I really don't see the appeal of hooking up my tv to the internet if the only thing I'll get in return is buggy service integrations and, worse, the tv spying on my viewing habits. This is on top of the added potential for security exploits on a poorly maintained device connected to my home network.
Smart devices, including but not limited to Smart TVs. The manufacturers need to be legally and financially liable for damages caused by their devices getting hacked and used as a botnet.
When I buy a toaster, I have a reasonable expectation that it won't burn my house down.
When I buy a Smart TV, I have a reasonable expectation that it won't get hacked, become part of a botnet and cause massive damage to someone else, far away that I don't even know.
It is not impossible to build a very secure IoT device. Anyone who has ever gone through PCI compliance to build a web site or anything else that accepts credit card data knows this. It's not impossible. It's just a very high bar to jump over. Demonstrating a similar level of security should be enough to be able to get insurance in case your IoT devices do get hacked and cause harm.
The costs of this would be passed on to consumers. This would make Smart TVs more secure. But I'm also happy to pay more for a toaster that doesn't burn my house down, instead of a super cheap one that is dangerous.
This would either kill smart TVs as an economical consumer item, or it would make them very secure. If it kills them, then the data / privacy issue is solved -- to move this back on topic.
I suspect the average person wouldn't get too riled up to hear that their internet connection was used to block someone's website, as long as they don't notice it in their service quality.
Another tangent -- do any sophisticated botnet systems throttle their connection during an attack to minimize impact on the device/network owner?
[edit - in case it's not clear, I'm admittedly ignorant about this kind of stuff, so I was just curious if anyone else can shed some light]
It's nice because I don't have to worry about stuff like the Netflix app aging out and not supporting X,Y,or Z feature. Is my phone up to date? That's it. I'd like to take it a step further and have it COMPLETELY dumb and plug my own chromecast/Roku/whatever in to it. No WiFi, no anything. Give me a good 4K display with whatever processing capabilities make the experience better and then get the hell out of the way.
I feel like this one is ALMOST there, just need to go one more step or two- and then quit spying on me would be nice too.