>My hope is that Nvidia will just develop a launcher

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...

They'll just delete the bad reviews after the initial PR storm subsides. Various big apps have been "caught" in the past doing it. Apparently if you have Google's ear then everything is possible under the table.

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.

They won't even wait that long. If they can find anyone on the internet telling other people to go give negative reviews to an app, they claim all negative reviews are due to that call to action. That gives them "justification" to delete all of them as "inauthentic".

Why would they need justification?

No idea. Makes the lawyers happy, perhaps?

I am beginning to go insane from YouTube ads, but in this case I'll say those reviews should be considered illegitimate.

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.

What is the harm if a company that screws its customers over gets punished out of proportion? It incentivizes companies to be better to their customers.

This sort of thing is so sad to hear about, because it’s hard evidence that people won’t stop using a platform even when it’s literally exercising censorship to sway their opinions.

We harp on about Chinese having no freedom of press, yet we let these corporations do these things?

Do we have a free press? ;)

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.

> Nobody is going to pay for a premium device that shoves ads in your face.

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?

You actually think they care? I get ads for apps I already have installed. YouTube says "time to revisit this app".

Google knows I have it, yet they still take the advertiser's money and make me watch the ad. Over and over again.

That has long bothered me as well, like we have some of the brightest minds in CS working on…how to collect, analyze, and extract value from telemetry via targeted advertising, yet so much of it is still so awful and irrelevant. The best kind of ads would be like a great salesman IMO - help me solve a real problem that I’m having and teach me something that is actually valuable to me in a non-condescending pressure-free way, then let me conclude that I must have whatever it is. Ads today a lot of times just go off of keywords that I’ve interacted with recently. Example: I recently purchased my second double-edge safety razor. I now own two. I don’t need any more. Now I see tons of ads for other razors that I have an approximately 0% chance of buying. I might be open to trying some new shaving cream, moisturizer, or other skincare products, but all the ad algorithms understand is “user searched for / clicked on an ad for a razor, so show them ads for new razors for the next xx days”. There seems to be zero understanding of potential customer needs in the actual targeting. I supposed it’s better than showing cigarette ads to non-smokers, but it still feels so irrelevant that it’s just super annoying.

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.

Some of the brightest minds in CS are working on maximizing ad revenue for their employer. That isn't necessarily the same thing as making the most relevant (whatever that means) ads.

Your interaction mocking the ad is engagement which may generate another penny of revenue for Facebook.

> 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.

They don't have a choice in that the contract they signed with Google for their OS prohibits them from doing so.

The Android TV Launcher is this one app, with an even worse score: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...

Supposedly part of the Android TV certification requirements include only using their launcher.

Hopefully there's some negotiation going on. If Google insists that the ad-laden launcher MUST be the default, they are killing any possibility of an "upscale Android TV". Seems dumb to purposefully kill that market.

I was thinking the other day about the Hollywood red carpet event backdrops that are plastered with logos and how tacky that makes the photos look. People even pay thousands for designer fashion goods that have “all-over” logo prints (e.g. most LV stuff, Supreme, Gucci, etc). I get that for some it’s desirable for the virtue signaling, but to me it just looks tacky. Let the quality of the leather and design of the handbag speak for themselves. It’s not as if an Eames chair has leather embossed with the Herman Miller logo every few inches, yet it’s still an iconic and recognizable design. Related: https://www.businessinsider.com/discreet-wealth-logos-status...

Why not just use great-looking photo backdrops instead of tacky logo walls?

Is that required for the play store, or just branding as "Android TV"?

The entire GMS suite, including Play Store and YouTube.

What makes you think NVIDIA did not opt into those ads, and is getting a cut of the revenue?