After paying for the device it's insulting to be forced to enter my payment information when I'm not buying anything (I'm sure there's a clever way around it but make no mistake, this is forced).
This is clearly for Roku's benefit in order to reduce future friction so that I spend more money than I would have otherwise. I just bought your device for MY benefit, NOT yours. I am an average consumer and I'm sick of being treated like I'm just a sack of meat for software companies to extract money from. I am NOT impressed. I haven't even watched anything yet and I have a bad taste in my mouth.
I will not be recommending Roku to anyone else.
You can create an account without entering any payment information, but it's not well publicized. If you did enter it, just go to https://my.roku.com and remove it.
While I appreciate your attempt to be helpful, this does not change Roku's contempt and disrespect for me as a customer which is the core issue. As a software engineer if I was asked to implement this sort of flow I would refuse on ethical grounds alone. It IS a dark pattern. It IS intentional. Some Product Manager is touting improved metrics and spend at MY expense. If you want to maximize profit in the short term and you have no desire to build a lasting business or quality product then this is a great strategy employ.
Regardless, my disappointment remains. I specifically chose Roku because I expected a smaller company to be less of an evil corporation compared to Apple, Google, or NVIDIA. Next time I'll just flash my own device and pirate everything I want to watch (In the United States downloading copyrighted material is not illegal, only distribution of it).