[HN Gopher] People regret buying Amazon smart displays after bei...
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People regret buying Amazon smart displays after being bombarded
with ads
Author : croes
Score : 114 points
Date : 2025-10-11 17:41 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| dotcoma wrote:
| I thought people _loved_ targeted ads! ;)
| zuhsetaqi wrote:
| I wonder what they expected when buying such a device from
| Amazon.
| shmeeed wrote:
| I never thought the leopard would eat MY face!
| sshine wrote:
| Yet people get leopards as pets.
|
| I remind myself multiple times per week of the ways I
| compromise by letting questionable service companies into my
| life. "I really should self-serve this." -- I guess people
| who don't fantasise of self-sufficiency to the nth degree,
| and don't get angry at being force-fed straight uninterrupted
| ads, just think of the immediate upside.
| neilv wrote:
| IIRC, when it was launched, with the camera, the Web page had a
| top image of the product sitting on a bedroom night stand,
| naturally pointed at the owner's bed.
|
| Either the marketing people weren't very aware of privacy
| (specifically, the chatter around that time, about covering
| webcams against hackers, and about whether adtech was listening
| in on device mics), or they have a dark sense of humor.
| HiPhish wrote:
| I think a lot of normies still think that when they buy a smart
| appliance they are buying an appliance like from yesteryear,
| except with more features. In reality they are buying a
| computer shaped like an appliance of yesteryear. Your
| smartphone? That's not a phone, it's a computer shaped like a
| phone. Smart TV? Computer shaped like a TV. Smart watch?
| Computer shaped like a watch.
|
| This brings with it all the advantages and disadvantages of a
| computer. Except that the user is not given any of the
| advantages they have with a desktop or laptop computer.
| Companies get away with it because in the normie's mind the
| smart watch is a watch first and foremost, and who would expect
| to log into a terminal on a watch? Why would you need security
| updated for a wristwatch? This is how artificially restricted
| technology is slowly being introduced into people's live, one
| appliance at a time.
| orsenthil wrote:
| This shouldn't be surprising. Amazon is known for such non-
| customer friendly behaviors.
| hinkley wrote:
| Amazon: our definition of "customer obsessed" is
| indistinguishable from stalking.
| Animats wrote:
| Do the "smart displays" monitor the behavior of people in the
| room say and do to determine what to pitch to them? They're
| already aware of whether someone is near the device. What else
| are they monitoring?
| more_corn wrote:
| Advertising will expand to the point where we won't take it
| anymore. And ultimately it comes down to power. If we can't stop
| it ads will arrive. On the display on your fridge. (Unless you
| can stop it) on the display in your car (unless you can stop it)
| Where's the line for you? And have you preserved your power so
| you're in a position to stop it?
| Gigachad wrote:
| It's already happened. Most news websites are so loaded with
| ads now that it's impossible to use them. No one clicks the
| links and reads the actual articles anymore. And if you do
| you'll be fighting against constant full screen adverts and
| getting sent off to new tabs when you accidentally click them.
|
| The major platforms like Reddit and Facebook have restrained
| them to the maximum people will tolerate and reducing the
| performance disruption and layout changes that the smaller
| sites are plagued with.
| gdulli wrote:
| It's not conspiracy or hypothesis that the only point of these
| products is ads, it's the straight up business model. When are we
| going to hold people accountable for being surprised by the
| obvious actions of these companies? It wastes our time and it's
| boring to keep responding with, what did you think was going to
| happen? We've tried not shaming these people, will shame get them
| to stop buying this stuff and actually creating change in the
| world? What will work?
|
| > "This is getting ridiculous and I'm about to just toss the
| whole thing and move back to Google," one Redditor said of the
| "full-volume" ads for Alexa+ on their Echo Show.
|
| Any article that quotes this and doesn't point out the crushing
| stupidity of it has failed. Do it politely, if you must, Scharon
| Harding. But if I wanted to be exposed to Reddit quality ideas
| I'd be on Reddit.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| > When are we going to hold people accountable for being
| surprised by the obvious actions of these companies?
|
| How should they know? Genuinely asking. Yeah _WE_ know, we 've
| known forever because we're the people who make this shit, both
| professionally and in our spare time. We know the costs
| associated with making these little magic devices, and we know
| the ongoing cost of powering them. Your average consumer does
| not. Not only do they not know, they do not care, until they
| feel their privacy is being eroded by it.
|
| Instead of being mad at people for taking a product advertised
| to them at face value to just be a useful thing for them to
| use, and not something actively designed to spy on them and
| then use that collected information to bombard them with ads,
| why don't we just say to companies: hey, it's no longer
| acceptable to sell loss-leader products that perform a handful
| of user-friendly functions that also then double as privacy
| violations and harass customers with ads?
|
| If we kill surveillance capitalism, not only do we de-fang the
| advertising industry which is actively making every tech
| product on the face of the earth worse to suit it's purposes,
| not only do we permanently end the privacy issue on the side of
| users, we also reduce climate threatening emissions and hideous
| power waste that _is required to make all this atrocious shit
| work._
|
| And you might say "well they SHOULD care!" and yeah, I kinda
| agree, and also I recognize that people have a lot of shit they
| already have to care about, and frankly, I don't think they
| should have to care about this. I don't think you should have
| to worry if your new TV is spying on you, I just think you
| should be able to buy a fuckin' TV, and take it home, and plug
| some shit into it, and watch TV. I think that's a better world
| to strive for than all the consumer awareness we can muster. I
| am perfectly able to, but don't WANT to have to shop for
| electronics like I'm actively negotiating a hostage crisis
| where the hostage is my ability to jerk off in my living room
| without 3 ad agencies knowing about it, and I don't think
| that's an unreasonable position to take.
| roughly wrote:
| > How should they know?
|
| Because they've got eyes, memory, and a working brain? Every
| product Amazon has ever put out has wound up with ads in it,
| as has Amazon itself, so why in gods name wouldn't this new
| one be covered in ads? It's not 2005, this stuff shouldn't be
| surprising anymore - everyone is on Facebook, TikTok, or
| Instagram, and if you can't recognize that those are ad
| platforms from ad companies and you somehow haven't heard
| from anywhere anything about the surveillance capital aspect
| of this (not the term, but the actual practice), I'm not sure
| what to say at this point except we fucking tried.
|
| And I agree, we _shouldn't_ have to worry about any of this
| crap, but were we're well past the point where that should be
| considered a reasonable expectation by anyone. We're a
| quarter century into this now, anyone who's still surprised
| by it, yeah, that's a "them" problem.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| > Because they've got eyes, memory, and a working brain?
| Every product Amazon has ever put out has wound up with ads
| in it, as has Amazon itself, so why in gods name wouldn't
| this new one be covered in ads?
|
| Because not everyone has been immersed in that world the
| whole time. A whole lot of people don't know fucking
| anything about Amazon beyond it being the best store on the
| Internet. I've got relatives who still don't understand
| email requires Internet access brother, because when you're
| not a nerd, this computer shit just doesn't matter to you.
| I get that it's hard to empathize, but like, a HUGE swath
| of the public just _doesn 't fucking care._ They don't know
| how computers work, they don't know how surveillance
| advertising works, all they know is the man at Verizon said
| email is this icon, and web browsing is this icon, and
| their grandchildren are in this other icon. That is the
| extent of their technical knowledge and they desire no
| more.
|
| And like, I don't they should need to have it. I don't need
| to know shit about plumbing, about electricity, about
| carpentry, or any one of dozens of specializations utterly
| crucial to my ongoing existence in this world. I know tech,
| because it's my job. People who's job it isn't shouldn't
| need to know shit to move safely through the world.
| jader201 wrote:
| To be fair:
|
| 1. I get a lot more value out of (some) Reddit threads than I
| get out of most online journalism, including Ars Technica, so
| I'm never surprised to see really bad quality from journalism.
|
| 2. I've had two Google displays in my home for over 5 years,
| and have never seen a single ad on mine (with default settings
| / no hacking). So it's not that surprising (to me anyway) to
| see these reactions from customers (unless you already had
| higher expectations from Google vs. Amazon).
| Gigachad wrote:
| Half the time they bait and switch you with a product which
| initially doesn't have ads, or has very minimally intrusive
| ones, and then they turn them on or make them full page banners
| long after you made the purchase. IMO you should be entitled to
| a refund in this situation.
| like_any_other wrote:
| Solving problems by waiting for people to collectively stop
| making stupid choices (while well-paid marketing and research
| departments look for ways to trick them into making stupid
| choices, and business deals are struck to deprive them of
| better choices [1]) has a poor track record.
|
| If you want change, you have to vote and lobby for it. That's
| what your enemies are doing [2].
|
| [1]
| https://www.theregister.com/2014/02/13/googles_secret_androi...
|
| [2] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/07/isps-
| spent-235-m...
| neilv wrote:
| I recently bought a Kindle/Fire device pre-owned, to save money.
| But seeing full-screen shitty consumer products ads _on the
| 'covers of my books', sitting around my home_ was so depressing,
| I paid the extra $10-$15, to retroactively turn it into an ad-
| free device.[1]
|
| Though, even with Special Offers disabled, it still puts
| oversized icons for marketing promotions, bursting out of the
| search bar at the top of the home screen. This is one of the
| reasons I find the home screen a little bit unpleasant to look
| at, and avoid it as much as possible.
|
| [1] If you want to remove Special Offers from your own
| Kindle/Fire (I don't know about Echo Show), go to
| https://www.amazon.com/hz/mycd/digital-console/alldevices , click
| on the icon for your device, and scroll down, to find an option
| to disable Special Offers by paying some amount. IIRC, it said
| the amount was the difference between the original retail prices
| of with-ads and ads-free versions of the device. I've also heard
| some people can get Special Offers removed for free by customer
| service, but in my case it seemed like a fair deal, so I just
| paid the modest fee.
| exe34 wrote:
| turn off WiFi and transfer by usb.
| RandomBacon wrote:
| Amazon no longer allows eBook downloads from their website.
| henry2023 wrote:
| Then don't buy from them, plenty of venues
| EA-3167 wrote:
| I've purchased and backed up over 700 kindle books over
| the years. The day Amazon made backups impossible I
| switched to Kobo and have never looked back.
|
| Amazon can can go forth and multiply with itself.
| geraldwhen wrote:
| Many with trade offs. I recommend the pocketbook 4. You
| can disable recommendations easily, and the unit mounts
| as a disk so you can read and write books as if it were
| an SD card.
|
| No internet required. No sync software required. It's
| quite nice!
| GrantMoyer wrote:
| Ditto. It's also significantly lighter weight than
| competing readers (at least when I bought mine), has
| physical buttons, has color models, and has really good
| battery life possibly because it runs a custom Linux
| instead of Android.
| patja wrote:
| I switched to a Kobo device and have zero regrets other
| than that I didn't switch earlier
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| I just got a case in for the kindle instead of unlocking ad
| free, I barely notice the ads in the very brief time they're
| visible
| like_any_other wrote:
| Paid the Danegeld. Hope it works out.
| neilv wrote:
| In this case, the original retail buyer was offered a choice
| between paying $X for ads-free or $X-minus-discount for with-
| ads. And it was disclosed upfront what they were buying into.
|
| Since my priorities were different than the original buyer, I
| repaid that discount amount.
| grues-dinner wrote:
| Nice deal for Amazon because they get to double-dip as the
| same device served ads for some time for the first owner
| and then they still get the ad-free uplift eventually.
|
| Maybe one day they'll turn it into an yearly thing to avoid
| ads.
| like_any_other wrote:
| You bought a device that obeys its manufacturer instead of
| you. A device you have no control over.
|
| Or maybe I'm wrong - did the $X you paid for ads-free also
| give you root access?
| cameldrv wrote:
| Same thing with Audible. Very annoying. When you open the app,
| it shows you ads for books to buy instead of the books you
| already have or the book you're listening to now. Of course,
| they do not care. Whether you actually listen to the book isn't
| that important to them, as long as you buy it.
| patja wrote:
| I found the Kindle ads particularly infuriating when they
| advertised books I had already purchased from Amazon. They were
| insultingly brain dead in their targeting especially given how
| much Amazon knows about me
| jonhohle wrote:
| I worked on Prime during the Prime Video launch. All of the
| marketing was around it being ad free and a new benefit of the
| Prime membership. Not too long later they started playing pre
| roll ads for Amazon Video offerings (maybe Amazon Studios, I
| don't remember). I brought it up in a meeting and the business
| folks said it was OK because it wasn't in the middle of the
| selected content. I'm pushed back, but it went nowhere.
|
| Thinking about it now, he probably meant it was OK regarding
| their contracts with studios. Our engineering chain of command
| was completely obsessed with customer experience. The business
| side, not so much.
| nipperkinfeet wrote:
| These days, the general rule is to avoid buying anything 'smart'.
| They are all filled with advertisements and data-sharing
| practices and are designed to target you through their user
| interface and applications. They bombard you with offers for
| their other products and deals.
| alex1138 wrote:
| I'm technically ignorant on this but would GDPR apply to this
| type of thing as well?
|
| (I hope so)
| Gigachad wrote:
| You'd be able to opt out of data collection and request a
| copy of your data, but not opt out of adverts in general.
| kace91 wrote:
| Not really. GDPR deals with privacy and personal data
| handling.
|
| There are directives about transparency in the costs or
| charges tied to a sale, but it is not immediate that it
| covers including new ads as an extra burden on the consumer.
|
| Same for other directives regarding misleading advertising
| and the like, hard to prove that this new anti feature goes
| against the advertised product. it's all very indirect and
| hazy, we're in need of more protections for consumer to truly
| own their hardware.
| gl-prod wrote:
| GDPR doesnt block ads
| sa-code wrote:
| "Smart" just means enshittegenic. Ripe for enshittification.
|
| To stick to the metaphor (apologies if this isn't HN friendly)
|
| Smart TV? Fart TV
|
| Smart display? Fart display
|
| Smart fridge? Fart fridge
| b00ty4breakfast wrote:
| Matrix got it a bit wrong; the machines aren't interested in
| our body heat, they're going to put us in the goo pods and
| force use to watch adverts 24/7
| Agingcoder wrote:
| I sometimes wonder whether there's an eu vs us difference here.
| At least when it comes to tv, I found the hard way ( a long time
| ago ) that the amount of ads Americans are exposed to is simply
| unbearable. This extends to youtube and similar services.
|
| Now, everything is global - so are we looking at European users
| or American users complaining ? If an American user says it's an
| unbearable, then it's unusable. If a European user complains...
| it depends ( and these days, it's at least to me unusable, but I
| obviously can't speak for everyone)
| xandrius wrote:
| I still think the eu user is correct, no amount of ads when
| using a product is ok.
|
| Imagine buying a tennis racket and being interrupted, as you
| are playing, to be told to buy something else. That would be
| ridiculous but that's we're been told is a valid business model
| today.
| abstractbill wrote:
| _Imagine buying a tennis racket and being interrupted, as you
| are playing, to be told to buy something else._
|
| Sadly I've come to believe the pendulum is going to have to
| swing about this far before it might have a chance of
| swinging back.
| gbin wrote:
| Simple enshitification, literally _everything_ is going down that
| road. Somewhere a VP with a dashboard is super happy: they will
| get their $1M bonus and "apres moi le deluge".
|
| Even local businesses get snatched by PE firms left and right,
| prices skyrocket, customers are pissed....
|
| Is the business-consumer relationship valued at exactly $0?
|
| There is no system we can think of to avoid that?
| krapp wrote:
| >There is no system we can think of to avoid that?
|
| There is, but it requires thinking outside the box of "free
| market" capitalism, something most Americans are incapable of.
| Terr_ wrote:
| We're way overdue to abolish the DMCA, in particular the "anti-
| circumvention" felonies.
|
| It shouldn't be a crime for me to customize the product I
| purchased. Or to sell people a kit to do the customization
| themselves.
| ACCount37 wrote:
| Better yet: ban hardware vendors from denying the user an
| ability to customize software.
|
| They don't have to make it easy, but they should be forced to
| give a way to opt out of walled gardens and bypass "secure
| boot".
| Andrex wrote:
| Throw away the DMCA and you throw away all safe harbors for
| websites, and then the internet is _truly_ screwed. There 's no
| way the current congress would ever accept such a thing again
| -- Section 230 has been weaponized against it already.
|
| What we should be saying is Improve the DMCA. You've already
| clued into the biggest thing that needs to change (DRM/anti-
| anti-circumvention).
|
| Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. This is
| unpopular to say in HN-type circles but the DMCA is actually
| not that bad and mostly works as it should.
| jm4 wrote:
| Amazon sucks. They are one of the greediest companies there is.
| What they do with online shopping, logistics, AWS is incredible.
| They are in a different league and could generate more revenue
| than any company could ever need by just doing those things well.
| But that's not enough. They have to stuff ads into everything and
| find every possible way to piss off customers all in the name of
| another buck.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| I've had two different family members complain that now days when
| they unlock their Fire Tablet, it launches the Amazon Store app
| to display the product page of whatever product was being
| advertised when they unlock the tablet.
|
| Is Amazon charging businesses who use their ad platform a fee
| based on how many times they display a product page?
| rconti wrote:
| Holy crap, I thought "full volume" was metaphorically speaking
| until I clicked on the link. I'd smash the thing with a hammer.
| Liftyee wrote:
| This is part of why I refuse to purchase things that further
| enshittification on principle, even if it means "putting up with"
| an open-source alternative.
|
| Anecdotally, I think that open-source software/hardware only ever
| gets better (because if it got worse, someone would fork it,
| etc...) while proprietary software will eventually succumb to
| rent-seeking and decline. I've seen many open source projects go
| from barely usable to matching their proprietary counterparts.
|
| Shoutout to Immich, full-featured self-hosted Google Photos
| alternative and my new favourite open-source project.
| Andrex wrote:
| Google Photos is an odd example to use, since it hasn't been
| enshittified (yet) beyond some questionable UI redesigns.
|
| I agree self hosting your photos is the way to go, though.
| syntaxing wrote:
| I make an explicit decision not to get any Amazon hardware within
| my household. I don't even trust the Eero brand.
| Andrex wrote:
| They got me by the balls with Kindle.
|
| Someone(/me if I had enough time) should make some kind of LLM
| scraper extension for Amazon's Web Reader. Run it on your own
| ebooks while you're signed in and you get the EPUBs. Maybe this
| already exists...
|
| I know there was some kind of cutoff earlier this year for
| unDRMing your Kindle books, but I definitely missed that by a
| mile.
| xrd wrote:
| I had buyers regret after getting a Mycroft II device a few years
| ago. Lots of drama there. I still think it was an inspiring
| vision but you can't spell hardware without hard.
|
| But then I recently found neon which allows me to repurpose the
| device. And, it is incredible.
|
| I recall trying to build something for the Google devices and it
| was an awful experience. Getting root ssh access on my Mycroft
| device is amazing, and I have tailscale on it to boot.
|
| And, no ads, ever.
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