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Comment by Hansenq

1 month ago

Everyone here seems to hate on the idea of seeing ads on an appliance you purchased. I hate ads too!

But, let's consider the counterfactual. What if Samsung offered you a new fridge for free, as long as you were ok with passive ads?

I hate ads, but I'm not sure I would pass up a free fridge...those things are expensive!

(this is not even that unrealistic. Let's say you have a household of 3 and a fridge lasts 10 years. Meta makes about $200 per year per user solely from showing ads; that's $6000 over 10 years. If Samsung got as good as Meta is (which they likely won't), 6k is more than enough to cover the cost of giving a fridge away for free)

Are they going to lock the fridge for 30 seconds each time you want to open it so that they make sure you finish watching the ad?

> What if Samsung offered you a new fridge for free, as long as you were ok with passive ads?

I'd still buy a normal fridge from a different vendor. There's absolutely no reason why fridge needs a display screen nor any "smart" features. And no ad deal would convince me because next thing that would come after this would be the obvious "watch ads to unlock the fridge".

Household appliances are meant to work for years - sure, now lifespan is way shorter than used to be but these aren't phones we're replacing every 3 years or so. The fridge we once had lasted 25 up until cooling unit failed and there was no way to replace it or fix.

I hope you rolled some really low bait here because if you really think like that then... I sincerely feel sorry for you.