If you don’t want ads everywhere, stop buying things with screens that don’t need them

Ah, victim blaming! That always goes over well, right? This past week, smart home users have been up in arms over the discovery that Samsung’s Family Hub refrigerators are being updated to start showing advertisements on their Cover Screen displays. In a statement defending the move, Samsung frames the addition as “enhancing every day [sic] value” for its customers, but it’s extremely difficult to view this as benefiting anyone other than Samsung and its advertising partners.

Granted, worse things have happened in the history of humanity, but I still can’t frame this change as anything other than capital-b bad: At the risk of being hyperbolic, not a single Samsung customer out there actually wants this. But for as right as they are to be upset about what Samsung is forcing upon them, what the heck did they think was going to happen when they bought a refrigerator with a giant screen on it?

If a company can get a screen it controls into your home, you had better believe it is going to take full advantage of that placement. Now, most of the time, those screens are ones we intend to actively use: our TVs, our computer monitors. Bombarding us with ads there becomes a little tricky, and if users feel that ads are interfering with their ability to actually use the product as intended, the consumer pushback will be enormous.

But the manufacturers selling this smart-home gear aren’t dumb, and you can bet that they’ve done plenty of market research to work out exactly what we’re willing to tolerate — even if we do moan about it, who’s lining up right now to return their fully functional fridge?

Idle screens are an advertising exec’s playthings

The need to place a video screen on a refrigerator always felt a bit spurious to me. Initially, these were billed as energy-saving ways to peek inside (with the help of internal cameras) and decide what you wanted to eat without wasting energy, standing their with the fridge door open as you mulled it over. I’m just not quite convinced how common a problem that actually is, nor that this kind of over-engineered solution is the optimal one.

More modern solutions can use AI to identify refrigerator contents, and even help order replacements when you’re running low on stuff. I’ll concede that this is starting to feel like more sensible use of the tech, but it’s also not one that demands anywhere near approaching full-time use of a large display surface.

No, your refrigerator doesn’t need speakers, either. 

By now, you’ve got a TV-sized screen taking up half your fridge. A lot of what Samsung tries to do with that space makes plenty of sense — the company has repurposed your refrigerator as a smart-home hub, letting you view camera feeds, see your schedule, and control media playback. Considering how many of us don’t have another screen this size in our kitchens, this seems perfectly logical.

With all that screen space, though, and keeping in mind how little of it we’re actively using at any given time, it feels like Samsung pushing ads to it was an inevitability; the temptation’s just too much for the company to resist. Samsung already serves ads to its phones, and to parts of its smart TV UI, and all that was lacking before in the kitchen was the will to see it through.

I really want to be disappointed with Samsung, but it’s clearly doing what works for it; this is a publicly traded company, and selling $2,000 fridges, then coming back and making even more money off those shoppers by serving them ads, is presumably generating a lot of value for its shareholders.

What’s a tech lover who wants to avoid ads supposed to do?

So what’s the solution here? It’s not a great one, nor a fast one, but your best option is to speak with your wallet. Just as Apple users pay a premium for privacy (while Google users arguably are the product), there’s room in the market for companies who make firm commitments to keeping their smart tech limited and functional, and not veer off into abusing its place in our homes as an advertising platform. The problem is actually waiting for good options like that to arrive. I’d count on them being even pricier than Samsung’s already lavish models, but for premium brands like Miele, I think they’d easily find a space in the companies lineups.

I’m hesitant to even mention the other option, as janky as it is, but when the problem stems from a screen you don’t control — just use one that you that you do. Tablets magnetically attach to a fridge in seconds, and paired with the right software — maybe even a custom ROM if you want extra control over the experience — you can get a lot of the same sort of home hub and media controls you’d enjoy on a Samsung smart fridge. I can’t help you with that swanky in-fridge camera, but one thing at a time.

Maybe the biggest problem is that I’m not sure we’re even to a point yet where manufacturers are interested in making hard promises against ads. I really hope that the outcry surrounding these moves by Samsung inspires other companies to fill that gap in the market. Critically, we need to look for brands that are willing to take a stand.

Earlier this year, The Verge was talking to Samsung’s head of R&D for Digital Appliances, and he told the site his company had “no plans regarding the inclusion of advertisements on AI Home screens,” and that “any future policies will be guided first and foremost by what best serves our customers’ needs.”

No plans to do something is very different from firm plans to not do something. And if you care very much about having a home full of smart, screen-laden tech that’s not constantly trying to make money off you, you’ll want to find a company that’s actually making that kind of commitment.