Samsung warned us last month that ads were coming to the giant Android tablets embedded in its Family Hub smart fridges. I’ve been eyeing mine ever since — and the first ones are about to arrive. Starting November 3rd, the $2,000-plus connected fridges will get a new widget that serves up ads, Shane Higby, head of Home Appliance Business at Samsung Electronics America, confirmed to The Verge.
The ads will be part of a new widget on some of the smart fridges’ “Cover screen themes” (like a tablet or smartphone’s home screen). The widget, which Samsung shared with me ahead of today’s announcement, has four rotating screens. One showing news, one calendar events, one the weather forecast, and one with “curated advertisements.”
This widget appears at the bottom of the fridge’s screen and rotates every 10 seconds among the four screens. You can swipe to rotate through them faster. Samsung says the widget will only appear on the Weather and Color theme screens, not on the Art or Album ones. A new Daily Board screen also won’t have the widget, but it will show an ad in one of the six tiles.
The one thing I’ve personally found, is that buying devices with less points of failure has been helpful when possible.
Especially true with fridges. In door water and ice being big points of failure.
Louis Rossmann’s Fulu Foundation put out a bounty for anyone who is able to come up with a way to modify the fridge to remove the ads.
The pot is currently at $11,558.00
https://bounties.fulu.org/bounties/samsung-familyhub-refrigeratorsHe did a video on it here: https://odysee.com/@rossmanngroup:a/we’ll-pay-you-10,000-to-de-shitify-this:7
deleted by creator
stop doing free marketing for Nazis
Can you clarify what you mean?
This movement is all about giving consumers more power and reforming section 1201 of the DMCA.
Louis Rossmann is big on consumer rights and the freedom to repair movement.
Did you mean to reply to someone else?
There was some drama about FUTO here a few days ago, on the sense they were promoting fascism and using Rossmann credentials to validate it.
If I am not mistaken, this is one of the articles shared. https://drewdevault.com/2025/10/22/2025-10-22-Whats-up-with-FUTO.html
I think the user before mistook FULU with FUTO. Not sure. I cannot see any redflags on the FULU website, they do not see to be the same people. https://fulu.org/our-team
Rossman has major right-libertarian incel vibes plus anyone hanging out on Odysee is way too comfortable endorsing a Nazi bar tbh
He literally put out a video not that long ago praising three democratic legislators for proposing a right to repair bill. Weird impression.
These sound a lot like “trust me bro, he’s bad” arguments
Not that I’d own a smart fridge, but if I did and they started shoving ads on it, it’d look like this later that day:
People really be buying these bigass connected computers for their home and expecting capital to not capitalize? It’s like the ONLY thing they do.
Eventually people might learn why they should not just prefer to have, but actually require open systems for all the computers in their lives, even the ones hidden inside of their appliances, instead of buying these locked down, pre-programmed, remote-updated internet-of-shit devices.
If you can’t get root and boot access on your device, decide what you’re updating it with and when, you don’t own it or control it in the first place. You’re just letting some shitty company (and maybe anyone at all with the amount of security flaws these devices have) directly into your home and network to decide what you can or can’t do with your product (and when and how much it’s going to cost), while they take advantage of every opportunity they can think of to spy on you and extract money from you. Any device with microchips in it isn’t just an appliance anymore, it’s a trojan horse full of gross and creepy salesmen and they’re going to be there forever, watching you and figuring out ways to get more of your money.
However, Samsung is giving users the option to turn off ads.
For now, like the author herself mentions later on (“The bigger issue is that of trust. […] that’s today.”)
[Higby] “This pilot further explores how a connected appliance can deliver genuinely useful, contextual information. The refrigerator is already a daily hub, and we’re testing a responsible, user-controlled way to make that space more helpful.”
What Shane Higby is saying here boils down to “we’re trying to help the user”. But if he said so, in clear words, every bloody body would call it bullshit, because it’s common knowledge companies smear ads on your face for their own sake - not yours. But if you hide it behind fancy words, like “further explores” and “deliver” and the likes, it’s harder to call the bullshit.
I’m getting real tired of this shit.
[Higby] "…future promotions will depend on the feedback and insights gained from the program.”
Translation: “we’re just testing the waters now. Let’s see if the suckers swallow it or spit it.”
This is similar to the justification Panos Panay, Amazon’s […] He said it was looking to be “elegantly elevating the information that a customer needs.”
Emphasis mine. You can always trust Amazon in one thing: belittling the user.
The problem here isn’t just the ads themselves (although they are a problem); it’s that they are being added to the device after it’s in my home.
[Warning, IANAL.] Fight this shit. Seriously, fight it. On legal grounds. What they’re doing should be outright illegal in most countries; it’s equivalent to changing a contract unilaterally after both parties signed it.
Additionally, I’d strongly advise against buying any sort of “smart” device, unless you’re pretty sure the benefits of connecting your toaster to the internet outweighs all the risks. Including corporations and crackers taking control of it, harvesting your data, spamming you, building kill switches into it, etc.
What they’re doing should be outright illegal in most countries; it’s equivalent to changing a contract unilaterally after both parties signed it.
Update to [COMPANY NAME]'s Policies
Yes, this should be illegal, but it’s already common practice. I’m just hoping that enough of this will eventually get people to stop buying these products, and hopefully we can start seeing some real legislation against it in some countries.
Additionally, I’d strongly advise against buying any sort of “smart” device, unless you’re pretty sure the benefits of connecting your toaster to the internet outweighs all the risks.
This should be obvious at this point. “Smart” just means “internet-connected”, and we already know what happens to every device that connects to a remote server during regular operation: telemetry (and not the nice debugging kind but the “what do you use” kind), and advertisements.
Including corporations and crackers
The “crackers” part of this confuses me. Samsung is a Korean company. The chairman’s name is Lee Jae-yong (이재용). Samsung NA’s CEO is Yoonie Joung. Maybe I’m misreading this?
Yes, this should be illegal, but it’s already common practice. I’m just hoping that enough of this will eventually get people to stop buying these products, and hopefully we can start seeing some real legislation against it in some countries.
Problem is, people won’t stop buying them. Often “smart” products are sold comparatively cheaper, because the business expects additional profits through ads; and if Samsung is going this way (ads on your fridge), it’ll do it.
The “crackers” part of this confuses me. Samsung is a Korean company. The chairman’s name is Lee Jae-yong (이재용). Samsung NA’s CEO is Yoonie Joung. Maybe I’m misreading this?
By “crackers” I mean “black hat hackers”. The sort of people who’d love to drop some ransomware into your fridge and then say “if you don’t want me to brick your fridge, pay me a few bucks”.
(After some websearch, apparently Americans use it as a derogatory term. I wasn’t aware of that.)
By “crackers” I mean “black hat hackers”.
Ok I just misread it then, sorry!
No problem - miscommunication happens.
The world was full of flat surfaces that did not yet have an Android-platform device driving a screen displaying advertisements on them.
This is what they will look like for me:
Can’t get smart fridge ads if I don’t get a smart fridge. taps forehead
Unless, years from now, the only fridges you can buy are smart. Like TVs now.
Not on “my” smart fridge… Cause, you know, well fuck that.
So, buy fridge add-space to put the ugliest add for dumb-fridges ?
