Roku TVs could one day show ads as soon as you pause playing a game on a connected Xbox, or stop a stream on an Apple TV.

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.

  • qwertyqwertyqwerty@lemmy.oneEnglish
    146·
    7 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·
      7 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·
          7 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·
          7 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·
          7 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·
        7 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·
          7 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·
        7 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·
          7 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·
            7 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·
              7 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·
          7 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·
      7 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·
      7 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·
        7 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·
        7 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·
      7 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.