If it's digital, it can have a screen. And if it has a screen, it can show you ads.
That's the logic that dominates the electronics and tech industry these days, and it's now coming to bear on an essential household appliance: the fridge.
We call it a fridge, but after reading this, you may yearn for the days when they functioned as a mere icebox. Friend of the advertising industry Samsung announced that it will start plastering ads on its Family Hub™ refrigerators in the US, rendering your blank, low-tech slate of a fridge door into a fixture that would look right at home in Times Square.
The update was confirmed by Samsung in a statement to Android Authority, confirming a changelog that came out days earlier but many thought too ridiculous to actually be true. This is also despite the South Korean conglomerate telling The Verge in April that it had "no plans" to shove "promotions and curated advertisements" onto its customers' fridges, the outlet made sure to emphasize in its latest coverage of the ads.
One of the ways that Samsung justifies the update, the Verge noted, was that the ads would "strengthen" the "value" of your appliance.
"Samsung is committed to innovation and enhancing every day value for our home appliance customers," the statement reads. "As part of our ongoing efforts to strengthen that value, we are conducting a pilot program to offer promotions and curated advertisements on certain Samsung Family Hub refrigerator models in the U.S. market."
According to the statement, the ads will appear on the cover screens of some Family Hub fridges when the screen is idle. They won't appear when the cover screen is on "Art Mode" or showing picture albums.
Thankfully, Samsung says you can manually dismiss the ads when they're shown, and these ads won't appear again.
But it made no mention of a way of permanently disabling the ad function through fridge's settings. Officially, you're stuck with them. We're sure someone will figure out a clever workaround, though.
This update shouldn't come as a shock. One of Samsung's guiding philosophies is literally called "Screens Everywhere," and it's long forced ads onto its TVs. Its Family Hub™ fridges are also advertised as AI powered, with features like AI Vision Inside™, which is supposed to automatically recognize what's in your fridge.
And everyone's doing it, not just Samsung. Not even your car's infotainment screen is safe from the encroachment of annoying ads — and now, neither will your tired eyeballs as you sneak to your fridge for a guilty midnight snack.
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