you are assuming people make their TV-buying choice with complete information

does the cheap TV have a big "NEW! SHOWS EXTRA ADS!" announcement on the outside of the box, or in any of its promotional material? no, of course not.

also: "Vizio TVs are now showing banner ads over live TV" means they didn't use to do this. people bought these TVs not knowing they would receive an update to show ads at some point in the future.

this free-market "consumers made an informed decision about the trade-offs of a cheaper TV" argument is absolute hogwash.

I've worked for about 9 different tech companies in my career and I only truly believed in maybe 2-3 leadership teams after a year working there. Execs are politicians at the end of the day, the only difference is that they're chasing profit instead of votes.

> These people are all fairly well paid, so none of this "just doing muh job" nonsense.

Changing jobs is time-consuming and stressful, and there's a lot more to a job than just total comp. Flexible hours, company culture, etc. also play a role. The reality is that if you've been around this industry long enough, there's a semi-decent chance that you have a company on your resume that you might not be proud to admit working for, either due to public or internal knowledge.

Fortunately, in this case we know exactly who to direct the complaints toward.

The most logical explanation I can come up with is that there are compensation incentives tied to financial performance (or even just project completion), and this sort of thing will probably boost the financials enough to trigger those payouts. When enough money's on the line, I'm sure it's easy to wave away any feelings about the end user.