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Comment by paulcole | Hacker News Reader

I sidedstepped the problem by buying a nice TV and not caring about ads or what the thing is doing w/ my wifi. Of all the things for me to get worked up over, this isn’t one of them.

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Just wondering... (really interested, not being snarky!) I see this opinion with family members and other people who aren't in tech/computers (the majority of people). I figured it was because they don't know how impressive data science has become.

But you most likely do know: so what would it actually take to make you care about what they are doing over your wifi?

Transmit every remote control button push? Send hashes of audio keywords recorded from you talking and use that to recommend shows/products? Raw lidar data? Raw audio/video recording of you/your house?

Is there potentially a line they could cross, or is data just data, and therefore equally fair game?

None of that stuff would bother me — except maybe the audio and video recording. But it’s not like they’re just recording me, it’d be thousands of other people too and there’s no way I’m the most interesting of the bunch. The issue I’d have would be the bandwidth adding towards my cable ISP’s data cap. But if they use some other network, whatever go nuts.

I think that's fair, and honestly it's how 90% of the TV consumer market feels. The vast majority of people don't really care that their TV is collecting marketing info on them. I do, but I'm not going to bend over backwards to avoid it. I just won't buy one.

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