ones are about to arrive. Starting November 3rd, the $2,000-plus connected fridges will get a new widget that serves up ads, Shane Higby, head of Home Appliance Business at Samsung Electronics America, confirmed to The Verge.

The ads will be part of a new widget on some of the smart fridges’ “Cover screen themes” (like a tablet or smartphone’s home screen). The widget, which Samsung shared with me ahead of today’s announcement, has four rotating screens. One showing news, one calendar events, one the weather forecast, and one with “curated advertisements.”

This widget appears at the bottom of the fridge’s screen and rotates every 10 seconds among the four screens. You can swipe to rotate through them faster. Samsung says the widget will only appear on the Weather and Color theme screens, not on the Art or Album ones. A new Daily Board screen also won’t have the widget, but it will show an ad in one of the six tiles.

  • Lvxferre [he/him]@mander.xyz
    5·
    8 hours ago

    However, Samsung is giving users the option to turn off ads.

    For now, like the author herself mentions later on (“The bigger issue is that of trust. […] that’s today.”)

    [Higby] “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.”

    What Shane Higby is saying here boils down to “we’re trying to help the user”. But if he said so, in clear words, every bloody body would call it bullshit, because it’s common knowledge companies smear ads on your face for their own sake - not yours. But if you hide it behind fancy words, like “further explores” and “deliver” and the likes, it’s harder to call the bullshit.

    I’m getting real tired of this shit.

    [Higby] "…future promotions will depend on the feedback and insights gained from the program.”

    Translation: “we’re just testing the waters now. Let’s see if the suckers swallow it or spit it.”

    This is similar to the justification Panos Panay, Amazon’s […] He said it was looking to be “elegantly elevating the information that a customer needs.”

    Emphasis mine. You can always trust Amazon in one thing: belittling the user.

    The problem here isn’t just the ads themselves (although they are a problem); it’s that they are being added to the device after it’s in my home.

    [Warning, IANAL.] Fight this shit. Seriously, fight it. On legal grounds. What they’re doing should be outright illegal in most countries; it’s equivalent to changing a contract unilaterally after both parties signed it.

    Additionally, I’d strongly advise against buying any sort of “smart” device, unless you’re pretty sure the benefits of connecting your toaster to the internet outweighs all the risks of connecting your household appliances to the internet. Including corporations and crackers taking control of it, harvesting your data, spamming you, building kill switches into it, etc.