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Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

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Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#861

Post by 72deluxe »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #813
shuntress wrote: post #789

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a sizable middle ground between "basic intuition" and "black art". I think anyone with some experience in that type of software would intuitively understand the negative user experience described here. Seems like a pretty straightforward case of the classic "Unless their salary depends on not understanding" rather than some opaque wall of unknowable unpredictable consequences.

Yeah, the sizable middle ground is I believe what props up most of the adtech industry. The sizable middle ground is occupied by people with minimum understanding of statistics, who bullshit themselves and each other with data - but as long as nobody can obviously tell they're wasting money, they're all happy and the money keeps flowing.

This is so true. It makes me lose faith in humanity, to be honest. My oh my do I detest adverts.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#862

Post by 72deluxe »

dvtrn wrote: post #820
TeMPOraL wrote: post #815

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cats are the devil, and I have reasons to believe they've recently entered into an alliance with the human infant community. I begun suspecting that one day when my wife was preparing dinner. Soon after she took the meat from the fridge to work on it, our baby started crying and making noise for absolutely no reason. My wife immediately dropped everything and went to investigate, and the cat used this opportunity to…

My friend had a pug like this once. Dog was as old as father time. Needed help making it outside to relieve himself before he finally left us. But I SWEAR that dog moved like greased lightning if you left a plate on the table to go check on the kid, as he'd make it from one side of the living room to another in the time it took you to take three steps and check in on the other room, hop up on a chair and your dinner…

I thought our cats were generally stupid because they could never do the jigsaws I assigned to them, solve a Rubiks cube or see 2cm in front of their faces (they are long-sighted).

But I have come to believe they are far smarter than me, particularly with scheming methods of sneaking around to quietly appear when they can get food. One used to push donut boxes off the side so that they would burst open, and would then run off with a donut. I have no idea why he wanted to eat donuts. He also tried to eat bread through the wrapper. Or they fein illness. Our one cat had an operation on his leg so we put a little box as a stepping stone so that he could get onto the bed, and then onto the window sill. Turns out he didn't need it at all and could jump perfectly fine, but would still use the box all the time.

They're really clever, just not at jigsaws or sudoku.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#863

Post by 72deluxe »

gpderetta wrote: post #779
dvtrn wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't get me started on dialog boxes that put the "cancel" button on the wrong side. Much like toilet paper, there is one way to display it, all other methods are heresy worthy of nothing less than immediate exterminatus. (partially kidding, but only partially.)

Cancel button is obsolete, the customers want to be reminded later.

No! I detest the dialog boxes that ask a question and then the only options are "Yes" or "Skip for now"/"Set up later". I want to confirm "No".

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#864

Post by 72deluxe »

cgriswald wrote: post #612
netsharc wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The god damned cookie consent popups do this. The "Decline" buttons are small and grey, the "Accept all and save" are big and green. They'd show empty checkboxes/iOS-style sliders at the off position that show that you won't be getting non-essential cookies, of course when you click "Accept all" these settings get overridden.

Not only an ad problem, but the sliders reminded me of a really bad UI feature I see everywhere: ambiguous highlighting when there are only two options.

I find some of the sliders for on/off are impossible to read. You can't work out what is on or off.

Windows 3.11 / 95 UI seems such a good idea by comparison to today's UIs - checkboxes with obvious tick marks or X marks in them, radio buttons, buttons that look like actual buttons, scrollbars you can see without having to flail the mouse around just for them to appear, scrollbars that go the right way when you use the mouse wheel (ok that was Windows 98), maximise buttons that actually maximised a window without having to hold alt like on macOS these days...

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#865

Post by 72deluxe »

Anther wrote: post #364
marcosdumay wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, yes, brand awareness is a real thing. For example, a lot of people will avoid Samsung TVs right now.

I just bought an LG. I’m so glad I dodged this bullet. I would be furious.

My old LG "smart" TV would send a web request to LG every time I pressed ANY button on the remote control.

I took that stupid TV off the network as soon as I could.

I think the manufacturers are all as bad as each other. My current Panasonic TV will refuse to load any of the "smart" apps (even Netflix) if it cannot reach Panasonic's servers, which means the entire TV becomes useless as an Internet device (no Netflix or ANY streaming services) if Panasonic has a server issue (which they sometimes do).

Might revert to VHS at this rate.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#866

Post by TeMPOraL »

bad_user wrote: post #843
TeMPOraL wrote: post #834

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 plai…

There is more than one factor to consider. Food is already way past being cheap and plentiful. Further optimizations go into enabling variety. Meanwhile, some prices are way too low, which is a serious problem in the climate crisis. What's the point of dining on a dirt cheap meat and 15 different flavors of the same yogurt today, only for our grandchildren to starve on a devastated planet?

I was born at the tail end of communism in my region so I haven't experienced the worst parts, but the 20+ years of market optimization in the food space that I actually remember went primarily into variety. There was no point in those 20 years where quality food was scarce or even too expensive for most.

I have people in my family who worked in grocery stores some years ago, when the market managed to optimize these jobs to the point there were a step away from modern slavery. Fortunately, a few large scandals over events like a pregnant employee losing child due to workload made the regulators clean the space up. Today, a chain store employee in Poland earns a reasonable salary and has hard, but not backbreaking work conditions.

There is a point past which things get too optimized, and there is no loss in preventing or reversing that.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#867

Post by 72deluxe »

wokkel wrote: post #591
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LG's already also have ads. They're not super obtrusive though, and I'm sure I shut personalization off.

That's who i bought a Panasonic. They cost more but don't have a shitty track record. In fact, my washing machine was the last Samsung here. It broke and got replaced by a German machine. These days I try to avoid the cheapest offering and try to buy quality instead. Upfront cost is higher but I really value my time too much to bother fighting with nonsense like ads on my tv.

Does your Panasonic stop loading any smart apps if their servers go down too? Mine refused to load anything (eg. Netflix) if it can't get in touch with Panasonic.

Check what network activity it is engaging in. You'll be disappointed, I am sure. Seems dialling home is the new thing to do on every single device these days. Data vacuuming the entire human population just because they can.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#868

Post by 72deluxe »

SteveGerencser wrote: post #451
kalleboo wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well it's more like "people hate ads, but next time they buy a new TV, the ads will make our TV $10 cheaper than the other guy and they'll buy it anyway" It's the same thing in the airline industry - people will complain all day long about legroom and being treated as cattle, but the next time they buy a ticket they vote with their wallets when they sort the flight list by price and choose the cheapest option.

But, do people actually know that when they purchase? If it were clearly stated anywhere on the box/sales copy that "you will see ads on this device" while the other one says "we won't shove ads on your device" I would wager the $10 more would be a bargain to nearly everyone. But that information is never available at the point of purchase so most people get the surprise of see ads when they had no idea that was even…

Do Amazon tablets and phones still show adverts on the lock screen? They seemed to sell a lot of them despite this being a "feature" of them back when they first launched.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#869

Post by 72deluxe »

alienfilesystem wrote: post #634
notyourwork wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why my tv stays offline and isn’t setup. My Nvidia shield runs to hdmi and is the only playback source.

Pi-hole. Works like a charm. Also does the same for every device in your house. Moreover, if you don't mind spending an additional $5 a month, set up your Pi-hole in a Digital Ocean droplet and you can blocks ads everywhere YOU happen to be, even on your mobile device.

I run one and it works very well, but I fear the rise of DoH and devices just bypassing your network's DNS settings to query the manufacturer's DNS servers. I think Google devices do this.

A sad world we live in when you have to fight the devices you paid for.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#870

Post by abiogenesis »

spockz wrote: post #763
jancsika wrote: post #610

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (looking at the companies who buy Google AdWords on their own brand - if someone's searching for your brand on Google your website will already be the top result - a click on the ad is not a true "conversion" in this case and is just wasted money) Except that Google lets anyone else advertise in that slot above your brand. And as we've seen some companies can confuse the customers and steal them away in such an ad.…

This happened today to me. I searched for the “DigiD” app which is the 2FA app for your social services account with the Dutch government. The app was the second app. Even though it matched fully on the query. The first app was some other document scanning app from some vendor. I can imagine someone paying less intention would install the wrong app. I’m actually considering whether it would be a good thing if the app…

That would be a nice and easy way for any government to censor TikTok.

"Hey, have you seen the new COVID-19 contact tracing app? It's named TikTok-19".

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