Texas is suing 5 major TV makers for spying on citizens
(texasattorneygeneral.gov)
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I remember years back when an LG "smart" TV that my roommate had would crash our internet router. Found out using a packet sniffer that even though the TV wasn't configured to be connected to a network it would continually and rapidly try to connect to any available wifi connection in range. That pissed me off.
Recently helped a friend setup a new TV. We disabled WiFi but also blocked the MAC at the router level. I do not trust the menus at all. Not to mention as long as it's plugged in it's always on. Literal 1984 apparatus.
Yep, blacklisting the MAC address in the router config was my "fix" for that fuckery.
They need to sell a small wifi router that doesn't actually route. It just captures devices and blackholes them completely.
Could do that with any old wifi router. Just give it an open wifi and don't connect it to the internet.
Yea, I'm thinking of my parents, where I could just tell them to get a $20 item off of an online store, they plug it in, point the TV at it, and forget the rest.
It should be that you can't even, accidentally, connect any network to this thing. A solid unfailing black hole.
This is genius. Low-tech solutions tend to be the best.
... so a pi-hole then?
I'm sure you could do that with a Linux box
Surveillance Monitoring Analysis Recording Technology
The end goal of all this data collection is mind contol. The optimization of marketing to the point where you see the ad, you buy as much of the thing as you can afford, take out a loan and buy even more of it. All major entities (corporations, billionaires, governments) beleive that you owe them every thing you own. Until they get violently reality checked this will continue.
Except advertising doesn't work. Click through rates are typically 0.1%. 1 out of 1,000 actually click, 1 out of 1,000,000 actually purchase.
They want to know what "America is watching" so they can manipulate them more. Too many people watching Candice Owens? Turn up the "anti-semetic rhetoric" against her. Too many people interested in Thomas Crooks? Turn up the FBI propaganda against the case.
The side benefit is you get to know what porn people like and you can operationalize data like that against them later.
It is working, at 1 in a million according to your numbers. And as with every other number it can be optimized. It will increase to 1 in 10,000, then 1 in 1,000 then 1 in 100, then 1 in 10 and 1 in 1. Sure the advertising in the future won't just be some images and sound, but it WILL increase in effectiveness, especially as they get more data to look through to find out what is effective and what is not.
That is pretty much the definition of marketing.
What are you basing this on? The current trends and data show that this is an entirely ungrounded prediction.
If people don't have money they can't spend it. I think you're only analyzing this through the lens of a single data point. Clearly that's frustrated your analysis.
Stop thinking in terms of products. Start thinking in terms of generating support for a war. You know, the think they keep trying and failing at, that's probably the thing to recognize here.
This is what they do. They make you think they're dumb, meanwhile, they're just not being honest, and you have to think of the big picture yourself or you're doomed to fail against them.
You are making assumptions about what i'm saying that just aren't true. Any method that has good sucesst in marketing for products will be used for everything else. They stoped MK-ULTRA not because it didn't work, they stopped it because they found something better: A/B testing.
I wonder what they mean specifically as far as the data collection being unlawful? I assume the data collection is being disclosed in the terms of use or privacy policy.
State law supersedes any agreement. In particular "click-through" or "shrink-wrap" licenses.
I clicked through to the actual lawsuit and it’s using the “texas deceptive trade practices act” so it’ll be interesting to see how that turns out.
I’ll preface this with the fact that I’m very privacy conscious and against data collection but people have to realize that the reason tvs are so cheap is because they harvest and sell data. So you can buy a 65” tv for $300. If they weren’t able to collect that data, that tv will cost much much more. Probably $1-2k. I’m very interested in how consumers will feel about that
I personally wouldn’t connect any new tv to the internet. I use a Roku and while they’re also collecting and selling this data, I try to just keep it so the least amount of companies are getting the data to sell.
I’ve been thinking about making a streaming box with a raspberry pi but haven’t gotten around to it yet
Honestly after W11 went full retard I put Mint on an old laptop and use that as my TV's "streaming" box. Works great with the caveat that you never know what hardware works with Linux so test with a bootable live USB image before wiping your hard drive.
For me with a 5+ year old Dell Inspiron laptop the video, sound, wifi and USB drivers all worked out of the box which I was surprised by.
That hasn't really been a problem since like 2010, you'd have to buy something really exotic for it to not work on lunix nowadays.
Speaking from personal experience, modern linux still has a lot of issues with graphics and audio.
The fuck it isn't still a problem. If you shop carefully you can easily get a totally compatible system but there's still a ton of hardware (especially OEM specific hardware, doubly so for laptops) that has zero or limited compatibility.
All hardware works with Linux. You just fixated on something you heard about sound cards in 2002.
Bullshit it does, I've been working with UNIX, Linux and PCs since before your mama's pimp's condom broke.
Uh huh.
I wonder how long before you can't buy a new TV without an internet connection; the kind that bricks itself if it can't phone home.
I think commercial displays will be around for a long time still. That’s basically the only way to get a non smart tv now. So there will be workarounds for the foreseeable future.
But like I said in another comment they are much more expensive because they aren’t stealing your data
cloud computing is cancer
[Thing] as a service is cancer as well, regardless of what that thing is. The internet was a mistake.
It just enables surveillance. If they didn't have it they would build something else.
It's like saying "guns are cancer."
It's just a tool. And a useful one at that.
Unless you're living with somebody who can't operate a TV in any way besides using a traditional TV remote, there's no reason to have anything but a PC hooked up to the dumbest TV you can find at this point.
I unhook my smart tvs from the internet and use a streaming device instead
I use an old laptop running Mint as a streaming device. Set the thing in the A/V cabinet below the TV and control it with a wireless mini keyboard+trackpad. Works great and no spyware or tracking at all. And no ads if you run Brave as the browser.
The problem with that is that you never know what hardware works with Linux so test with a bootable live USB image before wiping your hard drive.
Meanwhile, the same retard wants everyone to give up their ID to access app stores.