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>"Singolda tells Axios that he sees any sort of open web device, whether it being a smart refrigerator or a smart TV, one day being able to use Taboola's techno
by BitwiseFool 6y ago
>"Singolda tells Axios that he sees any sort of open web device, whether it being a smart refrigerator or a smart TV, one day being able to use Taboola's technology to power content recommendations."
Oh god no. If chumbox advertising gets integrated into IoT devices I'm getting a PiHole for my sanity.
>"While Taboola relies mostly on artificial intelligence to power content recommendations, Singolda says the company has invested in hiring over 50 full-time human moderation to ensure that every piece of content on its site is approved."
I use uBlock Origin religiously, but from what I can tell most Taboola recommendations are the same 15 or so clickbait topics repeated ad infinitum. Woman mid shout, guy holding credit card, lotus fruit, some weird berry that's supposed to cure something, skin disorder, etc.
- impendia 6y agoIt seems this is the natural endgame, every refrigerator will come with an LCD screen on the front that advertises at you. I just hope that my new fridge will continue to keep my food cold after I smash the screen with a hammer.
- thedrbrian 6y agoDon’t do that. Use it as spare parts for a new project. When the screens do come out they’ll probably run some flavour of android so it might be flashable.
- rtkwe 6y agoI've just never connected my smart tv to the wifi to avoid that fate.
- eecc 6y agoDon’t, they’ll add some routine that makes you tap on some “agree” button and shut down the whole darn thing otherwise... I have an idea: under the perverse excuse of delivering firmware updates for your own network safety!!! Hmm, the plot of Brazil becomes every day more realistic. Ah, what times were living!
- umvi 6y agoWell hopefully we can figure out ways to integrate advertising so deeply into every aspect of our lives that you can no longer escape marketing with pi holes and hammers. Imagine using a public urinal and you can watch an LCD screen while taking care of business. Filling up your car with gas? Fill your mind with ads while you do it! Imagine glasses that show augmented-reality ads based on your current location and what you are looking at, that would be incredible. Any place people rest their eyeballs should contain ads. Digital picture frames that show family photos in your home should occasionally flash ads, etc. Hopefully the National Park Service can install some satellite base stations so that hikers and campers can get the urgent advertising they need to be aware of the latest survival gear while out in nature. Basically, we need to prevent people from having quiet time and thinking - we need to come with as many ways as possible to aggressively interrupt and intrude thoughts with gentle reminders that the economy needs stimulating and that the only way to truly be happy is with more stuff.
- frakt0x90 6y agoThe urinal and gas station ones are right up the street from me and I don't visit either of those facilities anymore for that reason.
- BitwiseFool 6y agoMy corner gas station just rolled out new machines that start playing advertisements on the LCD screens as soon as the pump starts dispensing gas. It made me irrationally angry. One, that I have to deal with even more mental pollution in my daily life. And two, that the person who created this business model realized that pump-goers are quite literally a captive audience and that's the best way to force someone to watch an ad. I complained to the manager and I've never been back. Sadly, part of me knows it's just a matter of time before other gas stations gets these new machines.
- psadauskas 6y agoMost of the gas pumps with ads I’ve seen are the kind with 4 arrow buttons on either side. If you push the 2nd button down on the right side, it’ll mute the audio, and you can go back to listening to traffic and breathing fumes in peace. https://imgur.com/a/D7ZIR https://imgur.com/a/D7ZIR
- dylan604 6y agoThe hacker part of this website would investigate taking the LCD screen out, and repurposing it. We all know that DIY robot that goes to the fridge to bring you a snack will need some sort of LCD screen to act as an interface for you to choose the snack. It's not like we're going to use an iPad for that. We're too busy putting those in our cars.
- jostmey 6y agoIt will make people like us look crazy! People will walk into our homes and see smashed and covered ad-screens
- RankingMember 6y agoMy experience with modern refrigerators tells me that the fridge will likely _not_ continue to keep your food cold after the crappy display fails, whether by hammer or otherwise.
- reaperducer 6y agoIt seems this is the natural endgame, every refrigerator will come with an LCD screen on the front that advertises at you. Child's crayon drawing + magnet = problem solved.
- user22 6y agoFYI: pihole does not block taboola ads because they are not served from a separate network that can be filtered. You need to use a non-dns method of filtering them out
- manigandham 6y agoThe vast majority of these ads are rendered by JS from a third-party domain so they can be filtered out easily with DNS.
- hasperdi 6y agoOh yeah for sure you can block it using PiHole. Just add (^|\.)taboola\.com$ to your blacklist. Bonus: add (^|\.)outbrain\.com$ too while you’re at it.
- NortySpock 6y agoThanks for the reminder, just added it to my house-wide blocklist.
- mortenjorck 6y ago> If chumbox advertising gets integrated into IoT devices I'm getting a PiHole for my sanity. I tend to think of something like this as more of a “move to a cabin in the woods” scenario, but I suppose that could be a workable compromise. In all seriousness, I’m morbidly curious as to how chumbox “technology” would apply to TV show and whatever kind of “content” recommendations would go on a smart fridge. Viscerally unsettling thumbnails that have tested for maximum conversion? Perfect for the kitchen!
- alexjplant 6y agoI thought it was an obscure regionalism for a refrigerator... that definition makes far more sense grammatically.
- ChrisRR 6y agoWho the hell would want clickbait ads streamed to their fridge? This is awful idea We're inching closer to the episode of Black Mirror where everyone is forced to stare at ads all day
- m4tthumphrey 6y agoOne step closer to 15 million merits [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifteen_Million_Merits https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifteen_Million_Merits
- asiachick 6y agoJust don't buy IoT devices that have ads (or period)?
- safog 6y agoIt'll eventually become the default. Every single new fridge will have a display. And that display will have ads.
- anonAndOn 6y ago"Kids, that ugly, old refrigerator without a screen sitting in the garage is worth a lot of money and is your inheritance."
- sjg007 6y agoAftermarket in old fridge doors. Unless they put DRM in to stop the compressor from running I'm not sure how they'd prevent it.
- elliekelly 6y agoMy fridge uses DRM to check the filter. I’m sure they won’t forget the doors. And I bet they’ll be attached via some obscure proprietary screwdriver head that’s unavailable to the public.
- ogre_codes 6y agoPeople like nice clean looking kitchens. A kitchen with a display flashing crap does not fit into that. I'm sure some percentage of fridges will have displays flashing shitty adverts all day long, but there will be a large number of fridges that are just decent looking boxes with stainless, black, or white doors. With TVs I'm afraid we're screwed though. Adding a brain and wifi to a TV is super cheap now and manufacturers have already figured out how to monetize having a smart TV in your house even without advertising.
- burnte 6y agoMy Samsung TV has built in ads, which I HATE. I want a dumb TV. Apps built into TVs generally suck because to keep the BOM cost down they put in the cheapest SoC that will function, leaving the apps sluggish, jerky, and frequently cut down in features. On my previous LG TV I couldn't turn off motion smoothing on the bui8lt in video streaming apps. With the Samsung TV I just don't connect it to the network because there are ads that you cannot disable.
- ocdtrekkie 6y agoThe ad industry is prepared for this. DNS-over-HTTPS will ignore your PiHole, and lovingly bring you ads anyways. While you can turn DoH off in your browser, your IoT device will not be so configurable. And will most likely fail to work entirely if you block access to Google's DoH endpoint. DoH is an incredibly user hostile technology designed to remove your agency to control your network traffic, and by and large, the majority of tech enthusiasts have cheered for it.
- ryandrake 6y agoIt'll be an arms race. DNS-based blackholes would give way to IP-by-IP firewall rules. I remember when personal firewalls were mostly about blocking threats coming in through incoming connections. Now, I use mine more to block threats already on my network from exfiltrating through outgoing connections.
- burnte 6y ago1. DoH is a user configurable setting, it cannot be dictated by ad vendors or websites. 2. DoH fails back to standard DNS. 3. DoH is hard to filter, just like other TLS encrypted traffic. 4. DoH is a user FRIENDLY technology meant to increase user privacy and reduce DNS hijacking. 5. Don't like it? Turn it off. Only you have that power to enable or disable it.
- dredmorbius 6y agoDoH can be enforced by user-hostile devices and applications. Including Internet-of-shit infested appliances and devices. With 5G SIMS embedded and financed at rock-bottom mass-contract data-dribble rates via advertising, other revenue flow, or up-front / ongoing purchase revenue streams, WiFi LAN egress controls --- PiHole or other DNS blocklists, or IP and protocol firewalls --- simply won't be effective.
- ohazi 6y agoYou're confusing DoH in "friendly" browsers like Firefox, where you and I might deliberately turn it on to thwart ISP shenanigans. In that case, it's good that DoH is hard to filter and looks like all other TLS traffic. But the parent is correctly describing DoH as a double-edged sword. The same properties that make it good for you and me when trying to safely access domain data make it a weapon for rogue IoT devices who want to do the same. Your smart fridge could easily include software that allows it to acquire its own secure DNS info from a DoH network run by the smart fridge manufacturer. This would allow them to find the domains behind the chumbox ads that they want to show you in spite of your PiHole. Since the manufacturer would be doing this to get around a user's desired network configuration, it'll be configurable for them, not for you. You will not be the "owner" of this device.
- 650REDHAIR 6y agoI bought a Pi Zero W awhile back and it sat in my desk for like a year. While going through my desk about a month ago I decided to take 10 minutes to set it up and regret not doing it sooner! The little thing is pretty amazing. I've since moved the Pi Zero W to my travel bag paired with my travel modem and upgraded to a regular Pi at home!
- perardi 6y agoThe day my god-forsaken fridge presents me with a Taboola chumbox is the day I go full Amish and retire to a hut on my farmland in southern Illinois.