Crazy how stupid you have to be to buy Amazon Fire products.
I think the general public isn’t stupid in this instance, I think they’re just cheap. I have a friend who filled his house with Echo speakers and bragged that it was less expensive than a couple HomePods or Sonos speakers. When I pointed out that Alexa made shopping suggestions after a request he made, he kinda brushed it off, but a few months later he disconnected them all when he noticed private conversations around the house were influencing his Amazon recommendations. He’s fortunate enough to have learned from his mistake and been able to afford to fix it. A lot of folks see a 4k streaming device for $30, compare it to something like the Nvidia shield or the Apple TV, and think it’s a great deal. When they find themselves frustrated by advertising a couple days, weeks, or months later (or maybe desensitized to it like a frog in boiling water), it’s too late. They’ve already spent their money, and/or assume that this is just what all streaming devices are like, so why spend more for this experience?
Stupidity? Probably not, just cheapness and an ignorance of how low cost hardware stays low cost.
Well, you get what you pay for. It’s very cheap for a reason: you are the product.
I got an Apple TV in 2018 and it’s still working perfectly. Yes, it was expensive, but it has no ads, it’s still fast and responsive, and it still gets updates.
I bought an Apple TV recently for a secondary TV and it’s a real pleasure to use. Also have a Shield Pro in the theater which is getting annoying with ads and silly UX changes. I used to sing the praises of the Shield and encouraged many friends/family to buy it in the past (even over Apple TV). But not anymore.
Sadly that’s mostly a google issue. They can turn a lot of stuff on and off server side. Nvidia would have to build a new Home Screen and I’m not sure they want to do that.
Ditto, I caved and got an Apple TV around 2020 after getting fed up with Android TV OS being complete garbage and constantly crashing. I’m not even an Apple fan, but the user experience was a night and day difference. Siri ended up actually being really useful in a TV remote, no more typing in passwords manually or typing in search bars.
I still have one of the Apple TV HDs from 2015 on one tv and it’s still fast compared to the built in smart tv on TVs I got last year. I had 2 more that I upgraded to 4K units last year but gave the HDs away and they’re still being used. They really weren’t expensive for me because directv had launched their streaming service and were giving Apple TVs away when paying for a certain amount of months.
People who using PiHole/Adguard Home & NextDNS be like what ads ?
A great solution is just to stop buying from Amazon. Like, anything.
Chances are you did survive before Amazon was a thing. It’s possible.
I gave them 1 star and left a bad review for each of the fire tvs…they called me about the revie and then did nothing…buy a roku and throw out your $800 fire tv…it is worth it to take the loss for your own sanity
I recently bought a Roku and was surprised to find they force ads on their home screen. It’s obviously not as terrible as a fullscreen ad but its still very annoying.
Roku also does not work well with Crunchyroll at all.
You can’t get any dubs, and if you get subtitles - they only seem to be in the language the show is. E. G. Japanese subtitles only for Japanese Audio.
It’s so dumb that neither Crunchyroll nor Roku will budge.
If you don’t care about anime. Roku is better than the alternatives.
buy a roku
Wait, what? A Roku has more ads than a fire TV. 1/3 of the screen is always an ad. For new releases they’ll sell the entire screen as an ad. ( Disney’s Seeing Red was a full screen splash ad on my Roku.)
the ads on roku do not impact my experience, they go away as soon as i open anything.
OK open to any other options and I mean any…there has got to be someone who can wite hacks to fix issues like this…they are doing it for chrome?
Naw, it didn’t stop any other company i boycotted, and thinking it does is actually a silly idea to consider if you give it a minute to be in the ol’ noggin.
If it did make a difference there’d be a bunch of astroturf campaigns against voting with your wallet, wouldn’t there?
The only thing that stops this is something we’re not ready for yet.
EDIT: wimps.
It doesn’t make a difference unless enough people boycott. The problem is not enough people care enough to actually stop going there to hurt their revenue.
Then there’s the problem with the current political division, at least in the US, where if something upsets one side, the other likes to dig in to stick it to them and often winds up giving the boycotted company more money than they’ll ever lose.
The only thing that stops this is something we’re not ready for yet.
EDIT: wimps.
And what is that one thing?
“Viva la Revolucion!”, probably.
Hot take incoming, apologies in advance for the lecture…
What is it about the newer Generations that they’re so binary about everything, that it’s all or nothing, and nothing in between?
How about we try voting in the right people into office first?
And before you reply saying what a waste of time it is, only bother replying if you actually have the Congress app installed on your phone, if you watch the votes that are held and passed, and you can name your Representative and your Senators.
Because they sure as hell not paying attention to you, and what you comment about here on Lemmy. You need to get more in their faces with your opinions, if you want them to treat you with respect and seriously.
And yes, it might all fail anyways, because money talks and bullshit walks, but at least you can look in the mirror and say you tried.
You pay the Amazon tax indirectly often enough regardless. Huge chunks of the Internet run on AWS. And if it’s not AWS, then it’s Google Cloud or Microsoft Azure. Shareholders win again.
As for not buying shitty products, returning them when you realise how shitty they are, cancelling contracts when services turn shitty, etc. Yes, do that.
It’s true you can’t really control who uses AWS and you’ll end up on sites that use it. But it’s so easy to not buy anything from Amazon directly or from other stores.
Their shipping services aren’t even that good any more from what I hear (I haven’t bought from them in years).
I to this day have proudly never bought anything from Amazon (unless you count the one ebay purchase that was shipped from Amazon without my knowledge). However I have run into a couple of products, namely quality name brand USB4 cables (Plugable and Ugreen) that I for the life of me cannot find anywhere but Amazon in Australia.
So yes I have proudly survived without Amazon until very soon. I will try to continue to not use Amazon however with some sellers opting to exclusively sell on Amazon, I feel I am being left with no choice. It seems not enough boycotted Amazon when it mattered to the point that there are an increasing amount of items that are only available through them.
Facebook and Amazon are on my shit list due to their shear contempt for their customers/products and employees.
It’s also a terrible site now. It’s nothing but Alibaba crap marked up 700% and counterfeit products.
