Oh FFS. Not Brother as well. I used to recommend them to everyone. Who is left with unshittified printers?
this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2025
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Epson inkjets with refillable tanks probably.
Depending on the frequency of your printing, they can suck as well. Chronically clogged nozzles are maddening.
You can run a power clean cycle which should help, then just replace the foam pads they saturate with ink for the cleaning
They're not perfect but they're still the most consumer friendly option on the market at this point
After talking to support 15 times, they never suggested replacing anything, and power clean wasn’t enough. I’ve long since destroyed the thing out of malignant rage and turned to libraries and copy shops, but it’s good to know that there might have been a solution.
Wait until copy shops start raising their prices cause nobody has printers anymore and you have no choice but to use them
Still cost me less than a new printer every two years if they multiplied their prices by 10.
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I don't know if it matters, but I just bought a Canon laser printer. Didn't see anywhere about forced subscription options for toner.
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In case anyone was thinking this applies only to inkjet printers: no, it ONLY seems to apply to laser printers -- the thing that Brother used to be known for. Where the article says "ink", they mean "toner". There is no ink in a laser printer.
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It's like every company that wasn't complete shit just suddenly decided to...go to complete shit.
If regulators don’t stop them from doing it, the CEO’s of publicly traded companies will get the boot from the board for not doing it. They have a fiduciary duty to be as shitty as humanly possible.
We need laws to stop this, but the politicians are all bribed not to.
They have a fiduciary duty to be as shitty as humanly possible.
They don't -- that's a cargo-cult misunderstanding of Dodge v. Ford Motor Co -- but it's so widely believed I guess it might as well be true.
If the people sitting on the Supreme Court believe it, and I believe the majority of those shitbags do, then that is unfortunately the law as it stands.
But when the law is unethical, I don’t see why we should be lawful.
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Unrestrained Capitalism. Without those pesky regulations, companies can charge us all unlimited amounts and not have to consider our rights or health/safety.
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You were the chosen one! 😭
They had two things going for them... Decent linux support and non-shitty DRM ink/toner
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I suggest whoever has old firmware files to upload them to the Internet Archive (if they allow those).
Internet Archive is extremely lax in what it allows
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Brother used to be the good guys... Damn.
Right? I used to recommend friends and family invest in a brother laser printer instead of inkjet, especially if they didn’t need color
Et tu Brother?
These motherfuckers are actively making tech as a whole less secure by destroying any trust the public may have had in firmware updates.
Urgent security fixes are gonna go unpatched on a lot of shit because consumers are seeing more and more firmware or software updates actively making things WORSE.
Definitely true. I’ve been putting off an upgrade of my NAS because they have randomly decided to completely remove the video streaming software that came with it when I bought it. So infuriating.
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And once again the only available good tech is old 2nd hand.
Yep. Just getting ready to replace the color laser printer I bought almost 10 years ago. I had been considering a new Brother before this but looks like I’m going the 2nd hand route again (last one was an open box HP from microcenter for $200 lol)
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Nice, Brother was the last one standing in my mind.
I'm glad I have an IoT vlan without internet access. Nothing is allowed to phone home here.
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nononononononpnNONONONONONO WHYYYYY I JUST GOT A BROTHER BECAUSE OF HP DOING THE SAME THING WTF
Keep it off the Internet and don't update the firmware
anyone know about jailbreaking printers
It absolutely baffles me that there isn't a huge custom printer firmware movement.
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Et tu Brute! :(
Going to be honest, didn't realize my Brother laser printer got firmware updates, lol.
In 7 years I've replaced the toner cartridge once, given that the stater cartridge isn't very full I imagine it'll be awhile before I have to replace it again, at least.
This is a total shit move but I have tried many printers and I'm still choosing Brother everytime. Especially on some older generations with copy scan and print. None of the other big brands are worth a shit. They all fail or jam in some form or fashion.
Give them time and they’ll suck too. Nothing is safe from enshitification, as they’ve just shown us.
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I think its time we deprecate most forms of printing. Clearly corporations cannot be trusted to operate these kinds of companies.
If it's not already under the umbrella of right to repair, do we now need right to refill?
This shit happened to me recently. Installed firmware update and immediately my 3rd party toner stops working. Try to find old firmware to roll back to and couldn't locate it anywhere. Found some for other models via Google drive links in Reddit posts, but nothing for my printer.
I replaced the toner with new 3rd party toner which worked. And now I'll never install another firmware update on the printer and should probably block it from the internet.
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They were the last good guys :(
I guess it's time to buy the printer I've been postponing
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if the update doesn’t allow the printer to calibrate with this aftermarket ink the cheaper carts become basically unusable
This isn't true. It just means you have to do the registration manually.
This is scummy behavior for sure, but it's also being exaggerated for clicks. You can read the sources linked in the wiki to see exactly what users are reporting.
Nooo, you were the only remaining printer company that wasn't a customer-hating dumpster fire of a company!
Oh, Brother.
I too watched Louis Rossman’s YouTube video to author.