Submitted 5 months ago by punkibas@lemmy.zip to technology@lemmy.world
“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.
Oh sweet summer child, Google is NOT going to be any better at this. That will just be changing one corporate evil for another.
Google is NOT going to be any better at this
What are you talking about? Google Home devices have been out for like a decade at this point, they don’t play ads on them.
They don’t play ads on Google home/nest devices like this says Amazon do.
I would know if my Google home hubs played ads on them.
Yet. Google is an ad company that pushes ads nearly everywhere else. Shareholders/Wall St. demand infinitely increasing year over year profitability. It’s only a matter of time.
The Alexa division is struggling so they are well into the extract phase of the product.
Google will get there in time as well.
Yet
Wouldn’t this be a better fit for Leopards Ate My Face@lemmy.world ?
… and all the actual tech nerds who told everyone they should avoid smart devices like the plague laugh and laugh…
I really don’t. I can find no joy about being right about the state of our world. Quite the opposite.
You think “actual tech nerds” don’t like smart devices? I don’t think you know what a “tech nerd” is.
Actual tech nerds love the tinkering to make it work again until the moment they are tired of it and just want something that works. I’m in the tinkering phase.
And the pro tech nerds who told everyone to use local-only, non proprietary smart devices so they can still have a secure, ad-free smarthome laugh as we walk through the house without ever touching light switches.
I’ve been wanting to set up something like this for a while. Have any guides or a good place to start?
Oh, you own a house, I see, ok, that explains that.
Exactly. It’s not the smart part of a device that is the problem. That’s an extreme overreaction.
The problem with most smart devices today is that they are proprietary, non-fully libre and open source, for-profit, cloud-connected, corporate committee designed spyware, adware, and bloatware.
Devices that are fully FLOSS (firmware, hardware, software) and based on open and free standards and protocols are awesome, but they get easily forgotten.
The Internet and your technology can be so much better. Demand it.
Yes but I have done zero maintenance on my light switches in over 30 years. No downtime either or updates.
I mean…. Hasn’t been this with Amazon products forever? I had a Kindle Fire in 2012 and had to root it just to stop ads from showing up on the locked screen
Yes it has, every amazon product is massively subsidized price wise with the expectation they make it up via advertisements.
I think the only one that really didn’t fall down that train was the alexa.
But they have gotten significantly worse over time. I did buy a Fire Stick knowing i was getting ads, but it was so much better the Apps on my smart tv and cheap that it was well worth it. Now it’s gotten bad enough that I no longer use it but suffer through the TV’s apps
I do plan on trying Apple TV in case it stays useable but at this point I’m not buying consumer tech from three years ago
Similarly with the Fire tablet. I knew I was getting ads when I bought them way back when, but tablets were expensive. Fire tablets were much cheaper and quite usable so the tradeoff was worth it. That long since stopped being true, and this experience is e partly why I don’t have an echo show.
I do want some dory of home dashboard, but echo show had never been under consideration. If the Apple rumors are real I might try that but otherwise I guess I’ll see when I have the motivation to build my own
I feel like for all the effort you may spend pissing about you could just go to an electronics recycling center buy a relatively new laptop with a busted screen and just use that. Just get a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard, hell I think there are remotes specifically made for this purpose.
Second generation Paperwhite was actually really good, and still works nicely. They were still in the capture the market phase with that, so they had to offer some quality.
Don’t Kindles have multiple tiers though? Ad-subsidized or pay more for an ad-free model
Well, kindle e-ink e-readers are different from kindle lcd ipad knockoffs. The ereaders do have a subsidized tier that is cheaper by like $30 and shows ads on the lock screen. The ipad knockoffs are trash that arent worth looking at in the first place so I dont even know if they show ads but I bet they do. Dont buy either.
I may remember badly but I think in the days, the small one was only with ads and tiers were for the bigger tablet 🤔 (more than 10 years though so my memory is hazy)
Or contact support and ask nicely.
Did that and they removed the ads for me.
Additionally, Echo Shows may play audio ads when users listen to Amazon Music on Alexa.
Idiots. It's called - get a media player and a bluetooth speaker of which the media player can connect to. Both of which don't contain ads.
How inconvenienced are we that simply having a basic alarm clock - which has no ads, a dumb tv - that gives you no ads and among other stupidly simple but workable technology is just not enough?
They're just glorified tablets slapped onto the Echo speakers. Fucking morons.
Amazon garbage is literal ewaste as soon it leaves the factory.
I made the mistake buying a Kindle Fire in 2015. A few months in, it was literal garbage. Everything lagged. Very few apps would work. Not much variety in the Amazon app store. Learned my lesson about Amazon products.
I’m about to just toss the whole thing and move back to google.
… Ah yes. Here we see that, while frustrated, the consumer remains largely undeterred from fitting into the boxes outlined by our fearless corpo overlords.
“I gave Amazon my money and I’m mad, so I’m going to give even more money to another billionaire corp.”
They're a redditor and redditors aren't exactly smart.
Lemmy is structurally just super reddit. It just hasn’t been flooded by children yet so the discourse is still college level.
UI is too difficult for iPad babies but as the apps catch up the dumbass summer children will flood here too.
Hey! I resemble that remark.
can these things be reflashed?
The stupid part is how incredibly obvious this outcome was yet a bunch of clueless morons bought them anyway.
Isn’t there a saying about this? “Leopards ate my face” or something like that?
It’s like TVs… Google TV, Android TV, Chromecast, Fire TV… it’s all ads, all the way down. Apple TV though? Just a grid of apps. Certain apps on the dock (the top shelf as it’s called) could display ads because they’re allowed to display content in the top half, but I haven’t seen it done. Video apps typically just show what’s up next in your queue and maybe something suggested. But you can control what goes on the dock.
Can’t block ads on it and YouTube is fundamentally broken for it (despite there being no ad blocker between the app and the service). I’m looking into getting a gently used M1 Mac Mini for my TV, and wiring one of those Bluetooth keyboard/mouse things up to it. That way I can just run Firefox with uBlock Origin and call it a day.
Fuck all these “smart” devices. Can’t win with any of them. Meanwhile you can get a Raspberry Pi and be running Linux on your TV. That might introduce some challenges, but hey, you got Plex (/Jellyfin/whatever) anyway.
SmartNextTube can be installed in <2min if you know what you’re doing on Android devices and is better than ublock.
Look at it this way - how does a business make its money?
That’s the difference. They’re all shit companies from multiple angles. But at least Apple doesn’t actively disrespect you with unwanted advertising targetted to you by spying on you. They disrespect you by removing headphone jacks and making silicon valley executives behave like steve jobs who was notoriously a horrible person.
In this case, they are explicitly talking about serving ads on the device. Apple has a much less problematic track record for that particular issue.
excuse me i’m on an hp they’ve never ever ever done anything wrong
why yes i buy brother printers why do you ask
Not entirely true, but necessarily false either.
Projectivy launcher for Android TV is great and will remove home screen ads, and provide a much more streamlined interface overall.
Apple TV is really nice though, clean, smooth, and stable. I honestly would recommend that to most people, especially if they already have Apple products.
Even without having other Apple products. The only real benefit I see with the Apple TV — I do have other Apple products — is I can AirPlay to it. But, it isn’t very stable for whatever reason. The connection will just drop. So I AirPlay to the TV itself instead, and that works, though sometimes the audio doesn’t, so I just route it back to the MacBook, which has very good speakers, and it’s fine. Or I grab my Thunderbolt to HDMI and plug in directly, turn the TV into a monitor — but, this bypasses the Apple TV (but, so does AirPlaying to the TV itself). Oh, and I can use my phone or watch as a remote. All in all it’s perfectly fine if you don’t have any other Apple stuff.
The one thing it’s really lacking is some Dolby codec that people need to play Blu-ray rips. People in communities like Plex and Jellyfin complain about that. But those are like 50GB+ per movie, I don’t have that kind of storage to even come close to caring about that issue. It can still play 4K content, just not with that one codec.
In fact, it’s probably one of the best Apple devices out there, just because the competition is so much worse. I’d also say the same thing about the iPad, and the MacBook. You can make a case for a gaming PC, but for a laptop that isn’t gonna game because battery is an issue, you’re going for efficiency, it’s really hard to beat the MacBook. As for the iPad, it’s hard to tell which Android tablets are good and which ones aren’t — or which ones will never get updated. And iPad got a lot of love this year, it’s basically a desktop OS now (it’s like macOS lite at this point). No, you still can’t install whatever you want — need an actual computer for that.
Isn’t there a saying about this? “Leopards ate my face” or something like that?
“Leopards at my face” comes from claiming that your face would not get eaten while advocating for leopards eating faces.
If you would use it in the context of ads, it would be more along the lines of claiming you will not get ads because you are “special” while the thing just straight up says it will serve you ads.
I don’t think the thing is advertised as something to serve you ads, so it’s not the same.
I haven’t had this problem, yet
Return them!
Never owned that Alexa shit.
Voice technology is niche and just dumb. People think it's easier to have voice-everything. I've found that it is actually a pain in the ass. I've got some voice assistance in my vehicle, through Android Auto via Google. The fucking thing keeps saying "oops, there's a problem" even though I have a network, I'm connected and everything. It sucks shit.
And everything that is voice-reliant, there's always a few second delay and you're chancing on the thing even properly hearing you. How is this technology anyway easier than if you just simply had buttons that can be pressed in seconds without having to be prompted?
Why would anyone want a corporate government surveillance wire tap that’s connected to the Internet and constantly listening for voice command is beyond me.
My friend used an Alexa and smart plugs to rewire all the lights in his house because it was cheaper to get the Wi-Fi connected lights and sockets rather than rewiring the whole house.
In order to keep the thing running, no one was allowed to touch any of the lights switches on the walls because it would break the system. It was fucking hilarious listening to him yell at his Alexa to turn on the lights in the living room and have it turn on the dining room instead.
He even had the screen on the base that would follow you around as you were walking in the house and this creepy screen would constantly be monitoring you while waiting for commands.
If anyone walked in it just looked like he was screaming at the top of his refrigerator about the lights in the house.
I assume that there’s a segment of the population that:
Does vaguely like the idea of at least some home automation.
Doesn’t have the technical expertise and/or time to wrangle with something like HomeAssistant. Wants sonething that works off-the-shelf.
Doesn’t want to spend much money up front on a system, which creates pressure for an ad-supported model.
I will say that I’m still more than a little fuzzy on what substantial practical benefits people are actually getting from their deployed systems, though.
I’ve got to wonder what they thought they were buying. It’s not like the warning signs were sparse these past, oh, ten years or so.
Oh sweet summer child, Google is NOT going to be any better at this. That will just be changing one corporate evil for another.
The track record for people using that condescending phrase while not understanding what’s happening continues…
The smart TVs operate on Android TV, made by Google.
Amazon uses their own version of Android, and that’s where all the shitty stuff comes from.
I’ve got a nice name brand android TV, the only ads are “this movie is on streaming” or “this show premieres in a week”.
I got a cheap Amazon TV in another room, in the same place for ads on the home screen, it has ads for random products
There is a marked difference. They are “better” at this. Obviously no one in 2025 thinks google is “good”
The smart TVs operate on Android TV, made by Google.
I’ve been self hosting as much as I can for awhile. The one thing I don’t have a good replacement solution for is Google TV. At least with alternate launchers and being able to install APKs (for now) it mostly works as a decent experience.
Eh, I gave up and bought cheap used Apple TVs to replace all the Android / Google TVs and Rokus in the house.
Back in the day wed hook up old desktops straight to living room PCs. There was no apps so we’d just go to websites.
I’d be surprised if there isn’t some kind of raspberry pi mini PC with a good guinerap around Linux.
Some people will use a PlayStation/Xbox as well.
ALL the shitty stuff, exclusively from Amazon? Google is part of the game, the difference is in their business model.
No. As a user of both Amazon and Google devices (with screens/sticks), Amazon is far more aggressive in their advertising practices. As the other guy said, neither is ad-free out of the box, but Amazon devices will literally make your screensaver/lock screen a full screen ad (even on your TV). Google just has a home screen ad about something that’s going to play on streaming, usually.
If you want NO ads, set up DNS ad blocking or get an Apple TV and use that for streaming. But again, Amazon’s devices are FAR more aggressive about advertising as much as possible. My father has one of those Echo Show things that’s a speaker with a rotating screen attached to it. It’s playing ads almost all the time.
We’re talking about ads and privacy on TV’s mate…
Id have thought that theyd have seen this coming.
Any ads is a no-go for me.
I run Pi-hole, and ublock.
I went to my pal’s house and turn on his TV, ad. He turned on his Xbox, ad. Was looking for a specific game on his Xbox, another fucking ad.
“Too complicated” he says when I suggested setting him up with a raspberry pi.
Set him up with NextDNS then.
"Advertising is a small part of the experience".
Well great Amazon. Nobody is asking for this 'experience'.
What you mean you dont watch the superbowl for the commercial advertisements that take up approximately 80% of the time of the 6 hour game?
I bought the thing. I should control want it shows at all times. The reason I can’t trust the company to futz with that is why I don’t have one.
Today buying doesn't mean owning anymore.
Haha. Are people even supprised? I mean come on.
The best thing you can do, is just DIY your own display with a microcontroller and have some fun in building it. Maybe run Linux on it and voila.
While we still have that option… I’d bet money that the second when most people start deciding to DIY their own home tech, they’ll lobby these techs as unsafe and dangerous and potentially ban their use outright, or require special licenses and degrees.
Cool, I have a degree and multiple technology certifications. Happy to help people with tech that pulls them out of oligarchs fiefdoms.
they’ll lobby these techs as unsafe and dangerous and potentially ban their use outright, or require special licenses and degrees.
They have a strong foundation in the DRM built into HDMI. I suspect this is exactly the real reason it is there.
Whatever accelerates us getting off our asses and seizing the means of production quicker I’m all for. Take the TVs, I fucking dare ya
Installing spyware and wire taps in my home was never appealing to me.
I still have the first Google Home speaker I got for free via Spotify subscription years ago, and it’s as far as I went, wouldn’t have put money on this
AND not even being paid for doing so. But paying for instead. that’s the most bizarre part of it.
it doesn’t take much critical thinking to conclude that smart tvs are bullshit, but apparently too much for most people
Morons buying moronic ‘smart’ devices, unable to understand that they’re the product, not the consumer and they have sold away the rights to their eyes and ears with their purchases.
My house contains no smart devices that can harvest data from me (my mum does use a samsung smart TV from 2016) and all devices have everything disabled and other things installed to block data collection and tracking… I can’t stop 100% of it, but what little trickle they do get is basically worthless.
My eyes and ears are not for sale, nor is my privacy.
Did you see the research about how they were able to use the vibrations from your laser mouse to accurately determine what was being said out loud? Or how they can map rooms and detect motion with wifi. Enforable and painfully punished laws must be written not consuming one brand is not enough.
If there is a trickle, you do not know what you’re doing.
This whole comment has a, “I am very badass” vibe to it.
You’re probably sending more data to the cloud than most because of the hubris.
LAMF?
Google is NOT going to be any better at this. That will just be changing one corporate evil for another.
Personally, I disagree with the first and agree with the latter. I have a Nest Hub, and there are no ads on that. But I would still urge the redditor and myself to get acquainted with Home Assistant instead of bothering with the offerings from Google and Amazon.
My pet pony keeps shitting on the floor.
I am very frustrated and did not expect it.
I should sell it off and buy a horse instead.
W3dd1e@lemmy.zip 5 months ago
I get that we should expect shit like this from Amazon but at the same time, they bought something and the maker completely changed how the device worked after they bought it.
I’d be pissed too. We have to hold these companies accountable.
PushButton@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Yeah, they totally deserve to be sued and pay a $5 fee as punishment.
That will teach them!
FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I’m kind of glad that I don’t mind flipping switches and pressing buttons. I’ve never felt the need for a smart home, so this stuff hasn’t affected me much personally.
W3dd1e@lemmy.zip 5 months ago
Smart Home is really good for me bc I have trouble remembering things, but I’m for building my own and running it on my own server vs using corporate bullshit.
Smokeless7048@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Home assistant is the way to go, all run locally on a homePC, I have ZigBee lights and switches automated
An example is my front deck lights turn on at sundown, at 10% brightness, at 11;00 pm they drop to 1%.
If motion is detected they brighten up for a bit.
On holidays they have appropriate RFB effects.
All of this is automated, none of it talks to the internet.