There are people modifying their router so that ads stop appearing on their refrigerator

A man had to install an ad blocker directly on his router to stop his $1,400 refrigerator from showing ads. They tell it in the Wall Street Journal and, although it sounds absurd, it is just one of the experiences of those affected by the questionable decision that Samsung made a few months ago.

What has happened? Samsung Family Hub refrigerators (those with a screen built into the door) began showing ads in September last year. Samsung admitted it, confirming that it was a pilot program for some users in the United States. Six months later, the ads are still appearing, some showing Samsung consumables like water filters, but others are third-party ads and in some cases they are full screen. Samsung says that the latter appear when the browser is opened and that it cannot control them.

The problem of the official solution. Samsung allows you to remove ads from its refrigerators, but be careful because there is a catch. The advertising is integrated into a widget that also displays news, weather and calendar. To remove them, you have to delete the entire widget and there are users who do not want to lose it.

The unofficial solution. Brian Bosworth is one of those affected by this decision, but he refused to give up the widget because he found it very useful, so he took the long route: he logged into his router, installed ad-blocking software, and made sure his refrigerator was included in the filter. Result: You keep the widget and don’t see ads.

Discomfort. There are owners who feel directly deceived by this situation. They paid $1,400 for a premium appliance and now it has been turned into an advertising panel, all without their prior consent. One of them wants to return the refrigerator and has said that he will not Buy any Samsung device again, which leads one to wonder if Samsung has correctly calculated the benefit of this decision.

Making things worse. Cases like this are one more example of the drift that the internet and digital services are taking. This is what was coined as ‘enshittification’, which translated would be something like shittification. It is a deliberate degradation of products and services that responds to an economic objective. Advertising is one of the forms of this degradation and we have seen it flood all types of services such as Netflix, YouTube, Prime Video, Instagram and even applications to control home cameras. We didn’t expect to see it also in refrigerators, but that’s the way things are.

Image | WorldOfSoftware

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