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Ubiquiti starts serving ads in their management interface

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Re: Ubiquiti starts serving ads in their management interface

#181

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

wyuenho wrote: post #139

I'm going to go out on a limb here to point out the inconsistency of this entire thread. For the following reasoning, I'm going to use the word "ad" in the broad sense. 1. Everybody is excited with Github's new features that they promote on the dashboard. Sometimes popups and flashes too. Are they not ads? 2. Nobody ever complains about Github showing ads. 3. Github is a SaaS. 4. unify.ui.com is a SaaS 5. OP is compl…

> unify.ui.com is a SaaS

As far as I am concerned, UniFi is a set of compatible hardware products. Physical goods. Expensive, high-quality physical goods that I have already paid for. None of that is like GitHub.

But it looks like they want to be a SaaS instead, maybe because that's where the ad revenue is. But that's not what I as a buyer of WiFi APs want from them in any way whatsoever.

Re: Ubiquiti starts serving ads in their management interface

#182

Post by flemhans »

millstone wrote: post #145
computator wrote: post #143

I'm disappointed that the Ubiquity Dream Machine can no longer be set up and managed locally. You could do so in the past, but not anymore. You must use their cloud management now.

Can you say more? What happens if you try?

We bought their four-hardrive NVR for our security cams - same thing. You have to login with a Cloud login to access the web interface.

The unit still sits unused in our office rack.

The previous NVR allowed local logins.

Re: Ubiquiti starts serving ads in their management interface

#183

Post by lstamour »

wyuenho wrote: post #161
lstamour wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Github makes it a single click to hide their intrusive notifications and such. They're rather tasteful at where and when they show you something. They have a notifications panel you can click once and then it won't bug you until the next time. This screenshot shows the ad takes up a huge chunk of real estate and can only be turned off by presumably opting out of some new experience, which means it might become perman…

Apple is already pushing you ads in macOS, just click on the App Store menu item, or open Music, or News, or TV, or Podcasts. I don't disagree much with what you said, I'm just not sure if people actually know what they are arguing for. If the Ubiquity ad is too intrusive, complain about that. If it's a sweeping stance against all ads in things you've paid for, argue for that. I'm not seeing people make that distinct…

I have previously, strenuously argued against ads in the App Store and will continue to do so until I manage to singlehandedly change Apple’s mind on this (yeah, not happening, I know…)

Outside of that, I’m okay with Apple showing ads for their music service or iCloud storage. As I said earlier, ads for services are one thing but ads for hardware are another. Intrusive or otherwise, I think it crosses a very big line to advertise your new hardware that replaces my old hardware from within a management control panel for said old hardware.

That said, I let it slide when it’s a feature distinction, for instance the management for the EdgeRouter X would mention features only in upgraded hardware or my AP management would have more features if combined with a Smart Firewall. That’s acceptable because I’m not asking you to fork your software to hide features I can’t use — it would be nice, but it’s understandable if you want to rub it in my face that there’s more you can do for me, like Premium Service upgrades or new software features (maybe).

Where I absolutely draw the line though is when perfectly good hardware advertises its replacement and I’ll stick with that, even if others are less consistent.

Re: Ubiquiti starts serving ads in their management interface

#184

Post by gorgoiler »

The three stages of an engineer’s relationship with Ubiquiti:

1/ Their APs are so cool! Check out this web interface! I can manage an entire fleet of both of these, all from my home office!

2/ Aha, the APs run Linux and I can ssh to them and upload settings — even cooler!

3/ Er, you know what else runs Linux, has a pair of wired and wireless NICs, and can be managed remotely with plain text files and ssh — literally every SBC on the market for $20.

I run a mixture of UAC PROs and PoE SBCs as APs now. The latter because I’m cheap and I can manage them myself. The former because I’m cheap and refuse to retire something for which I paid $100+ a piece.

Ubiquiti provide some fantastic and well polished products. I thought I needed them, but all I really needed was commodity hardware and a shell script.

Re: Ubiquiti starts serving ads in their management interface

#185

Post by noahtallen »

andremedeiros wrote: post #55
nodesocket wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technically it's an advertisement for their own product. I have around $1,500 worth of various routers, switches, and cameras from Ubiquiti in my house and don't really mind. Agreed, the "ad" is very large and there should be a way to close it and never show again (cookie or local storage). However I think this HN title is misleading (clickbait and outrage driven) as they are not making ad revenue as one would infer.

How is pegging and selling the successor to what I have not making ad revenue? The difference is that they’re not selling pixels for money, they’re trading pixels for sales.

The main difference in my opinion is that typical advertising is a lot more privacy invasive and malicious. Tons of cross-site tracking, ads of dubious quality, getting 3 ads per 5 minutes of YouTube, etc.

I’m not frustrated when I get an email or dismissible banner ad from a company regarding a new product. It’s possibly interesting to me, and easily dismissible if not.

Sure, technically, this is advertising. But the biggest problems people have with advertising (privacy invasion, seeing too many ads, or seeing low-quality ads) aren’t present in this example.

It’s advertising in the exact same way that GitHub might show a banner informing me of a new plan they have. While it can be annoying, yes, I would disagree that it’s “as bad” as typical advertising practices.

Re: Ubiquiti starts serving ads in their management interface

#187

Post by izacus »

wyuenho wrote: post #139

I'm going to go out on a limb here to point out the inconsistency of this entire thread. For the following reasoning, I'm going to use the word "ad" in the broad sense. 1. Everybody is excited with Github's new features that they promote on the dashboard. Sometimes popups and flashes too. Are they not ads? 2. Nobody ever complains about Github showing ads. 3. Github is a SaaS. 4. unify.ui.com is a SaaS 5. OP is compl…

> 4. unify.ui.com is a SaaS

The Ad has shown on my locally deployed piece of software that's controlling hardware. It's not SaaS, it's a program for managing physical hardware running on my hardware.

And it has replaced USEFUL information (channel utilization and client counts) with a fullscreen unremovable ad.

How can you defend this crap?

Re: Ubiquiti starts serving ads in their management interface

#189

Post by alkonaut »

izacus wrote: post #187
wyuenho wrote: post #139

I'm going to go out on a limb here to point out the inconsistency of this entire thread. For the following reasoning, I'm going to use the word "ad" in the broad sense. 1. Everybody is excited with Github's new features that they promote on the dashboard. Sometimes popups and flashes too. Are they not ads? 2. Nobody ever complains about Github showing ads. 3. Github is a SaaS. 4. unify.ui.com is a SaaS 5. OP is compl…

> 4. unify.ui.com is a SaaS The Ad has shown on my locally deployed piece of software that's controlling hardware. It's not SaaS, it's a program for managing physical hardware running on my hardware. And it has replaced USEFUL information (channel utilization and client counts) with a fullscreen unremovable ad. How can you defend this crap?

> it's a program for managing physical hardware running on my hardware.

That's not what the article suggests. The article suggests an ad on a page with an ubiquiti url.

While it may be the same software under the hood, I agree that seeing an ad when I'm on someone else's hosted page is (somewhat) acceptable unless I'm a paying customer, but seeing it on my own machine isn't.

In the end since those are two entirely different things and the article seems to be discussing their hosted version, It's important to keep those things apart

Re: Ubiquiti starts serving ads in their management interface

#190

Post by KozmoNau7 »

user3939382 wrote: post #107
justinjlynn wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really sad. I used to recommend UniFi and their other hardware without a second's hesitation to all of my friends and the software and hardware quality control has just gone so far down hill. Now they're putting ads and privacy violating code in the admin user interface? What a complete disregard for user security and privacy in one of the most important places for it. Ugh. Add that to their GPL violations ( htt…

I’m in the same boat. I think it’s pretty weird that these days I’m more comfortable setting up a new router on the OpenBSD command line than I am with a Ubiquiti GUI. TP-Link has actually upped their game with routers and APs lately. The next time I’m doing an installation that doesn’t need big-boy stuff from Cisco I’m going with them.

Give Mikrotik a look, too. Their HW is solid and while the UIs are decidedly old-school, they also expose just about every configuration option you could want, and everything can be configured from the command line.
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