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Samsung makes ads on smart fridges official with upcoming software update

Samsung makes ads on smart fridges official with upcoming software update

stalfosknight

Comments (438)

  • kstrauser
    This guarantees I'll never buy a Samsung appliance. If they're this willing to screw with their customers today, they'll do it again tomorrow.Sadly, I'm including their TVs in this. I have one today, displaying the output of an Apple TV and not directly connected to the Internet because hah, no way, but I'll be shopping around when it comes time to replace it.Pity. They make nice stuff. Not nice enough that I'm willing to tolerate their anti-customer shenanigans, but otherwise decent quality.
  • perihelions
    > "Didn't you have ads in the 20th century?"> "Well, sure, but not in our dreams. Only on TV and radio, and in magazines, and movies, and at ball games, and on buses, and milk cartons, and T-shirts, and bananas, and written on the sky... But not in dreams."
  • nerdsniper
    There's a $30,000 bounty set up for anyone who can patch the firmware to eliminate the ads. Please consider contributing additional donations against the matching funds.https://bounties.fulu.org/bounties/samsung-familyhub-refrige...
  • prawn
    Can't stand behaviour like this.I pay for Spotify and the app now shows paid suggestions (cough ads), to paying users. When you tap the ellipsis and choose "Not interested", it doesn't respond with "OK, we'll stop" but something like 'We'll show less of this'.No, don't show less, I want you to not show it at all.
  • microflash
    At this point, anything from Samsung is a vehicle for ads, and anything with the word “smart” from Samsung is most likely a spyware. The amount of garbage I had to remove from a recently encountered Galaxy phone is on par with Windows 11 levels and some.Unfortunately, the entire industry is racing toward this behavior. Recent LGs have also started slapping “AI” stickers on their products. I’ve been visiting Rossman’s Consumer Wiki[1] more often than I’d like before making a purchase.[1]: https://consumerrights.wiki/w/Main_Page
  • rcarmo
    I've managed to mostly excise Samsung from my digital life (except for phones that family buys without my knowledge and that I have to troubleshoot), and I have been happier for it for many decades now.(This was after direct exposure to their Tizen engineering team back in the early 2000s)I stayed away from their phones, SmartTVs, everything.
  • aszantu
    Stopped buying Samsung phone because I couldn't disable some stupid assistant button with ai subscription on the last one. I'm really sad because Samsung was always a good brand to me
  • taegee
    Who needs a smart fridge anyway? It cools, and annoys as hell when you leave it open.
  • gus_massa
    I bought a Samsung notebook in ~2008. No crapware! Nice and small, it survived long beyond the guaranty date.My cellphone decided to die last month. It was near retirement, but still working until it didn't. I bought a Samsung phone. First it asked twice if I wanted to share all my life with Google (using some dark patterns) and then it asked twice if I wanted to share all my life with Samsung (using more dark patterns). (After that, I installed WhatsApp, so I'm not sure I bothered.)Next the phone offered to install the app from my carrier, TikTok and a ¿third? app-store. I didn't want them so in the screen with the offer I disabled the first and the other two were disabled by default. Anyway, I got TikTok and the other app for some reason! (I uninstalled them inmediately.)I still get random notifications, like complaining that I'm using the phone too much. Or a notification that they upgraded something, restarted the phone and all apps notifications were disabled until I unlock it. (Lucky, I didn't miss any important urgent message.)
  • verdverm
    Hopefully DNS level ad blocking will help here, and even more hopefully consumers will reject smart appliances. I'd never buy one
  • fourseventy
    I would rather go without household refrigeration than have the refrigerator that I own play ads in my house.
  • jmward01
    This is why I have so few 'smart' devices in my life. It is obvious that all of these devices are predatory. They start off 'helpful' and 'useful' and then turn malicious when you can't easily replace them. Lock-in bait and switch should be illegal.
  • dawnerd
    Of course they would do this. They did this with their top of the line 4k tvs when they first came out. Everything was great, their OS and such worked wonderfully then they started to inject ads for gamefly into notifications and it went downhill from there. Ads in a 200 dollar tv I understand. Ads on a 5 thousand dollar tv? Absolutely unacceptable.
  • philips
    Why is this the best business model we can collectively execute on? Whether it is AI, home cameras, or fridges it seems to just come back to, welp, lets slap an ad on it.
  • BLKNSLVR
    Off-topic-ish: I've got a TCL Smart TV that, by default, runs Google TV (which, to my understanding, is a rebranded newer version of Android TV). The default launcher / interface, which contains ads and has only minimal customisation options, can only be changed by installing an alternative launcher disabling some permissions via adb.Having followed the instructions to do it, it's much nicer having beautiful background images (rather than ads for crappy TV shows and movies) and a cleaner interface with at least one less click required to get to the apps I want (ie. a better UX).TCL TVs are not a particularly premium product, so I'm not too annoyed about having to go this little bit of effort to make it nicer. However, a $3,500 fridge seems like a premium-ish price, and so to also have ads on that feels incredibly tacky to the point it cheapens the product and the brand overall.
  • andreldm
    After not having a Samsung device for many years, I reluctantly bought a fridge from them (price was the decisive factor). Anyway, almost immediate regret, it features an always-on wifi network begging to be connected to the web, the only way to turn it off is to disconnect a cable from a circuit board, unbelievable.
  • userbinator
    integrated 21.5- or 32-inch (depending on the model) screenI don't want a fridge with a screen or any connections except power. All it needs to do is keep my food cold. I've had others very surprised to see my house containing mostly mid-century dumb appliances. I deal with enough problems caused by software at work, to know better than to bring that hassle home.
  • shreddit
    It’s so sad. Smart devices were meant to make life easier. Now all they do is to be another platform for ads.AI is going the same way.In the end it’s always going to be ads. Is just sad.
  • hermitcrab
    Its only a matter of time until your toilet starts telling you where to get high fibre cereal at 20% off.
  • mixxit
    Sometimes I wonder if developers are exempt from responsibility much like a soldier for following orders
  • aj_icracked
    I have the Samsung Frame TV (great TV btw) and decided I didn't want to pay the $5 / month to have curated art in the room and when Superman the movie came out a few months ago it was only displaying Superman comics on the screen. Was super annoying bc was subtle but not subtle enough. I uploaded family pics instead so I don't have that anymore but it was still pretty annoying. I have samsung washers / dryers / dishwasher etc all connected to the internet and I love the notifications when a load is done but I don't know how useful the data is... I assume data brokers are like, "Oh Aj uses his washing machine 7 times a month let's hit him with Tide ads", but I assume everyone uses the machine that much. I'm fine having my machines tell Samsung use bc it's normal usage (i think?)
  • MangoToupe
    Why on earth does a fridge have a screen in the first place?
  • KnuthIsGod
    SO glad that I avoided buying that nice looking Samsung fridge.
  • triceratops
    To be fair if you're gonna advertise to someone, people who buy $3500 fridges are ideal
  • jimbohn
    Your smart appliances are my opportunity
  • jp0d
    Soon there will be a subscription model to use certain features in the fridge! Spherical ice and fast cooling will cost $9.99 per month!
  • aanet
    There IS a market for non-internet-connected devices:- fridges - toasters - TVs - home appliances - what-have-youWhoever makes those, take my $€£¥For everything else, there are crappier alternatives from all the consumer electronics OEMs
  • atum47
    Galaxy S2 was the best phone I ever had. I think it was pure Android, if not, you had some minor apps from Samsung that you could've delete. I think I left the Samsung train right about S5 (which was supposed water proof, but it wasn't). It was just down fall from there. Samsung account, locked phone full with shitty apps that you couldn't remove (without rooting)... I don't think I'll ever have anything from Samsung in the near future
  • sidewndr46
    Finally, manufacturer's can be liberated from the opressive existence of a world without advertising revenue
  • t1234s
    Is there an alternative OS scene for these types of appliances?
  • lostlogin
    Wonder if you could stop this with Pihole?I had to go to contortions with a tv from Samsung, but did manage to force all port 53 traffic to go via Pihole.I believe this method may have been broken by Samsung/Google et al somehow though?
  • pavel_lishin
    > Samsung also said that its fridges will only show contextualized ads, instead of personalized ads, which rely on collecting data on users.What is a contextualized ad?
  • bmau5
    I'd understand if the ads were subsidizing the purchase price significantly, but this still seems to be in line with their highest pricing.
  • chrisweekly
    Their unbelievably poorly-designed icemakers are already a reason I'll never buy another Samsung fridge. Now this? Yikes.
  • nyell
    Never bought a Samsung phone, TV or Fridge. Smart is now translating into "Ad-injection" in various appliances and I hope this backfires!
  • tonyedgecombe
    I’ve seen enough of these stories to know that I will never buy any Samsung product. They are a repeat offender.
  • fxtentacle
    Yay to living in the EU! Since I would be allowed to get a full purchase-price refund if they'd try to pull this shit in the Europe, they limited the new "Cover-Screen-Widget" to only activate within the US.I know, I know, I suffer daily from government overreach ;) But have you tried lobbying for your fellow humans?
  • liendolucas
    You do not buy a smart appliance. Period. A fridge, oven, toaster, washing machine, bed do not need to be smart.Smart is the consumer that is able to spot all this BS ideas that are putting in front of us and avoids it as much as it can.
  • ge96
    Recently saw this clip about a public bathroom where the toilet paper dispenser had a screen on it/qr code you had to scan, watch an ad to get the TP... interesting if true.
  • Havoc
    Are there any other fridge brands up to such nonsense? About to buy one.Guessing anything without screen is reasonably safe
  • 7373737373
    Does a website exist that lists products only by companies who respect their customers?
  • daft_pink
    The headline is so insane. I’m not very interested in Samsung in general, because I use apple products and they don’t offer Dolby Vision on their TV’s, but the headline lol.
  • puppycodes
    Samsung products are shipping with what feels dangerously close to malware these days
  • djoldman
    > Samsung fridge owners can also opt to avoid the latest software update altogether. However, they would miss out on other features included in the software update, such as a UI refresh and the ability for the internal camera inside some fridges to identify more fruits and vegetables inside the fridge.The level of absurdity here with respect to "miss[ing] out on other features" strains credulity.
  • kavenkanum
    One needs to be rally dumb to buy a smart fridge
  • steve_avery
    Why would I ever connect my fridge to the internet? I cannot fathom any feature on a fridge that would incline me towards giving it the wifi credentials.
  • noir_lord
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3pYZwol6DcSilicon Valley parodied smart fridges nearly a decade ago.
  • cutler
    Smart fridge. Get a life.
  • not4uffin
    Bound to happen eventually...
  • dsign
    Samsung does make really great ad-free computer displays... that's as much as I'm willing to buy from them.
  • anon
    undefined
  • sussmannbaka
    Every frog will be boiled. Remember this when you argue “oh but it will still be possible to sideload via adb” “oh but you can turn it off” “oh but you only need it on the first run” “at least they don’t…”You won’t be able to. It will be mandatory. They will do it. If you give these companies an inch, they’ll take a mile.The moment they don’t actively work entirely aligned with your interests, they work against you.
  • klysm
    The backlash from this doesn’t show up on a spreadsheet so here we go!
  • pryelluw
    Can’t wait until I get those Lightspeed briefs adverts transmitted into my sleep.
  • dramm
    Zero chance I'll purchasing any household device from Samsung. Not with all the crapware and spyware they pile onto their systems. Zero chance I'd purchase a household appliance with a large screen. WTF would I want that for. More garbage annoying crap and more to go wrong. The never ending chimes about everything on our Mellie clothes dryer was annoying enough... (and oh it wants to connect to the WiFi? Good luck with that. Terrible menu UI. I'll never buy one of those again either).I like to think in future there migh be Harry Tuttle like appliance repair vigilantes that come out and remove all this crap from home appliances. :-)
  • xaedes
    In my opinion it is plain fraud: intentional deception to deprive a victim of a legal right or to gain from a victim unlawfully or unfairly.
  • Beijinger
    FYI: Out of curiosity, just googled it"No, Samsung fridges do not run on webOS; they use Samsung's own Tizen operating system. LG is the brand that uses webOS in its smart refrigerators. "
  • Aslima
    cara buka blokir wondr by bni
  • pclowes
    Honestly, stuff like this makes me want to leave my smart phone in the garage when I get home and have a single desktop linux box that is in a “computer room” hardwired and the house has no wifi or smart anything and every other screen goes into the trash.
  • dineol
    next step is they're gonna make ad-free version with an additional monthly fee
  • Dan4ik_Owl
    Where is Gilfoyle when we need him so much?
  • curvaturearth
    Nope nope nope
  • Hansenq
    Everyone here seems to hate on the idea of seeing ads on an appliance you purchased. I hate ads too!But, let's consider the counterfactual. What if Samsung offered you a new fridge for free, as long as you were ok with passive ads?I hate ads, but I'm not sure I would pass up a free fridge...those things are expensive!(this is not even that unrealistic. Let's say you have a household of 3 and a fridge lasts 10 years. Meta makes about $200 per year per user solely from showing ads; that's $6000 over 10 years. If Samsung got as good as Meta is (which they likely won't), 6k is more than enough to cover the cost of giving a fridge away for free)
  • JuniperMesos
    I've never purchased a refrigerator in my life - every place I've lived in my adult life has been a rental where I wasn't the one picking the appliances. What happens when I'm looking for a place to live, and I find somewhere that meets my requirements, except that the landlord has this Samsung smart fridge in the kitchen - maybe they thought this was a selling point, like the landlord I had who put the fact that they had a Google Nest thermostat proudly in the apartment ad (I deliberately never gave it my WiFi password)?
  • schaefer
    boycotted for life. All products.
  • johngossman
    Iirc, Chris Whittle proposed this idea of refrigerator advertising in the 1980s. Seemed dystopian then. Ugh.
  • stevepotter
    This ad nonsense aside, don't buy Samsung refrigerators. They are so awfully made and difficult to service that almost no appliance repair companies will touch them. I got suckered into buying one a few years back and it was awful. The ice maker didn't work, every few weeks I would sop up a gallon of condensation at the bottom of the cheese drawer, and eventually it just died. I went to a local appliance store and they chuckled when I told them. They would never carry that brand. Just fridges, don't want to talk about other appliances.
  • ChrisArchitect
  • throwacct
    This is stupid. Companies are really trying to get people to hate everything tech related. From "smart" beds, to "smart" fridges, and with the "looming" job displacement due to "AI" and robotics, I could see how a "human-centric" economy or new wave of businesses and startups with a "human-centric" approach could develop in few years.
  • 2OEH8eoCRo0
    I disconnected the wifi from my fridge. Opened the back and unplugged it from the board
  • jesse_dot_id
    Neat, another brand I don't have to consider when purchasing appliances in the future. Saves me time at a glance!
  • jimjimjim
    Once they have paved the way and built the infrastructure, most fridges will come with some sort of display. Probably just a small status display. But these fridges will be much cheaper, subsidized by the Ad opportunities. It happened with most mainstream TVs making people expect cheap TVs to the point where they will dismiss a TV with "normal" price.
  • ReptileMan
    Okay - so fridge is something that you buy, you put it on 3 degrees Celsius and you forget about it for the next 12 years. What exactly smartness gives?
  • platevoltage
    "You're going to have to PI-hole your refrigerator" wasn't on my 2025 bingo card.
  • luxuryballs
    Samsung SSDs I remember, do they still make good ones? I won’t buy the washer and dryer from them again, and probably not the dishwasher even though for the price it has been good.
  • nicbou
    Samsung is one of these companies that are so consistently scummy that I outright refuse to buy any of their products. They are forever blacklisted.
  • daveguy
    Just replaced a Samsung fridge. It was the worst I have ever had, and it wasn't even kludged up with smart-ai-internet-advertisement bullshit yet. The compressor went out after about 12 years (which is apparently good for current refrigerator manufacturing - yikes). But the ice maker and operation panel had been on the fritz for at least 4 years before that. I went with a Frigidaire + 5 year extended warranty. Much better use of internal space, nothing smart, dual ice makers. Only negative is it's kinda noisy and runs often due to the compressor being sized for "efficiency". Fingers crossed.
  • nemo44x
    Samsung makes bad fridges. I bought a Sub-Zero. It has 2 compressors (1 for fridge and 1 for freezer), is made of high quality parts so will last 20+ years, has excellent service guarantees, and is made in America. Highly recommended.
  • xoxxala
    This annoyed so much I actually wrote them a physical letter denouncing the practice and mailed it to their US corporate HQ. I haven't mailed a letter in years. Feels odd.
  • crm9125
    As a human, I'm FUCKING TIRED OF ADS.
  • AnimalMuppet
    So I recently (last two years or so) bought a (non-Samsung, non-smart) fridge. It's a very nice fridge. It cost, IIRC, about $1000-1500. No internet connection, no ads, no screen to play them on.Why would I pay $2000 more for a more annoying fridge?
  • nailer
    They’ve been doing this for years. The Galaxy S III (yes three) shipped with an indelible Pizza Hut bookmark.
  • ratelimitsteve
    I have a samsung fridge, and that's enough for them to already be on my shit list. if you put a screen in my kitchen and force me to watch ads I'm going to physically shatter the screen, I don't care what other functionality it may have.
  • christkv
    I got smart appliances not a single one is connected to the internet and never will.
  • baggachipz
    Way to punish your customers for paying you more.I know it's a trope, but this is the absolute textbook definition of enshittification.
  • fud101
    I upgraded my Samsung phone to the latest One Ui version and i've been having a frustrating time with it. Turns out months later I discovered they have changed the behaviour to work best for Right Handed users. I found a setting that allowed me to flip that and now i'm able to use my phone again.
  • neilv
    A lot of outrage in HN comments, but it's kinda ironic, because if you had to point at the single biggest concentration of people who built out surveillance capitalism and other facets of our digital dystopian future...Maybe the people complaining are the ones whose employers don't even sell out people with third-party trackers on their Web site. But I see more than 3 people complaining.
  • bgwalter
    They also offer Jian Yang's "AI" fridge from the Silicon Valley comedy show:https://www.samsung.com/us/home-appliances/refrigerators/bes...
  • bitwize
    Next up is the update that makes the refrigerator refuse to cool your food without an annual subscription. Oh, and the ads don't go away.
  • ath3nd
    [dead]
  • whatarethembits
    I’m in the market for buying two new fridges for our new house; this post reminded me to filter out Samsung immediately. I LOATHE ads.
  • sylvainr65
    Apparently, you can turn off ads quite simply.* How to turn off ads on your Family Hub The widget will appear by default on the fridges as part of the software update. However, Samsung is giving users the option to turn off ads. To do this, go to the Settings page on the fridge, scroll to Advertisements, select it, and you’ll be taken to a screen where you can toggle off ads.This will remove the widget entirely. If you think you might actually like the widget’s other features (calendar, weather, and news), you can “X” out a particular ad, and it won’t pop up again. But then you’ll get another ad.
  • 1970-01-01
    So a digital calendar with ads seems reasonable. What they don't mention is how much work they plan on putting into the maintenance. A $3k fridge should last decades, including the screen, software, and WiFi connection.