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.
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
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.
No, it should be illegal even when done willingly. Because this worsens the bargaining position of everyone else.
* 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.
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.
I can imagine deals where you get a huge 'rebate' if you permanently enable the ad-feature (the on-screen wizard will blow one of those tiny fuses as its final step, locking the device to that setting). That effectively mandates that the price for the device is its selling price minus the huge rebate, and the whole market will adjust to that.
Just ban advertising on those devices.
No, this does not need legislation. If you don't wants ads on your refrigerator, how about not buying a refrigerator with a screen built in, it's not necessary.
The other way around — make it clear that the devices are capable of showing ads, and provide instructions on how to opt-in to them (and no cookie-like prompts either)
https://www.mozillafoundation.org/en/privacynotincluded/cate...
If the fridge is in my house and hammers aren't banned yet then that fridge will not be showing me ads.
In many places, you can't legally buy gas outside of a gas pump that have a strong tendency to show more and more ads.
> To reserve a Telly, you must agree to use the device as the main TV in your home, constantly keep it connected to the internet, and regularly watch it. If the company finds that you violate these rules, Telly will ask you to return the TV (and charge a $1,000 fee if you don’t send it back).
1: https://www.theverge.com/televisions/777588/telly-tv-hands-o...
That said, I doubt these companies would sue because of the risk of setting a precedent in favor of the consumer. Scary legal letters (e.g. cease & desist letters) perhaps. But given enough customers, at least one will have the resources to hire a good lawyer and fight it all the way to court.
oh I'll fix it with a hammer, or glue a piece of cardboard on it.
I paid extra for devices without WiFi when I moved house this year.
Unless there's a solid track record of people consistently challenging them and winning, we can assume, based on bayesian priors, that most people cannot.
Which makes sense: court costs money.
If you're advertising me milk on a fridge I paid full price of, send me a full sized sample of the product.
What would that actually look like though?
Take something that could be considered an ad, but probably most people agree is a good thing. Say you post on here that task X is such a pain in the butt to do all the time as a general gripe, then I say hey, I built a cheap subscription webapp to solve task X easily that you might want to check out. You sign up for it and use it and like it. Seems like everybody wins - you get a problem solved for a small amount of money, I make a little money and get my project used and my work validated etc. But it's still technically an ad.
Lots of stuff like that could be considered an ad. Every "Show HN" could be considered an ad. Suggesting people vote for candidate X or party Y could be considered an ad too - plenty of organizations do pay for actual ads just like that already. Product placements is a type of ad, but it's pretty hard to not do. I don't know how you even make a movie or TV show with people driving cars without showing a particular model of car.
I don't expect that's the kind of ad that everybody is complaining about. Okay, but then how do you legislate the difference? Can you, or anyone, actually write down a definition of the ads you want to ban and the ads you don't? And how will people distort or abuse those definitions? There's billions of dollars in advertising (maybe trillions?), it's not going to all just go away because somebody passed a law. What happens when all of that money gets poured into attempting to abuse such individual personal recommendations? That's already happening on Reddit now, though at small scales for now.
Why didn't you read the EULA is like asking a roofie victim why didn't they have a chemist analyze their drink first.
There's also the fact that the problem was never about touchscreens per se, but inappropriate/incompetent UI design that happened to use touchscreens.
The device that immediately springs to mind is the Kindle. You can choose to buy a version without ads, or save ~10% and accept ads.
That seems like a reasonable compromise.
Do you want to talk to my 70 year old father about how he should come up with solutions to ads on his fridge? Yes he can grab a garbage bag and some tape, we can all probably agree that the day stuff like that is commonplace we have very, VERY evidently failed as a society when it comes to dealing with this specific issue.