Texas is suing all of the big TV makers for spying on what you watch

That sounds so expensive it's hard to see it making money. You'd processing a 2fps video stream for each customer. That's a huge amount of data.

And all that is for the chance to occasionally detect that someone's seen an ad in the background of a stream? Do any platforms even let a streamer broadcast an NFL game like the example given?

So potentially completely noncompliant if used in a business. E.g. it may have HIPAA, top secret etc.

This is especially annoying and just incredibly creepy -- I was watching a clip of Smiling Friends on YouTube (via my Apple TV), and I suddenly got a banner telling me to watch this on HBO Max.

I never felt more motivated to pi-hole the TV.

This is what seemingly every app does. They add 15 different categories for notifications / emails / whatever, and then make you turn off each one individually. Then they periodically remove / add new categories, enabled by default. Completely abusive behavior.

I firewall my TV from my Printer just so they don't get any ideas.

I’m using my tv with all the stuff disabled (the ones it’s possibly disable), but even then I realize I don’t trust them and I don’t trust their choices. Because they get to say sorry and not held responsible.

I want smart tv because I want use my streaming services but that’s it. I also want high quality panels. Maybe the solution is high quality TVs where you just stick a custom HDMI device (similar to Amazon fire stick) and use it as the OS. Not sure if there are good open source options since Apple seems to be another company that keeps showing you ads even if you pay shit load of money for their hardware and software, Jobs must turning in his grave

The real trick is to never connect your TV to the internet under any circumstances. These things are displays, they don't need the internet to do their job. Leave that to the game consoles and streaming boxes.

Well it wouldn't be Texas if there wasn't some grotesque corruption involved. Vizio is the absolute worst of the TV manufacturers when it comes to this shit, so now it's clear Texas is really just trying to bully Walmart's competition rather than do something positive for consumers.

The problem is that consumers are not savvy. They go to the store, and compare TVs based on features presented. Colors, refresh rate, size, etc.

Its only when they get home (and likely not even right away) that they discover their TV is spying on them and serving ads.

This is a perfect situation where government regulation is required. Ideally, something that protects our privacy. But, minimally something like a required 'nutrition label' on any product that sends our data off device.

I don’t agree with this. The only way this would make sense is if consumers were made aware of spying vs not spying prior to purchase.

But TV manufacturers can change the TV’s behavior long after it is purchased. They can force you to agree to new terms of service which can effectively make the TV a worse product. You cannot conclude the consumer didn’t care.

> Sadly, it seems like the contingent of people who have a problem with Smart TVs is small but noisy, and has no real market power.

No one cares. Smart TVs are super awesome to non tech people who love them. Plug it in, connect to WiFi - Netflix and chill ready. I have a friend who just bought yet another smart TV so he can watch the Hockey game from his bar.

> If there were any significant number of people who would pay for a dumb high end TV, the market would sell them one.

What happened to that Jumbo (dumbo?) TV person who was on here wanting to build these things? My guess is they saw the economics and the demand and gave up. I applaud them for trying though. I still cling to my two dumb 1080 Sony TVs that have Linux PC's hooked to them.

A situation in which many people care a little,but a few people care a lot in the other direction,is almost exactly what government is for. Ken Paxton has issues, for sure, but good on him in this case.

> If there were any significant number of people who would pay for a dumb high end TV, the market would sell them one.

I am not convinced of this. there is more recurring revenue involved in spying on people

I think government is the only way to regulate below pain threshold nonsense that weighs down society.

but I think small issues in society might translate to small issues for government action, and regulatory capture has a super-high roi overturning "minor" stuff.

I suspect only showing real harm for something is the only way to get these things high-enough priority for action.

I kind of wonder if the pager attacks, or the phone nonsense in ukraine/russia might make privacy a priority?

If there were any significant number of people who would pay for a dumb high end TV, the market would sell them one.

I don't think they would. There are some TV manufacturers that are better about not nagging you (which is one of the reasons why I bought a Sony last year), but as time moves forward, companies have been less likely to leave money on the table. This is just the logical result of capitalism. Regulation will be the only way to protect consumer privacy.

Similarly, air travel gets worse as consumer protection regulations gets rolled back

isn't a smart TV that's not connected to the internet just a dumb TV?

The thing is, I want smart features, I just don't want those smart features to be tied to the display. A separate box allows more consumer choice, which is generally a better experience. Easily flashable firmware would be an acceptable alternative for the same reason.

I would much rather buy a dumb TV. I feel that the smart TV experience is an opportunity it eventually make TVs feel dated and slow. I would rather buy a standalone streamer that I can plug in. Buying a new $100 dollar streamer every couple years is cheaper and produces less e-waste than buying a new giant TV.

I isolate smart TVs and other IOT devices to a separate network/subnet, and usually block their network access unless they need an update.

The exist, for commercial/enterprise use (usually digital signage and meeting rooms). They cost a few times more than consumer-grade, because of the word 'enterprise'

Just don’t connect your TV to the internet.

Yes I know there is a theoretical capability for it to connect to unsecured WIFI. No one still has unsecured WIFI anymore

They say you can just get a large PC monitor, for me it's the ads that would drive me nuts

I have this article growing in the back of my head that is currently mostly a rant about how impractical technology turned out by comparing the current state with the old days. It's hard as there are countless examples and I want to address only the most embarrassing ones. Dumb vs smart TV alone could fill a tomb worth of downgrades. Do you remember the variable resistor, the rotary knob that provided volume control? The ease of use, the granularity, the response time!

I currently have volume control on my TV, one on the OS on the computer that drives it and one on the application that makes the picture. That is only half the problem

https://www.reddit.com/r/techsupport/comments/pblj86/windows...

I own a 60 year old black and white tv. If the volume knob vanished people would know the problem is in my head.

I've been using my pi-hole as my DNS and then also firewall blocking the TV from phoning out on port 53 in case the manufacturer has hardcoded DNS. Though I agree with the point and I shouldn't have to do this. This is just mitigation.

You say "only", but if it is illegal, optional, and can be detected freely, it is very likely to not happen. For all the snark one can muster about DOJ, with those three things in place, it could get expensive very quickly to try to circumvent the law.

What about cheap cellular modems built in?

A broken clock is right twice a day!

That exists, it's called a pi-hole, and it's very popular. It will block the 'tv spy' apps.

You probably overestimate the market for something like that. Most people don't know or care. Those that do are more likely to hang out on HN or adjacent places and know how to deal with it themselves anyways.

A sibling comment says "just use Pi-hole" which kind of works and is also inadequate. A similar system is Ad Guard Home. These work at the DNS level with preset lists of bad domains. They aren't necessarily going to catch your TV calling out to notanadserver.samsung.com because that domain name is not recorded in the list of naughty domains. They are definitely not going to help if your device reaches out via IP.

Another approach is to disallow all DNS or only allow *.netflix.com for the TV. In my experience attempting to only allow certain domains is a game of whackamole where everyone in the house complains their stuff is broken because it needs undocumentedrandomdomain.com.

Until Samsung builds a fridge that won't cool if it goes more than some period of time (a week?) without pinging their servers. They'd probably get away with it given the friction of getting a large appliance out of your home and back to the store. Bonus evil points for making this feature active only after the return/warranty period expires.