Woman says her HP printer ran on cheaper third-party ink for years with no problems. A forced update changed that: ‘Sick of capitalism’

A TikTok user says her five-year-old HP printer stopped working with third-party ink cartridges after she was prompted to connect the device to Wi-Fi, despite having used a wired connection the entire time she owned it.

The video, posted by a creator named Brianne (@brianne.armst), has been viewed 2 million times and has more than 246,900 likes. 

In the TikTok video, Brianne says she was trying to print Zelda character cutouts for her daughter’s birthday cake when the printer would not work. She explains that she had never connected the printer to Wi-Fi and had always used a cord plugged directly into her computer.

Printer displayed a Wi-Fi warning before blocking non-HP ink cartridges

Brianne says she had been receiving repeated messages telling her to connect to Wi-Fi or lose the ability to print, even though the printer was working through a direct cord connection. She says she eventually connected to Wi-Fi to stop the warnings. After doing so, she says the printer displayed a new message: “The indicated cartridges have been identified as altered or cloned. HP printers require original HP.”

Brianne says she had been using a third-party ink brand for years without issues, and had printed successfully just two days before the printer stopped working. She says the third-party cartridges cost about $40 less than HP’s own ink. In the video, she says, “I’ve had this printer for 5 f–king years, okay? I’ve never connected it to Wi-Fi ever.”

She also says she had recently spent $70 on the third-party cartridges and would now need to spend $150 on official HP cartridges to print for her daughter’s birthday. In the video, she says, “F**k you, HP. F**k you. F**k you. I’m so sick of capitalism, bro.” Other drivers and device owners have voiced similar frustration online, including one woman who says a carmaker wants her to pay for a feature she already owns. 

In a follow-up TikTok video responding to a comment that said printers are “basically disposable” and that buying a new one is cheaper than buying ink, Brianne agreed with the sentiment. She said, “The fact that they are willing to have these entire perfectly functional pieces of f–king equipment be worth more using once and throwing away to forever sit in a landfill.” 

She added that it would likely be cheaper for her to go through five printers in a year than to keep buying official HP ink. Frustration with brand-specific repair and maintenance costs is not limited to printers, like a mechanic recently went viral after criticizing luxury car owners over upkeep costs. 

A separate TikTok creator, The Trusted Banker (@thetrustedbanker), posted a video discussing Brianne’s situation in the context of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). The creator said that if the CFPB were still fully staffed and funded, it could investigate HP over the ink cartridge restrictions.

The creator also discussed changes made to the CFPB’s staffing and enforcement power under the Trump administration, and connected this to broader concerns about data collection by companies.

HP’s practice of restricting non-HP ink and toner cartridges through firmware updates is known as Dynamic Security, according to a report from Ars Technica. The report says HP has used this practice for years and that it has drawn criticism from customers and security experts.

According to the International Imaging Technology Council (Int’l ITC), a trade group representing cartridge remanufacturers, component suppliers, and cartridge collectors in North America, has raised concerns about a recent HP firmware update. The group says HP released firmware update 2602A/B on January 29, 2026, across eleven printer models. Some of these updates, including one for the OfficeJet Pro 7720, appear to have come out in February.

The Int’l ITC says this update conflicts with rules under the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT) 2.0 registry, a set of environmental standards launched by the Global Electronics Council (GEC) in December 2025. EPEAT 2.0 requires manufacturers to avoid issuing firmware updates that disable remanufactured cartridges using aftermarket circuitry, unless they meet certain alternative conditions.

Tricia Judge, the Int’l ITC’s executive director and general counsel, told Ars Technica that HP is the only major printer manufacturer that uses lockout chips triggered by firmware updates justified as “security” measures. She said, “HP is the only one that misleads and frustrates its own customers when locking out the environmentally superior competition.”

As of the report, no printers had yet been registered under EPEAT 2.0, and the registry was described as still new. The Int’l ITC had previously asked the GEC in 2023 to revoke over 100 HP printers from the original EPEAT registry over Dynamic Security, but the GEC denied that request.

Under viewer comments on Brianne’s original video, one person wrote, “Factory reset. No update. No WiFi. And if in the future you want to get a new printer, try with a Canon or Epson with refillable tanks.” Another commented, “this should be a class action lawsuit, no joke.” A third wrote, “It’s not capitalism, it’s CORPORATE GREED!”