Roku is exploring ways to show consumers ads on its TVs even when they are not using its streaming platform: The company has been looking into injecting ads into the video feeds of third-party devices connected to its TVs, according to a recent patent filing.
This way, when an owner of a Roku TV takes a short break from playing a game on their Xbox, or streaming something on an Apple TV device connected to the TV set, Roku would use that break to show ads. Roku engineers have even explored ways to figure out what the consumer is doing with their TV-connected device in order to display relevant advertising.
Imagine being the guy working on this and how much you hate yourself anytime somebody asks you what you are working on.
Even worse: Imagine being the guy working on this and being proud of yourself.
I think the former situation is worse for the person working on it.
Unfortunately, I bet these guys don’t care. I used to work at a company you might have products from and I would constantly hear “Hey, we’re a business” as an excuse to degrade the user experience. :(
I remember having an argument with my teacher in college about this. He asked us what we would do if we were asked to code something that could be used for things you personally don’t agree with such as the government using tools to “help” but also remove peoples privacy. Or corporations being able to show you more ads. I told him i would refuse. And he said that it would be my job though and sometimes you have to do things you don’t like. So i told him i would quit. And for some reason he could not really comprehend that and we got into an argument.
You were talking to a teacher who probably couldn’t afford to pay rent if he ever quit his job.
To be fair, most people I know don’t have the financial flexibility to quit their job if they’re asked by their boss to do something objectionable
We had to listen this C-level guy give a speech how good the last couple of years have been. We’ve increased the price of services by 50% and the amount of useless upsell shit we push to people has gone up as well. While our wages are still the same and people are getting laid off constantly. But I need food and shit.
“Yeah, I know it’s shitty, but it pays the bills 🤷🏻♂️”
I recall watching a defcon speech given by someone who used to make malware. He opened the speech by apologizing and saying that he knows that he will burn in hell.
The shittiest of enshitifications.
We need an anti-awards show for shit like this.
I like that. If there was a site that did like The Razzies for movies but for technology enshitification, I would definitely watch, and probably follow a blog if it was done well
Youre in luck!
The plungies. Winners receive golden plungers
Plungers wrapped in cheap tinfoil, don’t want to give them anything they can melt down and sell
Roku has always been a shitty company that wants to monetize everything. People are finally waking up. How many of us have a Roku remote that advertises a useless or bankrupt streaming service?
I know I’m old, but I miss having numbers on my remote.
Now I have a “sling” and a “crackle” button. 🙁
Yeah, I do miss being able to quickly type a code to jump to a known broadcaster. Opening up a menu is slower than jumping direct to said thing.
The Roku buttons solves that a little bit, but there is only 4, you can’t change them, and they prioritize featuring whoever pays up.
"People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you.
You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity.
Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.
You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs."
– Banksy
Man… My personal list of banned companies not to buy from is getting scary long.
At this point just start using a white list.
I have a whitelist, not a blacklist.
You wanna DM me that list? And some decent alternatives would be nice too :)
That’s a hypothetical list in my head :P
As for alternarives, I use so many “alternative”/FOSS things daily that compiling one list would just be a waste of time at this point.
Lmao rip.
Amazon seems the hardest to get away from. The shipping is so fast compared to everything else, and prices are usually good.
I’m sure someone has made a list of all of the popular services and alternatives
How the fuck can an economy that’s almost nothing but advertisements sustain itself for any period of time? It feels like forcing more and more ads is the only thing anybody does for money anymore.
Brought to you by Carl’s Jr.
It’s got electrolytes!
Now I understand everyone’s shit’s emotional right now. But I’ve got a 3 point plan that’s going to fix EVERYTHING. …
Big economy, long time to fall. See example: rome or whatever.
They’re not even going to profit so much off the ads as they will having a new way to distribute them. Even then its, “line go up this quarter”, not “what if sales go down due to this?”. They’ll license it out to every offer company who needs it for line go up.
Wait until someone invents a bot/AI script that watches ads for you. Then the whole “ads everywhere” will either implode or it’ll trigger a war between AI ad makers and AI ad watchers
Either way, it’ll be entertaining.
I don’t think AI does what you think it does
They already have that it’s called click fraud or automated ad clicking, mostly though it’s websites that earned money from advertisers who engage in this, as a sleazy way of making more money.
Though if you want to partake in it there are ad blocking extensions that also do it. It’s not perfect but it is quite damaging to the advertising industry.
I’ve been using AdNauseam for several years already!
Interested in a 4 hour Adam Curtis documentary?
Don’t buy Roku TVs. Got it.
If Roku actually does this I would definitely never use them again. Completely asinine behavior. Especially because most people aren’t even using stand alone boxes with their smart TVs.
I would get rid of my old Roku that I’m sure is too old for this tech and urge everyone I know to never buy anything Roku, and if they did, I would lambast them every opportunity I could.
Our tv turned out to be a roku tv. When we bought it this wasn’t advertised well. Which feels on brand right now.
I don’t know. If done well this could be a much better option than pausing whatever you’re watching to show an ad.
If youtube showed ads on the corner of the screen while you’re browsing around searching for something to watch, it would be a much better platform than what it is today and it would probably make more money too. If Netflix did this they would triple their revenue.
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you’ve described youtube in 2008 and it was a much better platform.
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the issue isn’t what time to show ads, or where. It’s the furthering invasion of marketing into private spaces and lack of apparent concern for end-user consent. There are security concerns when devices can hijack eachother. This technology is likely to rely on some means of detecting idle time, like comparing consecutive frames as the article states, so you try reading a long text on screen in an RPG, and then you’re local kroger brand ad plays.
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The problem with this philosophy is that it’s basically how ads started on the internet and now we’re here.
Oh it’s just a small, non-intrusive side bar ad, thats okay… oh it’s just ads on both sides… oh it’s just an additional ad on top and on the bottom… oh it’s just an easily dismissed pop up ad… oh it’s just a short video to watch before I’m allowed to see the site… repeat ad nauseam (no pun intended)
Yep, just like autoplay video was common early on, then bad and now it’s common again starting with ads.
Late Stage Capitalism: Using a microscopic laser, we are able to burn our advertiser logos directly into our customer’s retinas, so they will see them even as they sleep.
Shareholders: 👏 👏 👏
our customers’* retinas
yarr harr fiddle dee dee, do what you want 'cause a pirate is free!
Sorry, I love that song. What are we talking about?
This sounds like it could display ads over your pirated content.
Only if you’re the kind of absolute dolt to let your television connect to the internet
the source matters…If you were to be a bad person and wait for the blu ray rips it wouldn’t have any ads in it.
Not that I would ever pirate anything…that would be immoral to steal from a giant corporation who’s executives each made millions of dollars while my previous comment has been posted
The TV itself is overlaying ads onto content supplied via HDMI. This includes BluRay players and Nvidia Shields.
I don’t think there was anything mentioning content detection of BluRays to stop playing the ads
oh…in that case you’ll need to find someone who knows how to work with the OS of that TV, or just disconnect the TV from the internet and use a separate device through an HDMI.
It seems like so long that Roku was not a horrible company. Simple little box for a good price with a small static ad on the home screen to make money.
Seems like a lifetime ago.
I mean, there was always this bullshit.
And those have taken over all the damn tv remotes. I designed and 3D printed a replacement faceplate for my Samsung tv’s remote that hides them, out of retaliation (they were in a spot where I accidentally hit the netflix button when trying to pause what I was watching, which was annoying af).
My parent’s 10 year old Sharp TV has a Netflix button on the remote. That’s how long this has been going on.
Yeah, just saying Roku is has been the worst offender of this. Other manufacturers restricted these promotional buttons to streaming services that have large user bases. Roku sells those buttons to anyone who pays enough, and their remotes famously feature services that people don’t care about.
That little box even got a recent update that lets you ban certain ads by hitting *.
Is this why they made people waive their right to sue them?
Yeah… Fuck Roku.
No, no. The waiver was because they lost millions of people personal data to hackers and scammers. Entirely different fuckup.
A piece of history
This is gross. I cut my cable because of ads. Have about 3 types of adblockers on my computer to stop them. This hyper marketing is why so many have turned away from traditional entertainment to begin with.
I am more than the ability to spend money and it’s goddamn time everyone say this and boycott companies that do shady garbage like this
I have ubo, what are your other kinds of ad blocking? I always want to block as many ads as possible
I suspect they might be talking about a DNS based ad blocking solution. Like Pi-Hole or AdGaurd DNS.
They work by blocking DNS requests made by ads so the content can never be accessed. They’re theoretically more powerful than browser extensions as they have the opportunity to block ads anywhere.
While we have one (Pi-hole) I can’t use it right now because some of my roommate’s work software won’t run with it and we haven’t had time to troubleshoot. So I have a bunch of extensions in my browser on my pc
You could configure the DNS only on devices that don’t have issues with it rather than the network as a whole?
That, and you can also decide what (if anything) gets blocked on a per MAC/IP/FQDN basis, so you can explicitly allow ads for specific devices.
Adblock plus, flashblock, ublock, and one that stops videos from autoplaying but i can’t remember it’s name right now.
My roommate has raspberry pi but it messes with his’s wife’s work software so we never have it active. Which is a shame because i’d rather use that.
Oh, and Brave browser on my phone. It’s lovely.
The Pihole has groups that you can separate devices with and remove blocks for those devices.
So you can have your stuff fully blocked and then her device can have the problematic blocks removed.
so glad i never bought into roku
and i never fucking will
good riddance.
I’m done with Roku. I have one in every room, but they all need to go.
No wonder why Walmart bought their asses
