Technology

Not a surprise for Roku. The company has been getting progressively worse in the last few years and their enshittification is accelerating. Their recent forced download of an update that requires users to agree to arbitration to even use our TVs was intended to ultimately take control of those TVs completely away from the people who own them.

Right now it's possible to block Roku's static ads and presumably the autoplaying ones using a local DNS server like Adblock Home or Pihole, but it's only a matter of time before Roku blocks everything unless we watch the ads they are trying force down our throats. I'm already in the process of obsoleting all 5 of our Roku devices.

It has taken Roku years to build up enough market share to allow this kind of behavior and it will take years for the market to abandon them. Their executives will claim ignorance as to why users are walking away when it finally hits their bottom line.

this is the worst, next they're gonna put ads on cars

Roku is bad, I have one older Roku ""smart"" tv that I just block from accessing the internet entirely, and use a shield with a custom launcher instead.

I only ever tried using a Roku so I could stream my PC to my smart TV, but it turns out there's MASSIVE latency. Of course I returned it. If I had to deal with that AND ADS, I would have set that shit on fire

Almost downvoted instinctually as a reaction to the headline. Visceral reaction. I hate this beyond belief.

Anybody notice the Max app on roku requires clicking twice to pause and then twice to unpause? Very odd and annoying glitch or feature.

Im literally willing to ditch the device and cancel all streaming services because of this. When I turn on my TV I don’t want to be forced to consume ads when I haven’t been provided with anything in return.

Think of any invasive streaming devices in your house. Samsung, Google Chromecast, ATV, LG etc. Roku is by far the worst.

Shit. I got a Roku TV. That's one big fucking stick to toss.

For years I was a big fan of Roku. It represented a better value alternative from the big corporations pushing their own agenda like Google, Apple, Samsung, and Amazon. They made products that were intuitive and user oriented and carved out a very nice and stable market share for themselves because of it. Now they're just leveraging their hardware relationships to transform the software into something terrible.

I used to look for tvs with Roku built in. Now I've disabled Roku features from my smart TVS and use a separate streaming device.

So glad I ditched Roku. My modified Onn box (with an open source, ad-free launcher) is so much better.

isn't their a foss os you can flash on your tv?