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.
Is there an anti-ad community on Lemmy? Or another non-Lemmy place to work through blocking/avoiding this bullshit? I’m so fed up with the advertisement industry. I don’t want ads on my devices. I don’t want ads in my operating systems. I don’t want ads in my content. I don’t want ads in the sky. I don’t want ads in the ocean. I don’t want to be forced to see or hear ads while putting gas in my car.
I really can’t emphasize how much I am willing to go through to rid my life completely of advertisements.
I can’t understand why anyone’s money entitles them to put their mental parasites into my attention space. They aren’t paying me, and I wouldn’t take their money no matter how much they were offering. For fuck’s sake, I don’t even want to experience the offer of money for ad attention.
They Live
If the gas pumps have those unlabeled buttons around a screen, try pressing all of em. The pumps around here (nebraska) will mute the audio when you press one of the buttons, it just isn’t labeled. I’ve taken to writing “mute” on the magic-button with a sharpie whenever I pump my gas.
One of my local gas stations had that to where it was so loud you can hear them in the car. A few weeks after they installed them, someone came by with a hand drill and drilled out all of the speakers. Not sure what happened to that hero but we need more people like them.
While I never condone audio speaker violence, I do want to cheer/salute the activism of the person who did the work.
I’ve tried pressing every button at every pump I’ve used in my area and this trick doesn’t work. I want to epoxy the speakers and screen and glitter-bomb the entire thing.
I won’t. But I want to.
Sometimes it’s multiple presses. Around here for example I find that at my local Shell station it’s the second button down on the right side, two or three times.
At the 76 here its also the second down from the right but only needs a single press.
I was trying to figure out how to shut the one at my local grocery store up and discovered that you can get into the administrative menu if you push two buttons at the same time.
You should install Doom on it.
If there’s an exposed speaker hole, a long enough push pin or coat hangar wire can probably ruin the cone and coil.
I really can’t afford to commit a crime by damaging the pumps, but if I found a way to temporarily disable them I’d be all for it.
I reckon you could kill it with a pin in a casual enough way, maybe make it look like you’re just putting a hand there to lean? Also you have like 4 other people come throughout the day and get gas at that same pump, and they do a similar casual hand movement around the speaker.
You’d be safe as houses, probably!
Appreciate the response, but I will stick to my non-criminal protest against the ad industry.
Definitely had to resist the urge myself a few times to jam my keys into the speaker when the mute button method didn’t work.
Wait, the thing about ads while fueling your car is real?
WTF?!
Yep. Just shell stations around here (so far at least)
They’re super loud and in my experience usually political, think local office smear ads and oil lobbyist propaganda.
Well yeah how else are they supposed to make money? /s
Yeah no it’s real and it’s bullshit. They also have ad signage, but that’s been around my whole life, it just keeps getting worse constantly. I remember boycotting the first company to have gas ads, now I don’t have a no ad choice
Years ago I was talking to some engineers at one of the main gas pump manufacturers. They were venting about their company’s partnership with Verifone. While they used to handle credit card reading themselves in the magnetic stripe days, the switch to chip credit cards and readers in the U.S. meant they were going to partner with an established card reader company and Verifone (at least at the time) was the largest and most established in the new chip technology. Verifone was dominating the partnership and making life difficult for the gas pump company, insisting on all sorts of changes to the devices that weren’t necessary for the gas pump but were going to let them do things like run ads at the gas pump. If the pump manufacturer didn’t go along with it, Verifone seemed to have a very credible threat that they were just going to leave and go to the other main gas pump manufacturer. The gas pump companies needed the card reader a lot more than the other way around.
So, these ads have been a long time coming, but it wasn’t the pump manufacturer that had the idea or wanted to do it.
♥️
Maybe try jamming something in too so it stays forever pressed and muted
Right side, second button down?
Left side, second from the bottom iirc
You’re doin god’s work, sir
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Ugh. Both of these exist already:
https://www.adquick.com/media/transit/train
https://simpleflying.com/inflight-advertising/
Sigh. They also have them in the rain:
https://www.streetadvertisingservices.com/discipline/rain-advertising
Jesus christ no. They’re bombarding adds on sidewalks AND putting some extra PFAS shit in the environment? Is this even legal?
I do not like green eggs and spam.
👏🎉
I don’t know if they’re on the fediverse yet but Adbusters has been doing great work in this space for a long time.
Dammmn that takes me back! I had a subscription to their magazine in high school in the early 2000s. HOLY CRAP they’re still selling the Corporate America flag too! Seeing all those tech company logos on the modern version makes me feel so old though… Shit.
I remember when there were a lot more logos on that flag, too
“CONSOLIDATE ALL THE THINGS!!”
It’s not specifically anti-ad, but the lemmy privacy community regularly discusses ad-blocking as it very much overlaps with privacy.
Look into adgaurd or set up pihole software for dns and have a network device dedicated to blocking ads
Roku uses hardcoded Google DNS, so you’ll need to make some additional changes on your router to direct their 8.8.x.x addresses to your DNS service. Instructions at the below site are for Unlocator, but I think should work with any custom DNS.
https://support.unlocator.com/article/131-how-to-bypass-forced-dns-on-roku
You are a fucking hero. I couldn’t figure out why my Roku TVs were still able to get ads after blocking everything.
I already have Pi-hole with a bunch of additional lists to be blocked. I also cancelled all streaming services that service ads, and I use Adblock. I still see ads occasionally. What do you suggest for dedicated ad-blocking hardware?
Also, I don’t know what to do about the environmental ads.
Make sure you’ve got rules set in your router to redirect Roku’s hardcoded DNS to your custom DNS service.
Some ads can’t be eliminated - for example, if a service delivers ads through the same content servers that the show/movie is coming from.
Roku’s current only saving grace to me is that I can block their shit conveniently. All my Rokus are on my Raspberry Pi in a special group so I can block specific things.
Custom DNS probably explains how the fucking thing throws a pop-up display informing me that I can watch the movie I’m watching using their Roku app instead if I want to. I was wondering how it knew the name of the movies I have been watching, lol. I will probably just go and reset my WiFi password on my router and 50+ devices, or rip the WiFi antenna out of the TV, not sure which yet.
I’m still running an older version of NextPVR with three usb tuners and Comskip.exe - it gets most of the ads out of free to air automatically.
Ublock origin and / or expressvpn seem to block some ads on the catch up services, but not all.
YouTube with Ublock origin and Sponsorblock work well.
Newpipe Sponsorblock fork is good as well.
Rate those places online to warn others. fucking hailCorporate nonsense
Perfect. Then people can avoid ads at that gas station by going to another gas station with ads!
That only works while this is still a niche use case. Just wait until they find out how many more places they can shove ads while we are forced to stand/sit somewhere for 20 minutes!
"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
The shittiest of enshitifications.
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.
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!
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=NXhmnQzZ7n8
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
The plungies. Winners receive golden plungers
Plungers wrapped in cheap tinfoil, don’t want to give them anything they can melt down and sell
Any company trying to use the HDMI-CEC protocol in such a subversive manner should lose their license to the HDMI standard IMO.
The HDMI forum is run by big companies so that is not happening, sorry
Death to HDMI. DisplayPort is the superior port.
I’m sure that a DisplayPort device in a chain can also inject video, but I have to admit that I would kind of like to not have two competing video standards, and my impression is that DisplayPort tends to lead HDMI technically, so…
DisplayPort: We have
- Higher maximum resolution.
- Better support for higher refresh rates.
- Multi-stream transport so you can use a single display cable for multiple monitors.
HDMI: Oh yeah? Well, we have
- Royalties.
- Specifications hidden behind contracts.
- An emphasis on implementing DRM technology that makes it hard to use a capture card.
Fuck HDMI.
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Oh and HDMI prevents open source GPU drivers supporting HDMI 2.1 natively.
That was covered under “Specifications hidden behind contracts”
It’s not like they ever properly implemented it in the first place.
I’m mad that they did their broken implementation of sending control codes between devices that never works. I have to disable it on everything so that the correct input gets set.
And then they are killing the universal remote industry so there is nothing to replace it with.
You know HDMI is not some big secret they can use it without the license and ship from overseas like 90% of shit shipped from China.
For cheap gizmos I can see a chinese seller getting away with it (rebranding under another weird name like AWOYO or something, in a sea of identical devices under different brand names), but not a large business like Roku.
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That only works if you’re headquartered in China.
Not that the HDMI Fourm will stop them, anyway. More likely, the companies involved will want to license Roku’s patent.
The bastards that control the hdmi standard: yeah!
Roku: 💰
Bastards: actually no
Collectivism: 💰💰 Fuck Roku.
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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.
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.
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
You were talking to a teacher who probably couldn’t afford to pay rent if he ever quit his job.
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 🤷🏻♂️”
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 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.
Some people also have no qualms in doing the dirty job. They get paid and they don’t care.
I knew a guy who went to work for palantir. I asked "what if you end up working on like domestic spying or other sketchy stuff?’
He was like, shrug, iunno. Guy did not give a shit about anyone outside his immediate friend and family group.
And when it turns out the thing he made is used to hurt his friends?
I’m going to guess he values himself more than his friends, and he’d find justifications, but maybe he’d surprise me.
If they can do that, then nobody can say anything about devices doing the reverse.
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At this point who would ever trust Roku products.
I wish I could find a TV for sale that isn’t a Smart TV. It’s not necessary and you get issues like this down the road. I’m sure it isn’t too long until the other TV manufactures do the same thing.
Imagine a world where talented engineers would put their minds to work for solving big problems instead of … I’m not sure wtf this is.
Increasing profit margins…which is the thing our society puts above all else.
Is it really “society” doing this? Or just the deliciously looking, juicy, meaty, 1%?
The 1% is society.
When was the last time you, or anyone you know, had an actual voice in how things are run?
But that’s the opposite of “society”…
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The 1% - but unfortunately this includes our leaders and lawmakers; so that puts power in the hands of those who value money above all else. And that power is used to extract more money and power from everyone else. Advertising always reinforces their message of course.
It would have to be a society that isn’t driven by profit. A society where everyone has the basics guaranteed to them, like housing, food, water, utilities, and transportation. A society where working is optional instead of one where you have to “earn a living”.
Just the phrase “earn a living” alone means to me that in capitalism, nobody deserves to live unless they work.
You underestimate how many talented people are in the world. I get that being on Lemmy for so long though lol.
This just goes to show how “engineering ethics” course requirements are extremely underrated (and how engineering ethics courses themselves don’t go far enough).
Didn’t know I’d have to drink a verification can just to turn on the TV
Roku, somehow becoming shittier than Twitter
Roku still gives me a lot more valuable content
Well, that would be a way to guarantee I buy a new TV…
That is definitely way too invasive. Plugging something on to a Roku TV shouldn’t enable them to show you ads through that other device.
I was actually thinking about getting a Roku once too. Really dodged a bullet.
The article says Roku is attempting to detect breaks, which are the only places Roku will try to show you an ad. So you open your inventory in the pause screen to fight a boss and an ad pops out.
Dark souls players in shambles.
It slowly dawned on video game developers that a lengthy loading screen was actually just a wasted opportunity for a digital billboard.
I wonder if they’re prepared for Microsoft’s lawyers to come knocking when they find out their screen space is being highjacked by another company for profit…
Sounds like popcorn hour to me.
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It’s not as bad as Dhark thinks, but still pretty bad. Read my last sentence and fully immerse yourself.
It’s absolutely insanely horrible and probably some of the most invasive drm I have ever seen even proposed.
This would require doing deep analysis on all of the content going through the stream. That analysis sure as hell isn’t being done locally since smart TV’s can barely run their own operating systems, so everything getting offloaded to Roku servers and then they get to put ads on whatever they determine to be an appropriate time.
This technology enables censoring and blacking out signals that Roku decides you don’t get to see, or preventing the release of the hijacked stream unless you perform certain actions, or just not releasing the stream at all unless you pay, effectively extorting you.
These cheap smart TVs already give you the worst panels and the worst processors. And now get to be extorted out of your own data being delivered the ten feet from your computer or PlayStation to the TV.
It’s beyond ridiculous.
