People regret buying Amazon smart displays after being bombarded with ads • Hacker News Board

Re: People regret buying Amazon smart displays after being bombarded with ads

#31

Post by like_any_other » Sat, Oct 11, 2025, 9:41 PM UTC

gdulli wrote: post #9

It's not conspiracy or hypothesis that the only point of these products is ads, it's the straight up business model. When are we going to hold people accountable for being surprised by the obvious actions of these companies? It wastes our time and it's boring to keep responding with, what did you think was going to happen? We've tried not shaming these people, will shame get them to stop buying this stuff and actuall…

Solving problems by waiting for people to collectively stop making stupid choices (while well-paid marketing and research departments look for ways to trick them into making stupid choices, and business deals are struck to deprive them of better choices [1]) has a poor track record.

If you want change, you have to vote and lobby for it. That's what your enemies are doing [2].

[1] https://www.theregister.com/2014/02/13/googles_secret_androi...

[2] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/07/isps-spent-235-m...

Re: People regret buying Amazon smart displays after being bombarded with ads

#32

Post by gbin » Sat, Oct 11, 2025, 9:43 PM UTC

Simple enshitification, literally everything is going down that road. Somewhere a VP with a dashboard is super happy: they will get their $1M bonus and "après moi le déluge".

Even local businesses get snatched by PE firms left and right, prices skyrocket, customers are pissed....

Is the business-consumer relationship valued at exactly $0?

There is no system we can think of to avoid that?

Re: People regret buying Amazon smart displays after being bombarded with ads

#33

Post by Terr_ » Sat, Oct 11, 2025, 9:44 PM UTC

We're way overdue to abolish the DMCA, in particular the "anti-circumvention" felonies.

It shouldn't be a crime for me to customize the product I purchased. Or to sell people a kit to do the customization themselves.

Re: People regret buying Amazon smart displays after being bombarded with ads

#34

Post by geraldwhen » Sat, Oct 11, 2025, 9:45 PM UTC

henry2023 wrote: post #17

RandomBacon wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon no longer allows eBook downloads from their website.

Then don’t buy from them, plenty of venues

Many with trade offs. I recommend the pocketbook 4. You can disable recommendations easily, and the unit mounts as a disk so you can read and write books as if it were an SD card.

No internet required. No sync software required. It’s quite nice!

Re: People regret buying Amazon smart displays after being bombarded with ads

#35

Post by krapp » Sat, Oct 11, 2025, 9:51 PM UTC

gbin wrote: post #32

Simple enshitification, literally everything is going down that road. Somewhere a VP with a dashboard is super happy: they will get their $1M bonus and "après moi le déluge". Even local businesses get snatched by PE firms left and right, prices skyrocket, customers are pissed.... Is the business-consumer relationship valued at exactly $0? There is no system we can think of to avoid that?

>There is no system we can think of to avoid that?

There is, but it requires thinking outside the box of "free market" capitalism, something most Americans are incapable of.

Re: People regret buying Amazon smart displays after being bombarded with ads

#36

Post by neilv » Sat, Oct 11, 2025, 9:52 PM UTC

like_any_other wrote: post #29

neilv wrote: post #10

I recently bought a Kindle/Fire device pre-owned, to save money. But seeing full-screen shitty consumer products ads on the 'covers of my books', sitting around my home was so depressing, I paid the extra $10-$15, to retroactively turn it into an ad-free device.[1] Though, even with Special Offers disabled, it still puts oversized icons for marketing promotions, bursting out of the search bar at the top of the home s…

Paid the Danegeld. Hope it works out.

In this case, the original retail buyer was offered a choice between paying $X for ads-free or $X-minus-discount for with-ads. And it was disclosed upfront what they were buying into.

Since my priorities were different than the original buyer, I repaid that discount amount.

Re: People regret buying Amazon smart displays after being bombarded with ads

#37

Post by torben-friis » Sat, Oct 11, 2025, 9:52 PM UTC

alex1138 wrote: post #20

nipperkinfeet wrote: post #18

These days, the general rule is to avoid buying anything 'smart'. They are all filled with advertisements and data-sharing practices and are designed to target you through their user interface and applications. They bombard you with offers for their other products and deals.

I'm technically ignorant on this but would GDPR apply to this type of thing as well? (I hope so)

Not really. GDPR deals with privacy and personal data handling.

There are directives about transparency in the costs or charges tied to a sale, but it is not immediate that it covers including new ads as an extra burden on the consumer.

Same for other directives regarding misleading advertising and the like, hard to prove that this new anti feature goes against the advertised product. it’s all very indirect and hazy, we’re in need of more protections for consumer to truly own their hardware.

Re: People regret buying Amazon smart displays after being bombarded with ads

#38

Post by grues-dinner » Sat, Oct 11, 2025, 9:59 PM UTC

neilv wrote: post #36

like_any_other wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paid the Danegeld. Hope it works out.

In this case, the original retail buyer was offered a choice between paying $X for ads-free or $X-minus-discount for with-ads. And it was disclosed upfront what they were buying into. Since my priorities were different than the original buyer, I repaid that discount amount.

Nice deal for Amazon because they get to double-dip as the same device served ads for some time for the first owner and then they still get the ad-free uplift eventually.

Maybe one day they'll turn it into an yearly thing to avoid ads.

Re: People regret buying Amazon smart displays after being bombarded with ads

#39

Post by jm4 » Sat, Oct 11, 2025, 10:02 PM UTC

Amazon sucks. They are one of the greediest companies there is. What they do with online shopping, logistics, AWS is incredible. They are in a different league and could generate more revenue than any company could ever need by just doing those things well. But that’s not enough. They have to stuff ads into everything and find every possible way to piss off customers all in the name of another buck.

Re: People regret buying Amazon smart displays after being bombarded with ads

#40

Post by like_any_other » Sat, Oct 11, 2025, 10:05 PM UTC

neilv wrote: post #36

like_any_other wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paid the Danegeld. Hope it works out.

In this case, the original retail buyer was offered a choice between paying $X for ads-free or $X-minus-discount for with-ads. And it was disclosed upfront what they were buying into. Since my priorities were different than the original buyer, I repaid that discount amount.

You bought a device that obeys its manufacturer instead of you. A device you have no control over.

Or maybe I'm wrong - did the $X you paid for ads-free also give you root access?