4 ms·

I see nothing wrong with this. In fact, I’d love for a company to give me a free car with ads on and/or in it for me to use during road trips.

majormajor 3y ago
I'd probably take free ad-sponsored taxis but I'd definitely not want to let a company pay me to put a camera in my home.
JohnFen 3y ago
> I see nothing wrong with this. Aside from all the data collection, anyway.
- NickC25 3y ago
  If you're willing to put that aside, it's great. Hopefully this is the death knell for TVs that cost over a grand yet come with bloated adware and other bullshit that you can't uninstall. If I want ads on my TV, you'd best be sure I'd like to be paid for viewing those ads. Fuck paying for the privileged of be advertised to.
  - vkou 3y ago
    > Fuck paying for the privileged of be advertised to. You've described TV in a nutshell.
    - hammyhavoc 3y ago
      TV previously generally didn't watch you. "If you stare into the void, the void stares back."
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    Sure, if you're willing to ignore the downside of anything, then that thing is great. Personally, this is no more attractive than any other "smart" TV -- which is to say it's a nonstarter -- but I have no doubt that there are enough people who don't mind it that they might be able to make a business catering to them.
- endisneigh 3y ago
  Data collection is not inherently wrong. As long as there is consent I will willing take the benefits in my hypothetical situation. Consider the alternative - we are literally discussing an ad now, and received nothing. Anyone who clicked the link has likely had some data taken about them.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    > As long as there is consent True, yes, as long as it's actually informed consent (which is incredibly rare in surveillance marketing). I was just expressing that it rates extremely high on my creepiness scale, not that there was an ethical problem with it.
gvedem 3y ago
the thing wrong with this is that there's already too much shit in this world, and advertisers paying you to put shit in your living room is just going to result in a bunch of extra shit going in landfills.
tyingq 3y ago
At scale, though, it just pushes poorer people into accepting it, since it frees up cash for other uses. So it turns into a propaganda and monitoring device that mostly targets a pretty specific group.
- londons_explore 3y ago
  And those poorer people aren't very valuable to advertisers, since they have far less money to spend on frivolous extras, so it's hard to run 'free stuff' services like this.
  - idopmstuff 3y ago
    This is the real issue with it - the people who opt in are almost certainly the least valuable from an advertisers' perspective. I would definitely wonder what kind of assumptions they built into their model about how much ad revenue folks would generate when deciding whether this was a viable business model. I wouldn't be shocked if they just used an average, ignoring the fact that this group is likely to be below average, and that renders the whole business infeasible.
    - rg111 3y ago
      I don't see this as an issue. Sure, there are expensive stuff that get advertised which poor people are shy to spend money on. But there are lots of stuff that poor people do buy. Like toothpaste, mobile phones, shoes, clothes, dishwashers, deodrant, soft drinks. Although these stuff are cheap, they are billion dollar industries. And manikng a lot of people switch from one toothpaste to another will make a company a lot of money.
      - SturgeonsLaw 3y ago
        The thing about low income earners is that they spend pretty much 100% of the money they make, and there are a lot of them
        3y ago

majormajor 3y ago

I'd probably take free ad-sponsored taxis but I'd definitely not want to let a company pay me to put a camera in my home.

JohnFen 3y ago

> I see nothing wrong with this. Aside from all the data collection, anyway.

NickC25 3y ago
If you're willing to put that aside, it's great. Hopefully this is the death knell for TVs that cost over a grand yet come with bloated adware and other bullshit that you can't uninstall. If I want ads on my TV, you'd best be sure I'd like to be paid for viewing those ads. Fuck paying for the privileged of be advertised to.
- vkou 3y ago
  > Fuck paying for the privileged of be advertised to. You've described TV in a nutshell.
  - hammyhavoc 3y ago
    TV previously generally didn't watch you. "If you stare into the void, the void stares back."
- JohnFen 3y ago
  Sure, if you're willing to ignore the downside of anything, then that thing is great. Personally, this is no more attractive than any other "smart" TV -- which is to say it's a nonstarter -- but I have no doubt that there are enough people who don't mind it that they might be able to make a business catering to them.
endisneigh 3y ago
Data collection is not inherently wrong. As long as there is consent I will willing take the benefits in my hypothetical situation. Consider the alternative - we are literally discussing an ad now, and received nothing. Anyone who clicked the link has likely had some data taken about them.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  > As long as there is consent True, yes, as long as it's actually informed consent (which is incredibly rare in surveillance marketing). I was just expressing that it rates extremely high on my creepiness scale, not that there was an ethical problem with it.

gvedem 3y ago

the thing wrong with this is that there's already too much shit in this world, and advertisers paying you to put shit in your living room is just going to result in a bunch of extra shit going in landfills.

tyingq 3y ago

At scale, though, it just pushes poorer people into accepting it, since it frees up cash for other uses. So it turns into a propaganda and monitoring device that mostly targets a pretty specific group.

londons_explore 3y ago
And those poorer people aren't very valuable to advertisers, since they have far less money to spend on frivolous extras, so it's hard to run 'free stuff' services like this.
- idopmstuff 3y ago
  This is the real issue with it - the people who opt in are almost certainly the least valuable from an advertisers' perspective. I would definitely wonder what kind of assumptions they built into their model about how much ad revenue folks would generate when deciding whether this was a viable business model. I wouldn't be shocked if they just used an average, ignoring the fact that this group is likely to be below average, and that renders the whole business infeasible.
  - rg111 3y ago
    I don't see this as an issue. Sure, there are expensive stuff that get advertised which poor people are shy to spend money on. But there are lots of stuff that poor people do buy. Like toothpaste, mobile phones, shoes, clothes, dishwashers, deodrant, soft drinks. Although these stuff are cheap, they are billion dollar industries. And manikng a lot of people switch from one toothpaste to another will make a company a lot of money.
    - SturgeonsLaw 3y ago
      The thing about low income earners is that they spend pretty much 100% of the money they make, and there are a lot of them
      - 3y ago