alt Hacker NewsRespect for the consumer has long been gone generally except for a few brands.
I am still wondering why consumer respecting brands are not emerging more and thriving.
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The bottom of the line TVs are basically commoditized and are sold at a loss. There's few tv manufacturers and they mostly compete on price, only the top of the line models have pricing power and only for 6-24 months for new models. A supermajority of consumers don't care if they're tracked all the time and a large fraction don't mind ads everywhere either (they're used to it).
A new display plant costs multiple billions.
A consumer respecting brand sells products. A Consumer selling brand sells consumers so they can be profiled, analysed for weaknesses and exploited economically in the name of Surveillance Capitalism
I suspect because it's hard to differentiate between ones that actually respect the consumer vs ones that only say so, but are actually lying to your face.
That and not respecting the consumer is more profitable in the short term (only!), which means more marketing money, buying out other brands, lobbying to increase the barrier for entry, et cetera.
We're in a recession, in all but official numbers (which are decreasingly credible by the day). Big companies weather a recession and use it to ransack countries, becsuse smaller/mid-size companies are struggling to do the bare minimum, outright shut down, or cannot start up to begin with.
There's a lot of moving parts that makes it really hard for ethical newcomers to disrupt in these current times. And that's just one angle.
Machiavelli's flexibility: evil has more options to achieve its goals than good, and therefore it always wins. (The invisible hand of the market is a myth - people don't choose things on principles unless they have money to burn).
Because there's no incentive to do it. The consequences of being tracked are outta sight outta mind.
That is why politicians get rich.
But also, people do not generally hesitate in front of an all-you-can-eat bouffe
The point is: which brands still respect user privacy? If I were to buy a new TV today, which brands-models should I prioritize? Also, are there brands-models that in which it is possible to sideload a different OS like with mobile phones (LineageOS, GrapheneOS, etc.)