Installing spyware and wire taps in my home was never appealing to me.
this post was submitted on 11 Oct 2025
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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
Even worse than not-really-understanding-any-of-it is the wilful ignorance shown by some. "I have nothing to hide" is the epitome of obedient worker-ant stupidity.
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In the case of smart tv's it's obvious why it works. It's way cheaper to buy a smart tv vs a dumb tv now, and It's all companies make for consumer side, which only leaves business grade TV's/advertisement boards which cost more. Even if this isn't the case though, with how streaming oriented most people are, the general public won't buy a dumb tv because they would still need to buy some sort of device to allow them to access their stuff. It's just convenient to have it in the same device rather than buy a tv then spend another $25+ on a device that can allow access to streaming, when one device can do it all.
I upgraded to a "decent" Smart TV for my den (my previous one was an early stage Phillips smart TV that the store was basically deprecated on), and it converted 3 devices I had for my dumb tv, into that one device. It's just convenient.
I personally think that people should be focusing more on not buying slop-ware, and working on implementing legislation of what companies are allowed to do to consumer purchased products before trying to revert back to dumb tv's and spending 3x as much. The future is going to happen regardless, and people are going to take the easy way out, the easier way is going to be preventing the annoyances from being allowed in the first place.
you do you. enjoy your convenience. for my part, i will continue to spend $0.00 for the privilege of being the product.
all of these brands can take their smart devices and go fuck themselves with it. "convenient" GTFO
I'd far rather have a dumb TV/monitor and a cheap, easily upgradable smart device connected to it, but I'm on Lemmy so that shouldn't come as a surprise.
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Are those things hackable? Even if it means a full wipe?
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.
Ponies are supposed to shit. It’s more like if the pony came strapped with ill-fitting saddlebags that leak toxic chemicals.
Yeah, but it's like you bought the ponies at Shit-R-Us
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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."
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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
Don’t Kindles have multiple tiers though? Ad-subsidized or pay more for an ad-free model
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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.
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"Advertising is a small part of the experience".
Well great Amazon. Nobody is asking for this 'experience'.
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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.
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Why would you buy that. Ten years ago I had an Amazon phone and it would fill my home screen with ads. I guess if you hadn't experienced that scenario but otherwise why would you pay for that. Besides the ads fuck Amazon why give them any money. Go to Newegg, Walmart anywhere else
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.
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