Well folks, it finally happened. The screen in your pickup truck… your last bastion of peace from the chaos of unskippable advertisements… now plays popup ads. Not even subtle ones. We’re talking full-dash, head-unit-commandeering infomercial panels in your RAM 1500, like you’re driving a Times Square billboard on wheels.
This is just terrible. Every aspect of life doesn’t need ads. I don’t care if it makes a company money or not.
Scammy ads for scammy people driving scammy cars.
Everyday, I wanna ram my car into a building and hope I run over the CEO in their office.
Now the hardest part isn’t ditching and risking my way of life, but choosing which CEO to ram 🤬
I would raise such hell at the dealership if anything like this happened to me.
But I prefer my cars with NO INTERNET, no touch screens, and very low tech (easier to fix).
GM was talking pretty publicly about doing this a couple years ago and there was a mild dust up over it. They also mentioned enthusiasm over the potential revenue to come from mining and selling driver data (which got them sued) . Last I heard about it was late 2023 or early 2024, so it seems their new data team.has been busy.
Don kid yourselves though, if GM is doing it, everyone else is or will be.
Never buy a new car
OH. And espn thought of this in 2011
Apart from how insane it is to put obtrusive ads on a car dashboard, having to link your phone to your car and then call a phone number to opt out of touchscreen display ads is 🤯
There is going to be a reason that they’ve set it up like that.
It wasn’t asking them to pair their phone to call the number to opt out, it was asking them to pair their phone so they could call the number to buy parts for their truck. You’d have to manually dial the number to opt out.
When calling that number, the caller will need somekind of proof that they are in control of the car that they are trying to opt out of ads. Afaik, the easiest way to accomplish that when requiring a phonecall, would be pairing phone and car. But obviously Stellantis is not going for easy with this setup, so this is purely speculation on my part.
My 2025 ram has never done this… not saying it won’t ever but… we’ve heard the same stories about all the manufacturers.
This is why I’m not going to buy RAM / Dodge / Chrysler/ Jeep / anything Stellantis owns, and this is why I’m not buying any new car with “smart” / “built-in” junk.
I don’t know of any car that has an actually good head unit. Its either garbage because its a giant touch screen, making it super difficult to navigate without looking (that’s why all the controls in an airplane are different shapes and sizes), or its just a hub for you to run Android Auto / apples equivalent.
Now ads? Ffs…
Wake up sheeple!
Have you ever seen a smart person driving a DUI1500?
Imagine getting a bud light ad while you’re blowing into your ignition interlock device
The Ram 1500 is the official car of “more than one, but not so many they take your license away” – both DUIs and beers before going to work.
Time to hack / root cars…
“You wouldn’t download a car (firmware)”. Hold my beer…
To me this looks like something potentially worse than just an ad. It looks like this text might be configurable by the dealership. I wonder if all of that gets screened and approved by people that work for the carmaker. Otherwise we will eventually see some funny stuff show up in people’s trucks.
I remember a while ago when this started appearing in chargers and they tried to act like it was an accident.
“Accident”
This is the defacto stance of advertising agencies doing horrible things.
“OOHHHH, You mean you DIDN’T want ads on your coffee maker or vibrator??? Our bad. This was a technical error we will fix immediately!”
Is there a custom firmware to counter this? And is there a way to inject custom firmware into it?
It’s very strange that no one has created a custom firmware to counter this.I don’t think there is much overlap between the sets of people
- buying these cars
- having the competence to hack them
- having the willingness and finances to potentially brick the car
The problem with that is that insurance companies would gladly interpret that as tampering of the vehicle, voiding your insurance and which will really fuck you up in case of an accident.
