Samsung Pilots Making Its Smart Fridges Billboards After People Bought Them

from the are-fridges-licensed-now-too? dept

Let’s do a thought experiment together. I want you to imagine that six months ago, you bought a couch. It’s a lovely couch and you put a lot of time and energy into making sure you got the right one. For six months, you’ve sat on this couch, napped on it, sometimes even slept on it overnight. And then, one day, as you’re laying on the couch, the armrest whispers to you, “Would you like to buy a soda?”

What would you do?

Well, once I was done reciting whatever that creepy priest from The Exorcist said to get the demon-spawn out of my furniture, I’d probably call the furniture store and ask them what the fuck their problem is, because this couch is not behaving like the one I bought. And if the store then told me that it actually wasn’t my couch, but it was instead their couch and that I was just paying to use it for a while, well, I would dial up my therapist and ask for an emergency session because clearly I’ve gone kazoo.

But suddenly, if you turn the couch into a Samsung smart fridge, this all somehow is okay.

Days after someone revealed the news on social media, Samsung confirmed today that it is showing advertisements on some US customers’ smart fridges. Samsung said the ads showing on some Family Hub-series fridges are part of a pilot program, but we suspect that they may become more permanent additions to Samsung fridges and/or other types of screen-equipped smart home appliances.

In a statement sent to Ars Technica, Samsung confirmed that it is “conducting a pilot program to offer promotions and curated advertisements on certain Samsung Family Hub refrigerator models in the US market.”

Once again, we have products that many people purchased when they operated one way, only to have the manufacturer update them remotely such that they operate a different way. And, while you’ll have to forgive my presuming so, I’m confident that any poll of these customers asking them if they want their refrigerators to suddenly start annoying them with advertisements, they’d say no.

So who owns these damned things? Are we really in a place where we’re “licensing” a fridge? If not, why the hell is the seller now messing with and changing the thing I already bought? In what other walk of life, other than digital and IoT products, is this accepted by the public?

And they did this without any real notice to anyone at all.

Samsung declined to respond to specific questions sent about the pilot program, including which fridge models are affected and its response to customers who may be irked that their expensive appliance is suddenly showing ads.

Samsung hasn’t been particularly forthcoming about the program, which appears to have been publicly disclosed for the first time by a Reddit user, as spotted by SamMobile.

A surprise pilot program to change how a product operates in a way that will certainly annoy customers who already bought it.

Thank the universe this isn’t how my couch works.

Filed Under: ads, fridge ads, smart refrigerator, who wants this?

Companies: samsung