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.
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Any company trying to use the HDMI-CEC protocol in such a subversive manner should lose their license to the HDMI standard IMO.
The bastards that control the hdmi standard: yeah!
Roku: 💰
Bastards: actually no
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.
Funnily enough, Flipper did exactly that and the Zero is still doing fine. It’s a loophole, but it does seem to be working fine-ish.
HDMI Forum have instead resorted to taking GPU manufacturers hostage because they don’t want any specs leaking, that’s why AMD were denied being allowed to support latest HDMI in their free Linux drivers.
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.
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
“Yeah, I know it’s shitty, but it pays the bills 🤷🏻♂️”
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.
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.
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!
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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
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
Didn’t Banksy sell out to corpos?
Not that I’m aware of. But secondly… it doesn’t matter if this quote is from a pure soul or a broken one - the we can gain value from its message either way.
Man… My personal list of banned companies not to buy from is getting scary long.
If a consumer watches something on their Apple TV and then presses the pause button, a Roku TV set could use either audio or video-based content recognition technologies (known in the industry as ACR) to identify what’s being watched, match the current scene to a database and extract relevant information to pair an ad with it.
Wow somehow their idea is even worse than I imagined, glad I don’t own a Roku now.
Yeah way to fuck 80% of the purpose of pausing. This is basically malware.
Do not look away from screen while ad is playing, or playback will be paused for 5 minutes for first offense.
Please drink verification can.
Yeah, I thought it was no different than what already happens on my fire cube. The screensaver with ads mixed in.
This is a much bigger invasion of privacy
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?
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
4 hour Adam Curtis documentary?
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Don’t buy Roku TVs. Got it.
Used to recommend Roku to others. I will never buy anything from them or recommend them to anyone again.
Someday maybe boards will figure out that “business” people have no idea what they are doing.
Boards only understand “line go up” or “line go down.” If something turns off a few weirdos like us but it lets them sell access to millions of eyeballs they’ll do it.
They’d step over their own dying mother to make a buck.
I mean, if she’s already dying, what’s the issue here? I’m losing money if I have to stop and call 911, when she has a perfectly good phone to do it herself.
History is littered with companies that decided they should “milk” their customers instead of providing new and innovative products. They usually don’t last all that long, but you’re right that the current board members might not gaf about any kind of longer term existence.
That may have been true in the past, but we’re in a corporate fuedal system now, with a bunch of little fiefdoms we can’t escape ruled by people who wish they had the rizz of Henry VIII or Louis XVI
Damage private property, destroy the chains that bind us.
I’ve always found their monetization strategy icky. Their remotes, with streaming service ads on them, always made me feel gross. Especially since those services change every couple years, and you get stuck with remotes plugging stupid services like Blockbuster and Redbox.
To be fair, this is just a patent, not Roku saying they will do this. But if they do, then absolutely.
I don’t want my money used for shit like this so Roku and I are done regardless.of if they exercise this patent or not.
Stand up, raise your hands, and shout, “McDonald’s!”
They know what they’re doing! Maximizing share price for the next quarter while they jump ship… It’s legitimately disgusting.
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% - 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.
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”…
Yeah it’s more of a kleptocracy I think.
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).
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.
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 will never buy a Roku device because of that forced arbitration stunt. We can add the fact that they are even considering this to the list of reasons.
Yeah, Roku must be on its last legs with the crap they’re pulling. All of this says to me: don’t buy Roku.
To be fair, a lot of companies are doing the forced arbitration nonsense. I just bailed on Vultr (VPS host) for doing the TOS update nonsense (undismissable pop-up, must accept to access account), and I’ve been looking for an alternative and every one I’ve checked has that forced arbitration nonsense in their TOS. Some let you opt out, but you need to send a letter or email to do so.
So instead of dealing with that, I’m actively looking for ways to avoid using any type of service with forced arbitration. I’m upgrading my NAS to support hosting my things, I’m trying to find VPNs that offer a fixed public address so I can expose services behind my NAT, etc. It’s incredibly frustrating because it’s literally everywhere 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.
Sounds like IOI in the rp1 movie
“We can take up to 80% of the visual field BEFORE inducing seizures” ~ Nolan Sorento
I quoted this a week or two ago for something else on here, and someone responded along the lines of you know they’d be trying to up that %, and they were 100% right.
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.
Guess I’ll never buy a Roku TV then: Get all the way fucked!
Is this why they made people waive their right to sue them?
Yeah… Fuck Roku.
“Wow, this Roku TV is so cheap!”
Your selling your privacy and basically leasing the disposable tv.
This makes me make goddamm sure 1 don’t buy a smart tv. Two definitely a Roku one.
Good luck finding an affordable “dumb” TV. They’re just computer monitors and they cost a hell of a lot more at TV size than most people are able to spend. The smart TVs are so cheap because they are subsidized by the shit vendors paying the manufacturer to load their malware in front of your eyes.
Then I will not buy one I will spend whatever it is to continue using a dumb tv.
Is there anyone selling high quality dumb TV’s though?
Don’t about hi quality but old console tv still exist and you can convert hdmi to them. My wife uses one in our bedroom.
Roku is a pioneer in most of this crap but don’t be fooled to think that only cheap stuff is gonna have these and that somehow you are safe if you spend a lot on your TV. as it turns out high end and average TV producers would also like to squeeze the tiniest profit margins out of their consumers and if they could get away with it they would do the same.
in fact nowadays most TVs regardless of price are actually collecting and selling your data and in the best case it’s an opt out option in the worst possible place in the menu.
