[HN Gopher] Kami home camera app suddenly started displaying ads...
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Kami home camera app suddenly started displaying ads in the app
Author : zbendefy
Score : 90 points
Date : 2023-06-07 19:15 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (forum.yitechnology.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (forum.yitechnology.com)
| 0xblinq wrote:
| Yi cameras are the worst piece of crap you can get. The app is
| terrible, constantly pushes you toward the subscription and if
| you don't subscribe they intentionally make it worse.
|
| And now you get ads. Just trash these cameras if you have one
| rchaud wrote:
| Sounds like Spotify.
| pettycashstash2 wrote:
| I posted about the bait and switch 7 months ago. I see they have
| steered the wrong way and in a bad way.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33336722
| johnea wrote:
| The primary reason any company forces users into an app as
| opposed to a web interface is for monitization.
| rchaud wrote:
| > "Is there a way to get these away without purchase cloud
| subscription?"
|
| Even with a subscription the ad-free honeymoon won't last.
| zbendefy wrote:
| Hi!
|
| There is this remote camera app for baby cameras and home
| survelliance cameras, that all of a sudden started displaying ads
| in the application that lets you access the camera remotely.
|
| Also these ads are full screen, unskippable 5-10 second ads that
| occasionally have sound as well.
|
| Upon asking about this, the only reaction from them is a canned
| response telling about some discount, but there was no ad in the
| product before, they changed the deal afterwards.
|
| Is this the new trend for companies to extract revenue from
| already sold products?
|
| How is it legal to add ads into an already sold product
| afterwards?
| LinuxBender wrote:
| _How is it legal to add ads into an already sold product
| afterwards?_
|
| I am not a lawyer but I would guess it is probably in an
| Acceptable Use or Terms of Use page you may have clicked
| through or maybe there was just a link to it. So it's
| _probably_ legal but that does not exclude it from being shady,
| deceptive and crass. If it is not on the outside of the
| hardware box then _maybe_ there is a case that it was
| misleading and deceptive since one would have to buy it to know
| about the Acceptable Use Policy.
|
| Consider asking LegalEagle [1] if he would do a Youtube video
| on this topic.
|
| Maybe there is a market for a pre-configured Zoneminder [2]
| RasPi that could optionally use something like tailscale for
| remote access so people could just buy some cheap onvif
| compliant cameras and keep their private home security streams
| private.
|
| [1] - https://www.youtube.com/@LegalEagle [video channel]
|
| [2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Us20t1gQPOE [video][48
| mins][zoneminder how-to]
| karaterobot wrote:
| > How is it legal to add ads into an already sold product
| afterwards?
|
| I assume that, unless they advertised it as being free of
| advertisements, that there is no conflict with them adding them
| into the product later. They can make even make an argument
| that those ads add value: wow, you get to learn about all these
| cool products that are relevant to you! But in general, I don't
| believe inserting ads into an existing product is against the
| law on its face. It's a shitty thing to do though.
| hammock wrote:
| Same thing happened to me after I started using Facebook. No
| ads for the first couple years (around 2004). Now there's an ad
| every 5 or 10 posts I read
| zbendefy wrote:
| Thats true, but facebook is a free product (in a monetary
| sense), however these cameras are sold at a price.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Samsung TVs show ads. It is an ever expanding list of
| companies to avoid.
| petepete wrote:
| The worst part is they released an update that added this
| obnoxious behaviour to TVs that were clean.
| okanat wrote:
| TBH their appliances were never good quality compared to
| locally European or American manufactured ones. They
| always bet on tech enthusiasm and the short term wooing
| of the users. Their software is almost always short-term
| supported and degrade in quality very quickly.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Why would it be illegal? Deterrents don't have to come from the
| state
| duxup wrote:
| The home security or just monitoring camera market is so cheap
| and thus you get flaky software and bad actors.
|
| There doesn't seem to be a middle ground between the cheap stuff
| and the super duper professional expensive stuff where you need
| to buy a controller and etc.
|
| Ive settled on wyze for now but I wouldn't have a problem with a
| middle ground product.
| aardvarkr wrote:
| Wyze for the win. Their early stuff was super hackable with
| open source operating systems. I'm glad they're challenging the
| big players with a genuinely good and cheap product. Now I
| sound like a paid shill but it's truly one service that I'm
| glad exists.
| CincinnatiMan wrote:
| What about cameras that operate with Apple's HomeKit Secure
| Video (aka HKSV)? There seem to be decent cameras that aren't
| at risk of bad software or bad actors.
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| Their app has been showing advertisements in notifications for
| the past few months, where previously a notification was only
| generated if movement was detected while the cam was in away mode
| (i.e. a serious matter).
| syntaxing wrote:
| I didn't look into it but you might be able to flash a custom
| firmware on it. I do that with the yi home cameras + frigate and
| they have been super solid.
|
| Edit: Seems like all the Kami ones have an equivalent yi home
| one. Should be doable from what I can tell. The process is pretty
| straight forward, flash the SD card with a folder, take it back
| out and add a file for wifi, then reinsert.
| bsagdiyev wrote:
| I did that with the Wyze Pan cam we used to keep an eye on our
| son when he was an infant. Same app functionality but we could
| also do an RTSP stream out and I could keep an eye on my
| desktop while working.
| [deleted]
| yazzku wrote:
| YI Technology must be one of the stupidest companies we've seen
| in a while. Those guys need a "never go full retard" poster
| somewhere in the office.
|
| ALERT! Heavy smoke detected in the house. Click to stream. But
| first, a word from our sponsor!
| pettycashstash2 wrote:
| Can't disagree. Also I enjoyed the " never go full retard" clip
| on YouTube https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=X6WHBO_Qc-Q
| kraptv wrote:
| Unfortunately, the Yi Home cameras have eroded other
| functionality too to force their users into an upsell.
|
| Many users are now reporting they are forced to use Kami cloud
| storage instead of local storage. Their ability to use the local
| SD card storage has been disabled in newer versions of the app.
| user3939382 wrote:
| This is why I strongly encourage people to only buy cameras that
| are ONVIF compatible, which makes the cameras viewable with an
| open protocol.
| artdigital wrote:
| Reminds me of a wifi connected sharp air conditioner I bought.
| Great device all in all but at some point sharp decided they want
| more revenue, so now the app to control the expensive hardware I
| bought is displaying completely random banner ads
|
| I can already imagine the thinking process to hit some arbitrary
| OKR to somehow increase revenue per user or some crap like that
|
| Very frustrating
| labster wrote:
| Are you sure you bought the air conditioner, or just a
| perpetual license to use it? Check the EULA, and you may find
| you have a license to cool.
| libpcap wrote:
| Well, it's a PRC-based company.
| rchaud wrote:
| well known as the originators of the SaaS model /s
| go2carter wrote:
| [flagged]
| ilyt wrote:
| Did you made the account just to advertise the company ?
| BastyKumor wrote:
| If I have to make my own app then I don't wanna pay another
| subscription lmao
| efitz wrote:
| There is a special circle of hell for business people who try to
| turn every single product into a continuous revenue stream. It's
| just artificial rent seeking and people who involve themselves in
| it are morally deficient.
| duxup wrote:
| I don't disagree, but also feel that consumers also so price
| sensitive that they will buy whatever cheap thing appears in
| front of them and don't think twice about the results.
|
| The Internet is a great example of that where we demand
| everything be free and then we get upset when it's not.
| [deleted]
| rodgerd wrote:
| Capitalism. You've described capitalism.
| efitz wrote:
| I think it's something else. If you sell me a thing and we
| both agree the price is fair, then I have no problem with
| that. It's when you then try to exert ongoing control or
| establish an ongoing revenue stream from me that I have a
| problem with.
| ilyt wrote:
| Reminds me of old Samsung phone I had. It had IR transmitter and
| some app to control it as TV remote.
|
| But it wasn't _Samsung 's_ app, nor (I assume) one owned by them.
| Still installed as system app so unable to uninstall tho.
|
| So one day the company decided to monetize on that and just
| started to display ads on lockscreen. No way to remove it either.
| So I rooted that POS and never bought any Samsung shit again...
| robotnikman wrote:
| I remember that app. It was great and I used it all the time,
| before they started adding all the unnecessary bs and ads.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| yeah, all the sensors and reality bending futuristic technology
| in the universe would not be enough for me to switch back to
| android away from the Apple ecosystem, due to experiences like
| what you described
|
| Apple would really have to mess something up, and another
| vendor would need to be more committed to their hardware than
| I've seen
|
| I would probably jump on the dumbphone luddite trend before
| going back to android
| sureglymop wrote:
| Having an amazing experience here on grapheneos. And unlike
| on iOS, I can sync my files, contacts, calendar events etc.
| to my nextcloud server, use syncthing to sync stuff in a
| decentralized manner and play nintendo switch games with the
| yuzu emulator. Maybe all unimportant for you, but this amount
| of security and freedom is amazingly refreshing.
| jchw wrote:
| Apple has started adding advertisements into their built-in
| apps, so it's probably not a bad idea to get an idea of what
| the dumb phone market is looking like. (though spoiler alert,
| a lot of them actually do still run Android internally.)
| aardvarkr wrote:
| Where? I haven't seen a single ad in any of their apps, and
| guaranteed none to the level described above. Citation
| needed.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| They're probably referring to in the App Store, perhaps
| Apple Music does as well?
|
| e: Yeah looks like Apple Music, Apple News also, soon
| Apple Maps & Apple Podcasts
| rodgerd wrote:
| AppleTV shows have started displaying ads for other shows
| before you can watch an episode. It is extremely
| irritating, considering that it's a paid service.
| notimetorelax wrote:
| I'm curious about it, what Apple apps have ads now?
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I find my exposure to unwanted advertisements to be much
| greater now that I've bought an Apple device, simply because
| Apple does not apparently have the tech to effectively block
| the spam calls & texts.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Yeah, this is wild. Last phone purchase I jumped ecosystems
| Android->iPhone on account of Google breaking their "free
| photo storage" promise on my Pixel. There were a number of
| pleasant surprises in the Apple ecosysem, but the spam
| situation is shockingly bad. So bad that I will probably go
| back to Android next hop if they don't figure it out.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| You can at least root android, use some kind of ad-away or
| other ad blocking software and also remove 95% of the ads
| within apps and games.... on apple, you're stuck with those.
| technothrasher wrote:
| This is why I'm itching to go back to Android. I switched
| to an iPhone because my car only supported CarPlay, and
| I've regretted it ever since.
| climb_stealth wrote:
| Unfortunately the only way to have a good Android experience
| is to go custom ROM. I only buy phones that are supported by
| LineageOS.
|
| No bloat, no adds, no bullshit. And a solid experience for
| years on end.
|
| I know some people have issues with banking apps refusing to
| work but it has never been an issue for me.
| oschvr wrote:
| What a shitty move.. someone told me about these cameras..I guess
| I'll have to pass
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(page generated 2023-06-07 23:01 UTC)