I mentioned it on the other thread, but free-pc tried this twenty four years ago and it was a dumb idea then.
There was also NetZero, alladvantage, and probably others that I'm forgetting that gave people money and crap for watching ads. It turns out people don't like ads.
How does this work as a business? Are ad companies so desperate they will buy ad space on machines destined for people with zero disponible income and zero loan capability? Are the data from stalking people who can't afford anything that valuable?
At the end of the food chain surveillance capitalism works thanks to profit from conversion from ads to purchases. How do they expect conversion by targeting people who can hardly afford rent and necessities?
It feels like increasingly ads are used to sell ad supported products so you can watch ads for things with ads. And at the end of the road it’s scams and subscriptions. Like it’s a good thing I don’t like capitalism because it feels like it’s looking bloated and a concerning shade of yellow
People keep saying that no one will hack it because it will cost them $1000. Plenty of people will pay that so that they can hack it anyway. And those people will come up with the countermeasures for the rest.
I genuinely don't know who would ever sign up for this. If you're too broke to afford a TV, just watch on your phone or laptop. Nobody needs a huge screen anymore. Then there's the number of people with ad blockers or paying a small amount per month just to get rid of ads. This just looks like a bad idea all the way from a bad VC investment to a bad job for the devs to a bad choice for the consumer. And at no point did anyone ever say "wait what are we doing again?"
Okay so this isn’t ever something I’d even consider - but I wonder what’s to stop someone from just putting a piece of paper (figuratively) over the bottom portion of the screen…?
I’m not too surprised; but to take the example of one country, in the USA where I live, 11% of the people (that’s about 40M people) live below the poverty line, and that is even much less money than a livable wage where you can afford rent, food and nothing else. I’m speaking of the US as an example, but I’m sure it’s not an uncommon situation in other countries either.
My point is: a massive amount of people can’t afford to spend $100 on entertainment, ever. I spent some time with such families, and I can tell you it is not at all an uncommon thing. If they have a TV today, they probably got it for free from somewhere (possibly a dumpster), and it looks exactly like they did. That’s a massive amount of people who would desire this kind of upgrade.
Now is it the right population to serve ads to, that’s a different question.
realistically, is there anything stopping me from ripping it apart and using one of those screen driver modules you can buy off ebay to control it and essentially turn it into a big computer monitor?