alt Hacker NewsBMW Is Showing Commercials on Their Car's Dash Screens as a Treat
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Remember, folks: it's not illegal to remove ads from your car. And it's not illegal to open a business where people can bring their cars and you'll remove ads from them for money. And it's not illegal to wire the seat heaters to a switch on the dashboard.
What a spectacularly efficient means to devalue a once “premium” brand. I guess “good will” didn’t get its own line item on their balance sheet.
At least in the USA, a new BMW is a high-end car. Not a supercar, but beyond the reach of most of the car-buying public. I'm surprised that the generally quite wealthy owners of those cars would tolerate that.
I've driven several BMW's starting in the mid 90's. I recently picked up a used 2017 site unseen from a dealer pretty far away. It was the only one available I could find that met my criteria.
The car was in superb shape and I'm happy with it, but I knew immediately after driving it that it would be the last BMW I ever purchased. This just seals the deal.
Don’t worry, with the progress in AI we will build BR (for blocked reality) goggles which will obscure anything you have considered possibly objectionable from your environment and replaced it with something innocuous.
Google thought "Oh let's bundle a movie ad in an OS update": https://www.androidauthority.com/google-pixel-theme-packs-la...
I have seen the bar at the top appear with "BMW has a surprise for you" or something, but I always use Android Auto which starts a second later so I have never seen what this was. Still unacceptable.
I wonder if advertisement was illegal, would that have effects on the economy other than the advertisement platforms not getting their cut?
I mean, in Europe there are no drug or doctor advertisements and in US there is. In London or Brussels the outdoor advertisements are much more limited than what’s happening in Tokyo or Istanbul. Do Europeans miss out on medicine? Do London business do worse than Istanbul?
I suspect that there’s a case for getting rid of advertisements but on the other hand the advertisement agencies are responsible for some of the greatest advancements in AI and computing, so maybe that’s the utility after all.
My 90s car has no screen. Auto industry needs to self correct before they collapse.
This upsets me so deeply in my core that so many companies do this instead of creating anything new for a customer to buy. I can't even process that someone would be mentally disturbed enough to even think of this, and not feel any shame.
The great irony of seeing ads in an article about how there is some arbitrary line between “you tracked me for no cost” and “I paid tens of thousands of dollars for this car” when it comes to where ads are no longer acceptable.
13 hours ago: "BMW Spider-Man in-car advertising" (consumerrights.wiki)
211 points | 148 comments
Every car given enough time will have ads. Just like every proprietary software will become enshittified. It should be obvious by now that the stock ticker must go up and to do that you have to squeeze your customers. And if they have already bought the car, they have no recourse.
The only solution I see is open-source but for cars, that’s a long ways out.
Where's my sledgehammer?
I have been recently looking at new cars in Europe and there is s massive difference in quality at all price tiers between Chinese and non Chinese cars.
Mind you, Chinese cars are often assembled in Europe and have to comply with all the safety laws etc, but at any price tier it feels you're getting a car that is 10k+ more expensive than it is.
And that's despite EU putting (non sense) sanctions on Chinese cars and components.
If Chinese were free to compete square and fair they would've long swallowed the European industry.
Like look at Volkswagen and what you get at 40k. A non base Golf, maybe?
It also grinds my nerves that European cars are less expensive anywhere but in Europe.
You go to US and they are like 15/20% less expensive.
return it as you bought it within 14 days if its a BTS vehicle.
Is there a cookie and gdpr consent bar at the beginning?
In-car adblockers would be nice.
Adblockers for cars?
Wow amazing
I would drive straight back to the dealership and return it
Yet another reason not to buy a BMW.
It’s a slow burn but I feel Europe is heading in a direction where vehicles will play a safety video every time you start up a vehicle, similar to what plays on airlines. Imagine a 3 minute video on rules of the road with no skip function and you have to click ‘agree’ before you can drive. Then you have cameras tracking your eyes, speed etc. They’ll automate license suspensions based on driving style. Maybe you’ll need to scan you license and/or face when the car starts too.
They won’t even be doing this to push people to use public transport. It’s just regular enshittification by big brother.
If you bought a car with a display instead of physical gauges, what did you expect to happen?
All automakers are bad. Hope you like biking a lot. Reports are from 2023 but assume it's gotten even worse.
https://www.mozillafoundation.org/en/privacynotincluded/cate...