This is definitely on the horizon and future generations won’t even be aware of a time when you didn’t pay a subscription for every aspect of life. (TikTok screencap)
this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2025
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Nah, fridges are simple enough that I guarantee it's trivial to rip all the smart bits out and still have a functioning fridge. Or just buy and old one, my grandparents still have their fridge from like 1970s and it still works.
Sure it works, it also uses more electricity than the rest of the electrical devices in the house combined.
We've figured out how to do fridges a long time ago, there's really not much to it: a well insulated box, radiators inside and outside, a pump, a metering device, and a thermostat. Sure, all components have been optimized a bit, but the power usage only went down by like half in the past 50 years, it's not as bad as you're describing.
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/US-refrigerator-energy-use-between-1947-2002-Mid-1950s-models-consumed-the-same_fig1_317751623
About 3,5 times more energy used in 1972 than 2002. That's quite a bit in my opinion.
Hm, that's indeed more than I was expecting.
Unfortunately, it is not. The "smart bits" are doing the job of a control board in a dumb fridge. If the tablet shits the bed, you won't get cooling until you factory reset it and get the tablet working again.
I've never had a fridge with a control board, it's usually just a compressor connected via a two-connection control thingy which prevents it from starting too often, and a relay that's controlled by a thermostat. If they managed to replace that with a control board... Why?
Just about every fridge sold (meant for residential use, in the US) in (at least) the last 10 years has a control board in it. The only exceptions are the really cheap and small top-mount fridges, and even then it is only the ones with physical knobs that might not have a control board. Anything with buttons or a display has a control board. Many appliances with knobs also have control boards (sorry to everyone buying laundry based on "it has knobs, I trust it more").
As for why - because they can. What are you gonna do, not own a fridge? Keep paying someone to fix an old one (or learn to fix it yourself)? Very few people will do that. Most people will bend over and pay.
Wow, fuck that. Thankfully fixing the electrics of an old fridge is really easy (as there are so few components and they are very simple); and I've never had issues with refrigerant leaking.