The main AppleTV UI doesn’t have any recommendations for streaming apps you don’t own - the only thing that’s even close are when you highlight one of the apps in the top bar.
As far as I understand though, is that it will show recommendations provided by installed apps. I do have Prime, and I still don't really want recommendations without explicitly asking for it.
This is a giant banner at the top of the home page that shows ads from random streaming services that you may or may not subscribe to or have installed.
https://twitter.com/Reaperducer/status/1393380938642563072
See also:
Ads for Apple Music, Apple Arcade, and Apple's fitness thing at the top of the Settings app.
https://twitter.com/Reaperducer/status/1390696646854397955
Fake notification alerts in the App Store to get you to tap on the Apple Arcade button to show you a subscription ad.
Spam from Apple that I can't seem to stop receiving, even though I'm unsubscribed from every Apple list. I've gone as far as to contact AppleCare about it. I spent an hour on the phone with someone at AppleCare who couldn't explain why I keep getting Apple Arcade spam in my e-mail.
just when i'm just about ready to pull the trigger and switch to iOS you tell me this..
save us pinephone
https://9to5mac.com/2020/03/04/apple-now-allows-push-notific...
Good way to get your notification privileges revoked though. I wish Apple would add granular notification categories within apps so that you could approve particular types of notifications while denying others. A quick google says Android 8 did this in 2017.
Apple's policy on this is to require in-app configuration to opt out of marketing messages, rather than a way to configure it through the OS.
I do see what Apple is going for, in that these predefined categories let you automate notification handling with Focus modes, but I have a feeling a lot of apps will have an inflated opinion of how important "new episodes of ____ are available" is to me.
Are you saying they do it after you opt-out of the marketing notifications in-app?
The digital prison builders are less offensive than their supporters. Remember to point and laugh when they complaint about their self-funded captivity. Its an important public service to point and laugh as they are paving the way for our imprisonment. We clearly didn't laugh hard enough in the past.
edit:
[0] - for the pun ill add a promotional link: https://tweakers.net/pricewatch/311843/bestmedia-platinum-my...
Is it Apple keeping non-Google-produced YouTube clients off the App Store, or is it Apple? Maybe both?
And I never watch MLB games nor do I have the app installed (clicking the games brings me to install the MLB app).
E.g. “Show sports scores” is off, “Games in Up Next” is off, and “Exciting Games” is off.
I don't see that they have a choice. Nobody is going to pay for a premium device that shoves ads in your face. Roku has ads, but they are less aggressive, so I imagine they would start picking up Nvidea customers.
The bad review bombing hit both nVidea apps and Google's AndroidTV launcher pretty hard:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nvidia.teg...
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...
This also reminds me of the famous BlizzCon where they announced Diablo Immortal -- where the Chinese exec infamously exclaimed (after the audience started booing): "Do you guys not have phones?" -- when the dislikes of the videos reached into dozens of millions and Google has reset the dislikes, several times in a row.
So yeah, these things do happen and will likely happen again.
It is rather easy to start a negative review campaign, but no one ever participates in a good review campaign. There's no rage in that, that's why.
Inciting people to give 1 star reviews quickly snowballs into even people who never used the app doing it. Where's the fairness in that?
I am watching one of these social meltdowns with a Chinese game that just launched. After successfully bringing it to 2.6 points on Google Play, people are now calling for everyone to stop (because it's not that bad) and remember to change their reviews if devs address the problems.
Now the latter is never happening. People did the hormone let go all over the app on Play store, they're not cleaning that up.
All because of a reduced amount of rewards compared to the Chinese version.
We harp on about Chinese having no freedom of press, yet we let these corporations do these things?
One thing to remember here is that reviews on an App Store are not public speech, they are always subject to censorship rules and always have been, because they are using a private for-profit service under a license agreement. It would be a different thing for the corporations you’re talking about to be able to censor criticism in the newspaper or on other people’s websites, but that’s not what’s happening here.
There’s also a legitimately difficult question here too. It has in fact happened that apps have gotten unfairly review-bombed, in response to public opinion, for third party reasons outside the seller’s control (Nvidia shield?), and also because of businesses playing dirty (look at Amazon and Chinese sellers for many examples of nasty review shenanigans). It is fair, and I would even say necessary, for the hosting company of a marketplace to be able to exercise discretion and editorial powers. It will always depend on the specifics of each case.
I have a Sony Bravia TV and it uses Android TV as well. It's had the homescreen ads for a while now and I really dislike it.
https://www.sony.com/electronics/support/articles/00225587
The funny thing about that page is that the image used to be animated. The first ad is for some crime show and has blood splatter in the background (you can still see it if you look closely) and the next ad is for Elmo. If you look, you can see the word Elmo where the next ad was fading in.
Who thought it was a good idea to advertise a bloody crime show on the same screen that you are going to target the Elmo audience and then use that for promotion?
Google knows I have it, yet they still take the advertiser's money and make me watch the ad. Over and over again.
Another example: I regularly comment on FB ads making fun of the product or the ad. The algorithm does not understand humor or sarcasm, so it registers my comment as a positive interaction. I then get a ton more ads for that same category of thing (e.g. a massager where they use a static preview frame of a woman in yoga pants using it on herself to get people interested) even though I was making fun of it.
TL;DR it’s disappointing both that so much investment goes into ad tech yet it’s still leading to so many irrelevant impressions that people have a very low chance of interacting with. Ads could be much better targeted which would potentially make them less annoying if they actually helped people find things they’re interested in.
Your interaction mocking the ad is engagement which may generate another penny of revenue for Facebook.
They don't have a choice in that the contract they signed with Google for their OS prohibits them from doing so.
Why not just use great-looking photo backdrops instead of tacky logo walls?
Yes there is. Absolutely no closed software ever. That's the rule you use. Even the modem on the phone I'm typing this on is running FOSS firmware. Don't compromise your freedom for convenience, you always end up with neither when you do.
I don't think I understand fully the point you're trying to make. How does free and open source software prevent a software developer from inserting the code necessary for behavior such as we're discussing? Granted, they may be chastised, but the ability remains. We've seen this happen already with software developers inserting ads into the shell during install (or some other operation). A lot more work and effort on our part is necessary to prevent this type of behavior becoming normalized.
TV streaming, Games streaming from local network at least, music...
A closed environment doesn't allow for competition, so they will monetize it to the greatest degree. That would include ads.
Android TV is really bad spyware for that matter... surprised it can even exist with Google TV having flopped that hard.
(Correctly, tbh).
(Correctly, tbh) - It is still a service problem.
I think at least Amazon fixed it in the meantime, I can play 4k without problems.
When we say Apple is as bad - what are we talking about?
Inside the individual apps obviously developers do push things.
https://9to5mac.com/2020/01/19/how-to-remove-home-screen-tra...
I'm a Apple TV+ subscriber, so I think I already seem to have access to most of the content. But I also have Prime / Netflix up there, and I can preview that stuff too (neither may wife or I mind this).
I did notice once I could turn things off, but we use the Apple TV App (confusing naming) for Up Next pretty frequently (new remote has a quick button for that) and up next nicely seems to pull most of our content in (not sure how) so when we are trying to decide what to watch (we watch about 1 hr every other week) it's handy to remind ourselves of what we were watching from before. Apple obviously does something so that netflix / prime / etc all flow into Up Next. My only annoyance is it feels like there are two "Home" screens, the app icon grid and the apple TV App.
This is a frankly ridiculous comparison.
I'm using Netguard on Android devices I don't want to root and it's been good. Plus it does per-app firewalling as well.
[1]: https://www.zenz-solutions.de
[2]: https://netguard.me
[3]: https://blokada.org
A weird side story: I had a situation where an app on my Roku TV would crash if it failed to serve an add from a blocked domain (there were several but they mostly pointed to google ad domains). I actually _had_ to allow ads from the domains they called.
Disclaimer: I co-develop a Intra fork.
Apple TV is less intrusive with ads in the interface and during the viewing experience.
While you can conceptualize recommendations for things you have not bought as Ads, there is likely no money changing hands here for these to displayed.
And most people actually like these features: https://www.theverge.com/2021/7/19/22580720/android-tv-watch...
Given this is Google's business, I'd find it hard to believe that they would market other products without a financial incentive (whether through a cut of the sale through the play store or direct payment for displaying the recommendation).
(I agree broadly users do not care, but some of these are definitely paid, placed advertisements by Google.)
Courts and legislative bodies can totally overrule and invalidate any clause in a private contract, if you feel this is a social problem then keep speaking up about it and ignore the people playing devil's advocate.
People are in the habit of giving counterpoint's for conversation's sake and have no strong opinions on their counterpoint.
The path is the following: ethical problem becomes a social problem becomes a legal problem. Specifically, obscure ethical problems become recurring and common social problems which become legal problems that can more easily get patched.
I've got some other apks disabled as well, but I think these two are the critical ones.
I haven't had the ads pop up again in over 2 weeks.
This is what I did with my Alexa hardware the instant it suffixed a routine response to a unit conversion or the weather or something with an ad for some unrelated Amazon service.
Throw it in the trash can't be the response to everything. Why don't I throw my phone and my car in the trash? Maybe I should throw my fridge and microwave in the trash too?
If my fridge started showing ads one day, suggesting that I shouldn't be pissed because I can just throw it out and get a cooler of ice is not helpful.
I'd normally just have a Linux box with Kodi, but once you try to get 4K HDR working, things start getting prickly. GPU and driver combos were a bit of a pain and even Windows had issues.
Same goes for an STB, or car, or any other thing that abuses you. You don't have to sit and take it simply because "that's the modern world".
Consumer choice is an important and powerful tool. Don't buy or use crap that abuses you, and don't shop at vendors that think that abusing their users is ok.
We got into this situation because people tend to throw up their hands and suffer.
> I also generally like the Google stuff including the assistant integration.
Google is an advertising company. Everything they do is in service to this goal, despite whatever side perks it may deliver to you occasionally. Liking the Google stuff while not liking ads is a mistake, because they are inseparable.
If you don't like ads, don't give your money and data to an advertising company. Don't run Android TV.
So you're saying as soon as you're abused just toss a few hundred/thousands/tens of thousands of dollars of hardware out the window and spend a like amount somewhere else -- hoping that /this/ time is different? Even though when you bought the equipment this wasn't the state of it?
It must be nice to live in that world. Wasteful and expensive, but nice.
https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/security/a264489...
Security updates are essential. Not only is a device full of unpatched vulnerabilities dangerous to use, but as we saw with the recent Western Digital scandal, is a serious risk to the continued functionality of the device.
Because the Shield is a streaming device, interoperability with streaming services is required for continued functionality. The set of useful streaming services changes over time and existing streaming services change their APIs.
Most hardware devices these days get a fairly short software update window and then the device is useless. Would you rather Nvidia/Google abandoned your device? Is funding continued updates with ads such a bad thing?
Additionally, I expect a corporation like NVIDIA or Google to have amortized the costs of supporting several ecosystems by the mere virtue of having engineers on them on a constant payroll -- those costs are not increasing, they remain the same for long periods of time -- plus to finance the support by other venues if need be. Brand loyalty and stuff?
This penny pinching by billionaire conglomerates leaves a sour taste in my mouth and it makes it all the more likely for me to invest in several specialized PCs, a home video / streaming player included. They'll never stop being shady, it seems, so we have to take things in our own hands, apparently.
These are profit oriented institutions. Once they've saturated the market, their only way to increase profits is to increase their per user profits.
The economy is designed to have your TV start showing ads.
I get how the business model of those services works btw -- but it's flawed from the beginning because it relies on keeping the users hostage.
The corps really underestimate the passive resistance they will meet. They think people will go to court and challenge their unbeatable lawyers there. No, nobody is going to do that. People will just work around those corporations (neighborhood private networks with NAS-es, old-school sharing of movies on DVDs or USB drives etc.; there are many ways).
Personally, I'd rather that consumers didn't buy into false dichotomies such as this one. You should expect more from your vendors.
No, they don't need it. They get them, because they can. This allows the vendors to:
- Sell buggy, half-baked alpha versions to customers as finished products;
- Turn a product into a service, to seek subscription rent from users, under the guise of "security";
- Justify the need for persistent Internet access, providing plausible deniability for data collection (if anyone asks, it's to support "security" and "improving the product").
Don't fall for this. The hardware and software we buy doesn't need to be like this. The vendors push it, because it's locally optimal for them, and it's self-supporting through competitive pressure ("because my competitors do it, I have to do it too").
I know it's in whatever terms I, uh, "accepted", but there's just no escaping it in this day and age.
Fortunately, I know how to use ADB and just installed another launcher, but most other people just have to bend over and take it. No doubt ADB tricks won't be sufficient in future updates and I'll be playing more silly games with a device I own.
Apple is seems almost as bad too. There's recommendations that I don't want. It's certainly worse in that I would have even less control and be unable to remove them.
It's certainly a good thing that I don't live anywhere near a Google office, otherwise I'd be launching this POS through one of their windows if I did.