TL;DR
- Samsung introduced advertisements on its Family Hub refrigerators earlier this year.
- While there was an option for disabling ads, this also meant losing widget functionality.
- An owner now shares that a new update allows ads to be turned off without losing access to weather forecasts.
A major injustice has been done to consumers. And no, this time we’re not talking about ill-conceived tariffs torpedoing the economy. Earlier this year, Samsung shared the unthinkable: It was about to start serving advertisements on refrigerator screens in our kitchens. While those ads have since arrived, this week we’re finally getting some good news about them, as owners finally get access to a useful new option for disabling them.
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Right before Samsung flipped the switch to turn these ads on in the first place, it shared a few details about how the would work. Critically, users would have the option to disable ads on the fridges, but not without consequence. While you could use the appliance’s screen to navigate to Settings and turn off Advertisements, doing so would mean losing the entire widget ads were housed in, including weather forecasts. It was nice to get a choice at all, but that hardly felt like a fair trade-off.
Well, over on Reddit’s Samsung sub, user Ravage-1 shares that they just got a new update on their fridge that appears to solve this problem. They describe pulling up that same Advertisements option in fridge Settings, but mention that they’re now able to continue enjoying access to weather information, even with ads turned off.
Hopefully, that’s the end of this unfortunate saga, and Samsung doesn’t feel emboldened to push advertising limits any further. We still don’t love that these promotions are on by default, as thousands of Samsung users are no doubt miffed about the new ads that suddenly surfaced in their kitchens, not realizing they can be disabled. But we’ll take this small victory for consumers, nonetheless.
If all this just has you feeling consumed with righteous indignation that you shouldn’t have to fight back against devices you own for control over your living environment — well, good. It should. And if you can’t figure out which manufacturers are on the right side and the wrong side of this issue, maybe just avoid buying things with screens that don’t need them in the first place.
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