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Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

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841–850 of 960 posts

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#841

... and that's exactly why my TV will never have an internet connection. By now, it doesn't really matter which brand you use. I have analyzed Samsung, Sony, LG and Philips and ALL of them send data about your usage to NetEase in China and ALL of them have ToS that say that they might record your voice and store it for improving their AI or whatever. Plus all of them shove suggested apps in your face, so I'd say it i…

My alternative, as I actually like my Samsung TV (lots of features including AirPlay 2 and Apple TV for not a lot of money): block the shit out of any connection it makes using https://NextDNS.io . If the tv can’t load the ads it also cannot show them.

Agreed but would you mind sharing which Samsung connections you are blocking in order to prevent ads from being displayed on the TV? I'm running NextDNS.io too (router config) and their logs show a plethora of Samsung queries that are all allowed, but I also have a Samsung phone and refrigerator. The only one they block by default is smetrics.samsung.com

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#842

... and that's exactly why my TV will never have an internet connection. By now, it doesn't really matter which brand you use. I have analyzed Samsung, Sony, LG and Philips and ALL of them send data about your usage to NetEase in China and ALL of them have ToS that say that they might record your voice and store it for improving their AI or whatever. Plus all of them shove suggested apps in your face, so I'd say it i…

> and that's exactly why my TV will never have an internet connection. That's increasingly difficult, e.g. HDMI offers ethernet communication. I also don't think salespeople care to be informed well enough on this feature. It seems that the last resort is digging through the user manuals found on the internet before the purchase.

Perhaps there will a market for HDMI “condoms”.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#843

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Supermarkets also need to stay open so they can sell you your beloved products, and you'd not believe how thin the margins of some supermarkets are Oh, no doubt. I'm not saying the spreadsheet guys aren't needed. They clearly are because competition is so stiff. So the reason store A needs spreadsheet guys is because store B has them. All of the spreadsheet guys, collectively, lock the grocery stores into a race to t…

Some technologies would be better off not existing, but I think the root problem is just unrestricted market competition. Without something to keep the bottom from falling out ( regulations), a competitive market is a fearsome optimization force. It will suck out all joy and happiness from any activity, as everyone gets increasingly more creative and willing to sacrifice to squeeze out just a little more marginal pro…

Those optimizations make it possible for prices to keep dropping, for food to be very cheap and plentiful. Global hunger has dropped to an all time low, since 1950 or so, because of that.

Yes, squeeze that marginal profit, please. I was born in communism, and guess what, we did not have 20 flavors of yogurt to choose from, or supermarkets for that matter. In Eastern Europe we counted ourselves very lucky to have plain yogurt, which was rationed.

Joy and happiness aren't the point, those are just nice to have. Putting food on the table is the point.

And having a flavor of yogurt discontinued, out of dozens, due to profit margins, is a first world problem and it affects only the rich.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#844

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's play a hypothetical game. Your TV attempts to literally control your life. And is ultra HD and really cheap. But you have to keep its front facing camera uncovered or it blares an alarm saying that its front camera is covered. The alarm also activates, but more quietly, if it loses its internet connection. Finally, there is a 30 second "sponsorship punishment" if it sees you have brought a product competing wit…

That is definitely going to also happen on brain-computer interfaces.

Beefbrain is real, and you'll never convince me otherwise.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#845
One way to handle this is to get a privacy-oriented DNS service like NextDNS[1] which can block ads and trackers. Then put that in your TV's networks settings. My Samsung smart TV tries to send out a lot of these requests back to the mothership: https://i.imgur.com/wCMrI3B.png but the service blocks them.

[1]NextDNS https://nextdns.io/?from=rj4b2nfn

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#846
post #39
post #31

Fuck the guy who wanted to suck up to the management in some stupid meeting projecting estimated revenue out of this to ask for a raise later because he "contributed to a revenue increase" to the company. There's absolutely no after thought to this decision - If I paid 1000s of dollars for an "idiot box" that's supposed to reproduce faithfully the signal that I pass it, showing ads is unacceptable, no matter what the…

I also bought a Sony Android TV for this reason. Then last month Google pushed an update for the "Android TV Home" app and now there are many people complaining about ads on the home screen [1]. This is not really Sony's fault but rather Google's but it still leaves a bad taste in my mouth… https://9to5google.com/2020/08/18/android-tv-homescreen-ads-...

I bought a Sony Android TV in June. I refused to connect it to the internet and I skipped past the Android setup screens.

I plugged in my Apple TV instead.

Every now and then the Android TV pops up when I turn the TV on and asks me to complete the set up. I always tell it to fuck off.

So far, no ads. It'll stay that way till the TV eventually dies - without ever connecting to the internet.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#847

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The truth is noone buys anything from any ads... however brand awareness is a real thing. If you see a fancy ad from a company, they must be a profitable company that has a great product so you might be inclined to buy it or suggest it next time you're looking for this category of products.

I've bought multiple products from mobile ads just this year. Heck the yoga app I use I saw through a mobile ad. Same deal for the fitness app I use (BodBot, awesome app, check it out!) I've gotten onboard Kickstarters from ads, and I've bought keto cereal from an ad I saw. 99.999% of most ads I ignore, but sometimes ads are really well targeted and actually show me something I want. (None of these ads were on a tv i…

OT question, but what the heck is a keto cereal? i tought keto means no/low carb. and I mean everything in cereals has carbs. I mean classic cereals use tons of oatmeal, fruits, differnt types of wheat, joghurt, etc.. like everything with carbs?! so basically the bread and butter ingrident of cereals is oatmeal which has like >60% carbs with other types of carbs?!

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#848

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just got one today. It's so much better than the "Smart" Samsung TV it is plugged into that it's not even funny. The remote control has touch. I can use my phone to type text input. It's fast . It's elegant and slick. It has no ads. It has options that I care about. It doesn't waste my time with options I don't care about. The Samsung TV on the other hand was a flagship model. Top of the line. Best of the best. Jus…

There is one thing Apple TV has so backwards that I can't even. Text input. All the letters lined alphabetically with only left-right movement allowed. Takes ages to input anything. Also no corrections allowed. I actually exit appleTV and use the built in TV apps for when I need youtube and the like, because their input mechanism is not insane. I know there is a remote app for iPhones, but you do provide an actual re…

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Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#850

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can always hook up a computer and use the TV as a monitor.

How do you know they aren't tracking that either? Your TV has a computer inside that has the capability of watching whatever is being displayed on your screen.

If you have a computer hooked up, you don't need the TV to have internet.
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