so basically you’re getting a surveillance device shipped straight to your living room.
Someone needs to jailbreak/root this TV!
I think that would be priceless. Send out a million TVs thinking man we are gonna make bank. Literally 990k jailbreak and use it as a dumb TV lol
(I have so much venom for this idea in general.)
Is there an intentional pun on it being priceless? I hope so
They have stated they have measures in place to detect anyone trying to do that and will require them to return the TV or pay for it.
Measures can be countered.
get that second screen working with HomeAssistant or somethin
I think that would be against the contract signed when reviewing the telly so they’d charge them.
For example I think it is mandatory to connect there TVs to the internet
It is. It also needs to be the primary television (it checks for that, probably by spying on your other devices), only allows ‘approved’ devices to be connected, and looks at your room to see how many people are watching (you’re not allowed to block it). It tattles on any attempt to alter or subvert it. If you break the TOS for whatever reason, they’ll automatically charge your credit card $1000. You have to give them your credit card info before they’ll ship.
I suppose it’s an okay device if you don’t care about privacy at all, or if you’re willing to pay $1k to jailbreak it.
Removed by mod
I mentioned it on the other thread, but free-pc tried this twenty four years ago and it was a dumb idea then.
There was also NetZero, alladvantage, and probably others that I’m forgetting the gave people money and crap for watching ads. It turns out people don’t like ads.
I remember having free dial-up Internet in the 90s in exchange for an adware banner while connected.
NetZero was the best for me, I was in middle school and this was the only way I could get Internet since my parents wouldn’t pay for a respectable ISP, anyway I searched for ways to get rid of the banner and finally found one where it would just be a small black square 😄
Nah you couldn’t pay me to put this TV in my home.
Also LOL at “smartest” TV. If you can’t install your own apps, then it isn’t exactly very smart.
I’m surprised they aren’t calling it an AI TV or something. Isn’t that the new buzzword?
Why would anyone want this? It’s free, so it’s obviously not even going to be a good quality TV.
There are no upsides to this.
It’s worse than that. If the concept of the book 1984 were a television this would be it.
“What Orwell failed to predict is that we’d buy the cameras ourselves, and that our biggest fear would be that nobody was watching.”
All we need is to get a Peloton so our exercise can be monitored too.
The upside seems pretty clear? It’s a free 55" TV. A lot of people won’t care that it’s not as good as other TVs.
You’re just not poor enough yet. They’ll keep inflating us into poverty until this becomes everybody’s best option
Low income folks who can’t afford an alternative.
Honestly, if I was broke, I’d consider it. If you can afford anything else, then yeah, take that something else. But not everybody can afford stuff.
You can buy good quality TVs that are maybe 2-3 years old in sales or secondhand which would be much better than this, and no need for ads.
I’ve seen people get an LG C1 for like $100 secondhand and there’s nothing wrong with it. You don’t have to spend close to or upwards of 1,000 on a TV.
Somebody posted another comment with the exact same idea, and I think y’all are under-estimating the amount of people who live under the poverty line (11%/~4M people in the US for instance), and the even larger amount of people who live below a living wage, and therefore all have zero buying power for consumer discretionary items, let alone having $100 to spend.
I tried to sign up just now but it’s US only. I don’t have a TV at all, I can’t afford one. I’d love this.
How does this work as a business? Are ad companies so desperate they will buy ad space on machines destined for people with zero disponible income and zero loan capability? Are the data from stalking people who can’t afford anything that valuable?
At the end of the food chain surveillance capitalism works thanks to profit from conversion from ads to purchases. How do they expect conversion by targeting people who can hardly afford rent and necessities?
Because there are people out there that make FUCKING TERRIBLE decisions. You ever see someone at a big box store trying to load a $3000 tv into a car that has plastic bags taped over missing windows? Or someone parking a brand new car next to their dilapidated doublewide? Those people.
And you will get people taking them up on this to put it in the man cave or the rumpus room thinking they are being slick and gaming the system “lol, its not even my main tv!” not even realising the sheer volume of data they are handing over that way and that wether you like it or not advertisers spend bilions on getting into your head without you thinking its working.
They’re siphoning up those people’s data too though. And you can definitely still advertise basic goods and fast food to those people. If it’s all Unilever, Pepsico and McDonalds, they’ve got an audience for those ads.
Start by giving them ads for payday loans or credit lines.
Should we put this company on the 2023 deathwatch list or the 2024 list?
Straight out of idiocracy
what prevents people from covering up the advertisements screen?
camera that watches you drink the verification can
I would expect them to include cameras that would check that you are looking at the tv and see the ads reflected in your eyes before it lets you play non-ad content.
The settings menus (input switcher, etc) will be on it. Also it will collect data on anything you view using the main screen (HDMI input, etc) regardless.
Big Brother.
Black Mirror.
Something as simple as a light sensor would stop that.
Kinda want to get one and rip it apart to extract the screens, strip the copper, etc. Turn it into a monitor with my own screen driver silicon.
I just looked it up and they charge up to $1000 if you block ads or tamper with it. They have all sorts of crazy requirements too.
If that’s the case, then it’s cheaper to just buy a 50” tv. Way cheaper than the $1000 they make you pay
That’s the point. If you can afford even a $400 tv, you won’t buy this. It’s for people for whom $1000 is unobtainable. So they’ll watch the ads rather than risk a lawsuit and penalty.
You could buy four for that price.
Idk how they’d enforce that though.
Same, I wonder if it’ll still function without internet, I’d just get a chromecast key or something on the HDMI. And just not connect the TV itself to the internet.
Granted it probably has some kind of contract that you get charged if you don’t play the ad’s
news sticker
does Lemmy have a r/boneappletea replacement?
Yes, called the same :)
It feels like increasingly ads are used to sell ad supported products so you can watch ads for things with ads. And at the end of the road it’s scams and subscriptions. Like it’s a good thing I don’t like capitalism because it feels like it’s looking bloated and a concerning shade of yellow
You don’t like capitalism because you’re the mark. Capitalism is for capitalists. Capitalists own capital. The vast, vast majority of the world, even in wealthy countries don’t own any capital. They own possessions, which is different. Capitalists have just spent capital confusing people into thinking they should like it.
I also dislike capitalism because I’m justice oriented. Capital doesn’t want justice it wants constant mindless accumulation. But yeah it’s also a shell game with counterfeit money, at some point even the winners are gonna be caught holding the bag and everyone still around is fucked. Well we’ve been hearing police sirens for a while now, and now we can see cops heading over. But the con artists insist we keep playing instead of breaking down the table and making a run for it.
I’m imagining the tv from Idiocracy.
Did anyone have Fahrenheit 451 on their 2023 bingo card?
Isn’t it literally the telescreen from Orwell’s 1984
15 Million Merits
Resume viewing.
I genuinely don’t know who would ever sign up for this. If you’re too broke to afford a TV, just watch on your phone or laptop. Nobody needs a huge screen anymore. Then there’s the number of people with ad blockers or paying a small amount per month just to get rid of ads. This just looks like a bad idea all the way from a bad VC investment to a bad job for the devs to a bad choice for the consumer. And at no point did anyone ever say “wait what are we doing again?”
If you’re too broke to afford a TV, just watch on your phone or laptop.
Tell me you’ve never lived in poverty without telling me you’ve never lived in poverty.
It’s the modern day…they have no bread
…then let them eat cakeMy phone doesn’t have a screen…
That’s exactly it. When I was dirt poor, basically half of the people around me had a phone with a cracked screen, and a good amount of that also had batteries that didn’t last much at all. Not only was it a constant game of finding a public power outlet whenever you’d be out for a while, but even staying home, you couldn’t do much of anything that would drain your battery too hard. There was a thing at the time where some phones had batteries that kept turning off unless you hit them on the side until they worked again, but it was a while ago so maybe that was solved by manufacturers since.
It’s incredible now that I live in a middle class neighborhood, how literally every single phone is perfectly functional. It really does change everything.
Anyway, that kind of population would happily get a free TV with ads. Now whether it is the kind of population that those ads would be most effective on is another question, since they basically have zero spending power.
Sad thing is, plenty of people will lap this up as a good thing and see it as a benefit. At least at first, until they realize they have to watch some TV based ads before they watch the ad roll on their YouTube video, followed by the second screen showing some banner ad the whole time. Yick.
As if a person who can’t afford a normal TV can just buy all the things from all those ads that advertisers think they’re selling.
