It’s not genuine. The fridge doesn’t show full-screen ads, the original Reddit post and image of the ‘Carol’ ad is staged. At best, this is a parable about the slippery slope our ad-ridden society is sliding down.

https://9to5google.com/samsung-smart-fridge-ads-how-to-turn-...

Update 11/14: Samsung has commented on the image posted to Reddit, noting that the ad format shown on the smart fridge display is not one that would appear over the cover screen. Any ad shown would be limited to the cover screen widget, which displays news, weather, and calendar events. Those slides rotate every 10 seconds or so, and an ad is looped in around every 40 seconds.

It appears that the ad shown in the Reddit photo is of the fridge’s Samsung Internet app. Through that, an ad seems to have shown up organically through a third-party website.

Samsung notes that full-screen ads do not appear as part of these recent software updates, and users shouldn’t expect to see ads that take up the entire display.

‘Shown up organically’ seems like a very generous interpretation to me - it seems far more likely that someone viewed it deliberately for the purposes of staging the photo.

On one hand I wouldn't cheer for spreading lies, but if this specific post got Samsung to lay down where the ads appear and at which frequency, I'd see the positive side of it. In particular they're that less likely to actually silently move to full ads in the near future even if they planned to, now that they officially commented on it.

On the other hand, this was traditionally the role of art and fiction. Black Mirror was based on the premise of getting people to react to this kind of future, and it looks like it's either not working (anymore?) or we're past the point where hypothetical situations would grab our attention and we can do something about it.

On the third hand, I have no intention to buy a fridge with a screen on it, but if it becomes the mainstream offering will I be forking 10% or 20% to not have th screen, or if those will have significantly better features (better temperature management etc.). I also wished I wasn't looking at ads, but in practice the best educational content right now is sponsored by S**space.

On the one hand, I don't trust reddit.

On the other hand, I don't trust a company that puts ads on their fridges.