Samsung makes ads on smart fridges official with upcoming software update
258 comments
·October 28, 2025kstrauser
Fwirt
Samsung appliances have among the worst reputations for ease of repair and lifespan. Sadly most other brands are rebrands of Chinese conglomerates or not much better on the quality chain. But honestly it's also a lottery. We bought a fridge on sale for $500 as an emergency stopover when our expensive fridge was delayed by a month during a move, and it's still plugging along out in the garage, a hostile environment for fridges. All the parts are very accessible too which bodes well for repair, although the leveling feet did snap off.
However, when you see the viral videos of "dream fridges" from the 1950s, it's important to remember that adjusted for inflation they would be something like $10k today. Of course they also last 10x as long, but you can still find fridges in that price range today with a similar value proposition. The question is whether or not you're willing to pay that upfront. I think we've all been so conditioned to accept that appliances go obsolete that it doesn't seem possible for a fridge like that to ever pay for itself.
It's the boots theory at work.
j1elo
I got another way of looking at it: it's not worth it having appliances that last 20 years, because in that time the tech itself can and does improve a lot.
Ready example is my aunt: a very good and expensive Miele washing machine, that was made to last as things were before. But now 10 years have elapsed and modern washers come with bigger drums, much lower noises, optimized water and electricity usages, and more effective washing patterns.
But she's stuck with her old and trusty one, because she feels that it's working "like new". And she's not wrong, it works well, so it became a sort of a "golden cuff" so to speak (not knowing any better metaphor). So good and expensive, that now getting rid of it for a new one feels like a waste of money for not much gain.
analog31
Maybe we need a new boots theory:
The rich person buys a $3500 pair of boots that comes with surveillance, useless AI, and bricks itself on the next firmware update.
The poor person buys a pair of boots, that are... boots.
derefr
It's hard to make the right boots analogy (try it yourself if you think you can), but to speak of fridges —
• The rich person's remodeller (or the developer of the house they buy) buys a commercial-kitchen prep fridge for the house's kitchen. This is a big, powerful, durable, repairable, no-frills, utilitarian fridge, that could be viewed as attractive or ugly depending on your opinion on brutalism. The rich person never sees this fridge. It's kept in the butler's pantry and only their private chef ever touches it.
• The rich person's interior designer then buys an elegant/classy half-sized in-wall glass-door fridge to live in the kitchen itself. This is intended for the rich person's household staff to keep constantly stocked with snacks and drinks for the rich person to grab. (Also, if the rich person thinks they want to cook one day, the staff will prep the exact ingredients needed in advance, keeping them in the butler's pantry until called for, but will then stage any "must stay cold" ingredients here.) This fridge is generally a piece of shit, made with huge markups by companies that make fancy-house furniture. But it sure is pretty! If (when) it fails, the staff can temporarily revert to just serving the role of that fridge, running to the butler's-pantry fridge or other cold-storage area (maybe a walk-in!) when the rich person wants something. (Also compare/contrast: in-wall wine cooler.)
• The rich person's household staff might respond to the rich person's request for more convenient access to snacks/drinks in certain areas of the house by buying + keeping stocked one or more minifridges. There'll certainly be one in the house's bar. (There's always a bar.) These are sturdy commercial-grade bricks, built by the same companies that build the ones that go into hotels; but these companies serve rich people just as often as they serve hotels, so they tend to have an up-market marque that makes the fridge look fancy while reusing the well-engineered core.
lexszero_
"You are so poor that when AWS goes down, you still can get into your house" -- seen somewhere
dylan604
Isn't that reversed now? You can only afford the device that is subsidized by the analytics you will be generating for them while the rich person can afford to by the non-subsidized version.
comboy
Boots theory yes, but there also seem to be a paradox of reliability of cheap things.
Manufacturers which are aiming at being dirt cheap and selling lots of products, have low margins and simply cannot afford too many replacements / warranty repairs. High margin products don't care, they could make you three in that price and still be ok.
tempest_
The issue is that the 10k fridge is not actually any better.
The "luxury" appliances can be double that and are still shit.
bleomycin
Not quite accurate as a blanket statement. Munro did a very detailed tear down series of a sub zero refrigerator that’s very interesting. Youtube link: https://youtu.be/KAYj6m9QtDU
I wish more content like this existed. It’s the only type of review that is worth paying attention to.
Long story short if you live in an energy market like california the energy savings of the sub zero will likely offsets its additions cost over the lifetime of the unit.
dylan604
The old fridge had much smaller usable volume inside. Modern insulation allows for thinner walls which increases capacity. Same for modern ovens.
pixl97
Depends if it's luxury or commercial. Commercial products are generally able to be fixed, but there is a quite a price premium on them.
oldpersonintx2
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donmcronald
I wonder if those expensive fridges are any more serviceable. I'm guessing someone with $10k to spend on a fridge doesn't care how easy it is to fix because they'll never do it.
jdeibele
I'm not sure about that. The issue that I'm having is that if I could spend $10,000 and not have fridge issues for 10, 15, 20 years I might be tempted.
The problem is that there might be problems with the equipment or problems caused by the installer.
A few years ago, we ended up replacing a Sub-Zero fridge (27 years old) with another one because the repair bills were mounting. Because of the way the previous owner did the kitchen, using any other kind of fridge other than the 2' deep, 7' high kind would have involved remodeling. It wasn't quite $10k but it was close.
At our new house, we had a repairman fix the ice maker in our current fridge. It's 17 years old and could have come off the floor at Best Buy or Home Depot (NOT a Sub-Zero, in other words) but he recommended keeping it until it failed because the quality of current appliances is not as good.
Our water heater is going to need to be replaced because it's 17 years old and showing signs that it's getting too old. I want a heat pump water heater because the gas water heater is the only gas-powered appliance we have. Trying to assess reviews of heat pump water heaters and of the local plumbing companies is not fun.
thih9
> you can still find fridges in that price range today with a similar value proposition
Does anyone have examples of consumer fridges like this?
stock_toaster
sub-zero or thermadore maybe?
oldpersonintx2
[dead]
nappy-doo
I beg to differ that Samsung makes good stuff. We had a Samsung front-loading washer. The drum and the crank that holds the drum were made of two different materials, and in the presence of the water and detergent, a galvanic reaction occurred, dissolving the drum arm. Replacing the arm was $400 in parts and over 8 hours in repair time. (There's lots of YT videos of this exact repair.)
What kind of monkey designs something like that. It's obsolescence by design.
I will never buy another Samsung product.
stephen_g
I’m glad to have avoided it - when I moved from sharing with room-mates into my own place and had to buy new appliances, there had just been a spate of Samsung appliances literally randomly catching fire in the news. Those models have all been recalled but it put me right off.
Otherwise I might have considered them but steered well clear, and am very happy with the decision a decade later. Went Bosch for the washer and Electrolux for the fridge, had zero issues.
leblancfg
My Samsung computer monitor is also the stuff of nightmares. Same story: useless "smart" UI features. I'm told I can use it as a dozen different things. But it sucks as a computer monitor.
Not cheap either!
pfych
My Samsung 4k 240hz OLED monitor has an absolutely gorgeous panel but if I knew I'd need to connect it to the internet and run a PYTHON script to disable some of its "features"[1] I probably would have gotten a similar LG display instead.
[^1]: https://pfy.ch/programming/disable-samsung-game-bar.html
kstrauser
That makes me sad. Many, many years ago I had a 17" Samsung CRT. It broke within the warranty period. I called their support and explained the problem. They asked for my receipt. I didn't have one, but I told them that the sticker on the back said it had only been manufactured 9 months ago, so it had to still be under warranty. Their support person agreed. They checked their inventory and found that they were out of stock on that model, and asked if I'd be OK with them upgrading me to a 19" CRT. Sure!
I was fiercely loyal to them for a lot of years after that experience.
LogicHound
I got their monitors from the "before" they bunged smart into everything. 2 x 4K from 2016/2017. These things refuse to die and the picture is still good.
Unfortunately all of my relatives love their phones.
SoftTalker
I had a Samsung phone a few years ago. It had the usual un-removable crap that Android phones have, but it wasn’t bad otherwise.
FuriouslyAdrift
My house came with all Samsung appliances and I can't wait for all fo them to die. The dryer already went (8 years old).
I've been replacing with mid-range LG on advice of the local repair company and been happy so far. Quirky and very few features but seems well built.
Can't wait to replace the massive refrigerator and swap the gas range for inductive. Fridge is slowly going (cracked and leaking ice maker, condensation problem with deli drawer).
I now know how my mom could justify the ridiculous expense of a Subzero refrigerator (around $6k back in 2000). That thing has only needed a couple of tune ups and no parts replacements in 20 years.
Beijinger
8 years is pretty good. I personally like Bosch. Is a fridge with an icemaker not always problematic? How about biofilm?
What is the advantage of an inductive stove? Will they even work in the US? I think in Europe they work with 360 V if I remember right.
I realized two things:
1. You can cook nearly everything with a ricecooker. Just throw everything inside. Yes, even the minced meat on top.
2. An airfrier is better and faster than a shitty oven.
southwindcg
Only eight years for a dryer is definitely not pretty good in my mind. It's barely acceptable unless you have a huge family and are doing laundry daily. I had a low-end Capri (Sears house brand) that was 21 years old and still going strong when I moved away. It was serviced once, by me, to replace a fuse. If I'd paid twice as much and gotten only eight years out of one, I'd be furious.
darkwater
> What is the advantage of an inductive stove?
That you can control temperature changes better than with a ceramic hob, on par with methane stoves.
> I think in Europe they work with 360 V
No, normal 230V (or 220V)
oh-4-fucks-sake
Speed Queen for washing machines. Bosch for dishwashers.
sgarland
Bosch 800-series dishwashers are amazing. I’ve bought one at every house I’ve lived at, regardless of what’s installed. They’re quiet, they get everything clean no matter what, and they dry without a heating element, and without popping the front open.
Re: washing machines, I tentatively put forward LG. I bought one (and matching dryer) in the early 2010s, and it lasted 7 years before needing me to replace some balancing parts. It lasted years after that. Hoping for the same on this next move in a few days (yes, I move a lot).
FridayoLeary
My parents fridge started it's life in the mid 1990's, and their freezer is probably a decade older, at this stage nobody knows. I don't think they were expensive models.
wiredfool
My parents are moving out of their house of ~50 years.
The garage fridge was in the house (as the kitchen one) when they moved in. The chest freezer in the basement moved with them in '77.
They have had at least three kitchen fridges in the time since the fridge got moved to the garage. I've lost track of the number of dishwashers. The current one was out of service for a few months, partially due to wifi/firmware issues. The super expensive oven clock doesn't work anymore, since it broke after the last time it was fixed for an $800 callout.
mbajkowski
I can relate. Same for my parents. Washer and dryer still going strong after 30 years, same for the fridge which has been relegated to the basement since the paint has begun to chip. Microwave still works. And out of the three AC units they have, only one needed service. Maybe they are just exceptionally lucky compared to me. And these were not very expensive appliances for that time. I used to offer washers and dryers in rental properties for convenience, but their reliability has become so bad lately that it is not worth it.
0cf8612b2e1e
The problem is that we are running out of alternatives. How long until there are no refrigerators, TVs, cars, whatever that will not work without some amount of baked in advertising?
embedding-shape
I dunno, my family started buying LG stuff for our appliances and otherwise, and none of the stuff has forceful ads on them, at least yet. Currently I think we have LG TVs, fridge, dish washer, drier, washing machine and something else I can't remember, all of them working well, has nice and fast at-home support when needed and no ads even on the TVs.
thrill
Same, regarding LG slowly occupying all the home appliances spaces. As long as they behave like a good guest in my home I’ll keep buying their stuff.
justinclift
> Currently I think we have LG TVs > no ads even on the TVs.
Um, have you needed to change anything for your LG TVs to not display ads?
Asking because modern LG TVs seem to display ads too. :(
Saying that because I was recently looking for a TV, and considered LG, but many people seem to be having regrets now due to ads being shown.
bluGill
Depends on what consumers stand for. If enough complain. If enough get bad reviews. If enough get returned. If enough buy something else is the big one. If there are other uses where they can't (some TVs are used a safety message boards in factories - if the ads ever show in this context and someone is hurt there will be a lawsuit - so there will be some demand at any price for something without ads)
masijo
How are people still buying into the whole "voting with your wallet" crap?
pixl97
Buy commercial units rather than consumer ones.
keybored
> The problem is that we are running out of alternatives.
But why is that? HN told me that ads were just reserved for people who refused to “pay for the product”. By inference we must conclude that for-pay products shall not have ads on sheer principle. Where’s that smug scolding at now?
kragen
If you're buying chips (other than Flash) made with cutting-edge semiconductor processes, your options are only Samsung and TSMC. How long will it take Samsung's foundries to start adding malicious hardware implants to their customers' designs?
FloorEgg
I bought a Samsung phone back in like 2014, and shortly after bought smartwatch to pair with it. A year later, Samsung released an update that removed the pairing functionality so my smartwatch could no longer pair. They did this in conjunction with releasing their own smartwatch and some proprietary pairing protocol.
I'm not a fan of vendor lock in, but their decision to retroactively remove functionality that I was depending on led me to never buy another Samsung product since.
noir_lord
Same they are off my list as well though I generally have less than zero interest in smart devices, I also have a Samsung "smart" TV as well, it asked for Wifi first time I turned it on, said "nope" connected a HDMI to a Fedora box and just use that.
I control what devices in my house connect to the internet.
Fwirt
I never thought I would connect my Hisense to the internet, but it turns out that it runs an MQTT broker and responds to WoL packets, so control via Home Assistant was really easy to setup and is much better than the IR blaster I was using before as response is almost instant and I can get power state so I can sync it to the rest of my living room. Most smart TVs seem to do well behind a DNS black hole, and if you're knowledgeable enough for that then self-hosting a dnsmasq instance on an old box you have lying around and pointing the TV at it is a snap.
Larrikin
Most modern TVs are fully controllable via their HDMI inputs. My shield and gaming systems are perfectly capable of turning my unconnected to the Internet TV on and off.
The shield also has a HA integration.
There's no need to risk an update that puts ads on the TV.
bobson381
Linux box to Samsung TV here as well. It's awesome, best of both worlds. Stable Debian with Plasma DE in my case.
yjftsjthsd-h
It's really too bad that Plasma's big picture mode is very WIP these days; once it's stabilized it should be a good option for this kind of thing
monkpit
> I control what devices in my house connect to the internet.
That’s certainly admirable, but haven’t tv manufacturers beeen caught connecting to ANY WiFi they find, if it’s open? Amongst other various dark patterns?
Your statement here kind of characterizes it as user error, but the manufacturers are absolutely hostile actors here.
JoshTriplett
> That’s certainly admirable, but haven’t tv manufacturers beeen caught connecting to ANY WiFi they find, if it’s open?
Not yet. Wouldn't be surprising, but most of the time the problem is "person holding the remote wants it to work, connects it to wifi when it offers, doesn't know that they shouldn't".
Nextgrid
This nonsense keeps getting repeated over and over again for years now and I have yet to find a single documented case of it happening. You'd think that with all the attention, someone would've actually documented it by now.
Enough people connect their TV/smart devices willingly to the internet that there is no need for adversarial approaches like this (which are not trivial to set up - they'd need to maintain per-country partnerships with Wi-Fi hotspot providers, pay them and hope the ROI is worth it).
netsharc
I'm going to sell this idea to Samsung and earn me some Wons:
> When showing that the user has switched to HDMI input, show the full screen information: "HDMI1, brought to you by _____ [insert advertiser here]. Best experienced with Monster HDMI cables. Gold plated for the digital clarity."
teddyh
Do not create the Torment Nexus.
perihelions
> "Didn't you have ads in the 20th century?"
> "Well, sure, but not in our dreams. Only on TV and radio, and in magazines, and movies, and at ball games, and on buses, and milk cartons, and T-shirts, and bananas, and written on the sky... But not in dreams."
alentred
Ah, lightspeed briefs fit everywhere, on the beach and on your the fridge.
nerdsniper
There's a $30,000 bounty set up for anyone who can patch the firmware to eliminate the ads. Please consider contributing additional donations against the matching funds.
https://bounties.fulu.org/bounties/samsung-familyhub-refrige...
wmeredith
I lieu of a donation I'll continue to not pay for ad-laden garbage.
commandersaki
I recall Louis saying that some (or all?) solutions to these bounties cannot be revealed to the public due to being liable under DMCA circumvention measures. IANAL.
scotty79
Doesn't it just affect US citizens?
_whiteCaps_
Canada and Mexico too thanks to CUSMA.
keybored
IANAA.
martinky24
That website has never once paid out a bounty? hmm...
embedding-shape
> Include instructions for carrying out the functional method which are accessible and easily usable by a non-technical individual
Good luck for anyone to claim this bounty if that's one of the requirements. Does the fridge have any exposed ports at all that the average person could access without removing anything from the fridge?
It's also not clear in the bounty, if I add funds to the campaign and it gets fully funded, does that mean that software/hack will be released publicly? Or only to "backers"? It's not clear what the donation goes to, besides for the person who makes the hack to claim.
gus_massa
I bought a Samsung notebook in ~2008. No crapware! Nice and small, it survived long beyond the guaranty date.
My cellphone decided to die last month. It was near retirement, but still working until it didn't. I bought a Samsung phone. First it asked twice if I wanted to share all my life with Google (using some dark patterns) and then it asked twice if I wanted to share all my life with Samsung (using more dark patterns). (After that, I installed WhatsApp, so I'm not sure I bothered.)
Next the phone offered to install the app from my carrier, TikTok and a ¿third? app-store. I didn't want them so in the screen with the offer I disabled the first and the other two were disabled by default. Anyway, I got TikTok and the other app for some reason! (I uninstalled them inmediately.)
I still get random notifications, like complaining that I'm using the phone too much. Or a notification that they upgraded something, restarted the phone and all apps notifications were disabled until I unlock it. (Lucky, I didn't miss any important urgent message.)
rcarmo
I've managed to mostly excise Samsung from my digital life (except for phones that family buys without my knowledge and that I have to troubleshoot), and I have been happier for it for many decades now.
(This was after direct exposure to their Tizen engineering team back in the early 2000s)
I stayed away from their phones, SmartTVs, everything.
hn_acc1
What phones do you recommend? I have an S21 FE I got free from Metro PCS (I got laid off, had to return company S20 phone). Others in the family have Pixel / moto. I get the feeling the later galaxy phones are much worse than the S21?
TylerE
iPhone. Android is so crap laden.
cma
They were caught uploading screenshots from content played on smart TVs. Ostensibly to sell ad tracking info like a Nielsen TV, but I'm pretty sure it meant they were capturing people's desktops with confidential corporate info etc. if you used the TV as a monitor.
https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/samsung-smart-tvs...
nomel
This isn't just Samsung! Nearly all of them use ACR [1].
[1] https://www.consumerreports.org/electronics/privacy/how-to-t...
redundantly
> except for phones that family buys without my knowledge and that I have to troubleshoot
It's okay to say no. After decades of being the computer tech in my family, I started saying no and have been a lot happier for it.
jmward01
This is why I have so few 'smart' devices in my life. It is obvious that all of these devices are predatory. They start off 'helpful' and 'useful' and then turn malicious when you can't easily replace them. Lock-in bait and switch should be illegal.
nicbou
Or they are neutered by a software update, or stop working when the company shuts down the servers that make them work.
microflash
At this point, anything from Samsung is a vehicle for ads, and anything with the word “smart” from Samsung is most likely a spyware. The amount of garbage I had to remove from a recently encountered Galaxy phone is on par with Windows 11 levels and some.
Unfortunately, the entire industry is racing toward this behavior. Recent LGs have also started slapping “AI” stickers on their products. I’ve been visiting Rossman’s Consumer Wiki[1] more often than I’d like before making a purchase.
prawn
Can't stand behaviour like this.
I pay for Spotify and the app now shows paid suggestions (cough ads), to paying users. When you tap the ellipsis and choose "Not interested", it doesn't respond with "OK, we'll stop" but something like 'We'll show less of this'.
No, don't show less, I want you to not show it at all.
smoe
I switched away from Spotify a couple of years ago because of this, after having been a paying customer for around 10 years.
But I fear all such services will eventually succumb to this, given just how much more lucrative ads can be compared to subscriptions.
pmw
I was also infuriated by this, so much so that I switched to TIDAL. Migrating was easy— I used their recommended webapp ti migrate all my playlists. Have been using TIDAL happily ever since. Never any popups or ads.
aj_icracked
I have the Samsung Frame TV (great TV btw) and decided I didn't want to pay the $5 / month to have curated art in the room and when Superman the movie came out a few months ago it was only displaying Superman comics on the screen. Was super annoying bc was subtle but not subtle enough. I uploaded family pics instead so I don't have that anymore but it was still pretty annoying. I have samsung washers / dryers / dishwasher etc all connected to the internet and I love the notifications when a load is done but I don't know how useful the data is... I assume data brokers are like, "Oh Aj uses his washing machine 7 times a month let's hit him with Tide ads", but I assume everyone uses the machine that much. I'm fine having my machines tell Samsung use bc it's normal usage (i think?)
move-on-by
If you are thinking of data - you have to think of meta data. Instead of how often you do laundry think more:
* number of adults in the house hold (people who have access to the account)
* when you are home
* opening fridge/doing laundry/etc. I have no idea if their app has an excuse to ask for location- but app location tracking would be the most valuable data
* even if you don’t share location- these things are on your network and any regular and simple network scanning would show when certain devices are home and we they are not home and what schedules they follow
This isn’t even very imaginative, just the basics really. I would not be surprised if you could guess the household size solely based on the number of times a fridge is opened in a day. You could at least determine between a person without a family vs. family- that’s useful for ads. Are these the fridges that have cameras in them ‘so you can see what you have while at the grocery store’? Throw some image detection in there and you now know brand targeting and if they cook regularly or eat out. A goldmine of data really.
verdverm
Hopefully DNS level ad blocking will help here, and even more hopefully consumers will reject smart appliances. I'd never buy one
thesuitonym
They won't. Smart devices tend to be cheap because the manufacturer is double-dipping by selling telemetry and advertising.
maerF0x0
Just wait till you have to watch N adds before the door will unlock. And good luck getting it open in a power/internet outage :lol:
teddyh
Please drink a verification can.
(<https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/2714117-mountain-dew-twitch-...>)
denkmoon
Millions of people sit through minutes of the worst ads I've ever seen to watch mr beast exploit homeless people. We're boned.
tracker1
We noticed you have Coca-Cola in your refrigerator... please enjoy this Pepsi ad and this QR code for 25% off your next purchase.
OptionOfT
It's probably work like IMDb does on your phone. All ads are piped through the same domain as useful data.
annoyingnoob
I'll never ever buy a 'smart' appliance. I'll go caveman first. Keeping food cold and/or cooking it does not require the Internet.
verdverm
Or import one yourself
null
fourseventy
I would rather go without household refrigeration than have the refrigerator that I own play ads in my house.
linsomniac
I'd rather put foil tape over the display than go without refrigeration.
This guarantees I'll never buy a Samsung appliance. If they're this willing to screw with their customers today, they'll do it again tomorrow.
Sadly, I'm including their TVs in this. I have one today, displaying the output of an Apple TV and not directly connected to the Internet because hah, no way, but I'll be shopping around when it comes time to replace it.
Pity. They make nice stuff. Not nice enough that I'm willing to tolerate their anti-customer shenanigans, but otherwise decent quality.