No Opt-Out For Ads On New Kindle Fires

An anonymous reader writes "Lost amid the announcements for Amazon's new tablets and e-readers was the news that their latest Kindle Fire tablets would include advertisements. So-called 'Special Offers' would place ads on the devices' lock screens in a similar fashion to the lowest price Kindle e-readers. However, on the e-readers, you had the option to 'buy out' the ads by simply paying the difference in price between the cheaper device and the regular version. But Amazon has no confirmed there is no way to opt out of the ads on the new Kindle Fire tablets." Update: 09/09 03:02 GMT by S : Reader Aoreias sends words that Amazon has now changed its mind. A spokesman announced that users will have the ability to opt-out for a fee of $15.

Comments

Expect more of the same

[NixieBunny]

Ads will take over the world. We'll have to jailbreak our devices with illicit ad-blocking software.

Re:Expect more of the same

[ultranova]

I wonder why ads bother people so much.

Ads lower the signal-to-noise ratio by saturating the environment with irrelevant misinformation. Even if every ad was 100% honest and trustworthy, they would still distract you from more relevant inputs. But of course they are typically extremely dishonest and manipulative.

Furthermore, ads perpetuate the idea that life's purpose is to work your ass of so you can consume an endless stream of useless (and sometimes actively harmful) crap. They do their part in making people waste their lives chasing after a winning lottery ticket for the benefit of the 1% at the top who run the lottery. They feed various neurosis and addictions to manipulate people into spending their hard-earned cash to try and fix imaginary problems by illogical means of buying an unrelated product.

An ad campaign is basically information warfare. People disliking them is simply their self-protection instincts at work.

Re:Expect more of the same

[pla]

I wonder why ads bother people so much. Especially on the kindle where the ads are unobtrusive (you only see them on the power-off screensaver).

Has some of my bandwidth gone to downloading those ads? Has some of my electricity gone to displaying them? Did I lose a tenth of a second of my life hesitating on unlocking it because I thought I saw boobies in the ad?

In all seriousness, I first started blocking ads because of bandwidth, back in the days of dialup. Oddly enough, the ads have kept pace with technology, and you'll still see a noticeable speedup (whether actually my network, or just because they can't be assed to pay for decent hosting so the load takes about 10x longer than the rest of the page combined).

At some point, I came to consider the ads as no different than your run-of-the-mill spammer - They go out of their way to waste my time, get me to look at their crap, try to con me into spending money, all on something in which I have no interest to start with. They fight back against ad-blocking technology with ever more subtle ways of getting around our filters, and yet they still can't take the goddamned hint.

So, you want to know why I loathe ads so much? Because marketers don't know how to take a polite "no" for an answer.

Re:Expect more of the same

[ljw1004]

It bothers me that overt $2000/person/year is spent on adertising in the US per inhabitant, i.e. including all babies, children, adults. That's a huge waste, a kind of regressive tax.

Also, ads to me are an unwanted intrusion into my personal space. They're forcing their way into my perception and consciousness. I'd rather keep those two things clear for what's more valuable to me.

Re:Expect more of the same

[pla]

What hint would that be, that you want the site to be run by magic pixies that don't have any server costs, don't have any bandwidth costs and don't have any costs creating the content?

Nice strawman, but I have my own website. And not a crappy LiveJournal blog, but a real, live, actual website. Costs me a whopping $10 a year.

Does YouTube differ somewhat from my own website? Sure it does! Do I, however, give the least fuck about whether or not Google makes a profit on a collection of content provided for free by its community

Nope.


See the disconnect here? People will provide content. The internet existed before its "monetization". Advertisers want to cash in on us, but honestly, we have very little use for them.

Google may have a use for them. I... Do not.

Re:Expect more of the same

[NeutronCowboy]

Nice strawman, but I have my own website. And not a crappy LiveJournal blog, but a real, live, actual website. Costs me a whopping $10 a year.

Yeah, I know quite a few people too who run their own website. Some even have their own actual business website. You know why it costs you $10 a year? Because no one visits it. A popular website can easily run a grand in monthly hosting costs. At that point, you either make sure your business can support the site as a marketing expense, or you make money off of each person visiting the site.

People will provide content. But they will provide it only for as long as doing so doesn't bankrupt them.

its no confirmed.

[matt007]

"Amazon has no confirmed there is no way to opt out of the ads on the new Kindle Fire tablets."

They no confirmed so its no sure there is no way out.

Re:Mostly meh, but some Grr

[nurb432]

Give them an inch, they will take a mile. This is similar to the trial balloon where they were optional, and if no one protests they are mandatory, expect more intrusive ones the next round.

Re:That will make the choice simpler

[teg]

I think this will help Google Nexus sales. I am not aware they come with built in adware.

From a 30000 ft view, Android is just an ad delivery mechanism. If you zoom in, it's a mobile OS, but it's sole job is to enable delivery of Google's ad service to users from it's customers. And as always, you are Google's product, not their customer.

Now, I use google mail, google docs, google talk and chrome... but I know they're doing this to sell me.

It's opt-in

[Fuzzums]

"there is no way to opt out of the ads on the new Kindle Fire tablets"

Actually, you opt-in by buying that tablet.
Your opt-out option is not buying that tablet.

Easy.

Troll?

[Ecuador]

Eh??? BS much?
I have both the low-end Kindle and the Kindle Keyboard (for me and my wife), both with "Special Offers" and have been extremely happy with them (which is why I bought the second) and would never even consider paying more for skipping the ads.
How it works is, if you stop reading and leave your Kindle for a while, it will go to "sleep" mode. Instead of showing a blank screen, it will show an ad. I am noting here that since an e-ink display will only use power to change a page, this ad will do nothing to your battery usage. Anyway, the next time you pick up the Kindle you will see the add instead of a blank screen etc. You just have to press the power button and in a second you are back to where you were last reading.
Now, if you like the ad (sometimes it can be something good, like a discounted book, or a $-off coupon etc - another reason to get the special-offers section), you can get more info on it by holding the center button, and at that point you will need a wifi/3g connection.
Also, if you don't connect to the internet for a while, you will actually stop seeing ads and you will get instead a "connect to the internet if you want to get new ads" screen instead.
There is also a banner in the home screen - I don't spend any time in that screen (too busy reading books), and it is a rather small banner.
So, overall the special offers version is great. Cheaper to buy the device, also has saved me some $ when books I wanted came up as a special offer in an ad and it does not cripple the device in any way.
The parent poster is either a troll, or mildly retarded and actually follows the on-screen instructions on how to read more about the ad instead of just skipping it.