[HN Gopher] Vizio makes more money spying on people who buy TVs ...
___________________________________________________________________
Vizio makes more money spying on people who buy TVs than TVs
themselves
Author : akaij
Score : 323 points
Date : 2021-11-14 16:49 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (pluralistic.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (pluralistic.net)
| throw63738 wrote:
| Good, cheaper displays for Pi with Kodi.
| tyingq wrote:
| Most people I know have either a Roku or an Amazon Fire connected
| to their TV. I assume Vizio's spying capability is nil if it's
| set up this way, with the TV wifi off.
|
| I wonder how common that sort of set up is.
| sgerenser wrote:
| That setup does eliminate Vizio's spying ability, but my
| understanding is that Amazon and Roku do essentially the same
| thing. On Roku at least, you can turn on settings like "limit
| ad tracking" to mitigate this somewhat.
| city41 wrote:
| Or setup something like a pihole. My pihole has blocked my
| Roku from calling home over 20,000 times in the past 24
| hours.
| rollcat wrote:
| I've never plugged any TV into a network, except as absolutely
| necessary for application development (my company used to do
| those). I fear this might no longer be enough in some possible
| future - if enough people don't connect their TVs, I could
| imagine manufacturers equipping the TVs with always-on LTE/5G
| modems. (You don't need airplane mode if you can't
| realistically use it on an airplane anyway.)
| mcrae wrote:
| Don't believe that using an external device helps -- the TV can
| detect what content is being played by sampling the video
| stream and creating a fingerprint. They can compare to live tv
| streams to detect channels, and static video files to detect
| movies/tv shows -- even the menus and cutscenes in video games
| can be detected.
|
| Also note that disabling WiFi isn't always helpful - some
| devices expose ethernet over HDMI which the TV will use to
| phone home.
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| When Shazam was popular, I believe they embedded digital
| fingerprints in the non-audible ranges of the audio stream.
| That allowed phone apps to quickly label content.
|
| I suspect a similar thing happens with video content.
| MAGZine wrote:
| time for hdmi condoms, I guess.
| aulin wrote:
| > some devices expose ethernet over HDMI
|
| wait, is this really a thing? I've heard about hdmi over
| ethernet, but ethernet over hdmi? also it seems it would be a
| lot trouble to bridge the wifi connection and dhcp to this
| ethernet over hdmi interface, why should they do it?
| LASR wrote:
| Yes.
|
| See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDMI#HDMI_Ethernet_and_A
| udio_R...
| president wrote:
| Source? I couldn't find information on any mainstream TV
| brands using ethernet over HDMI. Not configuring wifi and
| using an external device seems like it would do the trick.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| I've seen SmartTVs pop up with "Watch your stream on Service X"
| after ID'ing the content (presumably from fingerprinting the
| image or sound) coming in from HDMI. A smart TV I had kept
| offline for a few years to prevent this that someone
| "helpfully" attached to WiFi.
| lvs wrote:
| Then Roku and Amazon are the ones doing the data collection.
| There's no escaping it.
| propogandist wrote:
| This. If you have Roku device, you must use something like
| PiHole. It is the noisiest device on my network, constantly
| phoning home, down to each interaction with the physical
| remote.
|
| Amazon Firestick is the same, although there's potential for
| more control since it's running Android.
|
| Amazon's Ad business is one of its fastest growing segments.
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/29/amazons-ads-business-
| nears-7...
| WoodenChair wrote:
| Well you can get an Apple TV. They make a profit on the
| hardware, on the TV App Store, and on their services, so they
| have less incentive to spy when you're not using their TV
| app.
| Zigurd wrote:
| That's why I use Chromecast. It's just enabling Google to "make
| the rubble bounce" in the ruins of my privacy.
| LiquidPolymer wrote:
| I'm curious if projectors collect the same info? We bought
| several BenQ projectors that have no internet connection. Of
| course the computer player or Blu-ray player we use with the
| projectors do have WiFi connections.
|
| For aesthetic reasons we removed the large flat screen TV's from
| our house. We now use projectors on walls with a skim coat and
| flat white texture. It blends right into our 1927 house. The
| projections are around 120 inches and look glorious. In the past
| week we watched John Ford's "The Searchers" and then "Avatar" in
| 3D. Both were amazing to see so big, bright, and beautiful. When
| we are done watching, the projector is put away and our home is
| not a constant display of gadgetry.
|
| When ever I go into a store that has a wall of TV's they seem to
| get worse and worse every year with saturation dialed ALL THE WAY
| and images looking more and more like CG with smoothing and other
| weird filters. Perhaps i'm just old.
| OJFord wrote:
| I rarely shop in person so I can't really say if it's getting
| worse, but it's certainly always been my experience that other
| than in dedicated hi-fi/home cinema type shops they dial the
| settings to the ridiculous maximum and of course boast that
| it's 1200000000:1 dynamic 360 max HDR+ gen 5 or whatever.
| beaugunderson wrote:
| Highly recommend rtings.com to get the best settings for any
| TV; they do a lot of work to get the most natural look.
| sgtnoodle wrote:
| It's usually called "dynamic" mode and it makes me sad when I
| see it turned on in peoples' homes.
| sgtnoodle wrote:
| That's cool. I did that when I lived alone in an apartment, and
| it was awesome.
|
| When I researched the best projector setup, I read that a gray
| wall may actually be better than white because it can result in
| darker blacks. I couldn't try it, though, as I was renting at
| the time. Have you ever experimented with that?
| boring_twenties wrote:
| Not sure about gray walls, but I bought a vinyl screen for my
| projector and it looks infinitely better than the white wall
| I was using before, especially blacks.
|
| There are other things about the screen that are supposed to
| improve things (some kind of tiny glass beads on the
| surface), but also, it's gray.
| sgtnoodle wrote:
| I suppose you would want a partially reflective surface so
| that most of the light bounces back toward the audience
| rather than completely scattering. That scatter would
| otherwise raise the ambient light of the screen, and
| therefore make blacks worse. You wouldn't want a mirror
| like finish either, though, because then any given viewer
| would only see a narrow beam of the overall image. My guess
| is that a reflective cone of about 60 degrees would be
| optimal?
|
| That's probably what the glass beads are doing, reflecting
| the light and defocusing it in a consistent way. I vaguely
| recall that the optimal wall paint recommended by the
| internet was not only gray, but also satin finish.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Yes, gray works quite a lot better with a projector than
| white. But it does also depend a bit on your use case, you
| would choose a different paint for a very dark room than one
| with a fair amount of light pollution.
|
| Some people get quite involved with paint formulation, and
| for a while I played that game, but if I ever need to build a
| bigger screen I'm just going to buy one. Halfway decent ones
| aren't very expensive now.
| gennarro wrote:
| I'd highly recommend a dumb tv. From a previous HN link:
| https://helpatmyhome.com/best-non-smart-tv/
| LegitShady wrote:
| Just so people don't get confused from your link - all the
| insignia TVs without 'smart' features are 1080p. Every insignia
| panel I see at bestbuy with 4k resolution is a 'fire tv
| edition'. You can't get a modern dumb tv with a good panel from
| them.
| gennarro wrote:
| Good clarification. Thanks!
| chadlavi wrote:
| This is why smart tvs are cheap. Is that not common knowledge?
| Ozzie_osman wrote:
| > The idea that there is virtue in paying because it incentivizes
| better corporate ethics is absurd on its face.
|
| This swings too far. Yes, you can for a product and still be a
| product. Selling a product doesn't necessarily incentivized good
| privacy behavior. But using ads _almost definitely_ incentives
| poor privacy behavior.
|
| So you just have to be careful, but on the net paid products are
| probably more aligned with privacy
| someonewhocar3s wrote:
| Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) grew 91% to $19.89
|
| given 'it's just software' this is very significant for the
| bottom line, basically the value of 'quality' speakers or
| something like that (may be more than the entire remote)
|
| Not sure what they make per TV. Could be 0 in this model.
| wcfields wrote:
| I work in the advertising industry (media buy side) and we buy
| the feed from VideoAmp (Vizio) to determine linear TV spot reach
| better than Nielsen.
|
| We only buy for our clients and get a feed of only their
| placements, but essentially VideoAmp knows how many Vizio TV's
| are online in every zip code and from that can with a fairly high
| confidence interval give a statistical accurate determination of
| what played on TV.
|
| Most media includes ACR (auto content recognition) fingerprints
| for this purpose, either through VideoAmp or Comscore (comcast
| set top boxes).
|
| The whole game for them is for you to get your "Smart TV" online
| and they entice with apps and now tons of shovelware-esq free TV
| channels like PlutoTV.
| bradgranath wrote:
| https://investors.vizio.com/news/news-details/2021/VIZIO-HOL...
|
| Here it direct from the VIZIO CEO William Wang in an address to
| shareholders.
| civilized wrote:
| After the 9274821th article about yet another company hoovering
| up data about me to help someone run personalized ads, I am less
| frightened about the privacy implications than morbidly curious
| at the mammoth, grotesque waste of it all. I have to ask: how
| much of the American economy is now based on showing people ads?
| Is there no limit to how much money and time and effort
| civilization can sink into this?
|
| Even if ads could control me like a puppet and direct me to make
| purchases at any time, would the proceeds from that pay for the
| effort?
| bjackman wrote:
| I've recently ordered this book which I believe deals with the
| topic of your question:
| https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374538651/subprimeattenti...
|
| Haven't read it yet, looking forwards to it!
| teeray wrote:
| Even if I do get a good targeted ad, I'm usually like "oh yeah,
| I bought that months ago" or "this would have been a good ad
| for me three years ago at ${PREVIOUS_JOB} where we actually
| used this service."
|
| The targeting works, but the timing is abysmal and fails to
| introduce new products into my thought space at the time I'm
| making those decisions. In other words, they fail at their
| raison d'etre
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| That's not true in the general case and I'm sure you could
| think of many counterexamples for this.
| wayoutthere wrote:
| This is why I don't connect my TVs to WiFi. I have NVidia Shields
| and Chromecasts on all my TVs when I want to run apps. Sure,
| Google spies on me too, but they probably already know everything
| they would learn from what I watch.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| RTings, a site that reviews (amongst other things) televisions,
| maintains a list of fully ad-free models:
|
| https://www.rtings.com/tv/tests/ads-in-smart-tv
|
| (They are the ones with "10" in the ad-free column)
|
| The dominant brand for ad-free models is in fact... Vizio.
| jancsika wrote:
| This is a separate issue-- article is about tv surveillance and
| these tvs you link only that happen not to show ads "on the
| TV's _smart_ platform. "
|
| I'm going to rankly speculate that _every_ smart tv does
| surveillance on the user on part of either the manufacturer or
| some third party that pays the manufacturer for the data.
| Otherwise why bother putting a damned wifi chip and browser in
| the thing at all? I 'll take my tinfoil hat off if anyone can
| link me to an extant business model that includes all that
| smart business yet somehow _doesn 't_ leverage it to make money
| in our modern economy. But even then it had better be no data
| leakage _by design_ (which, if it 's connecting to the internet
| for whatever purpose I can't possibly see how that would work
| in practice)-- otherwise one update and you're back to square
| one.
|
| Additionally, your link doesn't include the few tvs that happen
| to be good ole' non-smart tvs. Check out feature #9 on my
| Walmart special:
|
| > USB - USB connects to USB flash drives for playing music and
| picture. The USB port is also used for updating the display's
| firmware.
|
| So good luck with your Smart TV Behavioral Modification Systems
| that may or may not shoot ads at your head, HN. Meanwhile, I'll
| be sitting in the privacy of my own home, sipping tea wile
| deciding which jpeg I'm going to play next.
| throwntoday wrote:
| I have a 4k Vizio dumb tv. It was the only one I could find
| that didn't have some laggy android/web OS and it's been solid
| for 4+ years. Never once connected it to the internet though.
| acjohnson55 wrote:
| I bought a 4k Vizio P65 dumb TV 4 years ago, and to my
| surprise, it was upgraded over the air to a smart TV.
| madengr wrote:
| Huh, how was it "upgraded over the air"? Does it have a
| hidden cellular modem?
| daxelrod wrote:
| Can you please give more detail about what model this was
| and how the upgrade worked? Did you give it an internet
| connection? Did it find open wifi on its own? Did it use a
| cellular antenna?
|
| I'm curious as an owner of a Vizio TV that I _think_ is a
| dumb TV...
| LegitShady wrote:
| currently ad free, you mean. I bought my mom a TV that didn't
| have ads and a year later it had ads and its own wifi network I
| couldn't disable.
|
| You 'own' the device but you can't control it. It's 'smart' and
| you're dumb, because you controlling it isn't the goal.
| bestouff wrote:
| How can someone on HN be unable to "disable" a TV's WiFi
| network ? Can't you just ban its MAC address from the router
| or something ?
| jackson1442 wrote:
| Its _own_ wifi network, likely a Chromecast network like
| "Vizio $MODEL.c"
| sa1 wrote:
| Maybe he means it came with a sim card.
| LegitShady wrote:
| It has its own wifi network it broadcasts - an internal
| wifi router that makes its own network. There's no option
| to disable it. You can stop it from connecting to your
| devices, but you can't stop it from broadcasting. You don't
| know what information it's collecting as your devices
| constantly query what wifi networks are around them. Even
| if the tv has no internet connection it still broadcasts a
| wifi network.
|
| I imagine the same way google improved their location
| services by driving around and literally collecting wifi
| network information, vizio can see where any TV not
| connected to the internet physically is if they send
| someone to drive around and look for their own TVs wifi
| networks.
| citboin wrote:
| I'd like to know how it's implemented and see if it can
| be physically disabled, removed or purposefully
| sabotaged.
| [deleted]
| bestouff wrote:
| Aha I get it. If it's not connected to any network,
| there's not much harm in it collecting some data. But I
| see it'll be a problem for the common people.
| rightbyte wrote:
| They probably mesh them to neighbours to spy on people
| that does not setup wifi.
| reacharavindh wrote:
| I still don't understand. If you never ever connect your
| creepy TV to the Internet and never give it permission to
| say connect to your phone, how could it pass on all that
| collected data?
|
| I have always used "Smart TV" this way and have been at
| peace thinking I don't have a problem. Am I missing
| something here? A Vizio TV can create its own WiFi
| Network all it wants, but it ain't connecting to my home
| Internet. Why Do I have to worry?
| codezero wrote:
| WiFi host networks are frequently queried by all nearby
| devices to see what access points are available.
| Collecting device IDs that are scanning is useful
| information since for a long time and on most devices,
| the MAC address was not rotated so it acted to identify
| people and where they go with mobile devices.
| zzt123 wrote:
| Amazon Sidewalk, public nets such as Spectrum Wifi, maybe
| even cellular like cars come with. There are so many ways
| a smart TV could surreptitiously pull a fast one, and
| those ways are increasing. Maybe even mesh networks
| consisting of other TVs. Yours might not be connected to
| your wifi, but maybe your neighbor's has permission to
| theirs.
| reacharavindh wrote:
| If I have to worry about WiFi war driving, I would have
| to worry about a lot of things at my home. I agree it's a
| concern and I choose to deal with it last.
|
| Mesh with neighbour's TV network which has access to
| their internet is more plausible to me and concerning.
| Wouldn't this be illegal and a waiting class action law
| suit? (Using Neighbor's internet surreptitiously?) and an
| easy one to spot at that?
| LegitShady wrote:
| you don't have to "worry" about wifi war driving per se -
| you just have to know that google already does it and
| likely sells that information to other companies. No need
| to worry except to know its likely already occurring.
|
| And in terms of legality - you likely give them
| permission to do whatever they want in the terms and
| services you agree to on first boot, or install an app on
| your phone, etc. And you have no control of the TV's wifi
| - unless you hack the encryption or get direct access to
| the firmware you might never be able to tell whats going
| on. That's definitely beyond my capabilities.
| z3t4 wrote:
| All it takes is someone that downloads an app, then the
| app connects to the TV and sends the data via the smart-
| phone internet connection. Could be your neighbor or
| anyone in range. Better get a soldering pen and remove
| the antenna.
| conductr wrote:
| Your TV connects with your neighbors tv that has
| internet, now your tv effectively has internet. Maybe you
| dismiss this risk because you live in a rural area, but
| meanwhile the manufacturer of your router (or any device
| you've validly given internet access to) inks a deal with
| the manufacturer of your tv.
| sneak wrote:
| Don't connect it to the network, ever, and it can't update.
|
| You took actions that initiated the auto update mechanism
| (plugging in ethernet, typing in with password) that were the
| root cause of the issue you experienced.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| A device you have already purchased acquiring new
| "features" is entirely the responsibility of the
| manufacturer. We're going to need regulation on this
| behavior, it's not solvable through technology.
| akvadrako wrote:
| Interesting table. I'm looking for an ad-free OLED TV and I see
| there are none from the past 3 years.
| wyager wrote:
| Every TV is ad-free if you don't give it internet access.
| jobe_br wrote:
| This. I factory reset my Vizio a couple months ago because
| it was crashing a lot and I didn't bother giving it any
| Internet access this time around. There are also no other
| WiFi networks nearby.
| unnouinceput wrote:
| or use Pi-hole smartly!
| jay3ss wrote:
| This is my solution, although it sometimes feels like
| playing a game of Whack-A-Mole
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Don't they automatically search for any nearby wifi? I
| remember complaints about that.
| jobe_br wrote:
| Not sure if that was a Vizio thing, but I think Samsung
| did/does this.
| wmf wrote:
| Half of the Vizio home screen is a carousel promoting third-
| rate streaming services like Tubi and Crackle. At least it's
| not ads for prescription arthritis medicine, but it still looks
| pretty advertisingy.
| whynotmaybe wrote:
| I think you just have to wait for them to have enough data on
| their users so that they sell ads to companies with a clear
| profile of what their users want.
|
| For the same movie, netflix is not showing the same poster
| for me or my kid. For "the dead don't die", it's Adam Driver
| for me, Selena Gomez for my kid.
| dbpatterson wrote:
| Ad-free doesn't necessarily mean they aren't tracking you,
| right? Viewership info is _still_ valuable, even if it's not
| being used right on the device.
| irq-1 wrote:
| Under "Opt-out of Suggested Content" its "No" for the Vizio
| TVs. Either its generic Ads, or they're watching you to
| target the Ads.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| Yes I suppose that's true. Tracking can at least be defeated
| by simply not connecting to the internet.
|
| Some TVs with ads actually have ads pre-loaded on them, so
| not connecting them isn't sufficient to defeat the ads.
| codezero wrote:
| This is until they start using 5G or LoRa to make a mesh to
| get around that.
| thantik wrote:
| Amazon's Smarthome stuff offers basically a bluetooth
| side-channel specifically for this purpose. It's called
| "Amazon Sidewalk", and they are already using it for Tile
| trackers, Ring Doorbell stuff (the doorbell even acts as
| a mesh point for this in some models)
| codezero wrote:
| Yep, eventually this technology will be worthwhile for
| folks with less scale to implement. Maybe Amazon will
| license access to Sidewalk. I believe Apple does a
| similar thing with their devices.
| bshipp wrote:
| Is it that difficult to build an open source Visio firmware that
| strips all the ads and has it operating like consumers want?
|
| Seems fair play if they're already ignoring open source licenses
| in the first place.
|
| I'd look into it but I don't have a Vizio box.
|
| Edit: seems like this is a place to start looking:
| https://github.com/spartan263/vizio_oss
| rollcat wrote:
| I would look into removing the "computer" that is doing the
| spying, and driving the panel itself directly (eg from an Apple
| TV, Raspberry Pi, whatever you consider trustworthy). The
| panels usually use eDP, MIPI/DSI or (in case of older laptops)
| LVDS internally.
|
| I've seen it done - a friend swapped the screens on two
| completely different laptops - one did work, and well, one
| didn't ;) but 50% success rate for a random guy with a
| screwdriver is not bad. I wonder what would happen if we could
| identify a particular cheap, mass-produced, high-quality screen
| / panel that'd be easy to DIY.
| throaway46546 wrote:
| I just removed the WiFi card from my TV.
| shmerl wrote:
| Someone actually trusts MS and Apple? Their reputation doesn't
| exactly instill any trust.
| ksec wrote:
| The correct headline should be Vizio makes more money by selling
| ads than selling TV themselves.
|
| We are only a month to 2022. This shouldn't even be a news
| headline. There are also plenty of other TV brands that does
| something similar. It is the whole reason why you can buy a 4K
| 55" TV for a $~450.
|
| And a lot of people knows this. So for the past few years it
| turns out plenty of people are willing to sell their watching
| habits for a cheaper TV. Unfortunately TV business in itself is a
| low margin business. Unless Apple decide to do something about it
| I dont think there are any company that could change the game
| much if at all.
| Rd6n6 wrote:
| When I tell people that their TVs are spying on them, they
| usually either don't believe me because they think it would be
| illegal, or are shocked and upset
| hammock wrote:
| I didn't know it and i wouldn't have guessed it was worth this
| much.
| pfranz wrote:
| > So for the past few years it turns out plenty of people are
| willing to sell their watching habits for a cheaper TV.
|
| The problem is that when it's endemic and not clearly labeled
| is that paying more may not do any good. Companies are very
| happy to charge you more to pretend you get something extra.
| chuckee wrote:
| > And a lot of people knows this. So for the past few years it
| turns out plenty of people are willing to sell their watching
| habits for a cheaper TV.
|
| Because every TV has all the ways it spies on you listed as
| prominently as the price? And there's a near identical model
| for sale next to it, without the spying-enabled discounts?
|
| Framing this as consumer choice implies consumers were informed
| and given a choice, but they were neither.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Perhaps something I actually appreciate about Amazon's
| devices. At least their Kindles with ads. They give you a
| choice between seeing ads, and not seeing them, and put a
| price on it. If ad revenue is a meaningful amount of the
| price of a new TV, then I'd definitely like the option to buy
| one with all of it disabled (with a permanent legal guarantee
| to back it up).
| mattmanser wrote:
| Do lots of people know this?
|
| TVs get magically cheaper, is anyone asking why? They just buy
| it.
|
| It's not on the box. It's not on the price sticker.
| karaterobot wrote:
| Your point is generally valid, in that the price of selling
| advertisements and data is factored into the cost of TVs. But,
| in case you or anyone else despairs of buying a reasonably
| priced "dumb tv": you can still buy a 55" 4K TV with no spyware
| and no apps for $450 or less. For example, the Sceptre U558CV-
| UMC is $400 at that large online retailer from Seattle. I own
| the 65" version, and it's fantastic.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| The problem as I see it is that if you really want a dumb TV,
| you generally have to settle for an off-brand, or lower
| quality, smaller, or older. Hisense has a 75 inch option on
| the rtings list that is rated fairly well, but what do I know
| about Hisense? Sony has one ad-free TV on the list but it's
| several years old now. Most of the rest are Vizio,
| ironically. And why should I trust them not to send out an
| update that changes the behavior of the TV to include ads?
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > It is the whole reason why you can buy a 4K 55" TV for a
| $~450.
|
| How are you so sure?
|
| For example, if a TV has $15 of profit on the hardware and $30
| of profit from ads, then you'd still see ~$450 models if you
| removed the ads and increased the price.
| rileymat2 wrote:
| "As Richard Lawler writes for The Verge, the division that
| handles ads and surveillance booked $57.3 million in profits,
| while the hardware division's profits were $25.6 million."
|
| I am curious how the accounting works on this, they could not
| make any profit on the surveillance without selling the TV's, but
| none of the TV cost is recorded as an expense for the
| surveillance numbers.
| fencepost wrote:
| The original source for that part of the linked article is
| https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/10/22773073/vizio-acr-adver...
|
| Numbers come from Vizio's reporting. Basically profits of 25
| million on TVs and 50+ million on advertising
| z3t4 wrote:
| I'm looking forward to the day where I can get a 80 inch smart-tv
| for free because it's financed with ads and in app purchases.
| Then I will disable the ads and use it as a dumb-tv behind my
| receiver.
| danparsonson wrote:
| > Then I will disable the ads...
|
| No you won't, because there will be no switch for that and it
| will include a 5G chip and therefore connect itself to the
| internet whether or not you want it to. Can't get online for 30
| days? Sorry, you violated the TOS that you agreed to without
| reading and now your free TV will only play nyan cat on a loop.
| squarefoot wrote:
| Apparently being sued years ago didn't teach them anything.
|
| https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/06/vizio-settles-for-2-2-mill...
|
| They also violated the GPL in their products.
|
| https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/vizio.html
| rendall wrote:
| > _In other words, they spy on you because they can get away with
| it, because the state permits them. We don 't have a federal
| privacy law with a private right of action, we don't have
| statutory limits on terms of service. Even where you do have some
| rights, we let companies take them away with "binding
| arbitration" waivers that confiscate your right to sue them and
| join class actions._
|
| My fellow Americans, I am an expatriate who lives in the EU, and
| so I come under GDPR protections. It gives me quite some piece of
| mind to live where the State is thinking about and acting on
| these issues, even if imperfectly.
|
| You, too, could have that piece of mind. There is a clear road
| from this rather dystopian reality, where a company can use and
| abuse your data at will, to solid protections with teeth. The
| first step is to believe it's possible and desirable.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| I thought this is well-known, read about it quite some time ago.
| Something about suspiciously low prices of their products in age
| of surveillance. Same vein as ie Xiaomi or Huawei in cell phones.
| avalys wrote:
| Anyone who uses the terms "spying" and "surveillance" to
| characterize this business model is being misleading in order to
| push an agenda.
|
| These terms imply some kind of personal connection. The police
| will put a suspect under "surveillance". Someone might "spy" on
| their spouse to see if they're cheating.
|
| These are the sorts of scenarios that these terms call to mind.
| These imply a deliberate and focused invasion of privacy by
| another person who is specifically looking to uncover and reveal
| some information that you want to keep secret, in order to use it
| against your interests.
|
| This really has nothing to do with a computer system
| automatically collecting data on what TV shows you're watching
| and the vendor reselling this information in aggregate from
| millions of users (or, just using it to allow some other vendor
| to automatically and impersonally select an ad to show you, along
| with millions of other users in the same algorithmic category).
|
| It's a false equivalency intended to manipulate your emotions
| into fearing a harm that does not exist. The reason they have to
| resort to this sort of technique is that they can't point to any
| actual harm from this practice that ordinary people would care
| about, so emotionally manipulative trickery is their only option.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > These terms imply some kind of personal connection. The
| police will put a suspect under "surveillance". Someone might
| "spy" on their spouse to see if they're cheating.
|
| The thing is, with "dragnet warrants" (see e.g.
| https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/sep/16/geofence-
| war...) it is _incredibly_ easy for your data to end up
| subpoena 'd by the police. Secret services may not even need
| that and simply take all the data they want. And at that time,
| your TV, phone or other device has effectively become an
| espionage device.
|
| This is why the European GDPR focuses so hard on data
| minimization: data that doesn't even get collected or stored
| cannot be abused by criminals and the government.
| Zigurd wrote:
| This argument is a denial of the existence and effectiveness of
| microtargeting.
| dopamean wrote:
| No it is not. I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with it but
| it's arguing that the harm of microtargeting is at the very
| least overstated.
| CuriousSkeptic wrote:
| Well in Sweden recording the audio, or intercepting data, is a
| crime that could land you up to six years in prison.
|
| It seems to me the only thing protecting these people would be
| claiming informed consent due to the dense EULA presented on
| activating the device. Im not really sure it would hold up in
| court though
| thot_experiment wrote:
| The actual harm? If you steal a dollar from everyone what's the
| harm, it's just a dollar? Except now you have 7 billion dollars
| and you can do a bunch of bullshit with it. Except in this case
| companies are stealing personal agency and using it to create
| reality.
|
| Not only that but that cache of power, it's not available to
| you but it's probably available to rich people and governments,
| further exacerbating power divides. The power of information is
| insidious and grows as you gain more of it.
| avalys wrote:
| > Except in this case companies are stealing personal agency
| and using it to create reality.
|
| What does this mean?
| thot_experiment wrote:
| By understanding behaviors and patterns on a large scale
| you can become better at manipulating on a large scale. In
| giving up privacy you allow yourself to be more effectively
| manipulated (giving up your agency) and the entities that
| understand the broader patterns can now use those patterns
| for to create large structures in our world (creating
| reality).
| chuckee wrote:
| And someone might "spy" on a whistleblower that leaked an
| incriminating video, by issuing a warrant for the media
| fingerprint [1], and finding which TV was used to view the
| leaked footage. Google doesn't "spy" on you either, by your
| ridiculously narrow definition, and yet their data sends people
| to jail [2].
|
| Or a personality/political profile could be built on a person
| from the shows they watch.
|
| Or your social score could be reduced if you watch too many
| subversive shows. Oh but that's in China, and could never ever
| happen here, so no worries about building all the
| infrastructure to enable it. Except if you _view_ terrorist
| content, then the UK feels justified in jailing you for 10-15
| years [3]. But hey I don 't think there's precedent yet for
| using smart TV fingerprinting for that, so why worry?
|
| Lets give up our autonomy and privacy one tiny slice at a time.
| And when there is nothing left, you can point to each
| individual slice and explain to us how losing that one was
| totally insignificant and non-nefarious.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_video_fingerprinting
|
| [2] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/sep/16/geofence-
| war...
|
| [3] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-41479620.amp
| akaij wrote:
| Threats to civil liberties only ever come a few dollars at a
| time.
| [deleted]
| userbinator wrote:
| I wonder how much demand there would be for a service that
| "dumbs" a smart TV by replacing its main board with a "universal"
| one that still has media capabilities, but no other
| intrusiveness:
|
| http://web.archive.org/web/20190511065920/http://redlightgre...
| whynotmaybe wrote:
| My Roku tv can work without internet, I just need to plug some
| hdmi device.
|
| And for limiting ads when my tv's connected to the tubes, I
| have a pihole.
|
| Now Scribe.logs.roku.com is the most blocked address on my
| pihole.
| thefounder wrote:
| You can just plug in an apple tv. Problem solved
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Interacting with a TV menu seems so alien to me. They all
| come with HDMI CEC, you never need to touch the TV remote.
| Apple TV, the IPTV boxes that pirate channels, Chome sticks
| and fire sticks, even cable and satellite set top boxes. It
| makes almost no difference to anyone unless TV manufacturers
| start popping up ads randomly while you are watching tv.
| mrlatinos wrote:
| Vizio tracks set top devices like the Apple TV as well. They
| do this through Inscape.tv - which basically tracks a pixel
| in the corner to fingerprint what you are watching, they
| record this real time along with your location, wifi info,
| etc. and create advertising audiences or sell the data in
| "anonymized" form.
|
| This is always running whether you're using an app, watching
| antenna TV, or using a third party device. The only way to
| prevent it is DNS blocking with something like the pihole.
| And that's if they allow you to change the DNS lookup
| address.
| thefounder wrote:
| Why would you connect the TV to the internet if you have
| Apple TV? Vizio can't send any data if it's not connected
| to the internet.
| nixgeek wrote:
| I found this article nearly impossible to read, it's just so
| angry. It's accusatory at every moment, it maligns essentially
| all of the worlds largest technology companies in an introduction
| before even getting to Vizio (the point of the article, per the
| title). I often feel this extreme writing style hurts more than
| it helps. Very difficult to convince people your cause is just
| with this tack?
| crocodiletears wrote:
| You can't convince people anymore. All that's left is
| resignation, anger, and used screens from the oughts.
| asbnk wrote:
| People should get off their computers and read some European
| literature again. This is not "angry", just a colorful style.
|
| What is frightening is the anger (i.e., emotion) policing that
| people programmed by big tech engage in.
| drumhead wrote:
| I dont get that impression at all. It was a clear easy to read
| article, setting the context doesnt or explaining the general
| environment doesnt reduce the credibility of whats said in the
| article at.. I couldnt see anything that sounds conspiritorial
| or unhinged. Now if I was cynical, Id say that would be the
| sort of thing a person representing the surveillance marketing
| industry would say to smear the author. Cory Doctorow is a well
| known advocate for privacy on the internet, so he may have made
| a lot of enemies in that industry, who may try to attack his
| credibility whenever and wherever they can. I found the article
| to be quite illuminating, especially about vizio and the lack
| of permission to monitor your activities.
| timmytokyo wrote:
| Cory Doctorow writes polemics. Not everyone likes polemics.
| anuvrat1 wrote:
| I wouldn't consider this "extreme writing style", author define
| what this so-called "ad-economy" then they get into, every one
| tries to show that they aren't part of it, but they are.
|
| Then there is the main point of the article, which is Vizio
| doesn't care about being clean and undercutting competition.
|
| A good chuck of Vizio's customer knows what they are buying,
| unlike companies like Samsung; charging premium price, "caring"
| about their customers but still involving in the same practices
| as Vizio.
|
| And the author gets the point across, so this is a decent
| article.
| chasil wrote:
| I don't own a "smart TV." If I did, I would have two options
| to secure it.
|
| I could keep it disconnected from my home network, except
| perhaps occasionally to update the firmware. Otherwise, all
| network content would come from a device in which I could
| place some level of trust.
|
| Alternately, I could put it behind a Gargoyle router set to
| push all content through Tor. That would render some network
| content inaccessible, and Vizio itself might block Tor exit
| nodes.
|
| Each of these choices introduces inconvenience and reduces
| function, but right now I would not trust my activity to
| Vizio, after seeing this financial reporting.
| 0x0nyandesu wrote:
| Kinda have no choice these days. Have a brand new house and
| want a 65 inch 4k OLED panel? Welp you're getting a smart
| tv. I found the Sony Bravia line to be the "cleanest"
| firmware. It's Android so you can do quite a lot to hack it
| to your advantage.
| anuvrat1 wrote:
| Isn't that "little inconvenience" the money you are saving
| going with Vizio?
|
| You get an excellent display for the price, use it as a
| display only and for updates thumb drive is your best
| friend.
| emodendroket wrote:
| Well, not really, since the better TVs are also smart
| TVs.
| sneak wrote:
| Updating the firmware is _the reason_ you never connect it
| to the network!
|
| If the firmware from the factory doesn't work, return it.
| If it does, never, ever connect it to a network, because it
| may stop working, start spying, or show ads.
| oopsyDoodl wrote:
| We should drop "tech" from tech company altogether at this
| point. No reason other companies, like Walmart, can't be blamed
| for the same things.
|
| Even a little cottage industry player for Apple or Intel is
| just grifting on large scale grift of agency and planet
| destruction; one shared reality makes it kind of hard to hide
| the whole economy is thoughtless dedication to death cult
| behavior.
|
| So much pointless taxonomy is generated about our society. Free
| speech is great but like with infinitely big little numbers, it
| can just meander forever, as our political system is showing
| us.
| bshipp wrote:
| It's like having a big family dinner with your crazy uncle Bob
| who spends the entire meal working themselves up into an angry
| froth spouting a vast assortment of conspiracy theories.
|
| It's possible that there is some nugget of value in that mess
| but your eyes have long since rolled so hard that you're
| worried you've sprained an optic nerve.
| aydwi wrote:
| > It's like having a big family dinner with your crazy uncle
| Bob who spends the entire meal working themselves up into an
| angry froth spouting a vast assortment of conspiracy
| theories.
|
| Is it, though? To me, this is a rather absurd equivalence.
|
| There's a significant amount of buildup before the "Vizio"
| bit, but it's presented in a structured format, helps
| establish context about the "issue", and is backed by
| credible references at every step. A time-constrained reader
| might not find this to be the most friendly writeup, but
| that's a separate discussion about the authour's writing
| style, which has no relation to the analogy you presented.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Is it really a conspiracy theory to suggest that Microsoft is
| spying on you in Edge? Or that Apple puts profits before
| security? I'm not really seeing the nutjob factor here, but
| maybe that's because I'm already intimated with the field...
| bshipp wrote:
| Not at all. Individually they are important discussions to
| have. The problem is that the thesis here is that "all
| companies spy on you regardless of how much you pay for
| their product" when the headline is about Vizio.
|
| Perhaps I'm alone in thinking like this, but if a person
| tells me they are going to discuss a topic but instead do a
| bait and switch by trying to roll in a dozen other
| tangentially-related subjects so they can get me to agree
| with them about a completely different thesis they should
| not be surprised if the listener starts to smile, nod, and
| slowly back away.
| tshaddox wrote:
| There's nothing remotely like a bait and switch here. The
| article is simply longer than the headline, which pretty
| much has to be the case.
| Drdrdrq wrote:
| To me the article makes perfect sense. They tell what
| Vizio does and explain why this is so, and why this is
| even expected behaviour in capitalism. They also list
| countless other companies that do the same. After all,
| it's all about incentives... In this case it is money,
| but it could be paperclips just the same.
| emodendroket wrote:
| The thesis isn't unreasonable and I think could be
| presented much more persuasively.
| [deleted]
| noirbot wrote:
| Maybe the better analogy is your friend who somehow has to
| make everything about how either capitalism or communism is
| behind everything wrong about the world. It doesn't really
| matter if they're right or wrong, as some point you just
| want to talk about how much you like the new episode of
| Succession or whatever and not have them link everything
| back into their pet universal theory of the world.
|
| It's often better and more effective to have an article
| about one single novel thing than to bang a drum about how
| every single thing in the world is just the same pattern
| again and again.
| tshaddox wrote:
| > It doesn't really matter if they're right or wrong,
|
| Do you actually think that it doesn't matter whether
| they're right or wrong? Or do you just say that because
| in the back of your mind you're thinking "of course
| they're wrong"?
| noirbot wrote:
| It doesn't matter in the context of how much I want to
| have that conversation with them in the moment. Having
| someone take the mention of a news event or unrelated
| conversation topic and turn it into "have you considered
| how that relates to a grander philosophical/political
| topic" changes the tenor of the conversation in a way
| that's often uncalled for. Even if I agree with them.
|
| I mostly agree with this article's points, but I tire of
| having every article about a company doing a nefarious
| thing also including a sizable discussion about how it's
| a pattern. I already see the pattern. I've read articles
| about how MSFT and Facebook and co. have been doing this.
| I clicked on this article because I'm curious about the
| new news that the title promises about something I didn't
| know before.
| tata71 wrote:
| Weird comparison to people complaining about very
| specific entities exhibiting very specific behaviors and
| performing very specific actions.
|
| Those are general economic concepts that aren't even
| broadly agreed upon.
| noirbot wrote:
| It's weird? TFA is literally "look at how capitalism has
| enabled surveillance capitalism as evidenced by all of
| these companies." It's "complaining about very specific
| entities exhibiting very specific behaviors and
| performing very specific action" and how all of those
| behaviors and actions are just the result of capitalism,
| and that Vizio is another data point in how everything is
| connected to general economic concepts?
|
| Sometimes everything is connected, and sometimes your
| boss is just a shitty boss, or a company made an
| unethical decision.
| Iefthandrule wrote:
| There is a certain amount of cognitive dissonance
| experienced when you read that the companies you frequently
| patronize (Microsoft, Facebook, and Apple for the majority
| of the tech world) are doing nefarious things. We would
| just rather not hear them than deal with that guilt.
| emodendroket wrote:
| Oh please, the only thing more off-putting than screeds
| is this kind of patronizing psychobabble.
| antiterra wrote:
| It's pretty clear that the GP was including themselves in
| the casual assessment, so I'm curious why that deserves
| such vitriol.
|
| If you were interested in not being patronizing yourself,
| you could discuss how to measure sentiment vs behavior,
| or discuss results if it has been done before. You could
| possibly suggest an alternative explanation or approach
| that shows the flaws in what you deem psychobabble.
|
| Is your goal to have insightful and rewarding discussion?
| emodendroket wrote:
| I find the suggestion that the audience of this site is
| uniquely unreceptive to the article because of the
| cognitive dissonance of buying things from Apple et al
| implausible, and I think it's patronizing in the sense
| that it basically says that the only reason you might not
| like the article is psychological bias or deficiency. The
| guilt angle would seem to throw in outright blaming
| readers who didn't like it. I think the unfocused,
| screed-like nature of the article, as originally
| proposed, is a more compelling rationale.
| antiterra wrote:
| I am not sure I read the same comment as you. I read it
| as a general observation that people compromise ideals
| for convenience. For example, I buy things from Amazon,
| but I also think their continued growth is likely
| harmful. This functional hypocrisy is common and human.
| Overcoming a particular case of it is a significant
| challenge, and I wouldn't know where to start.
| smoldesu wrote:
| I'd argue that it's more patronizing to promote ignorance
| of widespread, systemic issues than it is to just
| casually discuss them.
| noirbot wrote:
| Two things - First, this article isn't what I'd call "a
| casual discussion". It's fairly harsh in general. Second,
| if anything the issue is that many of us aren't ignorant
| at all. We're deeply aware of the moral and ethical
| tradeoffs of this industry, and the internet, and modern
| internal commerce, and energy consumption...
|
| It's not "promoting ignorance" to just be tired and sad
| and not want every article to make you feel like crap
| just for living in a capitalist society. I already think
| about it enough on my own.
| tsol wrote:
| I've always thought this line of thinking, while reasonable,
| was kind of admittedly strange. Just because someone is
| angry, and perhaps irritating, does not mean they aren't
| correct. In some ways, you'd expect them someone conveying
| wide scale injustices to be angry. It's almost counter
| intuitive to only trust those who can calm themselves. I mean
| in practical life, I still am a bit leary of overly angry
| rants-- but this thought occurs to me often.
| kbenson wrote:
| I'm not sure why you think it's strange. Nobody wants to
| wade through 90% bullshit to get to 10% useful info when
| the volume is high.
|
| If the first five things you pay attention to are obviously
| incorrect, do you keep listening in case there's a useful
| nugget in there, or do you switch to someone else's
| conversation which isn't rife with those problems? Because
| you don't know if what you were listening to was 100% BS,
| or 90%, or 50%, but you _do_ know it hasn 't been useful so
| far and there are other choices.
|
| Or, put another way, why are you conversing on HN when
| there's plenty of discussions on Facebook you could be
| contributing in, and undoubtedly some of them would have
| useful info? I think the same decision making process
| applies.
| tsol wrote:
| >Nobody wants to wade through 90% bullshit to get to 10%
| useful info when the volume is high.
|
| No one wants to, and yet it helps in understanding what
| others' grievances are. In today's polarized world,
| sometimes you even have to bear reading through what
| feels as insane rants in order to understand what another
| portion of society thinks. I may not agree with certain
| political parties or social causes but I believe it's
| still useful to understand them. Even if every other
| sentence is exaggerated rhetoric, somewhere in their
| diatribe there usually is some hint as to why they feel
| that way
|
| >Or, put another way, why are you conversing on HN when
| there's plenty of discussions on Facebook you could be
| contributing in, and undoubtedly some of them would have
| useful info?
|
| I do make it a point to visit other platforms. I find
| different platforms can expose you to views of different
| groups. HN has a lot of high level discussion which I
| appreciate, but sometimes people are a little too
| analytical. There are certain topics the community excels
| at, and others that leave me wanting. I find discussions
| on medicine tend not to go very in-depth on here, while
| on a larger platform like Reddit it's not uncommon to
| have MDs and researchers to participate. Facebook I can't
| speak to, I don't really use it because I dislike the
| platform for ethical reasons
| catlikesshrimp wrote:
| "...plenty of discussions on Facebook you could be
| contributing in, and undoubtedly some of them would have
| useful info?"
|
| Not in my experience.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| That's GP's point. Facebook is so full of shit that most
| people will go elsewhere for discussions.
| leetcrew wrote:
| it's not just the angry part. if you say "vizio model xyz
| phones home such and such information, and here are the
| logs to prove it", I'll believe you unless I have a
| specific reason not to trust you as an individual. if you
| say "the entire TV industry spies on its customers", that's
| not implausible to me, but I'm going to assume you're just
| repeating something you've read elsewhere (and I'd rather
| just read that). it doesn't add any concrete information to
| my mental model.
|
| I do find that the angry part does correlate pretty
| strongly with people who can't really back up their
| sweeping claims or are simply exaggerating.
| emodendroket wrote:
| Sure, that's true, but it's also true that it makes it hard
| to read and puts off anyone who isn't already 110% in
| agreement with what you are saying.
| sneak wrote:
| A fanatic is someone who won't change their mind and can't
| change the subject.
| 8note wrote:
| I generally put the ownership with the orator to use
| effective rhetoric to convince people that what they're
| saying is true.
|
| I have interests in learning new, true things, but I've got
| options and priorities on what to learn next.
| pessimizer wrote:
| You can't decide whether something is credible by looking for a
| tone of even-handedness. It's a misleading signal that rules
| out the possibility that all of the facts are on one side or
| another, and people who are trying to fool you will always
| adopt a tone of even-handedness.
| caymanjim wrote:
| It's a pissy rant that goes way off topic, but none of it is
| wrong.
| mdoms wrote:
| Cory Doctorow is a self-identified privacy activist. Not
| proponent, not advocate, activist. If you don't think there's
| room for activism in this space then his writing is not for
| you. But he has had a wildly successful career and has done
| more for privacy and digital freedom than most of us will come
| close to. I find it a bit rich that a random commenter tells
| Cory Doctorow that his writing style "hurts more than it helps"
| considering his success thus far.
|
| If you want something a bit less spicy there's no end of press
| releases from huge tech companies for you to read.
| dessant wrote:
| > I find it a bit rich that a random commenter tells Cory
| Doctorow that his writing style "hurts more than it helps"
|
| A Microsoft employee, under an article that states unpleasant
| _facts_ in the first few paragraphs about their employer.
|
| It is natural for the author of the article to be accusatory,
| when there is a documented trail of illegal actions and
| repeated cases of customer exploitation from all these
| companies.
| WaxProlix wrote:
| hah, he _is_ a microsoft employee, and one who posts MS
| press releases to HN apparently. Not the hugest fan of
| submission snooping but that adds some context, doesn 't
| it?
| benreesman wrote:
| I like hyperbolic feisty writing sometimes just as I like
| really spicy food sometimes.
|
| Some people never like really spicy food, but that doesn't mean
| restaurants shouldn't serve it.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| I do, too, but Cory Doctorow usually brings more craft to the
| table than what's evident here. This reads more like an
| angsty high-school dropout's application to join an anarchist
| commune.
|
| He's not _wrong_ , but then, neither was Stallman.
| yalogin wrote:
| Yep ever since the smart tv became a thing, every tv company is
| focusing on collecting and selling data. One thing I ever do is
| give Wi-Fi access to tvs.
|
| That is why when you sign up for comcast they give you a free set
| top box absolutely free on top of a free peacock subscription.
| There is money on the back end of that to be made.
| seized wrote:
| I bought a Vizio TV knowing this... But it lives it's life
| without any internet access at all courtesy of my firewall.
|
| And this isn't limited to Vizio at all, a lot of new Samsung's
| have a higher price AND ads on it's home screen.
| inetknght wrote:
| > _it lives it 's life without any internet access at all
| courtesy of my firewall_
|
| TVs now and in the future come with cell radios too. No need to
| worry about a pesky customer's firewall getting in the way of
| profits!
| andrei_says_ wrote:
| How does one disable/block something like this?
|
| What legislation can we introduce to ensure that we own a
| device after paying for it?
|
| Where "ownership" also means disabling nonessential
| functionality of our choice?
| MerelyMortal wrote:
| Open it up and remove the card/chip.
| inetknght wrote:
| That's not feasible right now, and certainly not in the
| future.
| morelisp wrote:
| > What legislation can we introduce to ensure that we own a
| device after paying for it?
|
| Right-to-repair legislation should be adopted to include
| something similar to the GDPR's anti-coupling rules so this
| can be verified at a deeper technical level; the TV
| manufacturer should be forced to make it work even if you
| disconnect all modems, network cards, etc.
|
| The GDPR alone is sufficient for legal protection, the TV
| manufacturer can't stop you from using the TV just because
| you refuse consent for data processing - but not protection
| against bugs, bad actors, or companies operating outside
| Europe. Anything impacting hardware is more likely to
| improve conditions everywhere, even if only enforced
| somewhere.
| netr0ute wrote:
| > How does one disable/block something like this?
|
| Watch this video: https://youtu.be/urglg3WimHA
| throaway46546 wrote:
| Why have it on the network at all?
| Rd6n6 wrote:
| Many devices like these use cellular chips these days to get
| around that, and to make installation and setup easier
| casperc wrote:
| Any example of this you can name?
|
| Not doubting you, I just never heard of it before. So it
| would be something to keep in mind.
| educaysean wrote:
| This was a fun reading with useful information, but I'm not at
| all impressed by the "capitalism is the root problem" tone behind
| the article. Yes, our society could do a better job with
| educating the public in terms of their privacy options, but
| capitalism isn't a system that rewards greed above all else. It's
| a system that transparently reflects the motivation of our
| population at large.
|
| You can scoff at all these companies today that are going carbon
| neutral as just "following the money" or whatever, but that's the
| entire point of capitalism. If something matters to most of us
| deeply, then we'll vote with our wallets. Eg. If most of us were
| so sick of how our mobile phones are apying on us, companies like
| Purism would be raking in billions. The truth is that most of us
| would rather have fancy cameras with fun case options. Capitalism
| isn't forcing our hands, we are the ones making choices -
| capitalism just reflects it.
| lvs wrote:
| I was surprised there was no mention of Windows Telemetry and the
| myriad dark patterns like forced updates introduced in Windows
| 10. That was the end of the road for me with Microsoft.
| dv_dt wrote:
| So are there any TV firmware hacking communities that help owners
| secure their TVs?
| tata71 wrote:
| Russia and China
| grepfru_it wrote:
| Hey you reached out to me on a previous comment but your
| profile doesn't have any contact info! Update your profile so
| I can contact you or feel free to hit me up by email!
| stragies wrote:
| https://github.com/RootMyTV/RootMyTV.github.io shows the code,
| that rootmy.tv uses to root some recent LG WebOS TVs.
| api wrote:
| I realized a while back that a hidden factor behind the rise of
| the "you are the product" model could be inequality. There may
| not be enough purchasing power remaining in the middle class to
| sustain honest straightforward business models, causing
| businesses that mostly market to the middle class to look
| elsewhere.
|
| In particular they are looking at ways to get more money from
| corporations, wealthy individuals, and governments, all of whom
| are totally flush with cash. Thus we have surveillance
| capitalism, which is about marketing the customer as the product
| to the people who actually have money.
|
| I realized this as my own income has increased a bit in the last
| decade, and I'm finding myself perfectly willing to look up-
| market for products that among other things have stronger
| security and privacy guarantees. In many cases this means buying
| "business grade" networking gear, flat panel monitors as TVs, DIY
| home security surveillance (Blue Iris + business grade cams),
| etc., and all those things cost a lot more up front. Then I
| realized I was buying privacy, and that privacy is now a
| privilege for the upper middle class and above.
|
| The solution to surveillance capitalism may be recapitalization
| of the middle class more than any techno-fix or even specific
| regulation of surveillance practices. The latter I think will
| fail for the same reason that much of the GDPR is empty: the
| legislators do not understand the tech well enough, and there's
| too much surface area anyway and thus too many ways to work
| around the law.
| clairity wrote:
| yes, that's a concrete instance of why increasing concentration
| of power and wealth is bad for society as a whole. now consider
| that there are millions of these little mechanisms working
| against social cohesion and our current malaise really comes
| into focus.
|
| as a result, i really think we should be tying fiscal, tax, and
| monetary policy to median income (and the like) rather than gdp
| (and the like). this would wholly combat the hollowing out of
| the middle class, rather than piecemeal policies that tend to
| be inadequate and circumvented.
| RNCTX wrote:
| I'd say it's more likely that the adblock model will persist
| into other forms (proxies, anonymizers, etc), and you'll see a
| rehash of the early 2000s Tivo lawsuits in which someone like
| Vizio claims that it is unlawful to stop the camera on the TV
| from surveilling your living room.
| noptd wrote:
| But advertisers won't pay us nearly as much if we can't
| verify how many people in your household are actually viewing
| the ads! /s
| renewiltord wrote:
| Yep, I worked directly in ad tech with them. Honestly, I thought
| it was great. We get better and better hardware available for
| cheaper and you can always pay more for a different brand and not
| have ads.
| quantified wrote:
| Yeah, we've just entered the world where you will get shown ads
| if you don't pay more. There will always be some top price
| point that has an ad-free experience available because the Koch
| brothers won't stand for ads.
|
| Are the ads only on the versions that cost $99, or are they on
| the $500 and $1000 models? Did the hardware significantly
| change for the price point, or did the ad-free price point
| rise?
| candiddevmike wrote:
| And the only difference between those models is the software
| most likely. Jailbreaking TVs when?
| HWR_14 wrote:
| > There will always be some top price point that has an ad-
| free experience available because the Koch brothers won't
| stand for ads.
|
| I'm not sure that's true. I've seen a lot of very rich people
| far more tolerant of ads than I am. Maybe because for them
| the problem is more "what interesting thing is there to buy"
| than "what should I buy with limited funds"
| maccard wrote:
| > you can always pay more for a different brand and not have
| ads.
|
| Which brand would that be? Samsung, LG and Sony all have ads in
| their major product lines.
| novok wrote:
| I agree, it's becoming near impossible to avoid.
|
| And don't say "but commercial models!". They are missing a
| lot of features like multiple HDMI inputs and such, and I
| wouldn't put it past these companies to start adding crap
| eventually to commercial models too. The cost difference is
| also significantly higher than the amount of money they make
| from your via ads & surveillance because it comes with a
| bunch of commercial support features we don't want to pay for
| because we will never use it.
| maccard wrote:
| Even if you take the price difference out of the running
| just for a minute, I don't think the feature set exists in
| commercial models. What I want is a 4k hdr tv with 4 hdmi
| inputs, and at least one of those inputs should support
| ARC, and it should support a coaxial aerial connection.
| What tv can I buy with those features that doesn't spy on
| me, even at an enormous cost?
| 542458 wrote:
| The problem there is that it's not always obvious ahead of time
| what does and doesn't have ads, and that on occasion
| manufacturers decide to ad advertisements after the fact.
| Additionally, many people are unaware of the nature of the data
| being gathered about them, so they're not actually making an
| informed decision here.
| renewiltord wrote:
| I certainly agree. My gold standard is the way Amazon sells
| their Fire tablets. You can explicitly choose the ad or
| adfree version (which implicitly informs you about the
| aggregate life time revenue on the ads - about $20).
| jml7c5 wrote:
| This is likely incorrect.
|
| The $57.3 million is for the "Platform+" division. It includes
| profit from homescreen ads, selling of buttons on remotes, and
| cuts of streaming revenue. It's likely that only a small fraction
| of the division's $83 million in revenue comes from tracking and
| then selling viewing habits.
| inetknght wrote:
| > _It includes profit from homescreen ads, selling of buttons
| on remotes, and cuts of streaming revenue_
|
| > _It 's likely that only a small fraction of the division's
| $83 million in revenue comes from tracking and then selling
| viewing habits._
|
| It's good to have an example of cognitive dissonance now and
| then.
| dlgeek wrote:
| Parent poster isn't demonstrating that?
|
| Selling of buttons on remotes absolutely does not involve
| 'tracking and then selling viewing habits'.
|
| The homescreen ads may or may not involve any tracking - I
| suspect they likely do not - they're billboards, and they
| involve showing ads to users but not tracking their viewing.
|
| (I have no information on how streaming revenue share is
| structured, so I won't assert anything about it. I can easily
| imagine it going either way).
| jjulius wrote:
| >Selling of buttons on remotes absolutely does not involve
| 'tracking and then selling viewing habits'.
|
| I would wager that they look at how frequently apps are
| loaded on their TVs in an effort to determine which apps
| get their own buttons, and what rate to charge those
| companies for said placement.
| inetknght wrote:
| > _Selling of buttons on remotes absolutely does not
| involve 'tracking and then selling viewing habits'._
|
| Yes it certainly _does_.
|
| 1) sell button on remote
|
| 2) user presses button
|
| 3) sell information about button presses.
|
| > _The homescreen ads may or may not involve any tracking -
| I suspect they likely do not - they 're billboards, and
| they involve showing ads to users but not tracking their
| viewing._
|
| Oh yeah and the ads on your computer definitely are also
| only just like billboards.
|
| It's certainly not profitable _at all_ to know who 's
| watching what when selling advertisement space. It's
| certainly not capable _at all_ of determining specific
| names /addresses just from an advertisement load.
|
| /s
| webmaven wrote:
| _> > Selling of buttons on remotes absolutely does not
| involve 'tracking and then selling viewing habits'._
|
| _> Yes it certainly does._
|
| _> 1) sell button on remote_
|
| _> 2) user presses button_
|
| _> 3) sell information about button presses._
|
| I'm not sure whether this is putting the cart before the
| horse, but it is likely that tracking button presses and
| other user interactions is providing the necessary data
| to make the sale of the button in the first place, and/or
| the revenue from the button is contingent on tracked
| button presses (ie. CPC or CPA).
| IshKebab wrote:
| > sell information about button presses.
|
| Well that's obviously a different thing isn't it.
| karxxm wrote:
| Would a PiHole help here? If yes, again a good reason why every
| household should have such a DNS blocking device in their local
| network
| clairity wrote:
| a (full-featured) firewall is much better, especially if it can
| consume popular blocklists. piholes can't deal with hard-coded
| IPs or an integrated dns server that bypasses the pihole.
| noptd wrote:
| Any recommendations on this front?
|
| I've been dreading the day that I'll have to deal with apps
| ignoring the pihole and using their own DNS servers,
| especially via https or TLS.
| clairity wrote:
| yes, google and the like reportedly already do this, so
| pihole bypassing is already here.
|
| i bought a pepwave surf soho[0] a few years back, largely
| because it had a few other features (multi-homing, multi-
| wlan, robust vlan'ing, etc.) that i wanted due to my
| peculiar circumstances. it has limited blocklist support
| however, but does allow manual blocklist curation of
| arbitrary length, including cidr-formatted IP ranges. the
| main downside of this router is that it's 100mbps (actually
| ~120mbps)[1], but that's a limit i come close to very
| rarely in my day-to-day.
|
| as with smart tv's, it's frustrating how few good router
| options there are.
|
| [0]: https://www.peplink.com/products/pepwave-surf-soho/
| [1]: note that this is sustained throughput, the ports are
| 1gbps. most consumer routers struggle to reach even this
| sustained rate.
| znpy wrote:
| The same can be said for samsung --
| https://www.samsung.com/us/business/samsungads/
|
| This is where the iot, the metaverse and other tech buzzwords
| converge: advertising. I guess.
|
| EDIT:
|
| On the subject: I had to look very carefully, but I was able to
| buy a TV from OK (https://www.ok-online.com/en/#televisions) with
| no software besides signal decoding. It's still got hdmi inputs
| so maybe i'll hook a smarter device in the future.
| kevindong wrote:
| I've had my Vizio TV (P55-F1, 2019 model; a mid range model) for
| about 2.5 years now. Image/sound quality is great. But the
| annoyances and overall mediocrity of the OS and its updates [0]
| made me just disconnect the TV from the internet and fully switch
| over to using an Apple TV for all consumption rather than using
| the native Vizio OS.
|
| [0]: The OS is terrible and the remote randomly stops working
| sometimes. Sometimes the TV would take tens of seconds to turn
| on, but then other times it was near instant.
|
| Every single update since I've gotten the TV seems to make the TV
| even slower/more laggy. There was even an update about two years
| back where the Youtube app's volume was inexplicably an order of
| magnitude lower than every other input's volume (e.g. a volume of
| 100/100 on the Youtube app ended up being equivalent to a volume
| of 10/100 for all other apps/inputs). It took Vizio 1-3 months to
| fix it.
|
| Unblockable ads on the home screen and genuinely multi-hundred
| millisecond response times on the app launcher infuriated me.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Does Vizio actually make the YouTube app? Why is it Vizio's
| responsibility to fix? I can see YT prioritizing this app's dev
| time waaaaaay lower than other devices. If the stats don't
| justify it, no PM at a FAANG is going to let their team work
| it.
| emodendroket wrote:
| Why does every television need a propietary system with
| custom apps?
| dylan604 wrote:
| Why does your phone need a proprietary system with custom
| apps? Not really sure what you're trying to get at though.
| vlunkr wrote:
| Just don't bother with it. Disconnect the tv from the internet
| and get a dedicated streaming device. The apps and OS will
| almost certainly be better than what's on the TV
| wombat-man wrote:
| yeah I had all kinds of issues casting to the vizio smartcast
| thing. it's their built in chromecast implementation I guess.
| I had to routinely power cycle the tv, sometimes by
| unplugging it.
|
| reset the tv and didn't connect it to wifi. Connected a
| dedicated chromecast. Works 100x better.
| H1Supreme wrote:
| I'm ready to do the same thing with my Vizio. The worst part
| about these updates is they happen without any regard for what
| I'm doing.
|
| I'll have Netflix or Hulu open. Next, the TV will update, close
| my app, and take me to the startup screen advertising something
| like "We have Apple TV now!". Or, it will update and go to a
| blank screen which requires me to physically power off the TV
| because it's stuck. The remote is useless in this case since it
| clearly doesn't power down, but put it into sleep mode.
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