this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2025
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Smartphone Required 📱(digital exclusion of people without smartphones)

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🫕📱GE: Wi-Fi required to roast food in your high-end $3,600 oven (www.consumerreports.org)
submitted 3 months ago by evenwicht to c/smartphone_required
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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/47171718

The guy could not use “Convection Roast” mode in his oven unless he connects to wi-fi and registers personal data. Apparently because this was a cook mode that was added after the oven was marketed.

Sure, it is useful to be able to get new features and upgrades after the thing is produced. But because of that, it’s as if they are making the store version deliberately excessively basic in order to twist people’s arms to run their proprietary closed-source spyware.

I was originally going to tag this as [a/d] (for asshole design), but opted to call it crappy design because upgradability is still a good thing. What’s crappy is the fact that:

  • it’s not FOSS
  • GE’s server is needlessly in the loop for everything
  • ppl must register on GE’s platform and give copious personal info which is then certain to be abused

To avoid both c/d and a/d, I would insist:

  • the app must be FOSS
  • the app and appliance both must have no cloud dependency and talk to each other in an off-grid LAN-only scenario
  • upgrades must be fetchable over Tor without registration, and side-loadable; users must be able to connect over Tor from a public cafe/library to fetch upgrades
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[–] JakenVeina@midwest.social 2 points 3 months ago

The guy could not use “Convection Roast” mode in his oven unless he connects to wi-fi and registers personal data. Apparently because this was a cook mode that was added after the oven was marketed.

According to the article, they guy was prompted to install the app and enable the feature when he tried to use it. How was he able to attempt to use a feature that didn't exist when he bought it?

The cook mode was not "added after the oven was marketed" it was either intentionally exlcuded, despite being functional or, at best, planned but not yet implemented. Either way, they intentionally marketed and sold the device in an incomplete state. Absolutely asshole design.