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Discussion (136 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
I was surprised that the first thing I was prompted to do was to download an app and sign up for an account. The TV would not work unless I was signed in (or at the very least the option was so well hidden I didn't see one). Of course the sign up asks for PII like my name and phone number.
Vizio was bought out by Walmart a while back, with the intent of expanding Walmart's advertising empire.
It's really unfortunate that the TV market has ended up the way it has. My family still has a few CRTs going that have been working every day for decades, just turn it on and TV immediately starts playing. I miss that level of simplicity.
I missed the part of your comment where you put it back in the box and returned it.
(Yeah, I know, understandable reasons. But that's exactly what I would do if it were going in my house.)
And your average Smart TV buyer is prepared to sign into Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, Prime Video, Crunchyroll, Youtube etc - that's the whole point of buying a smart TV. The only returns will be from the minority who are happy to sign up and sign in for streaming services, but who balk at one more account.
Personally, I'm about to return a smart TV (because it sucks) and replace it with a dumb screen. But realistically - I don't imagine these things get returned in sufficient numbers for vendors to change their ways.
The problem is that a lot of TVs won't even let you use it that way without signing in or downloading an app first. My Vizio wouldn't do anything until I acknowledged a terms of service screen. The only way I could do that was by downloading the Vizio app and connecting it to my network.
The only solution we have to this is to return the TV as defective and buy something else until you find something that works without an account or an app. A sane country would have regulations that make spying on you illegal but our government works for corporations instead of the public so they'll never protect us when there's money to be made off of us.
Yes, but we cheat ourselves out of change with learned helplessness. Did you see how much hatred the business community directed at Lina Khan when she started dusting off the old antitrust machinery? That happened recently. It can happen again. It was on the ballot, and it will be again.
Lina Khan truly has the interests of consumers at heart.
The hatred was not just right-wing. Many lefties hated her, too.
The common thread seems to be billionaires.
However, the laptop solution tends to only work if you’re single or have no family. The TV is unfortunately a very useful device.
They’re definitely more work to get right though
They need to put a stop to this or they'll start losing market share fast.
Can this spying and tracking be so lucrative that they'll risk alienating their customers over it?
Or THIS Hisense? https://nexxen.com/acr-data/
They all use Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) and collect profiling data to feed into an Ad service offering.
Samsung started this and is now a leading supplier for targeted advertising on TVs (because old serialized TV doesn't have such an option), this is forcing all the brands to follow and do the same, because:
#A: it creates a revenue stream based on active devices (like Apple/Google has), not just at the time of sales, and
#B: their business partners now demand it (big electronics chains won't sell a TV which will affect their targeted ad promotions)
It would be much more valuable to have proper journalists (sorry) to write an investigative report on this whole Ad-targeting industry, to create pressure not just on some TV-vendors but on all home appliances (including cable-company set-top-boxes, which do exactly the same btw).
The only way out of this is to increase public pressure to the point that a regulation (a LAW!) is drafted and enforced.
You know who DOESN'T sell the data to outside companies?
Car-vendors which have large competing in-house financial services arms that use the data themselves (VW, BMW, Ford, Stellantis, Tesla,...)
It ain't just TVs. Now that I've found out that my Hyundai is not only spying on me, but snitching to the insurance company, I might just take South Korea companies off my list for anything.
You know who DOESN'T sell the data to outside companies?
Car-vendors which have large competing in-house financial services arms that use the data themselves (VW, BMW, Ford, Stellantis, Tesla,...)
The issue is not a single company, it's that there is insufficient regulation against this.
Unless it’s in their face causing them friction they will just continue to use it as an appliance.
The underlying "research" is unfortunately not that clean, but I'd say for two reasons:
1. Because looking at the LG ToS alone, it seems that the devices do MUCH more data-collecting outside Europe
2. GDPR is covering your personal information (WHO you are) and personal identifiable information (data that can be used to infer WHO you are). In a nutshell: If a device (a TV, a phone, a car, a Smart Home device, whatever) collects information to PROFILE you, without collecting data about WHO you are, they are not violating your privacy. The company needs to be VERY careful about not accidentally collecting identifiable information, but as long as this doesn't happen, it's within GDPR.
That said, a proper technical write-up of the issues found, with an investigation by a professional journalist would be very helpful to get things going, put proper pressure where it needs to be and dismantle this Ad network business-model of all those TV-manufacturers (Samsung Ads, LG Ads, TCL Ads, Hisense Ads,...)
(A few years ago, you definitely had to opt out of data collection.)
Like reverse engineering how the software on the TVs work.
Also what third parties are involved.
I have a feeling there must be some third party vendor selling the same toolkit that manufacturers use.
Would be nice to figure out if it's possible to send junk data to the endpoints.
I suspect it will only be a matter of time before hardware manufacturers wise up and prevent you from using the TV if you block their ad network traffic.
I extracted the firmware and filesystem of a webOS 3.5 and webOS 24 TV previously so I could remove the spying bits and get an internet connected TV back. I asked Claude Opus 5 to do some analysis on the ACR implementation yesterday. I haven't had time to check it myself, so it might give some insight but take it with a grain of salt. Also because I'm not entirely sure I extracted the complete filesystem for the webOS 24 TV.
See the documents temporarily hosted here [1][2][3]. You can find the Markdown originals in the HTML source. The Markdown has also been pasted here [4] (although the forum software has sometimes inserted a lot of tildes).
LG uses the "Alphonso SDK" for ACR, a company which it seems to have a majority stake in [5].
WebOS itself is actually pretty neat once you get root on the device. It still has open source releases, uses a well documented service bus, the UI apps are unobfuscated Javascript. It's a genuine Linux TV if only LG allowed you to get root and would not install spyware by default. Secure boot unfortunately does prevent you from messing with the boot process.
If you want to know anything specific, let me know. There's also a pretty active Discord (ugh) community here [6].
Personally, I'm most interested whether LG and other device manufacturers are getting informed consent for ACR in European markets, and what the consent screen looks like. I doubt that many consumers actually know what they're consenting to, which might be a GDPR violation.
[1] https://scriptbase.org/lg-tv/webos-24.html
[2] https://scriptbase.org/lg-tv/webos-3.5.html
[3] https://scriptbase.org/lg-tv/comparison.html
[4] https://gathering.tweakers.net/forum/list_message/86090672#8...
[5] https://www.adexchanger.com/tv-2/lg-grabs-a-majority-stake-i...
[6] https://openlgtv.github.io/
Can anyone explain why Windows even makes this possible? I had to fight against Windows installing Alienware command center nonsense automatically because I have a "gaming" Dell OLED. Windows automatically fetched and installed it just from plugging in the monitor, adding a new system tray icon and persistent daemon with these kinds of annoying pop-ups and probably a bunch of security vulnerabilities.
It's completely incomprehensible to me. The monitor works great without it, on both Windows and Linux! I left a negative review on an otherwise good monitor as a result, but Microsoft shouldn't even be entertaining this crap.
Because, as much as we nerds might hate it, it's convenient to a large number of people. They plug in their device and the companion software to fully use all its features just installs itself. They don't have to go to some obscure URL and then locate their exact product. Even in the case you've described, the software likely enables some features of your monitor that aren't accessible otherwise. You don't care about them, but someone might.
- some product manager, who was thinking of additional ad revenue while trying to sound like not an asshole.
Not exactly sure what I’m after, but the problem is acute and widely prevalent, so there has to be some solution.
https://cani.rootmy.tv/
Because yes, this nonsense would never fly in a world where Software Freedom enabled a competitive market for TV operating systems.
Edit: Getting pushback asking for evidence (fair). Most recently I read it in an HN thread a few years back. I thought it was a TCL TV, but I can't find it anymore. It wasn't Samsung's WiFi Direct, which I don't think was ever on by default.
Lacking better evidence, I'll admit I'm probably wrong and no TV has been documented doing this (yet).
Keeping them disconnected from wifi is sufficient.
Otherwise it's just some 10+ year old rumour
But me personally, I wouldn't ever connect any of these devices to my network.
Are they getting paid for the data (e.g. we'll pay you $100M to install spyware), or are they trying to be an ad platform, or is it simply analytics gone out of control?
(Yeah, yeah, when someone actually demos a TV seeking open WiFi APs, then we'll talk. And anyone bringing up ETH over HDMI gets a spankin'.)
My understanding is that it uses bandwidth you aren't paying for to carry this signal rather than using up what you paid for, but still it's been there for something going on ten years.
As far as regular TV duties, the CM4 running libreELEC does everything I need and then some. The HDMI-CEC was flaky at one point, but from my research on it regular consumer TVs suffer from the same problem. If anything I'm more limited by the CM4's output, less the display itself.
Tradeoffs: I wanted to control my stack with minimal cabling pretty much everything else be damned, and this was a nice integrated solution and a excellent alternative to just buying a 43" dell monitor to hang on my wall. There are probably some image processing "features" that videophiles can comment on, but I've been used to literal decades of LCDs at this point, so an IPS display is going to be just fine(tm). Display lag is a bit higher than I would like for retro video games on it, but that's more an overall LCD problem, less a specific display issue.
In functionality it's much closer to a computer monitor than it is to a TV. The menus are obtuse, brutalist even, but if you ever had to work in IT and set up a conference room display you will feel right at home.
It's also a heavy pig compared to consumer televisions, right on the edge of what my mount is able to hold, and not really great to wrangle in a position by your lonesome, but not impossible either.
As for video: It's more than fine. Maybe the pixels are bigger than my macbook's screen, but at 6+ft viewing distance with my eyesight, I can't tell.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49605424
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49605356
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49573427
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49575176
NOW we're learning that they're spying with their internal microphone when switched off.