"Buy, Don't Repair" Is Subtle Message of Google Ad Campaign
Your toaster broke? Google says: just replace it! It's easy!! Also: how parts pairing is killing repair -and making Apple rich(er). And: the Deere disease has spread to trains.
We open on a family desperate for frozen pizza. The toaster oven is broken. And what’s worse is that a knob (yes a knob!) has fallen off. The children of the family look longingly at their pizza, which is frozen solid—then it spontaneously combusts. They may not survive the night.
Not to worry! Google is here to save the day. The father of these hungry children (who clearly takes his patriarchal responsibilities seriously) quickly buys a new toaster in seconds flat by using Google’s “Shop With Google” function. And just like that, the pizza has transformed into a delectable golden brown feast—being pulled out of a toaster shiny enough to do a TikTok makeup tutorial with. America’s youth will be fed for time immemorial, for this beautiful toaster shall provide them with sustenance.
This is the story told by Google’s 30 second advertisement (which is frankly very well done) for their shopping feature. The company’s advert has made it clear that toaster ovens don’t last like they used to. And they were so close, my gripe however is that the solution they point to is buy something new instead of repairing the toaster oven.
Convenience has hidden costs
I’ll say up front that Google isn’t the most anti-repair company in the world. In fact, they’ve got a mixed records. On the one hand, the Google Pixel 7 was ranked one of the most difficult phones to repair. On the other, Google has done things like offer parts for Pixel phones and extended the lifespans of their Chromebook laptops (albeit in the face of withering criticism for tanking school budgets with needless hardware replacement costs).
My problem is with how Google’s advertisement frames “repair vs. replace” and how that sits in our broader consumer culture. In marketing, we are constantly sold the idea that convenience is a 100% positive feature - it is only good. But just because you can conveniently get a new product doesn’t mean that coughing up the money to purchase a replacement machine is better for you (or the planet) than fixing something you’ve already purchased, but that has malfunctioned. Nor does it mean that just because individual consumers might not see a problem with toasters - which used to last decades - becoming products with 3-5 year lifespans doesn’t have a collective burden on- and cost for society.
In my family, there is a deep lore surrounding our toaster. Bought in the early 2000’s the toaster was running solidly for 15+ years. It had a setting (by that I mean a painted on mark on the dial) specifically for pop tarts. What more could you want? Of course we complained that in our large family it only had two slots and was not aesthetically pleasing but the toaster was actually quite reliable.
After laying this toaster to rest, my parents opted to get a newer toaster with four slots and a bagel setting! The future had never been brighter. But when I spoke to my mom about the new toaster she complained it didn’t work as well. And I’m going to hazard a guess that this new machine will not outlast our previous toaster.
The toaster discourse offers us a glimpse at a broader conversation about how we should relate to the things we own and how long they should last. There are many ways that right to repair is trying to increase the longevity of products through part availability, information, design requirements, and extending producer responsibilities.
What struck me about the Google toaster commercial is that the message is subtle. I had to watch it 5-10 times before the message it was trying to convey: that technology makes replacing broken stuff a breeze -don’t even think about repair.
I barely gave it any attention when first watching it, and mostly was interested in the music. And it makes me realize that, in a world when information is being beamed into our faces for larges swaths of the day, it’s hard to stay vigilant against all the subtle and unsubtle “consume! consume! consume!” memes floated our way.
While the sad looking toaster might be more reliable, its often less shiny and doesn’t feel as good as buying something new—at least in the moment. And when it’s just toasters it feels laughable, but when we pile the discarded toasters on top of the flatscreen televisions, the smartphones, laptops, cars, appliances, and more the toll these products take on our world is hard to laugh at.
Video: How Parts Pairing Kills Repair
Other News
New York’s right to repair law takes effect December 28! As of the 28th, manufacturers like Apple are required to provide parts, tools, and guides for device repairs to consumers and independent repair shops. The New York law was signed in December of 2022, marking a significant shift from the current practice of limiting repair resources to authorized shops, making repairs more convenient and affordable, Consumer Reports writes. The New York law applies to electronic device manufacturers doing business in the state, offering savings of up to $330 per year for families on repair-related costs. Repair documentation may also become widely available online as a result of the law, benefiting consumers beyond New York state.
Deere disease spreads to trains. Agricultural equipment maker John Deere is notorious for the steps it has taken in the last two decades to lock down its equipment and lock out farmers from even basic maintenance and upkeep. Other manufacturers have taken notice. As Hackaday reports, the Polish-made Newag electric passenger trains have been observed locking up when serviced by non-Newag workshops. The article cites research by a group of Polish and German researchers that will be presented at the upcoming Chaos Computer Congress (C3) in Hamburg, Germany. At the heart of the problem are the programmable logic controllers (PLCs) which control all aspects of a modern rail traction system. The Newag PLCs were observed returning bogus error codes when GPS signals detect the train has visited a third-party workshop.
iPhone SEs declared “vintage” and lose support. Apple's iPhone SE and second-gen iPad Pro are now labeled as "vintage," losing Apple's repair and software update support, TechTimes reports. Mickey Beats Solo3 headphones also join the "vintage" list, while Powerbeats 2 and Solo2 Wireless headphones are now "obsolete." The declaration doesn’t extend to France, where some newer Apple devices remain eligible for service and parts for 7 years. Apple’s policy is to label devices as "vintage" after 5 years and "obsolete" after 7 years, with exceptions for MacBooks. Big Tech companies have varying lifespans for device support; Apple provides 5 years of major updates. Samsung offers 4 years of major updates and an extra 2 years for high-end and folding phones. Google Pixel devices provide 3 years of major upgrades and 5 years of security patches.
The "5" R's: Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Repair, Recycle, Rot, Resist: Waste management is an increasingly troubling problem for countries to tackle. Many plastics take anywhere from a decade to a few hundred years to degrade in sunlight — that is, if they even get sunlight. Much of this trash is hidden under piles in landfills. This is why the order of the familiar turn of phrase is significant: reducing and reusing ought to come before we even think about the recycling bin. Consider it a waste hierarchy of sorts, with recycling as a last resort. Our efforts would be best spent by prioritizing reducing our waste, reusing what we already have, and only recycling if we absolutely need to discard something.
Free Software Foundation gives Right to Repair a shout-out. “The Right to Repair movement is one of the most successful movements of digital autonomy we have seen in many years here at the Free Software Foundation (FSF),” writes Zoë Kooyman. “We're excited to see where things head from here, since the Right to Repair and the free software movement are closely linked.” Appliances and other personal technology are “accelerating their pace in a transition from being purely mechanical toward becoming a technology that relies on software. This means that any meaningful notion of repair has to include user rights over that software. Without the freedom to run, modify, distribute, and share the software ourselves (i.e. software freedom), there will be no widespread right to repair. The top-down effect of a bill becoming law, as Right to Repair has accomplished, can be the beginning of an unstoppable change.”
Electric cars are less reliable than gas-powered cars according to a new study from Consumer Reports, which found that hybrids are currently the most reliable when compared to traditional gas vehicles. This doesn’t mean all hybrids are built the same, with plug-in hybrids having 146% more problems than gas vehicles.
Companies make money from our data, and one scholar thinks it’s time we get paid for it. It’s no secret companies extract data from users and Russell Neuman of NYU thinks government or other entities should step in to ensure corporations like Amazon and Google let users become active participant, having a say in who gets to access what information and getting a financial reward for it.
We’ve written previously about the $800 billion auto data industry
Blaming individual behavior for the causes of overconsumption is entirely missing the cause of the problem, says Chip Colwell in The Gaurdian. After visiting a local landfill he was struck by the minimal impact he would have by changing his consumption alone—reinforcing his belief in the need for broader, systemic changes in business practices and government policies to transition from a linear to a circular economy.
Meta is under fire for trying to get around Europe’s privacy laws by only allowing users to be anonymous if they paid a subscription. This model of privacy-as-a-service led to a complaint from the privacy rights group NOYB (None of Your Business), which filed a complaint against the company with Austria’s data protection authority over this option.
The Financial Times wrote a piece highlighting repairers shops and community organizations in the UK and EU working to mend and fix objects to save them from landfills. The articl additionally highlights that even in the face of recent victories in the EU, there are yet more calls for comprehensive legislation to give consumers the right to repair a broader range of goods.
Conflicts with international trade agreements such as CUSMA (also known as NAFTA 2.0) could be on the horizon with proposed Canadian right to repair bill C-244. This bill seeks to empower citizens to repair various products by addressing legal obstacles related to circumventing encryption or software protections, but CUSMA imposes obligations related to digital trade which might complicate things by requiring secrecy guarantees for software's source code, preventing manufacturers from providing access to diagnostic software and algorithms.
National Association of Manufacturers publishes anti-repair manifesto. After a year in which they lost big battles over the right to repair, the “No” forces are regrouping. Exhibit 1: NAM’s new “study” on how repair stifles innovation. 🤮
Cory Doctorow has a new piece out on this issue.
https://www.noemamag.com/freeing-ourselves-from-the-clutches-of-big-tech/