this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2023
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I genuinely don't know who would ever sign up for this. If you're too broke to afford a TV, just watch on your phone or laptop. Nobody needs a huge screen anymore. Then there's the number of people with ad blockers or paying a small amount per month just to get rid of ads. This just looks like a bad idea all the way from a bad VC investment to a bad job for the devs to a bad choice for the consumer. And at no point did anyone ever say "wait what are we doing again?"
Tell me you’ve never lived in poverty without telling me you’ve never lived in poverty.
It's the modern day...they have no bread
...then let them eat cake
That’s exactly it. When I was dirt poor, basically half of the people around me had a phone with a cracked screen, and a good amount of that also had batteries that didn’t last much at all. Not only was it a constant game of finding a public power outlet whenever you’d be out for a while, but even staying home, you couldn’t do much of anything that would drain your battery too hard. There was a thing at the time where some phones had batteries that kept turning off unless you hit them on the side until they worked again, but it was a while ago so maybe that was solved by manufacturers since.
It’s incredible now that I live in a middle class neighborhood, how literally every single phone is perfectly functional. It really does change everything.
Anyway, that kind of population would happily get a free TV with ads. Now whether it is the kind of population that those ads would be most effective on is another question, since they basically have zero spending power.
Sad thing is, plenty of people will lap this up as a good thing and see it as a benefit. At least at first, until they realize they have to watch some TV based ads before they watch the ad roll on their YouTube video, followed by the second screen showing some banner ad the whole time. Yick.
As if a person who can’t afford a normal TV can just buy all the things from all those ads that advertisers think they’re selling.