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People regret buying Amazon smart displays after being bombarded with ads

arstechnica.com

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

#51

Post by patja »

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…

I found the Kindle ads particularly infuriating when they advertised books I had already purchased from Amazon. They were insultingly brain dead in their targeting especially given how much Amazon knows about me

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

#52

Post by patja »

RandomBacon wrote: post #14
exe34 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

turn off WiFi and transfer by usb.

Amazon no longer allows eBook downloads from their website.

I switched to a Kobo device and have zero regrets other than that I didn't switch earlier

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

#53

Post by abstractbill »

xandrius wrote: post #30
Agingcoder wrote: post #23

I sometimes wonder whether there’s an eu vs us difference here. At least when it comes to tv, I found the hard way ( a long time ago ) that the amount of ads Americans are exposed to is simply unbearable. This extends to youtube and similar services. Now, everything is global - so are we looking at European users or American users complaining ? If an American user says it’s an unbearable, then it’s unusable. If a Eur…

I still think the eu user is correct, no amount of ads when using a product is ok. Imagine buying a tennis racket and being interrupted, as you are playing, to be told to buy something else. That would be ridiculous but that's we're been told is a valid business model today.

Imagine buying a tennis racket and being interrupted, as you are playing, to be told to buy something else.

Sadly I've come to believe the pendulum is going to have to swing about this far before it might have a chance of swinging back.

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

#54

Post by jonhohle »

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…

I worked on Prime during the Prime Video launch. All of the marketing was around it being ad free and a new benefit of the Prime membership. Not too long later they started playing pre roll ads for Amazon Video offerings (maybe Amazon Studios, I don’t remember). I brought it up in a meeting and the business folks said it was OK because it wasn’t in the middle of the selected content. I’m pushed back, but it went nowhere.

Thinking about it now, he probably meant it was OK regarding their contracts with studios. Our engineering chain of command was completely obsessed with customer experience. The business side, not so much.

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

#55

Post by b00ty4breakfast »

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.

Matrix got it a bit wrong; the machines aren't interested in our body heat, they're going to put us in the goo pods and force use to watch adverts 24/7

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

#56

Post by Andrex »

Terr_ wrote: post #33

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.

Throw away the DMCA and you throw away all safe harbors for websites, and then the internet is truly screwed. There's no way the current congress would ever accept such a thing again -- Section 230 has been weaponized against it already.

What we should be saying is Improve the DMCA. You've already clued into the biggest thing that needs to change (DRM/anti-anti-circumvention).

Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. This is unpopular to say in HN-type circles but the DMCA is actually not that bad and mostly works as it should.

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

#57

Post by Andrex »

syntaxing wrote: post #49

I make an explicit decision not to get any Amazon hardware within my household. I don’t even trust the Eero brand.

They got me by the balls with Kindle.

Someone(/me if I had enough time) should make some kind of LLM scraper extension for Amazon's Web Reader. Run it on your own ebooks while you're signed in and you get the EPUBs. Maybe this already exists...

I know there was some kind of cutoff earlier this year for unDRMing your Kindle books, but I definitely missed that by a mile.

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

#58

Post by Andrex »

Liftyee wrote: post #47

This is part of why I refuse to purchase things that further enshittification on principle, even if it means "putting up with" an open-source alternative. Anecdotally, I think that open-source software/hardware only ever gets better (because if it got worse, someone would fork it, etc...) while proprietary software will eventually succumb to rent-seeking and decline. I've seen many open source projects go from barely…

Google Photos is an odd example to use, since it hasn't been enshittified (yet) beyond some questionable UI redesigns.

I agree self hosting your photos is the way to go, though.

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

#59

Post by HiPhish »

zuhsetaqi wrote: post #3

I wonder what they expected when buying such a device from Amazon.

I think a lot of normies still think that when they buy a smart appliance they are buying an appliance like from yesteryear, except with more features. In reality they are buying a computer shaped like an appliance of yesteryear. Your smartphone? That's not a phone, it's a computer shaped like a phone. Smart TV? Computer shaped like a TV. Smart watch? Computer shaped like a watch.

This brings with it all the advantages and disadvantages of a computer. Except that the user is not given any of the advantages they have with a desktop or laptop computer. Companies get away with it because in the normie's mind the smart watch is a watch first and foremost, and who would expect to log into a terminal on a watch? Why would you need security updated for a wristwatch? This is how artificially restricted technology is slowly being introduced into people's live, one appliance at a time.

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

#60

Post by reactordev »

I’m of the mind to stop using consumer tech entirely. TV’s with ads before ads when you just want to watch a show. Tablets opening store pages on their own. Alexa listening in on every conversation. Smartphones tracking your every movement, app, contact, network, website you visit.

It’s completely fucked.

I got rid of social media a couple years ago and never looked back. I think I might take it even further and just remove all consumer tech from my life. Just a linux box.

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