[HN Gopher] Stellantis Is Spamming Owners' Screens with Pop-Up A...
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       Stellantis Is Spamming Owners' Screens with Pop-Up Ads for New Car
       Discounts
        
       Author : cf100clunk
       Score  : 142 points
       Date   : 2025-11-28 16:37 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.thedrive.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.thedrive.com)
        
       | gdulli wrote:
       | Trying to estimate whether I'm old enough that when I buy the
       | last car of my life, there will still be ones without screens to
       | choose from.
        
         | floxy wrote:
         | black construction paper?
        
         | SoftTalker wrote:
         | All new cars have screens since reverse cameras are mandatory.
         | You'll have to shop on the used car market.
        
           | gdulli wrote:
           | Oh really? My current car is over 20 years old so I'm way out
           | of the loop. I guess I'll hope for options with smaller
           | screens that control fewer of the functions.
        
             | SoftTalker wrote:
             | Keep that car as long as you can. Modern cars are shit.
             | Peak of cars was probably 1990s/2000s.
        
               | chneu wrote:
               | You could still buy some rad cars into the '10s but you
               | generally had to go looking.
               | 
               | The fiesta st is a decent example. An economy car, so
               | very simple, but with a sports package. The only "smart"
               | features, like traction control, can be turned off.
        
               | sudonanohome wrote:
               | You forgot to mention that ST is a manual transmission
               | car, not for everyone
        
               | qball wrote:
               | The attitude that the computers should always be
               | subordinate to the driver also extends to the
               | transmission.
        
               | sudonanohome wrote:
               | 100% manuals are the way to go if you want to feel like a
               | driver, not a passenger. I love my manual Jetta Thing is,
               | people are lazy. US market is automatics only. Can't make
               | people understand what the clutch is or why slushbox is
               | bad for fuel efficiency. No one cares. Gas guzzlers are
               | the national idea My kid learned to drive a manual in 15
               | minutes. Too much effort for US drivers!
        
               | ErroneousBosh wrote:
               | I honestly can't say I notice any difference between
               | driving a manual or an automatic car.
               | 
               | If we were in a car right now and I was driving, I'd have
               | to look at the gearstick to tell you if it was auto or
               | manual.
               | 
               | I genuinely don't get the USian obsession with driving
               | manual gearbox cars being somehow "elite".
        
               | sudonanohome wrote:
               | When you have a small fuel efficient engine, you can tell
               | and feel the difference. With a V6 under your hood, you
               | probably don't care. US is mostly big engines
        
               | hvb2 wrote:
               | It's an anti theft feature too
        
               | userbinator wrote:
               | 1960s/early 1970s for me.
        
             | ErroneousBosh wrote:
             | My daily is a 1997 Range Rover.
             | 
             | My next daily will likely be something with approximately
             | the same level of technology.
             | 
             | There are about ten buttons on the dashboard, of which the
             | only ones I care about is the rotary knob that turns on the
             | headlights and the button that switches the heater from
             | "normal" to "EVERYTHING UP FULL ALL ON RIGHT NOW FULL BORE
             | MAXIMUM EVERYTHING WE ARE GOING TO AIR FRY A POLAR BEAR ON
             | THE BACK SEAT".
             | 
             | There's an LCD screen. It's the size of my thumb, and tells
             | me how many miles it's done (only 190,000 - it's my low
             | mileage one, my other has done 270 and there's a guy on my
             | forum who's rapidly closing in on 600,000 miles in his),
             | what gear it thinks it's probably in, and occasionally it
             | uses this LCD to lie about the gearbox overheating because
             | water got into the plug for the sensor when I drove through
             | a river and it came over the bonnet.
             | 
             | It's not very fast or very efficient, but it does
             | everything I need a car to do, and I have a full factory
             | service manual for it and easy access to spares.
        
           | genter wrote:
           | The screen doesn't have to be obnoxious like this, though. A
           | Chevy van has a small screen embedded in the rear view
           | mirror, which is impossible to see when not in reverse.
        
         | kjkjadksj wrote:
         | People drive 70 year old cars today. Just buy a sensible car
         | from sometime before the 2020s, keep up with it and put on 400k
         | miles on it.
        
         | queenkjuul wrote:
         | My 2016 Corolla seems to be the last year without a SIM (it
         | does have a screen but whatever it just shows me what's playing
         | on the stereo), but despite a Corolla being bulletproof and me
         | rarely driving anymore, i do still wonder whether i can get
         | away with this car forever or if I'll have to buy some spyware
         | carriage someday
        
         | whartung wrote:
         | To be fair, I have a 2014 Jeep Grand Cherokee. It was the first
         | year of their then new model rollout for the GC. It was (as I
         | understand it) the last of the Mercedes JGCs.
         | 
         | I love this thing, it's a "cold dead hands" kind of car for me.
         | Only has 120k-ish miles on it.
         | 
         | I won't say it's my last car ever, I just have a hard time
         | visualizing swapping it out for anything.
         | 
         | It starts, all the buttons work, it's cosmetically 95%. The
         | single biggest issue is that last year it was down for a couple
         | of months simply because of parts availability. It's not
         | unreliable, but it's swapped a few things (water pump,
         | radiator, A/C has had work twice, guess it's a bit notorious in
         | the community). Purchased in 2013, it's a 12 year old car.
         | 
         | But waiting months for suspension components (air suspension,
         | which I adore) was a real drag. Even with a dealer supplied
         | rental.
         | 
         | That would be the thing that sends me over the edge long term,
         | I think.
         | 
         | It'll be a shame when it happens, I love the car.
         | 
         | The dealer wants to buy it every time I take it in for routine
         | maintenance.
        
           | sudonanohome wrote:
           | So your 12 yrs old truck with only 120k miles got:
           | 
           | - radiator replaced
           | 
           | - water pump replaced
           | 
           | - AC repaired (twice)
           | 
           | - suspension rebuilt
           | 
           | And that's considered to be a "good" truck? Good lord I'm
           | happy we don't get such garbage sold here in Europe
        
             | genter wrote:
             | Yeah, it's not as if Mercedes (who made the vehicle he's
             | talking about) or BMW are German.
        
               | sudonanohome wrote:
               | Mercedes or BMW don't sell "tough trucks" lol.
               | 
               | They sell luxury goods, which people know to avoid when
               | they care about reliability
               | 
               | The thing is, jeeps are even beating the BMWs when it
               | comes to unreliability.
               | 
               | Yes Mercedes built that garbage for the US market because
               | US market eats that crap. Then stellantis took it a step
               | up and removed reliability from their vocabulary entirely
               | - more profitable that way. I'd pick a modern VW over
               | American garbage all day any day.
               | 
               | But sure, keep yourself convinced about exceptionalism of
               | American SUVs.
        
               | CGMthrowaway wrote:
               | >Mercedes or BMW don't sell "tough trucks" lol.
               | 
               | G-Wagon is body on frame
        
             | hluska wrote:
             | You don't know much about cars. All the work they had done
             | on their vehicle was typical for that model generation. Air
             | suspensions are generally problematic because of constant
             | wear mixed with parts issues, and A/C problems are common
             | in that model generation. This is all normal stuff to fix
             | over twelve years.
        
               | sudonanohome wrote:
               | I do most of the maintenance of cars in our garage, and I
               | would never accept double AC repair, suspension and
               | radiator replacement to be "normal" around 120k.
               | 
               | The thing is, modern jeeps are a joke even compared to
               | this "reliable" example.
               | 
               | There was a post recently about over-the-air update
               | bricking Jeeps WHILE DRIVING ON THE FUCKING HIGHWAY. And
               | no one cares. People keep buying this trash and defend
               | double AC repairs. - \ _ ( tsu ) _ / -
        
             | tartoran wrote:
             | > And that's considered to be a "good" truck? Good lord I'm
             | happy we don't get such garbage sold here in Europe
             | 
             | Yes, in spite of this it is considered a good car.
        
         | venturecruelty wrote:
         | What if, instead of just attempting to retreat into a shrinking
         | world that will eventually disappear, we all collectively
         | worked together to fix things?
        
         | CGMthrowaway wrote:
         | May I present Coretti Cruisers restomods. Prime example:
         | https://x.com/washghost1/status/1994198208545714472
         | 
         | Cost roughly $150K
        
       | Bender wrote:
       | I never owned a car with such a system. Do they at least give you
       | a way to install uBlock and NoScript or will that brick the car?
        
         | technothrasher wrote:
         | You're joking, right? The systems are locked up tight. I did
         | manage to hack into my Porsche Macan's system so that I could
         | turn Apple CarPlay on (it's disabled in the Macan, but
         | supported by the system because the unit is shared with the VW
         | Atlas which has CarPlay), but it involved a pretty complicated
         | jailbreak.
        
           | Bender wrote:
           | _You 're joking, right?_
           | 
           | Only 3.1415% joking. I predict people will eventually get
           | credits for saying things like, _" Brought to you by Carl's
           | Jr."_ in their car, bonus if the kids also repeat it. But
           | seriously I figured someone would have found Easter-eggs by
           | now that allowed some form of super-duper-root similar to
           | windows god-mode.
           | 
           | I am honestly surprised that car manufacturers have not been
           | sued into oblivion for adding distractions.
        
             | sowbug wrote:
             | I had an old Prius with a nav system that disabled all the
             | controls when the car was moving. But it also had a full-
             | screen page of legalese that you had to dismiss every time
             | you started the car.
             | 
             | So Toyota's lawyers were OK with drivers reading a legal
             | contract, but not with drivers pressing a couple buttons to
             | get where they need to go.
        
             | Y_Y wrote:
             | _Drink verification can to continue journey_
        
             | technothrasher wrote:
             | There's less attack surface on these systems than your
             | typical windows install. The only reason I was able to hack
             | the Macan is because they'd left a debug avenue open such
             | that you could plug an ethernet adapter into one of the USB
             | ports and use it drop a shell, and then exploit a bug with
             | handling of a certificates to get privileged access. I was
             | more surprised they'd left that USB ethernet avenue open
             | than that there was a certificate handling bug.
             | 
             | I believe since I did it, somebody found another way in by
             | inserting a malicious payload into a USB firmware update
             | image.
        
           | CamperBob2 wrote:
           | What generation had CarPlay disabled? It works very nicely in
           | 95B.2 and .3, and the pre-facelift 95B models with PCM 3
           | didn't support CarPlay at all without an adapter, did they?
           | 
           | I know _full-screen_ CarPlay isn 't supported without a
           | jailbreak, but I don't care about that myself so haven't done
           | it.
        
       | firefoxd wrote:
       | I remember many years ago thinking, "if they can have a add a SIM
       | card on a phone, why not add one in your car? Imagine an Internet
       | connected car?"
       | 
       | What I didn't think about was this would be an opportunity for
       | ads and subscriptions. And everyday you'll own less and less of
       | your car. I'm shopping for a car right now, I may have to just
       | put a fresh coat of paint on my old one.
        
         | toomuchtodo wrote:
         | In most vehicles, you can pull the cellular capability (either
         | a physical sim or the RF component). You'll lose telematics,
         | but will also lose this.
        
           | qball wrote:
           | So nothing of value is lost.
        
             | hluska wrote:
             | If you consider updates to be zero value, sure.
        
               | thereisnospork wrote:
               | Of course I do? Across all my utilitarian devices, e.g.
               | phone, desktop, laptop, I already find updates to be a
               | large net negative except for the vague and nebulus
               | 'security'. If a car 'needs' updates then it isn't doing
               | its job.
               | 
               | I can't imagine the expletives that'll come out of my
               | mouth the day I'm running late for a meeting and my car
               | won't start because its in the middle of an update.
        
               | qball wrote:
               | "Car won't start because the radio failed to update" and
               | "insurance company tracking and other telemetry" are not
               | just zero value, but net-negative.
        
               | toomuchtodo wrote:
               | Hence why folks should be pushing right to repair and
               | similar legislation through to prevent this before it
               | happens. Technical hacks are tactical solutions, good
               | policy implementation is the strategic, long term
               | solution.
        
               | yason wrote:
               | For a lot of things, zero value would be a high peak.
               | Often the value is negative. Thus:
               | 
               | You don't update anything if it works and it's not
               | connected to internet.
               | 
               | If it works and is connected to internet, then disconnect
               | it from internet if possible.
               | 
               | For the rest, delay updates for long enough without
               | having heard complaints that there's sufficient
               | confidence on the update not breaking anything.
        
               | tremon wrote:
               | I consider OTA updates to be of negative value, actually.
               | If my car needs fixing, I'll bring it in for servicing.
               | If it's not broken, I don't want my car tampered with.
               | 
               | Come back to me when there's a punitive liability model
               | for OTA updates. If the garage manages to break something
               | during, that's on the garage, not me. It should be the
               | same for OTA updates: the company pushing the update
               | should be liable for any failure _and for providing
               | replacement transportation_ if they manage to break my
               | car with an update.
        
           | venturecruelty wrote:
           | Until that voids the warranty or the car refuses to start
           | without internet access. Why do you think the depravity will
           | stop here?
        
         | ruralfam wrote:
         | Not just the ads. They are likely tracking your location, and
         | drive events. These can be sold to your insurance company who
         | may adjust your rates, or even drop you if they consider your
         | driving patterns to be risky. When we got our Ford Maverick,
         | first thing I did was disable this. Kudos to Ford for making
         | this easy.
         | 
         | Downside is that we got a recall notice about the software for
         | the backup camera needing an update. I scheduled an
         | appointment, and it took over 3 hours. Asked the service guy
         | why it was taking so long to flash to software, and he said our
         | system needed an update because we had not enabled over-the-air
         | connection with Ford which allows this to be done in the
         | background. Evidently the download speed for this was
         | incredibly slow according to the SG, so it took over two hours
         | before our Mav was current, and they could apply the backup
         | camera fix. Note: I was very suspicious about this claim. I
         | thought it was more likely we were being purposely held captive
         | in the service waiting area -- which has a big screen
         | constantly running Ford ads. I guess that is OK. I had my
         | Kindle, and was into a great book at the time, so I actually
         | was not too put out.
        
           | ok_dad wrote:
           | I highly doubt the overworked service center employees were
           | wasting your time, they probably were just as annoyed as you
           | were that your car was sitting in a service bay longer than
           | expected.
        
           | hluska wrote:
           | Do you really think that a dealership would tie up a service
           | bay to keep you captive?
           | 
           | Service is where dealers make their money. You're convinced
           | that manufacturers will sell data to insurance companies yet
           | believe that dealers will sacrifice hours of profit. That
           | doesn't work out.
        
             | ruralfam wrote:
             | We were not in the service bay. Our Maverick was outside.
             | The Service Guy said they had to download the update to
             | their servers. From there it was a quick trip to the
             | service bay for the updates. That is the reason I had asked
             | in the first place. I could see the Mav outside. Not
             | blaming the SG. I am sure it as not the Dealership, but
             | someone at Ford Corporate??? Not so sure.
             | 
             | Also: I made sure we were the first appointment, arriving
             | at 7:45am for my 8am reservation. Soon another guy was
             | behind me. One thing I have learned it to always schedule
             | "the first time in the AM" if you do not need immediate
             | service.
             | 
             | Edit: In retrospect, they had turned on the OTA system in
             | the Mav. So maybe when the SG said it was downloading, I
             | thought "to a server" but maybe it was directly to the Mav.
             | As I noted, was not a big issue. Still not using the OTA
             | features.
        
           | maximus-decimus wrote:
           | Nissans have a disclaimer that they spy on your sex life :
           | https://nypost.com/2023/09/06/nissan-kia-collect-data-
           | about-...
        
           | CGMthrowaway wrote:
           | >They are likely tracking your location, and drive events
           | 
           | I can't speak to whether or whither they sell the data, but
           | they are 100% tracking your location and vehicle events
        
           | cromka wrote:
           | Just a reminder: shit like this doesn't easily happen where a
           | regulation like GDPR is in effect.
        
       | hollow-moe wrote:
       | "Ok", "Remind me later", "To opt-out, call..."
       | 
       | The jokes write themselves in 2025
        
       | hereme888 wrote:
       | I had already scratched Jeep off my car-buying list years ago.
       | 
       | Now the bulk of car-buying research is not "how good is it?" but
       | "what are the purposefully in-built annoyances? Can I hack them
       | away?"
        
         | sudonanohome wrote:
         | You won't have any options for non garbage vehicles pretty
         | soon. It's more profitable to sell you garbage and than sell
         | you the maintenance on the above mentioned garbage while
         | getting a steady trickle of revenue for ad impressions.
         | 
         | Ford pulled focus/fiesta lineup from US ignoring great sales
         | (despite widely known DCT issues) just so they can focus on
         | selling the garbage SUVs and pickups, highest margin cars. But
         | hey, no CAFE regulations to follow, can pollute as much as you
         | want.
         | 
         | Jeep quality is a joke - they would've been sued out of
         | existence with trucks like that in Europe. When I first saw the
         | Jeep Gladiator photo I through it was a joke/meme.
         | 
         | Corporations do truly control everything in US. They'll sell
         | you garbage overpriced trucks, convince you to feel happy about
         | them and laught all the way to the bank while raking cash for
         | all "dealer maintenance" required to keep such garbage on the
         | roads. And then they lock down all the maintenance behind
         | encryption so you can't replace a battery without going to the
         | dealer for the unlock code.
         | 
         | Please speedrun your late stage capitalism asap, it's getting
         | harder and harder to watch
        
           | general1465 wrote:
           | Technically you are correct, practically you will get into
           | question of "who pays for the internet in the car?" and if
           | customer refuses to pay (like in VAG case) then you will have
           | just a car without an internet.
        
           | morshu9001 wrote:
           | I got a Honda, it's fine
        
         | willio58 wrote:
         | My partner recently bought a newer Subaru. It's great, and when
         | we looked it up we saw it had remote start. Turns out it's
         | behind a subscription. When I found that out I essentially
         | wrote off Subaru as a brand for my future car purchases. Catch
         | me driving my 2017 civic into the ground before I pay a
         | freaking subscription for basic vehicle functionality
        
           | readthenotes1 wrote:
           | Remote start is basic vehicle functionality for you?
           | 
           | You and I understand the word "basic" differently.
           | 
           | I wish they'd offer a lifetime purchase option--but maybe
           | they learned from the 2g remote start debacle not to rely on
           | technology they don't control
        
             | willio58 wrote:
             | In the age of push-to-start cars, yeah it does feel basic
             | to me. If I can unlock my car with my key fob, why can't I
             | send a signal to start it?
             | 
             | My 2017 Honda civic has it without a subscription so I was
             | pretty shocked to learn that Subaru decided its customers
             | would be cool with it being behind a pay-wall.
        
               | apparent wrote:
               | Are you looking to remote start from the fob, or from an
               | app? I agree that if it's done via the fob, that
               | shouldn't require a subscription. But I understand that
               | something requiring a cell signal will usually be paid,
               | one way or another. I prefer it not be baked into the
               | cost of the car, since some people (me) will not want
               | that feature.
        
               | treyd wrote:
               | Even if it was from an app, why can't I use
               | wifi/bluetooth? Even if it depends on a relay server, why
               | can't I load my own sim and run my own relay?
        
               | apparent wrote:
               | This seems like a very HN-specific use case. It's not
               | surprising that automakers don't have APIs that let
               | customers host servers that they use to remotely start
               | their vehicles. Security is obviously a huge issue, and
               | almost no one cares about remote starting that much, and
               | has the know-how to implement relay servers and such.
               | 
               | I'm not happy with how consumer choice is boxed in by
               | automakers, but for sensitive systems like ignition, I
               | don't think that their approach is unreasonable.
        
               | justin66 wrote:
               | My Toyota is charging a monthly fee for it as well.
        
           | rightbyte wrote:
           | I agree with boycotting subscription looked down cars, but
           | what is the point of remote start? Defrosting?
        
             | celsius1414 wrote:
             | Or the opposite: cooling the interior to a survivable
             | temperature.
        
               | tartoran wrote:
               | It could be for both defrosting and cooling.
        
             | petre wrote:
             | Gasing your neighbours and every living beign on a 100ft
             | radius. I can't stand drivers that idle their cars while
             | they're gone doing other stuff. Remote start should totally
             | be a subscription feature, before it gets banned or
             | regulated. Why? Because it's very annoying.
        
               | Thorrez wrote:
               | Do you live in an area where it snows frequently?
        
           | morshu9001 wrote:
           | There was an article not long ago about a Subaru vuln that
           | allowed anyone to remote start, track, or unlock any new
           | Subaru
        
             | dotancohen wrote:
             | Interpretation The First: One does not need to subscribe to
             | enjoy this functionality.
             | 
             | Interpretation The Second: These vehicles are maintained by
             | a corporation that is both greedy and incompetent.
        
           | whatevaa wrote:
           | Bettet write off Toyota too then, and many others.
        
       | hedora wrote:
       | The last (hopefully only) Stellantis vehicle we owned had trouble
       | with its transmission's network connection.
       | 
       | "Nothing stops a Ram, except routine driving".
       | 
       | I'm completely unsurprised they're pushing spam to the dashboard.
       | 
       | The crazy thing is BMW has been doing this well for years. They
       | should have just copied the playbook. There's a little shop icon
       | in the app where you can buy digital services, swag and schedule
       | dealership appointments.
       | 
       | Sometimes it has discounts or track day invitations in there.
        
       | general1465 wrote:
       | Imagine you will buy a house and somebody will have so much gall
       | to slap a billboard on the side of your house. Repeatedly. Would
       | you tolerate this behavior? Obviously not, then why companies
       | thinks that it is OK to show ads on my fridge or in my car? This
       | is outrageous behavior and I hope that some nasty regulation will
       | end this nonsense so we can hear crying of companies how big
       | government is bullying them and hampering innovation...
        
       | Animats wrote:
       | Just when you think Stellantis couldn't do anything worse...
       | 
       | This is the company that ran Chrysler into the ground. The only
       | remaining Chrysler product is one mini-van.
       | 
       | They raised the prices on Jeeps so much that they lost their
       | market. They went the "mild hybrid" route, with such silly things
       | as 21 miles of electric range.
       | 
       | The Stellantis dealers signed a joint letter demanding that the
       | CEO be fired. That was done. It didn't seem to help.
       | 
       | (I own a pre-Stellantis Jeep Wrangler, and would like to buy a
       | replacement, but Jeep now has nothing I want.)
        
       | Covzire wrote:
       | Saw this in my car this morning myself. I only noticed it as I
       | was getting out and right before turning it off.
        
       | froidpink wrote:
       | Is this also the brand that tracks your driving data and sells it
       | to insurance companies?
        
         | SteveNuts wrote:
         | Even Toyota does this, so I wouldn't be surprised if they all
         | do.
        
       | ReptileMan wrote:
       | Here is an idea for a project - open source street legal EV car
       | platform.
        
       | dbg31415 wrote:
       | Any screen is just an advertising delivery system.
       | 
       | Relevant.
       | 
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPGgTy5YJ-g
        
       | tonyedgecombe wrote:
       | Looks like Stellantis is on my no buy list now, along with
       | Samsung, Microsoft and Tesla.
        
       | zetanor wrote:
       | So, what happens if you accidentally drill through your car's LTE
       | modem while doing an oil change?
        
         | qball wrote:
         | It'll throw a code, just like it does if you forget to put DEF
         | in. It's not a malfunction, they just want you to think it is.
        
       | kotaKat wrote:
       | And isn't this just weeks after a bad software update bricked a
       | bunch of Wrangler 4XEs?
       | 
       | ... Oh, and isn't this the same Stellantis that now requires a
       | fuck-ton of hoops to access your own diagnostics now because of
       | their "secure gateway"? (https://autel.us/security-gateways/)
        
       | UberFly wrote:
       | I bough a new Honda and Mazda within the last year and neither
       | have any of this kind of nonsense. Both are great. I hope people
       | vote with their wallets. I would never have considered anything
       | from Stellantis anyway.
        
       | dreamcompiler wrote:
       | Stellantis makes some of the most unreliable vehicles in the
       | world and charges a small fortune for them. I predicted they'd be
       | out of business a year ago but apparently somebody keeps buying
       | them.
        
         | daemonologist wrote:
         | The most shocking part for me is that FCA survived for seven
         | years until the merger with PSA. The French brands are enough
         | of an unknown to me that I can believe they might be carrying
         | the whole company, but putting Fiat, Chrysler, Jeep, Ram,
         | Dodge, Lancia, Maserati, and Alfa Romeo into one basket - good
         | god. It's a who's who of disreputable car companies.
        
       | dreamcompiler wrote:
       | 1. Locate cellular modem.
       | 
       | 2. Disable it.
        
       | qwertox wrote:
       | > To opt out, call 1-800-777-3600
       | 
       | You call the number, maybe let it ring one time, and hang up. You
       | did your part to opt out.
       | 
       | Then you sue them.
        
         | kylehotchkiss wrote:
         | You signed up for mandatory arbitration in the sales agreement
         | probably.
        
           | venturecruelty wrote:
           | "Agree to kangaroo court or be unable to go anywhere
           | forever." I wonder what people will choose!
        
           | qwertox wrote:
           | It's incredible that companies get the right to do this. What
           | a corruption.
        
           | jerf wrote:
           | Arbitration is still a pretty big money sink for them. If
           | enough people do it then it becomes a problem for them. There
           | have been instances of companies reinstating normal class
           | action lawsuits back into their EULAs because it turned out
           | that forced arbitration wasn't a magical wonderland of cost
           | cutting for them after all. Forced arbitration and especially
           | when they have a clause that forbids class-action arbitration
           | can turn into a huge liability for them even if they
           | nominally win every instance.
           | 
           | The fundamental financial maneuver of the modern world is to
           | take modest risks of modest loss and financially engineer it
           | into a smaller risk of much, much larger loss, with a higher
           | expected loss (risk*size) in the end after the engineering
           | than before. Forced arbitration (and especially when class
           | arbitration is banned) is that manuever in the legal sphere.
           | It isn't a ticket out of the risk entirely, it's shoving that
           | risk under the rug and making it net larger. If you and a few
           | hundred of your closest friends put their minds to it you can
           | trigger that smaller-chance-of-larger-disaster scenario and
           | all you have to do is file... you don't even have to win.
           | 
           | I won't deny it's an uphill battle but the forced arbitration
           | clauses can be turned to consumer's advantage with relatively
           | modest coordination, you just need to get enough annoyed
           | people together.
           | 
           | (I can't help you with this one, I don't have a car with this
           | problem. Your few hundred closest friends will need
           | standing.)
        
       | kylehotchkiss wrote:
       | it'd be cool if we had a more consumer-friendly admin who would
       | ban advertising on long-term purchases like washing machines,
       | fridges, cars or require you the seller to tell you about how the
       | advertising works on said things (ad types, whether they are
       | child friendly, frequency, and upfront option to permanently opt
       | out)
        
         | CGMthrowaway wrote:
         | Yes. This problem of in-vehicle ads definitely stems from the
         | current president, and a different president can and will solve
         | it for good. A multi-step config panel for these ads is exactly
         | what we need.
        
           | estimator7292 wrote:
           | The word "admin" in the above comment is short for
           | "administration" which encompasses thousands of individuals
           | across pretty much every branch and department of the
           | government.
        
             | kylehotchkiss wrote:
             | Exactly, I mean departments like the FTC, CPSC, DOT (these
             | ads are probably displaying while driving at highway
             | speeds, much like the jeep software updates deploy at lol)
        
       | venturecruelty wrote:
       | It's an interesting phenomenon. Something like this happens every
       | week or two, and then these threads basically just become cope,
       | with vague advice that most people can't easily do ("oh, just
       | desolder the eSim contacts, it'll be fine"), as though that is in
       | any way a longterm solution to corporate overreach in our daily
       | lives.
       | 
       | What if we all decided to actually work together to _fix_ this
       | terrible situation? Unfortunately, it will involve collective
       | action, and holding companies accountable who are otherwise very
       | averse to that sort of thing. But dear God, we can 't keep "why
       | don't you just"-ing forver as the world closes in around us,
       | people.
       | 
       | If we want a better world, we are going to have to build a better
       | world.
        
         | nemomarx wrote:
         | So what's the collective action? Any proposed regulations to
         | sign on to?
        
         | drdaeman wrote:
         | Have you contacted your representatives and demanded something
         | that would improve the current situation?
        
       | mosselman wrote:
       | Getting a pop-up like this would be a sure way to get me to never
       | buy your brand again.
        
       | more_corn wrote:
       | Never buy any product from any company who does this.
       | 
       | There is a time to put your foot down and that time is now.
        
         | deely3 wrote:
         | Let's start from Samsung!
         | 
         | https://mlq.ai/news/samsung-faces-backlash-after-rolling-out...
        
       | slurrpurr wrote:
       | Pro tip: if you buy the new car, the ad goes away for a year ;)
        
       | avazhi wrote:
       | Nope.
        
       | lostdog wrote:
       | This kind of behavior should re-open the return window for the
       | car.
        
         | tartoran wrote:
         | I wonder if we're gonna see a class action lawsuit.
        
       | pimlottc wrote:
       | For those unfamiliar and confused, Stellantis is the mega
       | corporation formed from the merge of Chrysler and Fiat that owns
       | Jeep, Dodge, Peugeot, Opel, and many other brands.
        
         | morkalork wrote:
         | Their reputation is verging on the likes of private equity
        
       | josefritzishere wrote:
       | Reason # 10034 why I do not want a TV screen in my car or truck.
        
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