alt Hacker NewsManufacturers for 100 years didn’t try to wrap their fridges in ads, or tune the compressor sound to a commercial jingle. They sold mostly honest products to cool your food efficiently.
But when they add an LED display and Internet connection, suddenly they forget about cooling your food and impulsively add a bunch of adversarial functionality, meaning functions that monetize the consumer rather than keeping the food cool.
It’s like the Internet advertising ecosystem is a virus intent on infecting anything and anyone with an Internet connection, making them do bizarre customer-hostile things they never would have done otherwise.
You are way off: it's just about money. For a long time, making appliances was an ok business, making good stuff, selling them, factories running, employment, margins ok, ... and there was progress/innovation to do.
Now that there is not much to update or innovate with, and companies have already squeezed workers in Bengladesh to the max, the only current innovation and additional money source are "connected" and "ads".