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https://archive.ph/3MRXv

I'm happy to see it. They should have included Roku in that too!

> Roughly twice per second, a Roku TV captures video “snapshots” in 4K resolution. These snapshots are scanned through a database of content and ads, which allows the exposure to be matched to what is airing. For example, if a streamer is watching an NFL football game and sees an ad for a hard seltzer, Roku’s ACR will know that the ad has appeared on the TV being watched at that time. In this way, the content on screen is automatically recognized, as the technology’s name indicates. The data then is paired with user profile data to link the account watching with the content they’re watching.

https://advertising.roku.com/learn/resources/acr-the-future-...

I wouldn't be surprised if my PS5 was doing the same thing when I'm playing a game or watching a streaming service through it.

Most likely case is that the tv is computing hash locally and sending the hash. Judging by my dnstap logs, roku TV maintains a steady ~0.1/second heartbeat to `scribe.logs.roku.com` with occasional pings to `captive.roku.com`. The rest are stragglers that are blocked by `*.roku.com` DNS blackhole. Another thing is `api.rokutime.com`, but as of writing it's a CNAME to one of `roku.com` subdomains.

The block rates seem to correlate with watch time increasing to ~1/second, so it's definitely trying to phone home with something. Too bad it can't since all its traffic going outside LAN is dropped with prejudice.

If your network allows to see stuff like that, look into what PS5 is trying to do.

What system do you use to get that level of visibility?

Replace your router's DNS with something like pi-hole or a bog standard dnsmasq, turn up the logging, that's it. Ubiquiti devices I think also offer detailed DNS logging but not sure.

Hashing might not work since the stream itself would be a variable bitrate, meaning the individual pixels would differ and therefore the computed file hash

They're using perceptual hashing, not cryptographic hashing of raw pixels. So it's invariant to variable bitrate, compression, etc.

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?

I don't think they mean that kinda streamer - the idea is the roku tv can tell you're watching an ad even if it's on amazon prime, apple tv, youtube, twitch, wherever, and associate the ad watching with your roku account to potentially sell that data somehow?

That way they aren't cut out of the loop by you using a different service to watch something and still have a 'cut'.

It'd make sense if they're using streamer in a different sense than I'm used to. I see that's at the bottom of the definitions Google will produce.

Yeah I think they mean "user of a streaming service" here, which would more conventionally be user or watcher or so on.

I assume these systems are calculating an on device perceptual hash. So not that much data needs get flown back to the mothership.

Are there video "thumbprints" like exists for audio (used by soundhound/etc) - IE a compressed set of features that can reliably be linked in unique content? I would expect that is possible and a lot faster lookup for 2 frames a second. If this is the case, the "your device is taking a snapshot every 30 seconds" sounds a lot worse (not defending it - it's still something I hope can be legislated away - something can be bad and still exaggerated by media)

I've been led to believe those video thumbprints exist, but I know the hash of the perceived audio is often all that is needed for a match of what is currently being presented (movie, commercial advert, music-as-music-not-background, ...).

There are perceptual hashing algorithms for images/video/audio (dsp and ML based) that could work for that.

Given that the TV is trying to match one digital frame against another digital frame, you could probably get decent results even with something super naive like downsampling to a very low resolution, quantizing the color palette, then looking for a pixel for pixel match.

All this could be done long before any sort of TV-specific image processing, so the only source of "noise" I can think of would be from the various encodings offered by the streaming service (e.g. different resolutions and bitrates). With the right choice of downsample resolution and color quantization I have to imagine you could get acceptable results.

You only need to grab a few pixels or regions of the screen to fingerprint it. They know what the stream is and can process it once centrally if needed.

The actual screenshot isn’t sent, some hash is generated from the screenshot and compared against a library of known screenshots of ads/shows/etc for similarity.

Not super tough to pull off. I was experimenting with FAISS a while back and indexed screenshots of the entire Seinfeld series. I was able take an input screenshot (or Seinfeld meme, etc) and pinpoint the specific episode and approx timestamp it was from.

> The actual screenshot isn’t sent, some hash is generated from the screenshot and compared against a library of known screenshots of ads/shows/etc for similarity.

this is most likely the case, although there's nothing stopping them from uploading the original 4K screengrab in cases where there's no match to something in their database which would allow them to manually ID the content and add a hash or just scrape it for whatever info they can add to your dossier.

Attribution is very painful and advertisers will pay lots of money to close that loop.

it's hashed on the tv then they compare hashes in aggregate

[dead]

It’s far less important for ad-free content. They mainly want to connect your ad watching behaviour to an email and then have loyalty program data connected to the same email so that they can identify which ads convert vs not.

It’s still a privacy violation a lot of people would be outraged by if they knew it. Tracking what shows you are watching is a valuable data set.

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

> HIPAA

Are health providers using PS5s in a context where information may be leaked to other providers? What kind of information would you expect to be displayed that might violate HIPAA?

It is a violation of the VPPA to collect this for streaming services and prerecorded media. Scheduled broadcast and cable TV aren't covered.

I thought the 2013 amendment to the VPPA largely defanged it by allowing sharing with customer consent (which is probably one of the clauses in the million-word customer agreement nobody reads).

Boardroom presentation TVs in publicly traded companies would yield insider information.

Sending 4k screenshots twice a second to a server would be tremendously bandwidth hungry. My guess is that it's all done locally.

There's probably compact signatures extracted from the screenshots (color profiles, OCR, etc) which are then uploaded later in bulk. You don't need the full original image to be able to reliably uniquely identify the content if you have an index of it already.

I'm wondering if there is some sort of steganographic watermark that broadcasters are including in media, to enable stuff like this. Probably would need to be robust in the presence of re-encoding, more compression, etc..

This has been long solved by YouTube for detecting CP and other non-compliant videos.

For example, check out https://github.com/akamhy/videohash

Yeah that’s why Webex is still in business. TVs are a great entry point to LANs.

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.

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

Or just disconnect from the internet entirely? You already have an apple tv. Why does your tv need internet access?

Some TVs have a dedicated mobile connection, there is a SIM card and baseband radio inside. Of course only they can use it, not you.

Source? This sort of conspiracy started with "smart tvs will connect to open wifi networks", then evolved to "it uses amazon sidewalk", and apparently now morphed into "tvs have 5g modems". Given how poorly supported the prior claims were, that does not bode well for the 5G claim.

Every time the topic is TV on HN someone repeats this conspiracy or that "it'll happen soon!"...

This place like a flat-earther gathering sometimes.

You said 5G, not me

I agree that I misquoted you, but that's a distinction without a difference in this context. "SIM card and baseband radio inside" means 5G, 4G, 3G, whatever. I still demand that you produce proof that there are TVs with "SIM card and baseband radio inside".

TVs tend to incessantly ask for internet access, especially android ones.

Then don’t buy an Android tv?

A banner from Apple or your TV trying to navigate you back to its own HBO app?

Time for me to get Apple TV.

As if it didn’t track your habits as well.

...it doesn't.

Like, Apple knows what you're watching within the Apple TV app obviously.

But it's certainly not taking screenshots every second of what it displaying when you use other apps -- which shows and ads you're seeing. Nor does Apple sell personal data.

Other video apps do register what shows you're in the middle of, so they can appear on the top row of your home screen. But again, Apple's not selling that info.

Having each app report what is going on vs figuring it out from a screenshot locally is the same from a privacy POV.

But I do trust apple more

A lot of this stuff is actually being used to track which ads are being watched. Apps definitely aren't reporting those.

The PS5 doesn't need to, they get it all in metadata because they control the full stack — TVs do it because they have less control over sources.

The PS5 does actually record video all the time in a ring buffer. That’s how when you press the share button, it includes a video of the recent past.

> > Roughly twice per second, a Roku TV captures video “snapshots” in 4K resolution.

Isn't that too much data to even begin to analyze? The only winner here seems like S3.

Nevada has a gaming dept that certifies the firmware in "slot" machines. It shouldn't be hard to do the same for TVs. Maybe include cars too... they like to phone home more than they should.

I've had the advertising settings disabled on my LG C2 for a while and yesterday I decided to browse the settings menu again and found that a couple new ones had been added and turned on by default.

Good times.

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.

Want to unsubscribe from this email? Ok, you can do it in one click, but we have 16 categories of emails we send you, so you'll still get the other 15! It's a dark pattern for sure.

1.3076744e+12 -1 is a lot of categories to click.

1,307,674,368,000

And if you just add them to your spam filter, it won't even work easily, because they deliberately shift around the domains and subdomains they send from every so often.

I just use a unique address for each service. Any email that gets leaked or is getting unsubscribe resistant spam is added to /etc/postfix/denied_recipients :)

this is where LLMs could actually help. create spam filters that an LLM can parse and deny if it looks close enough. but then again, hallucinations would be kind of terrible.

I agree this would be a good use of an LLM (assuming that it was running locally). I wouldn't put one in charge of deleting my messages, but I could see one being used to assign a score to messages and based on that score moving them out of my inbox into various folders for review.

Yep. Had that happen with the United app a few weeks ago. Unsolicited spam sent via push notification to my phone. Turns out that they added a bunch of notification settings - of course all default to on.

Turned them all off except for trip updates that day.

Best part is- yesterday I received yet another unsolicited spam push message. With all the settings turned off.

So these companies will effective require you to use their app to use their service, then refuse to respect their own settings for privacy.

I've taken to "Archiving" apps like this on my Android phone. When I need it, I can un-archive it to use it. Keeps the list of things trying to get my attention a little bit smaller.

I just hellban every app from sending any notifications, except for a select few. Apps get like a one strike policy on notification spam. If they send a single notification I didn't want, I disable their ability to send notifications at all.

Also all notifications/etc are silent, except for alarms, pages, phone calls, and specific named people's texts.

Everything else... no. YouTube was the worst offender before for me.

> YouTube was the worst offender before for me.

Uber. Hands down. I'm using it a lot less since they started sending ads on the same notification channel as my ride updates.

Another technique for me is to avoid apps like Instagram, Facebook and Youtube. I run them all through mobile Firefox with uBlock origin and custom block scripts that block sponsored posts and shorts. This combines well with having Youtube's history turned off which prevents the algorithmic suggestions.

I give apps a one strike policy on notification spam. If they do it at all, I'm uninstalling it until I actually need to use it next (if I can't find an alternative). And the same goes for getting in my way to beg for a review on the app store: that's a shortcut to getting a one-star rating.

The main exception to this is the notification spam from Google asking me to rate call quality after every damn call. I don't have my phone rooted, so I can't turn off that category of notification.

This is the way. You get one chance, app. If you send me an unwanted notification, you're done. You have to almost treat these apps as attackers.

Why even give most apps even one chance? For almost every app I have zero interest in ever getting a notification from. I see no reason to give them an opportunity to annoy me even once.

Honestly because I won't remember to go into the settings page and disable it. When a notification comes in, there's a quick route to disable forever, otherwise I have to go preemptively digging

Why do you even need the United app? They have a website.

Boarding pass. For the airline apps, it probably is a good assumption that most people want to get a notification that their flight is delayed, or started boarding, etc..

This is why whenever you try to do anything significant on a web site with a phone, they tell you to "Download our app". Detection is very good now. Slack can see right through desktop mode, cheater, and will redirect you to the app regardless.

Never had that issue on Vanadium browser, or Brave or even Firefox. I personally refuse to download an app if there is a website for the same. For a long time I was even using door dash in browser.

When I get email like that, I mark it as spam. That trains the spam filters to remove their marketing email from everyone's inbox. I see it as a community service.

That behavior is what finally got me off Facebook awhile back.

Edit: And something similar with Windows now that I think about it; there was a privacy setting which would appear to work till you re-entered that menu. Saving the setting didn't actually persist it, and the default was not consumer-friendly.

LinkedIn does the same thing re emails, notifications, etc that they send. I think I turned off notifications that connections had achieved new high scores in games they play on LinkedIn. Absurd.

I’m at the point where I just cleared everything out of Linkedin and have designated all LinkedIn emails as spam. It’s just a modern equivalent to a slave market, where slaves vote to be the pick-me alpha slave.

LinkedIn is one the most useless app ever. I have trashed it countless times, but I do use it now and ten to keep up with companies and respond to a few solicitations. There is almost never anything of value in my feed, between the fake jobs and the low value self-promotion AI-written posts. Who even reads this? Not even mentioning the political, and pseudo-activist posts. And this happens despite systematically marking all of these posts irrelevant or “inappropriate for LinkedIn”. This app is beyond repair. Uninstalling.

I especially like how they add it to the bottom of a widget with hidden scrollbars, just to make it totally missable that they added them at all!

I have a Hisense TV which recently did the same. It turned on personal recommendations and advertising. I have no idea where the ads are or how it works; I only use devices over HDMI. I'm sure the TV is spying on me incessantly nonetheless.

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 solution is a separate, internet connected device to play media connected to a non-connected tv.

Honest question: Why would "separate internet connected device", in the case of apple tv, firestick, roku, etc, won't do the same thing?

I call this Zucking.

When a new permission appears without notice and defaults to the most-violating setting, gaslighting you into the illusion of agency but in fact you never had any, you've been Zucked.

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.

I worry about the new cellular standards that support large scale iot.

Search for 5g miot or 5g massive iot or maybe even 5g redcap

Existing LTE is fine. If they wanted to embed modems in the TVs they could do it now. I'm guessing they simply don't have to, simply because a huge number of consumers will dutifully hand over their Wi-Fi passwords.

This is exactly the situation we're in with new automobiles...

It's going to happen on any device. It's a software thing. If LG isn't doing it, it's Netflix, Amazon Prime, etc. My PS5 basically shows ads on some system ui screens (granted mostly for "game" content but it still counts).

ACR needs to die. It’s an absurd abuse of the privileged position that a TV has - a gross violation of privacy just to make a few bucks. It should be absolutely nobody’s business to know what you watch except your own; the motivation behind the VPPA was to kill exactly this type of abuse.

The greatest irony is that HDCP goes to great lengths to try and prevent people from screenshotting copyrighted content, and here we have the smart TVs at the end just scraping the content willy-nilly. If someone manages to figure out how to use ACR to break DRM, maybe the MPAA will be motivated to kill ACR :)

"All of the big TV makers" except Vizio which is owned by Walmart, of course, who happens to do ACR and ad targeting:

> In August 2015, Vizio acquired Cognitive Media Networks, Inc, a provider of automatic content recognition (ACR). Cognitive Media Networks was subsequently renamed Inscape Data. Inscape functioned as an independent entity until the end of 2020, when it was combined with Vizio Ads and SmartCast; the three divisions combining to operate as a single unit.[1]

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vizio

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.

It should be illegal to set information collection settings to on by default. Being watched is considered a threat almost universally across all animals.

you would be incredibly uncomfortable with someone wide-eyed staring you down and taking notes of your behavior, wouldnt you? This is what tech companies are doing to everyone by default and in many cases they actively prevent you from stopping them. It is the most insane thing that people only seem to mildly complain about.

Humans are intensely social creatures, and are not adapted to feel the same way about things done invisibly versus visibly. That's how you end up in weird situations where people know the pervasive spying we're subjected to is wrong, but can't muster the will to act on it most of the time. It's cases like these where "voting with your wallet" produces terrible results. On one end you have organized groups of people figuring out chinks in human instincts, and on the other you have an unorganized mass of people doing what feels right or is expedient. You need coordination on both ends for competition and optimization to play out and find an acceptable compromise.

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

Sort of reminds me how we complain loudly about how shitty airline service is, and then when we buy tickets we reliably pick whichever one is a dollar cheaper.

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.

As far as I know, there is nothing to prevent Samsung from selling you a TV, then sending out a software update in two years which forces you to accept a new terms of service that allows them to serve you ads. If you do not accept, they brick your TV.

So it’s not a question of being savvy. As a consumer you can’t know what a company will choose to do in the future.

The lawsuit seems to be about using ACR, not the presence of ads.

> As far as I know, there is nothing to prevent Samsung from selling you a TV, then sending out a software update in two years which forces you to accept a new terms of service that allows them to serve you ads. If you do not accept, they brick your TV.

To the parent commenters' point, this is a perfect example of a situation where governments should be stepping in.

> If you do not accept, they brick your TV.

That ought to be a slam dunk win in court. Especially since they probably won't show up to my local small claims court and I'll just send them the judgement.

a required 'nutrition label'

This didn't work for GDPR cookie warnings.

True. But it does work for food safety, and to help curb underage drinking and smoking, to stop lousy restaurants from serving unsafe food and for lots of other stuff we take for granted.

Top down governance isn't a silver bullet, but it has its place in a functioning society.

I wouldn't say they aren't savvy. Many aren't, but also I don't blame them. Often you can buy a perfectly reasonable device and then they ad spying and adverts after you bought it. Most reviewers also don't talk about this stuff, and there are no standards for any of it (unlike e.g. energy consumption).

I agree more legislation is required.

Yep, the store TV is in demo mode, then that first firmware update at home it changes it completely.

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.

This 'Wild West' is easily solved with decent consumer law. Spying could be shut down over night if laws levied fines on TV manufacturers pro rata—ie fines would multiply by the number of TV sets in service.

If each TV attracted a fine two to three times the amount manufacturers received from selling its data the practice would drop stone dead.

All it takes is proper legislation. Consumers just lobby your politicians.

We're past the point when most people can claim ignorance. And surely we have enough protection to at least defend against the "changed the terms and conditions after purchase" situation? They can't force me to do anything, and then stop working if I refuse.

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."

The problem is easily solved and I'm surpised more people don't do it. For years I've just connected a PVR/STB (set top box) to a computer monitor. It's simple and straightforward, just connect the box's HDMI output into a computer monitor.

Moreover, PVR/STBs are very cheap—less than $50 at most, I've three running in my household.

If one wants the internet on the same screen just connect a PC to another input on your monitor. This way you've total isolation, spying just isn't possible.

This is okay if you want a small TV, and/or are willing to forgo the picture quality of a modern big TV.

..and constant notifications that the network is not connected, that there are wifi APs nearby, do you want to configure one(?), and that it's been 157 days since the last software update, and that you should connect your tv to the internet to get newest bestest firmware with 'new features'.

> 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.

> 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

There is a market and people pay for it. However they are mostly not TVs, but monitors and those paying for it have the budget to pay far more. However this market will always exist because some of those are showing safety messages in a factory and if the monitor in any way messes those up there will be large lawsuits.

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?

Hope does spring eternal, doesn't it 8-/

If no one manufactures such a product, how does the "market" express this desire?

Buying one toaster, that would last your lifetime, is easily manufactured today, and yet no company makes such a thing. This is true across hundreds of products.

The fact is, manufacturing something that isn't shit, is less profitable, so what we're gonna get is shit. It doesn't really matter what people "want".

This is true for toasters and TVs...

How often are you replacing toasters?

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?

wait until your TV has it's 5g modem to bypass your wifi

This isn't really an accurate analysis because it assumes the only parties involved are the TV manufacturers and the purchasing consumers. In fact the third party is ad brokers and so the calculus to alienate some users in pursuit of ad dollars is different.

Dumb TVs are hard to find: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/12/the-ars-technica-gui...

It's always amazing how many people plop anti-consumer comments out here. Like, of course you bastards deserve to be served ads on your own TV that you just paid $800 for. Because why? Because ... the market is wise, and "the market" is screwing us, so ... we must ... deserve to be screwed?

Whatever is being offered to us must be the best deal we can get, because ... it's being offered to us?

What drives this sentiment? Is it Stockholm Syndrome?

It's driven by the fact that many of these people work for companies doing similar things, and this is how they resolve the cognitive dissonance. Otherwise they'd have to accept that their work is unethical.

HN is a haven for principled libertarians but I don't see many such comments in this thread.

Good for Texas. State governments often protect us from the federal government. Many laws that we have now were only passed at the federal level when about 2/3 of states previously passed the same laws (e.g., women's voting rights).

As long as the firmware is proprietary and cannot be inspected or modified, the only reliable way to avoid snooping by tech industry is not to connect any "smart" device to the Internet. Use the TV as a dumb monitor for a PC under your control (running Linux). If streaming service X will not run on Linux because DRM is not implemented or enforceable on a free device, do without it, or find alternative sources for the content (hint: Linux ISOs).

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?

Is there any evidence those exist in TVs and other home appliances?

Modern cars have cellular modems, I unplugged mine, and would not hesitate to take apart a TV and physically rip off the modem.

Maybe not yet - but 5g was built with the idea of making them cheap. It takes a couple years to design the cheap modems and then a few more years to get them in TVs, so they could well be coming in the near future yet - only time will tell. And the modem will also be your wifi so you can't really rip it off without losing other useful things.

>but 5g was built with the idea of making them cheap

For bandwidth, maybe. It's still going to add cost to the BOM. They'll have to recoup that somehow. Say a 5G modem costs $20 (random number). For it to actually make money, it'll need to be otherwise not connected to the internet, otherwise it can just use wifi instead. Out of 100 people, how many do you think won't connect it to the internet for privacy reasons? 1? 5? 10? Keep in mind, if they don't connect to the internet, they'll need to go out and get another device to watch netflix or whatever, so they're highly incentivized to. Say 10 out of 100 don't, and with this sneaky backdoor you now can sell ads to them. For that privilege, you paid $200 per disconnected TV, because for every disconnected TV with a 5G module, you need to have a 5G module in 9 other TVs that were already connected to the internet. How could you ever hope to recoup that expense?

assume they are aiming for $1 in large quantites. I don't know thier number but that is closer. And the cost will be low because they are bulk buying excess data. They can send this at 3am when everyone is asleep so cell companies can give a deep discount.

again the above is the plan, reality often changes.

The above pricing is just for the modem itself, not the data plan. There's no way you can get a cellular modem for $1.

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.

>and then also firewall blocking the TV from phoning out on port 53 in case the manufacturer has hardcoded DNS

I'm surprised they haven't switched to using DoH, which would prevent this from working.

This is exactly why the current ad model is broken.

Users are tracked without real consent, advertisers still waste budgets, and everyone loses except the platforms collecting the data.

What’s interesting is that you can actually build effective ads without spying at all — by targeting intent signals instead of identities, and rewarding users transparently for engagement.

The tech is already there, but the incentives are still backwards.

I just want a somewhat trustworthy organization to develop a "DUMB" certification. I would pay extra for a DUMB TV.

I like the suggested "Don't Upload My Bits" backronym.

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'd be happy with a setup box giving me the ability to add apps for streaming services or whatever, but I don't want that STB spying on my either. I feel like even if all TVs were dumb monitors we'd just be moving the real problem of insane levels of data collection and spying to another device. We need strong regulation with real teeth to prevent the spying at which point all of our devices should be protected.

A separate box allows more consumer choice, which is generally a better experience.

In the life of my last TV (10+ yrs), I've had to switch out that separate box three times. It would have sucked & been way more expensive to have had to replace the TV each time.

Firmware can be updated, sure, but there's the risk of some internal component failing. There's the risk of the services I want to use not being compatible. I'd also prefer to use an operating system I'm familiar with, because, well, I'm familiar with it, rather than some custom firmware from a TV company whose goal is to sell your data, not make a good user experience...

Of course, this ties back to the enshittification of the Internet. Every company is trying to be a data broker now though, because they see it as free passive income.

Regarding the failure of internal components--there are some 'failure' modes which I had not even contemplated previously.

I have a TV that's only about 5-6 years old and has a built in Roku. It mostly works fine, but the built in hardware is simply not fast enough to play some streaming services, specifically some stuff on F1TV. And before anyone asks, it's not a bandwidth problem--I have gigabit fiber and the TV is using ethernet.

Anyway, between that, general UI sluggishness and the proliferation of ads in the Roku interface, I switched to an Apple TV and haven't looked back.

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

We've already had TVs which only started serving ads after a few months of use. What's stopping them from selling TVs which stop working if it hasn't been able to connect to the mothership for a few weeks?

And instead of a full brick, let's just downgrade to 360p and call it an "expiration of your complementary free Enhanced Video trial".

>We've already had TVs which only started serving ads after a few months of use. What's stopping them from selling TVs which stop working if it hasn't been able to connect to the mothership for a few weeks?

Same thing that prevents your phone manufacturer from adding a firmware level backdoor that uploads all your nudes to the mothership 1 day after the warranty expires. At some point you just have to assume they're not going to screw you over.

> At some point you just have to assume they're not going to screw you over.

That'd be quite naive in my opinion.

That's not a good answer, unless you just want cable. YouTube, Netflix, etc won't work. Buying hardware is paying extra which is already a deterrent, but anyway just shifts the problem to that piece of hardware - is the stick vetted to not do any harm? Other solutions are often impractical or overly complex for non-technical people. I haven't seen any good answers to date. I guess your TV just shouldn't spy on everything you watch? Seems like a reasonable expectation.

Buy an AppleTV.

Google devices are out because they are developed by a advertising company.

The Roku CEO outright said they sell Roku devices below costs to advertise to you.

Apple is already sending spam notifications for stupid bullshit like that F1 movie.

My TCL/Roku TV recently started showing popups during streams with services like YouTubeTV and PlutoTV, that basically say, "Click here to watch this same program on the Roku Network". I poked around the settings on the TV, and sure enough, there were some new "smart" settings added and enabled by default. I disabled the settings, and the popups stopped. But it's only a matter of time before something else appears.

> is the stick vetted to not do any harm

The stick is $30 and trivially replaced. The TV is closer to $1000. Worst-case scenario I'll just hook up an HTPC or Blue-Ray player to the TV.

The $30 stick is also sold below cost and makes money from advertising. The only one that I would trust is AppleTV

I trust Apple’s business model.

For now. They’re about to undergo a CEO change, again. Who knows what will happen in the future, particularly if the shareholders expect the perceived value provided by enshittification.

Its not like they change CEOs every year - Tim Cook has been CEO since 2011.

John Ternus, SVP of Hardware Engineering, is considered the front runner for CEO right now. The board wants a more product oriented CEO this time. Things could change but makes me optimistic.

Because with a stick, I can easily decide to chuck it and replace with another. Over and over again. Hard to do with a TV. Even if I had the money, disposing of one is a royal pain.

I just connect it to a computer and watch YouTube without ads and movies without anti-piracy warnings (from a store I go to-rrent them).

How do you hook it up and how do you control it remotely?

I do the same thing. My PC is hooked up via HDMI to a receiver which goes to the TV via HDMI. I use VNC on my phone to remote control it. It works well. The phone’s touch screen functions as a mouse and you can pull up the phone’s on screen keyboard to type. My wife is extremely non technical and does fine with it. Usually we just use the browser to watch ad-blocked YouTube or unofficial sports streams.

Until they start using Sidewalk/LPWAN type things automatically instead of your home WiFi.

Pretty sure some already do this.

This theoretical capability could connect to a neighbor's WIFI in an apartment or condo.

Every router shipped these days either by the cable company or separately is configured with a password by default.

And a guest wifi that is password free on by default. All it takes is a neighbor to get a new router from the ISP. I just had to turn my guest wifi off because I noticed a lot of bandwidth on it (likely coming from our neighbor who was bragging about cord cutting).

Even that WiFi is gated by having to have an account with the ISP at least it was with Comcast.

>>And a guest wifi that is password free on by default.

I've literally never seen a router with a guest wifi enabled by default, from any ISP or otherwise - is that a common thing where you live?

It's anecdotal, but I live in an apartment and while most of the WIFI networks are password protected, not all are.

A related alternative would be that the listed tv price included the price of time spent viewing ads, and the sale price of your usage data (and that changing the price, say by showing more ads, required agreement).

A DUMB TV costs $x, while a badly behaved smart TV costs $y up front, plus $z per hour for the next few years, where y is potentially slightly less than x.

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'

> They cost a few times more than consumer-grade, because of the word 'enterprise'

They cost more because they aren’t subsidised by this junk.

Likely much smaller sales volume as well. Economies of scale are a thing, especially where marketing (largely through dealers / vendors / distributors) is a major expense.

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.

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

I would agree if they would sell them over 55 inches with the latest panel technology in a similar pricing ballpark.

I really like that thin one featured on LTT a long time ago, it's like just a sheet of glass you attach to a wall, it's crazy.

And audio. I don't want a separate audio setup.

Perhaps the one thing Ken Paxton and I agree on.

Perhaps. But you also need to ask why Paxton is doing this as this case will vaporize as soon as that is accomplished. I would be much more optimistic if California were also signed onto this.

Paxton, however, doesn't give one iota of damn about individual freedom. So, this is either a misdirection, shakedown or revenge.

Unfortunately, we don't have Molly Ivins around anymore to tell us what is really going on here in the Texas Laboratory for Bad Government.

A broken clock is right twice a day!

It is an important observation, and a reminder: evaluate positions on their merits, and not who is taking the position.

While I agree (and I agree with the upstream comments, too), there's often deeper reasons why we can short circuit fully evaluating an argument made on its merits: often the "merits", or lack thereof, are derived from the party's values and beliefs, and if we know those values to be corrupt, it's likely that subsequent arguments are going to be similarly corrupt.

There's only so much time in the day, only so much life to live. Could a blog post written by the worst person you know have a good point, even though it's titled something like "An argument in favor of kicking puppies" by Satan himself? I mean, true, I haven't read it, yet. There could be a sound, logical argument buried within.

This is also what "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" teaches, essentially. Trust is hard-won, and easily squandered.

"A lie is around the world before the truth has finished tying its shoes."

"Flood the Zone" is why some of us are so exhausted, though.

In these instances, the argument has to come from someone who is self-aware enough of the short-circuit to say "okay, look, I am going to address that elephant" — but mostly, that's not what happens.

Thankfully in this case, all we need get through is the title.

Reminder. Just don't connect a smart tv to the internet.

Easy fix

It's absurd, I've blocked outgoing connections for all home devices and appliances by default. The printer and TV were some of the worst culprits.

How do you watch streaming content? If you choose a movie in Netflix, I expect it makes an outgoing connection to Netflix's servers.

It seems like there is a big business opportunity for someone to create a box you attach to your network to filter outgoing info, and incoming ads. Too much work for a tiny team to research what everything is talking to, and MITM your devices and watch DNS queries, etc, but if there was something dead simple to block a Samsung fridge from getting to its ad server, I have to think it would sell.

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

I tried using a Pi-hole for this exact reason: prevent bullcrap TV ads. My Roku TV wouldn't stopped working. I had to whitelist so many roku-related domains that it basically became pointless.

I had the same issue, decided to remove Roku instead…

I used to have a Roku TV, plus a a few of the standalone Roku Ultras for my other (non-Roku) TVs. I got a full page advert when I started up the TV one day and started the process of replacing them all (I think it is when Roku were experimenting with that).

Over about a year I replaced them with Apple TVs* and the user experience is far better, plus the amount of tracking domains reported by Pi-hole dropped precipitously! The TVs don't have internet access at all, they are just driven via the HDMI port now.

* I replaced the Ultras first, and when the Roku TV eventually started acting laggy on the apps I replaced the Roku TV as well.

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.

>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.

...not to mention that apps have random third party SDKs that are required, and might not work if you block those domains. A/B testing/feature flags SDKs, and DRMs (for provisioning keys) come to mind.

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.

In Soviet Russia TV watches YOU!

"The TVs “are effectively Chinese-sponsored surveillance devices, recording the viewing habits of Texans at every turn without their knowledge or consent,” the lawsuits said."

This explains why Vizio, who is owned by Walmart, was not sued.

Sony, Samsung, and LG are not Chinese companies but they are being sued. It's more likely that Vizio is not included because they already got hit by the FTC (but not hard enough to disable ACR).

From what I understood, ACR on Vizio TVs was disabled, but is available as an opt-in "feature". I don't know what sort of person would opt-in...

It's Texas destructionist politics. Do you think they really know or care about the difference between Chinese and Korean/Japanese?

It's also excellent pro-privacy advocacy. I am happy to have a big tent for this issue.

No, that's the problem - it's not good advocacy. The destructionist movement is more appropriately seen as arbitraging away existing concern about the issues they claim to take up. Their politicians' main use for reformist political causes are as cudgels for threatening businesses with, after which they back off once their own pockets get lined. As a libertarian who cares about many of the causes of individual freedom they dishonestly champion, I'm well acquainted with their abuse of ideals.

Doesn't the $2 million fine paid by Walmart just make this a cost of doing business? Doesn't seem enough to be a deterrent.

That fine was levied years before Walmart acquired Vizio.

So.. if it was American companies doing the spying it would be a different story?

Not according to the law. Speeches are not the law.

Yeah pretty much. No regulators are batting an eye at the industrial data gathering schemes of Meta, Google, Amazon, etc. and they never have. And the only major social network under real legal scrutiny is TikTok.

The American Government wants to have the cake and eat it too, as per usual. They want to leave the massive column of the economy that is surveillance capitalism intact and operating, and making them money, and they want to make sure those scary communists can't do the same. Unfortunately there isn't really a way to take down one without taking down the other, unless you legally enshrine that only American corporations have a right to spy on Americans. And (at time of comment anyway) they seem to not want to openly say the reason is just naked nationalism/racism.

And of course: casual reminder that Vizio does extensive ACR and ad targeting, and even bought a company doing it to facilitate that:

> In August 2015, Vizio acquired Cognitive Media Networks, Inc, a provider of automatic content recognition (ACR). Cognitive Media Networks was subsequently renamed Inscape Data. Inscape functioned as an independent entity until the end of 2020, when it was combined with Vizio Ads and SmartCast; the three divisions combining to operate as a single unit.[1]

But I'm sure Texans are fully aware and consented to this, right?

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vizio

Why focus on TV makers and not include social media and other computer/phone surveillance?

I've said it before and I will probably say it again, this is digital assault and should be thought of and treated that way. Companies, and their officers, should be treated criminally for things like this. Most people do not know/understand this is happening and that is by design. Is this view a little hyperbolic? Possibly, but the privacy scales are so far tipped against the average person right now that we need more extreme views and actions to start fixing things.

surprising to see that this lawsuit hasn't originated from CA given the privacy laws that was established such as CCPA.

Did they exclude the makers of video projectors (Epson, BenQ, Optoma, etc) simply because the market segment is too small?

Any good options for wifi/wire gateway (opensource) that can filter and block spying?

It has been increasingly interesting to me how aligned the interests of platforms are with advertisers against the end consumer.

I don't think I have ever heard a person say they enjoy watching ads (except maybe the super bowl and even then it's a pretty short list).

Despite that, it seems like ads continue to multiply and companies get even more annoying and slimy with how they integrate them.

I guess what I'm wondering is where the breaking point is, when people start abandoning ad-filled platforms all together and ads become less profitable to sell/purchase.

The person or company to figure out a way other than ads to monetize eye balls (and its not just data, that's only used to make better ads) will be the next Google.

Smart TVs turned into computers with monitors and microphones, except the whole computer part is out of our control and they barely work as a monitor.

Next do Smart TVs listening to you. This is the #1 cause of "uncanny" ads that people get on Facebook, etc. when they think their phone is listening to them. It's usually their TV doing the listening.

edit: why the downvotes?

Wiretapping laws should apply; you could have an HDMI capture card hooked up to camera with mic etc.

Is this the Californication of Texas?

Ha, we had a company email to all employees saying that we are not allowed to view any company confidential material on any Samsung TVs and appliances because they will take a screenshot of whatever it is you are watching and send it back to Samsung, unless explicitly disabled in settings but that setting is frequently "bugged" and just turns itself back on after some firmware updates.

Yeayyyy now for the EU to finally do the same. But they're too busy nerfing privacy laws to appease trump.

I wish my Apple TV could take multiple pass through inputs.

From there I could pick an app or input on the Apple TV and then I'm good.

That's all I want, nothing these TVs try to provide I want, quite the opposite.

I loathe ending up on the TV menu...

I loathe whenever an older family member ends up at the TV menu, since chances are they will not be able to find their way back to whatever external device they were trying to use the TV as a monitor for. TVs using android seem to be irritated that you even plan on using some external device plugged into the HDMI ports.

You may want to look into an AVR (audio/video receiver), also known as a home theater receiver. Aside from powering speakers, that's their core function: connect a variety of inputs (HDMI, AirPlay, radio, composite, etc. etc.) to one or more outputs.

That still doesn't escape ACR, AFAIK. These "smart" TVs still capture screenshots from HDMI inputs.

That's one of the reasons I only buy Sony for years now. ACR & the like are opt-out at the first terms/privacy screen, and you can even go into Android/Google TV settings and just disable the APK responsible. (Samba something-something)

It's better not to connect the TV to the Internet at all. This will solve most of your problems. Use a Linux HTPC to stream content (not an Apple box, they collect telemetry and profile users like others).

What's your HTPC setup? I used Kodi for a while, but gave up on it as unsuitable as a frontend for netflix et. al.

I googled how to disable ACR on my new Samsung TV. Followed the instructions only to find out that it was disabled already. That, combined with a built-in physical microphone switch (which I noticed in the quick start guide before I'd even attached the wall mount) made me quite impressed with Samsung off the bat.

It does have some weird behaviors, though, like occasionally letting me know it has some kind of AI features or something, or bringing up a pop-up on the screen letting my kid know how to use the volume control on the remote every time he uses the volume control on the remote for the first time since power-on.

Still, a pretty decent TV nonetheless.

Excellent. Badly needed. Thank you Texas.

Pro plaintif not only because of privacy concerns, but if it raises the cost of televisions by introducing a production inefficiency, it is one step against the Baumol Effect.

Imagine looking around in the year 2025 and concluding that TV prices are high.

It blew my mind when TVs started being cheaper than windows per square inch.

I'd never thought of it that way, but you're absolutely right, particularly in Germany, by a factor of at least 3-4. 50-55" mid-range TV: plenty under 400 EUR. Double-glazed window about that size, custom-made (because just about all windows in Germany are custom-made): 1200 EUR, and that was about six years ago - I shudder to think what it would be now.

Similar to when solar panels became cheaper than fencing.

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Ok, but please don't post unsubstantive comments to Hacker News.

> "This conduct is invasive, deceptive, and unlawful. The fundamental right to privacy will be protected in Texas because owning a television does not mean surrendering your personal information to Big Tech or foreign adversaries."

But, but, but, you agreed to the TOS didn't you, or else you cannot use your TV.

So you buy a big TV, unbox it, and disagree to the TOS. Can it still be used through one of its HDMI ports?

As far as I can tell, I'm doing that right now with a new higher-end Samsung television. The installer showed me how to make it boot directly to the active HDMI source and skip the Samsung smart hub. The TV has never been online and I don't see any reason to change that — what possible improvement could a firmware update bring? I don't use any of the television's software-enabled features.

I have a cheap samsung from 5 years ago that pops up a dialog when it boots. I've never read it or agreed to it. It goes away after about 5 seconds. After that I stream using HDMI and all is well. It's also never been connected to a network.

Can't say what other TVs do, but this one works fine without TOS etc. If there is some feature or other that doesn't work due to this, I can say I've never missed it.

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I was going to say the same thing. I am really surprised to see Texas did this. I will now follow this keenly to see the resolution

> I am really surprised to see Texas did this.

I think this comes from strictly looking at the world in left/right terms. Texas is a pretty libertarian state. This is probably the entire reason the founders ensconced the states into the union the way they did.

This country is a _spectrum_ of ideas. It's not bipolar. Only the moneyed interests behind political parties want you to think this way.

I wouldn’t call Texas libertarian. They have the most restrictive abortion rights,

They tried to fire teachers who spoke bad about a racist podcaster

https://www.texastribune.org/2025/09/15/texas-education-teac...

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/11/charlie-kirk...

Weed is still illegal

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabis_in_Texas

You can’t sell liquor on Sunday

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_laws_of_Texas

There is a state law restricting what can be discussed in public schools

https://www.texastribune.org/2025/12/02/texas-public-schools...

And he is pushing for schools to post the 10 commandments

https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/news/releases/attorney-...

I guess I just don't understand people who face what should be welcome political surprise with extreme and hyperbolic negativity. It's a feature of this forum which honestly bothers me. It's entirely unproductive and strikes me as a bad faith effort to avoid giving credit to "the other side" even when they're enacting a policy which benefits us all.

The comment I replied to said Texas has a liberterian streak. There is nothing libertarian about denying free speech, putting religion up in schools, not selling alcohol because of religion, etc.

But if someone want to praise a state that goes out of its way to tell other people how to live because of religion and say they are “libertarian” because they sue a TV manufacturer, I don’t think that tips the scales

He probably already got one, from Vizio, for leaving them out of the lawsuits.

Walmart owns Vizio. Vizio buys components from other manufacturers and has assembly performed overseas. Not sure where the software comes from, but likely one of those suppliers.

I was going to say, "at last, something good out of Texas". Maybe you're on to something?

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It’s impossible to offer any differing opinions or discussion on the differences between the smart TV thing and your whataboutism without triggering a flame war and being downvoted to oblivion.

What does this have to do at all with the posted article about smart TV’s?

You're right, it's not a productive comment and I would delete it if I could. I don't like how Texas Republicans operate but that's another topic.

reminder: there's tech that reads your mind. who gives a fuck about some Smart TV bullcrap

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