5 ms·

This „we own the glass“ idea is completely insane. How does an industry degenerate to the point where they consider acceptable to base their business model on o

by dgellow 1mo ago

This „we own the glass“ idea is completely insane. How does an industry degenerate to the point where they consider acceptable to base their business model on owning part of the product they sell you?

mc32 1mo ago
Marketing executives thinking “out of the box” is how. Ethics cannot contain them inside. They have breached the perimeter and now trample everyone for MRR.
newsclues 1mo ago
Sony and Microsoft fought to own the living room in console wars
oh_my_goodness 1mo ago
If you don't have laws, or don't enforce them, people will do whatever they want. I can remember when this simple point was obvious to almost everyone.
- dathinab 1mo ago
  yep one of the first rules of any market should be you sell a product -> you are responsible about the product with a ".. -> you must be honest about the product (/what the products does, provides, etc.)" to see how absurdly not followed this common sense(^1) is in the us look at supplements 1. provider are not hold responsible, non small parts of sold supplements are harmful in one way or another. Even cases like supplements advertised for pregnant woman with highly dangerous components for pregnant woman existed, no major change followed. 2. high amounts (AFIK 80% or so) of supplements sold in the US are severely dishonest and don't quite contain what is advertised. And this isn't just about it technically containing the supplements, but in a form the body can't absurd. But it goes so bad that "it's just sugar pills" is more on the harmless side... (and even that is dangerous given that many people take supplements for fixing health issues caused by to little of what the supplement). not only has the US not fixed it when it started going out of hand, they went explicitly out of their way to not fix it. (^1): (Common sense for anyone looking a bit into market dynamics/consumer protection etc.)
  - XenophileJKO 1mo ago
    I don't think the supplement information you quoted is correct. There are issues, but I don't think it is that prevalent. I subscribe to consumerlab.com, they do regular testing.
    - neltnerb 1mo ago
      (1) is certainly correct, they're poorly understood when it comes to interactions and they almost never have much clinical evidence for claims (thus they say "support"). There are also heavy metal contaminants in all sorts of things, certainly stuff bad for babies. Just to make clear that while (2) is at least an exaggeration unless you really stretch the issues with GRAS components not being adequately safety tested, it's certainly true that evidence of benefit is thin. Personally I'd love to see the FDA actually regulate supplements, including actually testing additives for safety rather than falling back on GRAS sketchiness. But we can't even test food for parasites and bacteria so I guess it falls to the consumer to somehow get enough information to make an informed decision.
- ihsw 1mo ago
  [dead]
- drdaeman 1mo ago
  We didn’t have laws but every TV at the dawn of the era came with full schematics and documentation. That said, I’m not arguing that we don’t need laws today - we do, or at least I have no other idea how to do a course correction from where we are. Preferably wide-range ones that alter the whole consumer-producer relationships. But the key thing is not the laws, it’s the attitude (individual and corporate) towards others. Can’t legislate that, I’m afraid.
  - deleted 29d ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 29d ago
    [deleted]
  - mitxela 28d ago
    There's probably something to do with volume and mfg capacity. The TV companies were doing everything they could and still not meeting the demand for TVs, so they might as well make them repairable. Signals quality. But now we have much more ability to make TVs than demand for TVs, and making them not repairable stimulates demand.
    - hyperman1 28d ago
      I'd say: Shortages after the world wars, combined with the teething problems of new technology made customers acutely aware and capable of repairability. That lesson is now forgotten. It also wasn't universally true. E.g. the story of Mad Munz creating TVs that worked only for 90% of the customers (who had good enough reception and needed less signal cleanup). His idea was to capture 90% of the market with a cheaper product, while shafting 10% of the consumers and shamelessly send them to other vendors when they reported their troubles and he already had their money. https://www.autodesk.com/products/fusion-360/blog/madman-muntz/ https://www.autodesk.com/products/fusion-360/blog/madman-mun...
- Yizahi 29d ago
  I would rewrite it as follows: " If a country had some good and working components a few years or centuries ago, it doesn't mean that it is still working fine today". E.g. If a country had a working legislative branch 50 years ago and it was one of the best at that time, it doesn't mean it is good or even working at all today, despite having the same name. I'm implying that parliaments in multiple developed countries are rapidly devolving and ceding their powers and/or work to the unelected or unrelated officials.
- MetroWind 28d ago
  We do have laws. They are sided with the corporations.
dreamcompiler 1mo ago
Companies are amoral. If killing people boosted their share price they would issue every employee a machine gun in a heartbeat. The only reason this doesn't happen is it's illegal.
- hydrogen7800 29d ago
  I tend to agree with this in general, especially lately, but I think there is an Overton window of depravity that businesses won't exceed the bounds of unless the industry norms shift it. I think the drift has a lot (or maybe everything) to do with the regulatory environment.
amelius 1mo ago
If you do it, you have to be more subtle about it. See Apple.
cogman10 1mo ago
Lawmakers should have outlawed EULAs the moment they first showed up in software. The idea that someone could sell you a product which is completely broken until you sign away all your rights on a contract you don't get to see before the purchase is the most anti-consumer thing ever invented. Nothing worked like that before software came along. The fact that it's now infecting other non-software consumer products is a reason why congress should kill this with fire. Companies are putting screens onto products specifically so they can force an EULA on customers.
marginalia_nu 1mo ago
Big pivotal moment is probably the DMCA and the DRM it's enabled, it's really eroded the concept of ownership in both software and hardware (via firmware), to the point where we've completely lost all control over the devices we buy. These days devices do what we ask when it benefits their real owners, and refuse to do what we ask of them when it doesn't. It wasn't an overnight thing, but the temperature in the pot has been increasing for well over a two decades and it's getting more than a bit sweaty. It's not like Doctorow, the EFF, and a bunch of others didn't warn us. They told us this would happen. Like exactly this.
- gustavus 1mo ago
  I brought this up all the time I argued with co-workers I advocated for Open Source because I knew where this was headed and every time it played out the exact way this comic did. Now I just post a link to this comic in discussion about these kind of things. https://xkcd.com/743/ https://xkcd.com/743/
  - cwillu 1mo ago
    I hate that 2010 is 16 years ago
  - applfanboysbgon 1mo ago
    Open source caused this, as much as anything else did. When you demand that software is free, you kill the market for paid software, leaving only enshittified software to fill the void. This has the dual effect of being worse for both developers and consumers: significantly fewer developers can make a living outside of working for $EvilEnterprise, which have an easier time centralizing and monopolizing the market, and consumers are paying the developers working at $EvilEnterprise with their data and lack of ownership. This is the business model of free software. There was never going to be a world where all software developers worked for free as a hobby, never received compensation, and all software was truly free.
    - smrq 1mo ago
      I don't know how you can simultaneously believe that open source is prevalent enough to kill paid software but also non-existent enough that it doesn't itself fill the void it supposedly created.
charcircuit 1mo ago
How is it insane. Owning distribution channels has been valuable since the beginning of commerce. It's no different than a newspaper company saying they own the paper so they have the power to print ads in it.
- sixothree 29d ago
  You really aren't paying attention. They weren't talking about distribution channels. They were talking about capturing user data - "we know who's in the LG household. We know which devices are there. We know what you're exposed to on TV and we know how to extend that reach into mobile."
  - charcircuit 29d ago
    Having a device that can distribute ads to consumers is a distribution channel. Measuring ad impressions is a core part of ad distribution.
    - Shadowmist 29d ago
      You still aren’t paying attention. They capture data about people in (and nearby) the household that aren’t even using the product.
simmonmt 1mo ago
It's not entirely the fault of the industry. Consumer preferences are part of this equation too. https://www.streamtvinsider.com/advertising/roku-vizio-lean-ctv-advertising-device-sales-margins-shrink https://www.streamtvinsider.com/advertising/roku-vizio-lean-... If consumers are unwilling to shell out for a TV priced high enough that the manufacturer doesn't need to do things like this to earn a (decent) profit, then what we've got is what you get. You could certainly argue that the industry should've held the line, but that ignores human nature. One "innovative" manufacturer was always going to break ranks then the rest would follow, especially since the typical consumer appears (judging by the lack of non smart TV's for sale at consumer prices) to prefer lower prices to lack of tracking features. I think people very much like being able to buy a 65" tv for USD399. If you want to mandate the sales of TVs that don't track, get a law passed. I suspect it'd be deeply unpopular once the resulting price rises were known.
- jagged-chisel 1mo ago
  > If consumers are unwilling to shell out for a TV priced high enough that the manufacturer doesn't need to do things like this to earn a (decent) profit, ... The problem is, even if the device is priced at cost plus a reasonable margin, they can make more margin by selling data that they acquire by spying. No matter the margin on the sale, there's still more money to make by selling that data. There is no upper limit that magically prevents the manufacturer from looking for other avenues to increase profit. "Premium" device priced 3x the "reasonable" price? Still more money to be made selling data. Now, factor in the race to the bottom on selling price, and those data sales just look that much more enticing.
  - dd8601fn 29d ago
    I get what you’re saying but the market had a choice on this, and it chose. They wanted the “smart” tvs. Overwhelmingly. “We” chose this hellscape when we had the opportunity to say no. So I think the person you’re replying to is kinda right. We didn’t get forced into this so much as everyone collectively said, “Yeah, that’s what I want.”
    - 28d ago
fzeroracer 1mo ago
I'm not sure how anyone didn't see this coming. Literally every business is working towards a solution where consumers own nothing and they own everything. Games, music, movies. They want to sell you subscriptions to use shit like your car or your fridge. They want to double dip on that by making you not only pay for the ability to use the stuff you bought, but also so that they can sell everything you do on it to advertisers. This is even especially true with all the shit people feed LLMs daily for work or personal purposes. This is the end state of an unregulated capitalist market without consumer protections.
deleted 1mo ago
[deleted]
karim79 29d ago
Great question. Reminds me of social networks, but this is in the physical space. It's pretty hard to wrap my head around it.
penguin_booze 29d ago
> How does an industry degenerate to the point It's called stage-4 capitalism: profit by any and all means.
- dd8601fn 29d ago
  The actual (and more sinister) answer is that consumers chose it, overwhelmingly, over years. Alternatives existed. People thought they were getting more for their money with “smart” tvs, and bought those. It was fucking dumb, and nearly everyone participated. Sony is out there with no ad/data platform to speak of, I believe? And projectors, I suppose. But there are almost no clean alternatives in living room appropriate panels. Even monitors are starting to go the way TVs did.
lambdaone 29d ago
"Owning the glass" is a euphemistic way of saying "owning the viewers".
Frieren 28d ago
> How does an industry degenerate to the point where they consider acceptable to base their business model on owning part of the product they sell you? Neoliberalism. The only thing that keeps companies in good behaviour are strong regulations and harsh penalties (prison time) for perpetrators. Remove that and corporations will become feudal systems to pay tribute to.

by dgellow 1mo ago

mc32 1mo ago

Marketing executives thinking “out of the box” is how. Ethics cannot contain them inside. They have breached the perimeter and now trample everyone for MRR.

newsclues 1mo ago

Sony and Microsoft fought to own the living room in console wars

oh_my_goodness 1mo ago

If you don't have laws, or don't enforce them, people will do whatever they want. I can remember when this simple point was obvious to almost everyone.

dathinab 1mo ago
yep one of the first rules of any market should be you sell a product -> you are responsible about the product with a ".. -> you must be honest about the product (/what the products does, provides, etc.)" to see how absurdly not followed this common sense(^1) is in the us look at supplements 1. provider are not hold responsible, non small parts of sold supplements are harmful in one way or another. Even cases like supplements advertised for pregnant woman with highly dangerous components for pregnant woman existed, no major change followed. 2. high amounts (AFIK 80% or so) of supplements sold in the US are severely dishonest and don't quite contain what is advertised. And this isn't just about it technically containing the supplements, but in a form the body can't absurd. But it goes so bad that "it's just sugar pills" is more on the harmless side... (and even that is dangerous given that many people take supplements for fixing health issues caused by to little of what the supplement). not only has the US not fixed it when it started going out of hand, they went explicitly out of their way to not fix it. (^1): (Common sense for anyone looking a bit into market dynamics/consumer protection etc.)
- XenophileJKO 1mo ago
  I don't think the supplement information you quoted is correct. There are issues, but I don't think it is that prevalent. I subscribe to consumerlab.com, they do regular testing.
  - neltnerb 1mo ago
    (1) is certainly correct, they're poorly understood when it comes to interactions and they almost never have much clinical evidence for claims (thus they say "support"). There are also heavy metal contaminants in all sorts of things, certainly stuff bad for babies. Just to make clear that while (2) is at least an exaggeration unless you really stretch the issues with GRAS components not being adequately safety tested, it's certainly true that evidence of benefit is thin. Personally I'd love to see the FDA actually regulate supplements, including actually testing additives for safety rather than falling back on GRAS sketchiness. But we can't even test food for parasites and bacteria so I guess it falls to the consumer to somehow get enough information to make an informed decision.
ihsw 1mo ago
[dead]
drdaeman 1mo ago
We didn’t have laws but every TV at the dawn of the era came with full schematics and documentation. That said, I’m not arguing that we don’t need laws today - we do, or at least I have no other idea how to do a course correction from where we are. Preferably wide-range ones that alter the whole consumer-producer relationships. But the key thing is not the laws, it’s the attitude (individual and corporate) towards others. Can’t legislate that, I’m afraid.
- deleted 29d ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 29d ago
  [deleted]
- mitxela 28d ago
  There's probably something to do with volume and mfg capacity. The TV companies were doing everything they could and still not meeting the demand for TVs, so they might as well make them repairable. Signals quality. But now we have much more ability to make TVs than demand for TVs, and making them not repairable stimulates demand.
  - hyperman1 28d ago
    I'd say: Shortages after the world wars, combined with the teething problems of new technology made customers acutely aware and capable of repairability. That lesson is now forgotten. It also wasn't universally true. E.g. the story of Mad Munz creating TVs that worked only for 90% of the customers (who had good enough reception and needed less signal cleanup). His idea was to capture 90% of the market with a cheaper product, while shafting 10% of the consumers and shamelessly send them to other vendors when they reported their troubles and he already had their money. https://www.autodesk.com/products/fusion-360/blog/madman-muntz/ https://www.autodesk.com/products/fusion-360/blog/madman-mun...
Yizahi 29d ago
I would rewrite it as follows: " If a country had some good and working components a few years or centuries ago, it doesn't mean that it is still working fine today". E.g. If a country had a working legislative branch 50 years ago and it was one of the best at that time, it doesn't mean it is good or even working at all today, despite having the same name. I'm implying that parliaments in multiple developed countries are rapidly devolving and ceding their powers and/or work to the unelected or unrelated officials.
MetroWind 28d ago
We do have laws. They are sided with the corporations.

dreamcompiler 1mo ago

Companies are amoral. If killing people boosted their share price they would issue every employee a machine gun in a heartbeat. The only reason this doesn't happen is it's illegal.

hydrogen7800 29d ago
I tend to agree with this in general, especially lately, but I think there is an Overton window of depravity that businesses won't exceed the bounds of unless the industry norms shift it. I think the drift has a lot (or maybe everything) to do with the regulatory environment.

amelius 1mo ago

If you do it, you have to be more subtle about it. See Apple.

cogman10 1mo ago

Lawmakers should have outlawed EULAs the moment they first showed up in software. The idea that someone could sell you a product which is completely broken until you sign away all your rights on a contract you don't get to see before the purchase is the most anti-consumer thing ever invented. Nothing worked like that before software came along. The fact that it's now infecting other non-software consumer products is a reason why congress should kill this with fire. Companies are putting screens onto products specifically so they can force an EULA on customers.

marginalia_nu 1mo ago

Big pivotal moment is probably the DMCA and the DRM it's enabled, it's really eroded the concept of ownership in both software and hardware (via firmware), to the point where we've completely lost all control over the devices we buy. These days devices do what we ask when it benefits their real owners, and refuse to do what we ask of them when it doesn't. It wasn't an overnight thing, but the temperature in the pot has been increasing for well over a two decades and it's getting more than a bit sweaty. It's not like Doctorow, the EFF, and a bunch of others didn't warn us. They told us this would happen. Like exactly this.

gustavus 1mo ago
I brought this up all the time I argued with co-workers I advocated for Open Source because I knew where this was headed and every time it played out the exact way this comic did. Now I just post a link to this comic in discussion about these kind of things. https://xkcd.com/743/ https://xkcd.com/743/
- cwillu 1mo ago
  I hate that 2010 is 16 years ago
- applfanboysbgon 1mo ago
  Open source caused this, as much as anything else did. When you demand that software is free, you kill the market for paid software, leaving only enshittified software to fill the void. This has the dual effect of being worse for both developers and consumers: significantly fewer developers can make a living outside of working for $EvilEnterprise, which have an easier time centralizing and monopolizing the market, and consumers are paying the developers working at $EvilEnterprise with their data and lack of ownership. This is the business model of free software. There was never going to be a world where all software developers worked for free as a hobby, never received compensation, and all software was truly free.
  - smrq 1mo ago
    I don't know how you can simultaneously believe that open source is prevalent enough to kill paid software but also non-existent enough that it doesn't itself fill the void it supposedly created.

charcircuit 1mo ago

How is it insane. Owning distribution channels has been valuable since the beginning of commerce. It's no different than a newspaper company saying they own the paper so they have the power to print ads in it.

sixothree 29d ago
You really aren't paying attention. They weren't talking about distribution channels. They were talking about capturing user data - "we know who's in the LG household. We know which devices are there. We know what you're exposed to on TV and we know how to extend that reach into mobile."
- charcircuit 29d ago
  Having a device that can distribute ads to consumers is a distribution channel. Measuring ad impressions is a core part of ad distribution.
  - Shadowmist 29d ago
    You still aren’t paying attention. They capture data about people in (and nearby) the household that aren’t even using the product.

simmonmt 1mo ago

It's not entirely the fault of the industry. Consumer preferences are part of this equation too. https://www.streamtvinsider.com/advertising/roku-vizio-lean-ctv-advertising-device-sales-margins-shrink https://www.streamtvinsider.com/advertising/roku-vizio-lean-... If consumers are unwilling to shell out for a TV priced high enough that the manufacturer doesn't need to do things like this to earn a (decent) profit, then what we've got is what you get. You could certainly argue that the industry should've held the line, but that ignores human nature. One "innovative" manufacturer was always going to break ranks then the rest would follow, especially since the typical consumer appears (judging by the lack of non smart TV's for sale at consumer prices) to prefer lower prices to lack of tracking features. I think people very much like being able to buy a 65" tv for USD399. If you want to mandate the sales of TVs that don't track, get a law passed. I suspect it'd be deeply unpopular once the resulting price rises were known.

jagged-chisel 1mo ago
> If consumers are unwilling to shell out for a TV priced high enough that the manufacturer doesn't need to do things like this to earn a (decent) profit, ... The problem is, even if the device is priced at cost plus a reasonable margin, they can make more margin by selling data that they acquire by spying. No matter the margin on the sale, there's still more money to make by selling that data. There is no upper limit that magically prevents the manufacturer from looking for other avenues to increase profit. "Premium" device priced 3x the "reasonable" price? Still more money to be made selling data. Now, factor in the race to the bottom on selling price, and those data sales just look that much more enticing.
- dd8601fn 29d ago
  I get what you’re saying but the market had a choice on this, and it chose. They wanted the “smart” tvs. Overwhelmingly. “We” chose this hellscape when we had the opportunity to say no. So I think the person you’re replying to is kinda right. We didn’t get forced into this so much as everyone collectively said, “Yeah, that’s what I want.”
  - 28d ago

fzeroracer 1mo ago

I'm not sure how anyone didn't see this coming. Literally every business is working towards a solution where consumers own nothing and they own everything. Games, music, movies. They want to sell you subscriptions to use shit like your car or your fridge. They want to double dip on that by making you not only pay for the ability to use the stuff you bought, but also so that they can sell everything you do on it to advertisers. This is even especially true with all the shit people feed LLMs daily for work or personal purposes. This is the end state of an unregulated capitalist market without consumer protections.

deleted 1mo ago

[deleted]

karim79 29d ago

Great question. Reminds me of social networks, but this is in the physical space. It's pretty hard to wrap my head around it.

penguin_booze 29d ago

> How does an industry degenerate to the point It's called stage-4 capitalism: profit by any and all means.

dd8601fn 29d ago
The actual (and more sinister) answer is that consumers chose it, overwhelmingly, over years. Alternatives existed. People thought they were getting more for their money with “smart” tvs, and bought those. It was fucking dumb, and nearly everyone participated. Sony is out there with no ad/data platform to speak of, I believe? And projectors, I suppose. But there are almost no clean alternatives in living room appropriate panels. Even monitors are starting to go the way TVs did.

lambdaone 29d ago

"Owning the glass" is a euphemistic way of saying "owning the viewers".

Frieren 28d ago

> How does an industry degenerate to the point where they consider acceptable to base their business model on owning part of the product they sell you? Neoliberalism. The only thing that keeps companies in good behaviour are strong regulations and harsh penalties (prison time) for perpetrators. Remove that and corporations will become feudal systems to pay tribute to.