Aggressively American
this post was submitted on 13 Nov 2025
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A Boring Dystopia
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Fridge with ads should be 1/3 the price with free repairs
Sorry, the best I could do is increase the price by 20% and bombard you with 24/7 ads.
Also ad free refrigerators will be rapidly phased out
Free with free repairs.
by the way the fridge cost 1800$
Wait why the fuck would a fridge be connected to the internet?
Edit: where I come from we don't have unlimited internet plans so this would just be taking up expensive bandwidth and monthly quota.
I'm not defending this practice because it's remarkably awful but I will note that I have a router that lets me monitor the traffic that individual devices use and most smart devices like this actually use incredibly small amounts of bandwidth. Our smart water tank uses ~10 MB a month which is smaller than most images.
And yes I do think a smart water tank is valid because it can do shit like tell me when it thinks it's about to explode or leak or whatever and it can also like, be remote controlled, and it has a heat pump which is nice.
I suppose I'd want to know if my fridge was about to explode... /s
In seriousness, though, you're right - the problem isn't with the technology, it's how the technology is used
Recently I read an article about smart devices uploading and downloading over 1GB per day. I tried to find the article again but all I can find is stores selling smart fridges etc. Search engines are broken. I asked chatgpt, which was able to find articles. How fucked is this. Boring dystopia. Anyway, here are some sources.
https://www.tomshardware.com/networking/your-washing-machine-could-be-sending-37-gb-of-data-a-day
https://www.reddit.com/r/smarthome/s/F5ETernz6f
https://www.reddit.com/r/SmartThings/s/HY2E0uOBiH
In the following article they talk about devices sending up to 19MB per week, but only text (so again insane amounts of data considering it's only text).
https://www.consumerreports.org/electronics/privacy/smart-appliances-and-privacy-a1186358482/
The following is about researchers finding lots of thirst party domains when analyzing IoT traffic from Smart devices.
https://arxiv.org/abs/1909.09848
The following is an academic paper on how even encrypted data isn't safe from Smart devices. Bit off topic, but still interesting.
I tried to find the article again but all I can find is stores selling smart fridges etc. Search engines are broken.
I was able to find some links using duckduckgo including the same article from "Tomshardware" so at least that still works.
Again I don't know why a washing machine would need an internet connection it's not like you can remotely load it.
I mean I do understand the appeal and usefulness of smart homes and some IoT devices but companies are pushing AI and internet connectivity like it's some kind of magic that makes any product better. I mean it would be nice to have a centralised panel to view your usage patterns and consumption but even then you don't need all this overpowered tech stuff.
The whole selling points was to track fridge contents via cameras so that not only could you ‚see’ inside without having to open the door - theoretically saving electricity, using AI it was supposed to be able to track expiry dates, and suggest shopping lists in order to have full recipes.
Additionally it had all the usual „smart home” integrations on top of that.
But let’s be honest, the whole point was just to put in yet another screen that vendors could sell advertisements on, as well as track/sell personal information.
For no good reason whatsoever
The dystopia is already here ffs...
That's the whole point of this sub lol
"Feed me!"
I have seen a video about this shit also being implemented in cars. You can drive down the highway, with your GPS on and a pop up ad appears out of the blue, blocking the screen, not really allowing you to get rid of it before you remove your attention from the road to the screen, trying to figure out what button to push to get rid of the ad.
And the fact that people pay extra for cars and fridges to show them ads is just so friggin stupid. If people buy these products after knowing that they pay extra to be bombarded with ads, its 100% on them.
But in the case of the car, I do feel that shit should be illegal. It's so fucking dangerous and irresponsible from the manufacturer to implement a "feature" that can cost lives.
Don't worry, the fridge ones'll have ads for kids soon, with a candy-coated Buy Now button. Go-o-o *society!*🥳
Atwood's a gawdamn fortune teller
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Appliance repair man here. You can turn the screen off from a cover you remove from the top of the fridge door. Do so. You don't need a fucking android tablet on your fridge.
Also don't buy these kinds of appliances. They're terrible!
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Please stop buying these & they will stop making them.
This is capitalism, they will stop making the normal fridges and only make these fucking things. The only power customers truly have is through regulation(though we should still boycott things because it still helps).
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By 2030 everyone's kitchen will look like fucking Times Square
The stairs to your basement will look like the London Underground. We're going down the fucking tube... literally and metaphorically
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So, if I bought this at Costco, and the fridge was 10 years old, I'd use their guarantee to return the motherfucker and make a ~~huge~~ epic fucking scene if they tried to refuse.
edit: huge wasn't enough, it would be epic.
Oh no, who could have ever seen that coming?
Now wait for the subscription service to get rid of ads on the fridge you bought and "own". Oh, and that neat thing they do with cars now where you have to subscribe to get certain feature? That's also next. "Only ~~5$~~ ~~10$~~ 20$ per month to keep your fridge cool enough so the milk won't spoil! It's not a normal function of the fridge, it's our super special anti-bacterial option that costs extra.
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Imagine that. You not only paid for the refrigerator, but also the electricity and the internet access. And it uses all of that stuff to display ads to you. You're literally paying for every ad it shows you.
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