Slashdot Mirror
Xiaomi Admits To Putting Ads In the Settings Menu of Its Phones (theverge.com)
Xiaomi, the world's fourth largest smartphone maker, was caught by a Reddit user for placing ads in the settings menu of its smartphones. The ads reportedly show up in Xiaomi's MIUI apps, including the music app and settings menu (MIUI is the name of Xiaomi's skinned version of Android). The Verge reports: When The Verge reached out to Xiaomi for confirmation on this matter, the company responded with the following statement, while also clarifying that it only applies to its devices running MIUI and not its Android One phones: "Advertising has been and will continue to be an integral part of Xiaomi's Internet services, a key component of the company's business model. At the same time, we will uphold user experience by offering options to turn off the ads and by constantly improving our approach towards advertising, including adjusting where and when ads appear. Our philosophy is that ads should be unobtrusive, and users always have the option of receiving fewer recommendations."
I am going to Google that statement and see if it has a chance.
Just more bullshit corporate speak.
Nothing quite says "you don't really own your device" more than forced advertising. And their answer is pretty weak/non-specific. And I wonder if they advertise/disclose this to potential purchasers.
They put ads in the channel menu. You could remove those channels (it was a royal pain in the ass), but they'd pop up again after a few days.
Hey U-Verse, if you can't make money charging me $140/month for lowest tier cable, then fuck you. I don't want to see your fucking ads when I channel surf.
tldr; Last May I canned U-verse, went from $140+/month to Cox cable basic internet for $15, and I'm not missing a thing. Then again, I spent about $300 one time charge for hardware (cable modem, pi 3B+, router) and am pretty good with bit-torrent. I figure 4-5 years before "pirating" stuff gets hard to do, but by then I plan to have 10-15 years of stuff on my NAS to watch. I'm old, if I'm not dead in 15 years I'll come up with a plan B.
Aren't people becoming desensitized to ads? You'd think the free market would have driven the price advertisers are willing to pay so low as to not be worth the 10 seconds it takes a developer to paste the support code into an application.
There are metrics on who clicks the ads, and that is still conceivable worth money if the data is good. But if half the people accidentally click an ad trying to access the brightness setting for their phone, that's worthless data and advertisers ought to learn not to pay for garbage.
P.S. I was really disappointed when the market for banner ads crashed in the late 1990's and it didn't completely die. I hoped they would finally ceases and go back to TV, radio, newspaper, etc. Instead we got pop-ups, then pop-unders, then overlays. And Google came in on the upswing and turned web advertising in a trillion dollar industry.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Any sufficiently connected device is a portable billboard that you can fit in your pocket. If it has a web browser, you will see ads. That's how the web works now.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
If it has a web browser, you will see ads. That's how the web works now.
Now?! Where you been for the past 20 or so years?!
Only the hoi polloi see ads. Those who know run adblockers.
Who knows how long *that'll* last...
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
For every new ad breakthrough, there will be a blocker.
Even if we have to find the source IP and null route it, we'll do so. The Internet is not one huge playing field for the Direct Marketing Association and Google Adwords.
I'm blocking 19 scripts on this page alone. When I find ways to block more, I will. And I'm sure I'm not alone.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Oh wait, they did.
I'm with Google. I use Android, I'm in the local Google developer group and my last two pieces of hardware I got are Chromebooks. I turn off location most of the time but I don't have a single doubt that the almighty Google knows more about me than anything else ever could.
But if they start pushing ads on me in the most obscure places I'm out faster than you can say "Google Takeout".
It is clear to me that for this exact problem we need an alternative to Android and iOS.
It's a shame that Firefox OS got axed. They went it too big and had to draw out. I don't trust Kai os enough and purisms Linux phone is a tad on the expensive side.
This is a problem we will need to attack sooner or later.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
And that is the reason you should always buy an Android One phone.
If the phone isn't in the Android One program, i don't want it.
Next up the list of features should be if the phone is supported by one of the major custom roms.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
I don't see ads on my phone when browsing. The current version of Firefox on Android supports the same extensions as the desktop version. uBlock Origin FTW!
I also rarely browse on my phone because I hate touch interfaces with the burning rage of 1000 suns, but when I have to, no ads.
- chrish
Then you go ahead and pay more for such a phone--that's your choice.
Xiaomi operates differently--and they've never hidden this fact. They sell high-quality handsets at razor-thin margins, openly stating that they will make their money from advertisements, in-app purchases, add-ons, and up-sells. This is the way the economy works in China, India, and most of Asia. People there are happy to watch ads if it means they get a phone for under a third the price (iPhone 8 = $699, Xiaomi 8 = $204).
This whole kerfluffle just highlights how oblivious people are to how things work in the rest of the world.