Finally, manufacturer's can be liberated from the opressive existence of a world without advertising revenue

So I recently (last two years or so) bought a (non-Samsung, non-smart) fridge. It's a very nice fridge. It cost, IIRC, about $1000-1500. No internet connection, no ads, no screen to play them on.

Why would I pay $2000 more for a more annoying fridge?

Just replaced a Samsung fridge. It was the worst I have ever had, and it wasn't even kludged up with smart-ai-internet-advertisement bullshit yet. The compressor went out after about 12 years (which is apparently good for current refrigerator manufacturing - yikes). But the ice maker and operation panel had been on the fritz for at least 4 years before that. I went with a Frigidaire + 5 year extended warranty. Much better use of internal space, nothing smart, dual ice makers. Only negative is it's kinda noisy and runs often due to the compressor being sized for "efficiency". Fingers crossed.

Horribly bad, and also bad precedent, but:

"The ads experience, though, seems to have improved somewhat from the earlier pilot testing in that users can use their fridge’s settings menu to opt out of seeing ads. If users set their Cover Screen to show integrated Art or Album themes, then the display won’t show ads."

So at least for now tech savvy, aware users can opt out. But I don't like where this is going.

Maybe we can tape cardboard over the screens?

Galaxy S2 was the best phone I ever had. I think it was pure Android, if not, you had some minor apps from Samsung that you could've delete. I think I left the Samsung train right about S5 (which was supposed water proof, but it wasn't). It was just down fall from there. Samsung account, locked phone full with shitty apps that you couldn't remove (without rooting)... I don't think I'll ever have anything from Samsung in the near future

Is there an alternative OS scene for these types of appliances?

> Samsung also said that its fridges will only show contextualized ads, instead of personalized ads, which rely on collecting data on users.

What is a contextualized ad?

I'd understand if the ads were subsidizing the purchase price significantly, but this still seems to be in line with their highest pricing.

Yay to living in the EU! Since I would be allowed to get a full purchase-price refund if they'd try to pull this shit in the Europe, they limited the new "Cover-Screen-Widget" to only activate within the US.

I know, I know, I suffer daily from government overreach ;) But have you tried lobbying for your fellow humans?

Funny that they do that after the purchases have been made. Goes to show how much bundled services upset the user-manufacturer relationship, to the detriment of the user.

Using a service is an ongoing relationship, and relationships change over time, sometimes for the worse. This needs to be factored in as risk, every time someone makes a purchase that includes a service.