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Roku is exploring ways to show consumers ads on its TVs even when they are not using its streaming platform: The company has been looking into injecting ads into the video feeds of third-party devices connected to its TVs, according to a recent patent filing.

This way, when an owner of a Roku TV takes a short break from playing a game on their Xbox, or streaming something on an Apple TV device connected to the TV set, Roku would use that break to show ads. Roku engineers have even explored ways to figure out what the consumer is doing with their TV-connected device in order to display relevant advertising.

  • m-p{3}@lemmy.caEnglish
    6001·
    9 months ago

    Any company trying to use the HDMI-CEC protocol in such a subversive manner should lose their license to the HDMI standard IMO.

        • tal@lemmy.todayEnglish
          441·
          9 months ago

          I’m sure that a DisplayPort device in a chain can also inject video, but I have to admit that I would kind of like to not have two competing video standards, and my impression is that DisplayPort tends to lead HDMI technically, so…

          • pivot_root@lemmy.worldEnglish
            871·
            9 months ago

            DisplayPort: We have

            • Higher maximum resolution.
            • Better support for higher refresh rates.
            • Multi-stream transport so you can use a single display cable for multiple monitors.

            HDMI: Oh yeah? Well, we have

            • Royalties.
            • Specifications hidden behind contracts.
            • An emphasis on implementing DRM technology that makes it hard to use a capture card.

            Fuck HDMI.

      • SmoothLiquidation@lemmy.worldEnglish
        22·
        9 months ago

        I’m mad that they did their broken implementation of sending control codes between devices that never works. I have to disable it on everything so that the correct input gets set.

        And then they are killing the universal remote industry so there is nothing to replace it with.

    • Jimmycakes@lemmy.worldEnglish
      181·
      9 months ago

      You know HDMI is not some big secret they can use it without the license and ship from overseas like 90% of shit shipped from China.

      • m-p{3}@lemmy.caEnglish
        191·
        9 months ago

        For cheap gizmos I can see a chinese seller getting away with it (rebranding under another weird name like AWOYO or something, in a sea of identical devices under different brand names), but not a large business like Roku.

      • frezik@midwest.socialEnglish
        4·
        9 months ago

        That only works if you’re headquartered in China.

        Not that the HDMI Fourm will stop them, anyway. More likely, the companies involved will want to license Roku’s patent.

  • RunningInRVA@lemmy.worldEnglish
    271·
    9 months ago

    Imagine being the guy working on this and how much you hate yourself anytime somebody asks you what you are working on.

    • jg1i@lemmy.worldEnglish
      482·
      9 months ago

      Unfortunately, I bet these guys don’t care. I used to work at a company you might have products from and I would constantly hear “Hey, we’re a business” as an excuse to degrade the user experience. :(

    • RageAgainstTheRich@lemmy.worldEnglish
      32·
      9 months ago

      I remember having an argument with my teacher in college about this. He asked us what we would do if we were asked to code something that could be used for things you personally don’t agree with such as the government using tools to “help” but also remove peoples privacy. Or corporations being able to show you more ads. I told him i would refuse. And he said that it would be my job though and sometimes you have to do things you don’t like. So i told him i would quit. And for some reason he could not really comprehend that and we got into an argument.

      • acr515@lemmy.worldEnglish
        20·
        9 months ago

        To be fair, most people I know don’t have the financial flexibility to quit their job if they’re asked by their boss to do something objectionable

    • datelmd5sum@lemmy.worldEnglish
      18·
      9 months ago

      We had to listen this C-level guy give a speech how good the last couple of years have been. We’ve increased the price of services by 50% and the amount of useless upsell shit we push to people has gone up as well. While our wages are still the same and people are getting laid off constantly. But I need food and shit.

      • jjjalljs@ttrpg.networkEnglish
        11·
        9 months ago

        I knew a guy who went to work for palantir. I asked "what if you end up working on like domestic spying or other sketchy stuff?’

        He was like, shrug, iunno. Guy did not give a shit about anyone outside his immediate friend and family group.

        • Kalysta@lemm.eeEnglish
          3·
          9 months ago

          And when it turns out the thing he made is used to hurt his friends?

          • jjjalljs@ttrpg.networkEnglish
            5·
            9 months ago

            I’m going to guess he values himself more than his friends, and he’d find justifications, but maybe he’d surprise me.

    • Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      1·
      8 months ago

      I recall watching a defcon speech given by someone who used to make malware. He opened the speech by apologizing and saying that he knows that he will burn in hell.

  • Ultragigagigantic@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1591·
    9 months ago

    "People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you.

    You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity.

    Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.

    You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs."

    – Banksy

  • qwertyqwertyqwerty@lemmy.oneEnglish
    147·
    9 months ago

    Is there an anti-ad community on Lemmy? Or another non-Lemmy place to work through blocking/avoiding this bullshit? I’m so fed up with the advertisement industry. I don’t want ads on my devices. I don’t want ads in my operating systems. I don’t want ads in my content. I don’t want ads in the sky. I don’t want ads in the ocean. I don’t want to be forced to see or hear ads while putting gas in my car.

    I really can’t emphasize how much I am willing to go through to rid my life completely of advertisements.

    • yuriy@lemmy.worldEnglish
      63·
      9 months ago

      If the gas pumps have those unlabeled buttons around a screen, try pressing all of em. The pumps around here (nebraska) will mute the audio when you press one of the buttons, it just isn’t labeled. I’ve taken to writing “mute” on the magic-button with a sharpie whenever I pump my gas.

        • yuriy@lemmy.worldEnglish
          26·
          9 months ago

          Yep. Just shell stations around here (so far at least)

          They’re super loud and in my experience usually political, think local office smear ads and oil lobbyist propaganda.

        • captainlezbian@lemmy.worldEnglish
          17·
          9 months ago

          Well yeah how else are they supposed to make money? /s

          Yeah no it’s real and it’s bullshit. They also have ad signage, but that’s been around my whole life, it just keeps getting worse constantly. I remember boycotting the first company to have gas ads, now I don’t have a no ad choice

        • jqubed@lemmy.worldEnglish
          14·
          9 months ago

          Years ago I was talking to some engineers at one of the main gas pump manufacturers. They were venting about their company’s partnership with Verifone. While they used to handle credit card reading themselves in the magnetic stripe days, the switch to chip credit cards and readers in the U.S. meant they were going to partner with an established card reader company and Verifone (at least at the time) was the largest and most established in the new chip technology. Verifone was dominating the partnership and making life difficult for the gas pump company, insisting on all sorts of changes to the devices that weren’t necessary for the gas pump but were going to let them do things like run ads at the gas pump. If the pump manufacturer didn’t go along with it, Verifone seemed to have a very credible threat that they were just going to leave and go to the other main gas pump manufacturer. The gas pump companies needed the card reader a lot more than the other way around.

          So, these ads have been a long time coming, but it wasn’t the pump manufacturer that had the idea or wanted to do it.

      • ralakus@lemmy.worldEnglish
        35·
        9 months ago

        One of my local gas stations had that to where it was so loud you can hear them in the car. A few weeks after they installed them, someone came by with a hand drill and drilled out all of the speakers. Not sure what happened to that hero but we need more people like them.

        • Cosmic Cleric@lemmy.worldEnglish
          19·
          9 months ago

          While I never condone audio speaker violence, I do want to cheer/salute the activism of the person who did the work.

      • qwertyqwertyqwerty@lemmy.oneEnglish
        24·
        9 months ago

        I’ve tried pressing every button at every pump I’ve used in my area and this trick doesn’t work. I want to epoxy the speakers and screen and glitter-bomb the entire thing.

        I won’t. But I want to.

        • 4am@lemm.eeEnglish
          16·
          9 months ago

          Sometimes it’s multiple presses. Around here for example I find that at my local Shell station it’s the second button down on the right side, two or three times.

          • qwertyqwertyqwerty@lemmy.oneEnglish
            3·
            9 months ago

            I really can’t afford to commit a crime by damaging the pumps, but if I found a way to temporarily disable them I’d be all for it.

            • yuriy@lemmy.worldEnglish
              3·
              9 months ago

              I reckon you could kill it with a pin in a casual enough way, maybe make it look like you’re just putting a hand there to lean? Also you have like 4 other people come throughout the day and get gas at that same pump, and they do a similar casual hand movement around the speaker.

              You’d be safe as houses, probably!

        • Confused_Emus@lemmy.worldEnglish
          4·
          9 months ago

          Definitely had to resist the urge myself a few times to jam my keys into the speaker when the mute button method didn’t work.

    • Entropywins@kbin.social
      12·
      9 months ago

      Look into adgaurd or set up pihole software for dns and have a network device dedicated to blocking ads

    • Mango@lemmy.worldEnglish
      9·
      9 months ago

      I can’t understand why anyone’s money entitles them to put their mental parasites into my attention space. They aren’t paying me, and I wouldn’t take their money no matter how much they were offering. For fuck’s sake, I don’t even want to experience the offer of money for ad attention.

      • qwertyqwertyqwerty@lemmy.oneEnglish
        2·
        9 months ago

        That only works while this is still a niche use case. Just wait until they find out how many more places they can shove ads while we are forced to stand/sit somewhere for 20 minutes!

      • frostysauce@lemmy.worldEnglish
        11·
        9 months ago

        Perfect. Then people can avoid ads at that gas station by going to another gas station with ads!

    • I_Miss_Daniel@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      9 months ago

      I’m still running an older version of NextPVR with three usb tuners and Comskip.exe - it gets most of the ads out of free to air automatically.

      Ublock origin and / or expressvpn seem to block some ads on the catch up services, but not all.

      YouTube with Ublock origin and Sponsorblock work well.

      Newpipe Sponsorblock fork is good as well.

  • Moose@moose.bestEnglish
    103·
    9 months ago

    If a consumer watches something on their Apple TV and then presses the pause button, a Roku TV set could use either audio or video-based content recognition technologies (known in the industry as ACR) to identify what’s being watched, match the current scene to a database and extract relevant information to pair an ad with it.

    Wow somehow their idea is even worse than I imagined, glad I don’t own a Roku now.

    • Mango@lemmy.worldEnglish
      16·
      9 months ago

      Yeah way to fuck 80% of the purpose of pausing. This is basically malware.

    • danc4498@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4·
      9 months ago

      Yeah, I thought it was no different than what already happens on my fire cube. The screensaver with ads mixed in.

      This is a much bigger invasion of privacy

  • Got_Bent@lemmy.worldEnglish
    101·
    9 months ago

    How the fuck can an economy that’s almost nothing but advertisements sustain itself for any period of time? It feels like forcing more and more ads is the only thing anybody does for money anymore.

    • untorquer@lemmy.worldEnglish
      22·
      9 months ago

      Big economy, long time to fall. See example: rome or whatever.

      They’re not even going to profit so much off the ads as they will having a new way to distribute them. Even then its, “line go up this quarter”, not “what if sales go down due to this?”. They’ll license it out to every offer company who needs it for line go up.

    • Billiam@lemmy.worldEnglish
      81·
      9 months ago

      Wait until someone invents a bot/AI script that watches ads for you. Then the whole “ads everywhere” will either implode or it’ll trigger a war between AI ad makers and AI ad watchers

      Either way, it’ll be entertaining.

      • Draconic NEO@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        9 months ago

        They already have that it’s called click fraud or automated ad clicking, mostly though it’s websites that earned money from advertisers who engage in this, as a sleazy way of making more money.

        Though if you want to partake in it there are ad blocking extensions that also do it. It’s not perfect but it is quite damaging to the advertising industry.

  • andyburke@fedia.io
    83·
    9 months ago

    Used to recommend Roku to others. I will never buy anything from them or recommend them to anyone again.

    Someday maybe boards will figure out that “business” people have no idea what they are doing.

    • Semi-Hemi-Lemmygod@lemmy.worldEnglish
      55·
      9 months ago

      Boards only understand “line go up” or “line go down.” If something turns off a few weirdos like us but it lets them sell access to millions of eyeballs they’ll do it.

      They’d step over their own dying mother to make a buck.

      • digdug@kbin.social
        16·
        9 months ago

        I mean, if she’s already dying, what’s the issue here? I’m losing money if I have to stop and call 911, when she has a perfectly good phone to do it herself.

      • andyburke@fedia.io
        9·
        9 months ago

        History is littered with companies that decided they should “milk” their customers instead of providing new and innovative products. They usually don’t last all that long, but you’re right that the current board members might not gaf about any kind of longer term existence.

        • Semi-Hemi-Lemmygod@lemmy.worldEnglish
          4·
          9 months ago

          That may have been true in the past, but we’re in a corporate fuedal system now, with a bunch of little fiefdoms we can’t escape ruled by people who wish they had the rizz of Henry VIII or Louis XVI

    • Ghostalmedia@lemmy.worldEnglish
      8·
      9 months ago

      I’ve always found their monetization strategy icky. Their remotes, with streaming service ads on them, always made me feel gross. Especially since those services change every couple years, and you get stuck with remotes plugging stupid services like Blockbuster and Redbox.

    • InvaderDJ@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4·
      9 months ago

      To be fair, this is just a patent, not Roku saying they will do this. But if they do, then absolutely.

    • Empricorn@feddit.nlEnglish
      4·
      9 months ago

      They know what they’re doing! Maximizing share price for the next quarter while they jump ship… It’s legitimately disgusting.

  • Blackmist@feddit.ukEnglish
    781·
    9 months ago

    Late Stage Capitalism: Using a microscopic laser, we are able to burn our advertiser logos directly into our customer’s retinas, so they will see them even as they sleep.

    Shareholders: 👏 👏 👏

  • InvaderDJ@lemmy.worldEnglish
    76·
    9 months ago

    If Roku actually does this I would definitely never use them again. Completely asinine behavior. Especially because most people aren’t even using stand alone boxes with their smart TVs.

    • BassTurd@lemmy.worldEnglish
      27·
      9 months ago

      I would get rid of my old Roku that I’m sure is too old for this tech and urge everyone I know to never buy anything Roku, and if they did, I would lambast them every opportunity I could.

      • Kalysta@lemm.eeEnglish
        2·
        9 months ago

        Our tv turned out to be a roku tv. When we bought it this wasn’t advertised well. Which feels on brand right now.

    • jkrtn@lemmy.mlEnglish
      21·
      9 months ago

      I will never buy a Roku device because of that forced arbitration stunt. We can add the fact that they are even considering this to the list of reasons.

      • Marleyinoc@lemmy.worldEnglish
        21·
        9 months ago

        Yeah, Roku must be on its last legs with the crap they’re pulling. All of this says to me: don’t buy Roku.

      • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        71·
        9 months ago

        To be fair, a lot of companies are doing the forced arbitration nonsense. I just bailed on Vultr (VPS host) for doing the TOS update nonsense (undismissable pop-up, must accept to access account), and I’ve been looking for an alternative and every one I’ve checked has that forced arbitration nonsense in their TOS. Some let you opt out, but you need to send a letter or email to do so.

        So instead of dealing with that, I’m actively looking for ways to avoid using any type of service with forced arbitration. I’m upgrading my NAS to support hosting my things, I’m trying to find VPNs that offer a fixed public address so I can expose services behind my NAT, etc. It’s incredibly frustrating because it’s literally everywhere now…

    • Phen@lemmy.eco.brEnglish
      326·
      9 months ago

      I don’t know. If done well this could be a much better option than pausing whatever you’re watching to show an ad.

      If youtube showed ads on the corner of the screen while you’re browsing around searching for something to watch, it would be a much better platform than what it is today and it would probably make more money too. If Netflix did this they would triple their revenue.

      • untorquer@lemmy.worldEnglish
        29·
        9 months ago

        1. you’ve described youtube in 2008 and it was a much better platform.

        2. the issue isn’t what time to show ads, or where. It’s the furthering invasion of marketing into private spaces and lack of apparent concern for end-user consent. There are security concerns when devices can hijack eachother. This technology is likely to rely on some means of detecting idle time, like comparing consecutive frames as the article states, so you try reading a long text on screen in an RPG, and then you’re local kroger brand ad plays.

      • subtext@lemmy.worldEnglish
        27·
        9 months ago

        The problem with this philosophy is that it’s basically how ads started on the internet and now we’re here.

        Oh it’s just a small, non-intrusive side bar ad, thats okay… oh it’s just ads on both sides… oh it’s just an additional ad on top and on the bottom… oh it’s just an easily dismissed pop up ad… oh it’s just a short video to watch before I’m allowed to see the site… repeat ad nauseam (no pun intended)

        • SpeedLimit55@lemmy.worldEnglish
          5·
          9 months ago

          Yep, just like autoplay video was common early on, then bad and now it’s common again starting with ads.

      • TacoThrash3r@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        4·
        9 months ago

        Sounds like IOI in the rp1 movie

        “We can take up to 80% of the visual field BEFORE inducing seizures” ~ Nolan Sorento

        • Drusenija@lemmy.worldEnglish
          5·
          9 months ago

          I quoted this a week or two ago for something else on here, and someone responded along the lines of you know they’d be trying to up that %, and they were 100% right.

  • freebee@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    771·
    9 months ago

    Imagine a world where talented engineers would put their minds to work for solving big problems instead of … I’m not sure wtf this is.

      • exanime@lemmy.todayEnglish
        8·
        9 months ago

        Is it really “society” doing this? Or just the deliciously looking, juicy, meaty, 1%?

        • blind3rdeye@lemm.eeEnglish
          6·
          9 months ago

          The 1% - but unfortunately this includes our leaders and lawmakers; so that puts power in the hands of those who value money above all else. And that power is used to extract more money and power from everyone else. Advertising always reinforces their message of course.

        • Kalysta@lemm.eeEnglish
          3·
          9 months ago

          The 1% is society.

          When was the last time you, or anyone you know, had an actual voice in how things are run?

    • Refurbished Refurbisher@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
      1·
      9 months ago

      It would have to be a society that isn’t driven by profit. A society where everyone has the basics guaranteed to them, like housing, food, water, utilities, and transportation. A society where working is optional instead of one where you have to “earn a living”.

      Just the phrase “earn a living” alone means to me that in capitalism, nobody deserves to live unless they work.

    • grue@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      9 months ago

      This just goes to show how “engineering ethics” course requirements are extremely underrated (and how engineering ethics courses themselves don’t go far enough).

  • flop_leash_973@lemmy.worldEnglish
    70·
    9 months ago

    It seems like so long that Roku was not a horrible company. Simple little box for a good price with a small static ad on the home screen to make money.

    Seems like a lifetime ago.