Imagine paying the kind of prices that car manufactures demand, and then they shove ads in your face on your own property. I would drive it back to the dealership & demand a refund.
You can probably have an ad-free system for a monthly subscription.
Wankers.
That’s Bayerische Motoren Wankers AG to you.
It’s crazy that few days ago I learned what BMW stands for and now I see it everywhere.
I thought it was Bavarian Motor Works or something? Logo was a propeller? No? This is what I’ve always known it to be.
Correct. It’s Bayrische Motoren Werke which translates to Bavarian Motor Factories or maybe Bavarian Motor Workshops.
The German
Werkhas several meanings:- The process of work/the work itself needed to finish a specific task.
- A specific action. E.g. used to imply someone did $thing
- A specific thing that was produced by someone (e.g. a piece of art) or even someone’s lifeworks as a whole.
- A factory or industrial complex BUT ALSO depending on context the workers on said factory/complex.
- Kraftwerk if you want old German techno
Shprockets! Dance!
- Overwerk for more modern tastes
Blessed info
Bayerische Motoren Werke AG, is the proper name, but sometimes people anglicized it to Bavarian Motor Works.
it’s called the Baader Meinhof effect or frequency illusion
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion?wprov=sfla1
Ad free*
Yup. Netflix will advertise its shows to you on the ad-free* tier, but say they’re not ads.
Remember when they tried to make you rent the heated seats you already have?
Maybe they will offer a commercial-free subscription service.
Maybethey will offer a commercial-free subscription service.Ftfy
If have to watch ads it’s not a luxury car, it’s a Kia in a suit.
I don’t watch ads in my Hyundai. That makes it worse than Kia/Hyundai.
The only cars I see ads in are borrowed from Europcar and are basic pieces of shit. So I guess BMW is around there now.
This is brilliant. Single sentence deathblow to BMW marketing.
Oh no! How will me and my soldiering iron cope?
Better get good at CAN bus. Unless u like the Christmas tree look of a lit up dash.
you’d think BMW customers learned from that
Or you’d hope, I guess, because I actually wouldn’t think them smart enough to learn from that
Remember when they installed turn signals you never use?
I hope they don’t act surprised when cheap Chinese cars without all that crap devour their market share.
Cheap chinese car, yes, without all the crap, you wish. They are all capitalist and learn from each other. Remember the door handle shit? It’s very much everywhere in chinese car to the point their government have to regulate the shit out of it. Chinese car maker want to export their car so bad because they can exploit without limit.
to the point their government have to regulate the shit out of it
Sounds like the system works. A problem was caused by capitalist firms doing stupid capitalist bullshit, and so the government stepped in to regulate them. What a country! Imagine if our governments would step in to regulate stupid firms doing stupid shit.
What a country!
Yeah if we pretend all the other issue with CCP didn’t exists, it’s a functional government.
Broken censorious genocidal clocks… or something like that.
And the US doesn’t censor at all, and doesn’t run propaganda via media, interfere with scientific and educational institutions. Or start wars and genocides across the middle east. Or kidnap and assassinate presidents of countries. Or oppress and imprison the most number of people of any country in the world. Only China has human rights violations, not our country.
Not sure how any of that is relevant to my comment but okay.
In the intertest of fairness, yes both USA and CN are both dystopian shitholes.
The CCP is a functional government, but one you do not like
You can say that to a lot of government in this world.
Didnt know dbzer0 is turning into lemmy.ml
You have to admit that the West is collapsing ahead of Asia. China will be also falling, of course.
Neither of which is challenging my comment but partly agrees with it.
Both the west and the east are on the road to collapse.
And (as you said) the true question is when, not if.
edit: wrong person!
No problem :)
Cheers!
lol try talking with an actual chinese person in 2026 irl, ask them how they feel about their own country. Its not 1952 with mao at the helm. Very illuminating actually talking to someone with direct experience instead of the daily mail and their weird takes based mostly on hearsay and misconstruction
Why would i wanna ask them who the south china sea and taiwan belongs to lmao
I don’t pretend that China is a hell hole, but you just pretend that CCP doesn’t have issue, that’s the difference here. And obviously it also depend who you ask. If i talk to charlie kirk obviously he would say trump is the greatest. Ohh wait he’s dead.
Corpos figured out that onerous regulations can keep out competitors who haven’t achieved the economies of scale to pay for compliance.
At least China regulated it. Tesla and GM still use those handles.
This is pure sinophobia.
Could you point to the part that you consider racism, please?
In what way criticising car manufacturer sinophobe? Is it because it’s a chinese company that you must unconditionally defend it? They’re billionaire ffs, no need you to defend them.
They will just be kept out of the market in the US. Oligarchs gonna oligarchy.
That only delays the problem, doesn’t fix it, sadly. Chinese firms understand capitalism better than the west imo, so once they have a large market share, they will likely pull off the same shit. Still, for now, they are probably the better option.
For me, personally, I am trying to keep my 300 thousand km car alive :)
Very good point and I think I have proof. You can already see them inserting ads in their low budget phones
Unfortunately that doesn’t happen, because EU put tariffs on Chinese EVs. And then they are complaing why EV adaption doesn’t happen as quickly as they would like, lol.
It’s funny how much of a joke the German car brands have become.
VW shoving touch controls down our throats, BMW selling their cars after they’ve been already sold, Audi and Mercedes sticking fake exhausts on their $70k cars, and all of them just desperately catering to the Chinese market while simultaneously not getting EVs…
Not to mention that in the wake of VW being caught red-handed with fraudulent software to evade emission regulations, BMW had to quickly get their (very similar) hack out there. Which, of course, was done so incredibly poorly that nowadays, several types of modern BMWs are liable to just explode into a fireball. Seemingly out of nowhere.
At least when they do explode they don’t then also trap the occupants like Teslas do but still, plenty of stories of bmws in Europe just bursting into flames.
To be fair, the Germans weren’t the only ones cheating emissions tests. As far as I’ve heard, Harley-Davidson used special tunes on their bikes to pass emissions testing. Never heard of BMWs just randomly bursting into flames, though, gotta look into that.
I don’t know about US car makers, but I can imagine them having done similar stuff
Never heard of BMWs just randomly bursting into flames, though, gotta look into that.
The have been blowing up for over a decade. This is just the latest recall.
It’s a meme it’s so frequent.
Don’t doubt it for a second, absolutely. There’s a reason why BMW scrambling to fix their own little trick. VW just got caught doing it
All those electric car owners missing out on the gas station pump ads can finally feel included.
Anyone got tips for muting those? I always touch all four corners. Periodically, you find one that shuts the fuck up.
If the pump has 8 buttons around the screen, 99% of the time it’s the second button down on the right side.
This is the type of tips I’m looking for. Thank you!
I have been hearing this for years and it has never worked. One day I will find one that shuts the eff up!!
Past year I have yet to find one near me that responds anymore. My favorite are the stations that have them really loud and there’s always a bit of an offset so you get this diffuse echoy aural ad experience for the most godawful products.
Oh yeah dystopian city. Especially at odd times of the day.
Is that a US thing only? Cos I haven’t seen this crap here in germany, fortunately.
Oh you are missing out mate. I can’t even imagine the stress of just standing there pumping alone with my own thoughts. After I park and watch a brief ad on my bmw screen I can immediately turn my attention to the screen on the pump telling me about a new color of mountain Dew that I simply must try. Pure bliss. God bless America.
The day Germany gets the Internet I’m sure we’ll be served as well, but in the meantime French / Belgium / NL already have this.
You have to watch the commercial before you can access the turn signals, right?
That would explain some things.
It’s kinda weird how this slogan got so much cultural traction. Years later and it’s still a meme. I guess because it’s irrelevant to the issue - IIRC it was about piracy - and also because it’s completely wrong. I would absolutely download a car if I could. So would pretty much everyone.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Wouldn’t_Steal_a_Car?wprov=sfti1
Copyright concerns
It was reported that the music in the announcement was itself used without permission.However, one source disputes this, saying the reporting is the result of conflation regarding a different anti-piracy ad that used stolen music composed in 2006.
The “ransom note” typeface used in the campaign was FF Confidential, designed by the Dutch typographer Just van Rossum. Reports arose in 2025 that the copy of the font used to design the commercial may not have been properly licensed. In April 2025, Sky News reported via extraction from old campaign PDFs that the actual font used was Xband-Rough, a widely-distributed pirated version of FF Confidential. Van Rossum was aware of the font Xband-Rough, but was unaware that the advert has used the pirated font and described its use as “hilarious”. According to a different investigation by journalists, the pirated font was only in a domestic campaign by the British Federation Against Copyright Theft, who had no involvement in the making of the original PSA. The Federation responded by saying that everyone involved in the creation of the announcement was no longer at the organization.
There’s something about watching a luxury import brand fast-track enshitification faster than everyone else, including economy options.
Yeah this is one thing enshittification apologists never seem to understand, they’ll claim ‘well if you don’t like ads just pay for the non-ad version, I want cheaper prices’ but the reality is no matter how much you pay there’s a mandatory side dish of enshittification.
BMW’s are pretty fast :P /s
Wow, maybe bring it back to the dealership and tell them the car is broken, and insist on them fixing it or ask for a full refund.
i’m sure when you buy a new car you somewhere sign to this t&c’s… which is why i’m not buying a new car (well, one of the reasons anyway ;))
Maybe now people will stop thinking they’re a premium brand.
Embarrassing for BMW.
Not as embarrassing as subscriptions to use hardware you paid for.
BMW drivers deserve this as punishment for all the missed turn signals
BMW got turn signels? When did that happen?
It’s an add-on you pay for. Or now you can also watch an ad per use.
I don’t think BMW drivers ever paid for that add-on.
Found the BMW driver
Hah! No! I generally drive a 16 year old Jeep Patriot and a 15 year old Dodge Hemi when I need to pull my 24,000lbs tandem trailer.
But they said if we pay, we are not the product…
Was the BMW free? It must have been.
Well, what they actually say is if you don’t pay you’re the product. They never said anything about what happens if you pay
Imagine this: when you start your car, you’re forced to watch a 30 second commercial. Your car already has eye tracking, which actually is a good safety feature, but we’ll be using this to make sure you’re watching the entire time.
If you stop watching, it will change to a 1 minute long commercial instead. If you still don’t watch the entire time, we might just start an even longer commercial.
Or better yet: your inattention is enough reason for us to turn off your car. Lawmakers can’t ban this now, because it’s a secondary safety feature: you don’t have enough attention to mindlessly watch a 30 second commercial, so you’re obviously not alert enough to operate a motor vehicle. Think of the kids.
Damn, I need to be like Sony and get a patent on this, just to stop anyone else from doing it.
Even Black Mirror wouldn’t go this far because it’s too banal, but Sony would
Fuck capitalism and all of the sneaky and invasive ways they try to sell you shit. Advertising is now like a cancer that interferes with simply living a life.
