Texas is suing all of the big TV makers for spying on what you watch
theverge.com
theverge.com
> 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.
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.
> Most likely ... sending the hash
I do suspect you're right since they would want to reduce bandwidth, especially since residential upload speeds are slow but this is pretty close to verifiable, right?
Also just curious, what happens if you block those requests? I can say Samsung TVs really don't like it... but they will be fine if you take them fully offline.
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?
That way they aren't cut out of the loop by you using a different service to watch something and still have a 'cut'.
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.
Client side processing like this is legitimate and an excellent way to scale, it just hits a little different when it's being used for something that isn't serving you, the user.
source: backend developer
Then server-side the hash is matched to a program or ad and the data accumulated and reduced even further before ending up in someone's analytics dashboard.
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?
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?
Come on hackers. We could murder the global economy with this shit.
I work for a company that does some work on Internet advertising and one of the main issues that came up when we discussed supporting smart TV platforms was how we could protect our proprietary advertising audience data while still showing ads on these devices. Knowing what ads we show the user tells them what the user is interested in, which is valuable information for our competitors.
Unfortunately, we were not able to solve that problem, and instead to just use lower fidelity user models for advertising on smart TVs. That makes smart TV ads less valuable, but allows us to keep our competitive advantage on desktop and mobile.
I'm indifferent to YouTube have frame-by-frame nanodata about me.
But as a Roku user, this snap shotting makes me very angry.
Maybe because much of what I watch on my TV via my Roku is content I own and stream from my personal server?
I expect my media app, ie. YouTube, to know what I watch from the media app. YouTube knows about YouTube.
My operating system, ie. Roku, should not know about what's happening inside a given app. ie. Roku does not know about YouTube.
When they start crossing layers, that greatly upsets me.
I guess I can always just refuse the TV OS access to the wifi, assuming they're not using 4G modems.
Isn't that too much data to even begin to analyze? The only winner here seems like S3.
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 :)
VPPA — Video Privacy Protection Act: a U.S. law aimed at limiting disclosure of people’s video-viewing/rental history.
HDCP — High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection: an anti-copy protocol used on HDMI/DisplayPort links to prevent interception/recording of protected video.
DRM — Digital Rights Management: a broad term for technical restrictions controlling how digital media can be accessed, copied, or shared.
MPAA — Motion Picture Association of America: the former name of the main U.S. film-industry trade group (now typically called the MPA, Motion Picture Association).
TV / TVs — Television(s).
Good times.
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.
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.
Search for 5g miot or 5g massive iot or maybe even 5g redcap
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
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.
You can store my data for me, but only encrypted, and it can be decrypted only in a sandbox. And the output of the sandbox can be sent only back to me, the user. Decrypting the personal data for any other use is illegal. If an audit shows a failure here, the company loses 1% of revenue the first time, then 2%, then 4, etc.
And companies must offer to let you store all of your own data on your own cloud machine. You just have to open a port to them with some minimum guarantees of uptime, etc. They can read/write a subset of data. The schema must be open to the user.
Any systems that have been developed from personal user data (i.e. recommendation engines, trained models) must be destroyed. Same applies: if you're caught using a system that was trained in the past on aggregated data across multiple users, you face the same percentage fines.
The only folks who maybe get a pass are public healthcare companies for medical studies.
Fixed.
(But yeah it'll never happen because most of the techies are eager to screw over everyone else for their own gain. And they'll of course tell you it's to make the services better for you.)
Once a generation starts to accept that everything they do is getting tracked, things may never go back, it may even lead autocracy.
People forget, autocracies don’t just show up one day and announce “ok, we’re going to do autocracy now and I’m your dictator. Ok? Good?” They are conditions that have a long tail setup and preparation and then an accelerating escalation (where it seems we are now) and then, if not adequately countered, it bursts into place almost overnight.
That has resulted in the state of, in the EU, unelected (popularly) Commission Presidents dictating and dominating all of Europe, and the Presidency using powers it wasn’t supposed to have to tariff and threaten countries with destruction, conferred upon the office by a Congress that has also failed its core function.
Shallow thinkers tend to think in terms of the past archetypes, but it is unlikely that we will ever see anything like one of the middle eastern or Latin American autocrats with a clownish amount of metals on their chests ruling the West. It is a small cabal of people that manage a new kind of patronage system where everyone gets a piece of the plunder of the peasants. Call it neo-aristocracy if you like, until a better term emerges. Remember, the new tricks and lies tend to not be the same as the old tricks and lies.
(Same goes for the credit bureaus and all the information brokers that slurp up every bit of de-anonymize information they can get.)
But yea privacy is a silly thing to propose to a surveillance industry.
Saying that I think I am already hooked on free and/or easy to search etc etc BS. Basically take my data for convenience and some advanced tech. Honestly feels like addiction.
> 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]
If this case succeeds, suing Visio on the same charges would be a cakewalk.
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.
This is why the EFF or some other privacy watchdog should fund a ad campaign depicting Google, Facebook etc. as a creepy stalker character peeking through someone's window, following them around, noting everything they do, gaslighting them etc.
Expose this abnormal norm for the disgusting behavior it is.
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?
Seriously, totally deranged to think the “free market” is capable of protecting humans against widespread nefarious behavior from colluding actors with vast amounts of money and power.
I don't know. It's one guess among many.
You can look at Vizio's quarterly statements before Walmart bought them: their devices were margin negative and "Platform+" (ads) made up for it: https://investors.vizio.com/financials/quarterly-results/def...
They should not be allowed to track user at all as a hardware manufacturer, let the users purchase the tracking software themselves and get a rebate back.
My question was, Why do people get so passionate about being screwed? Say consumers really are receiving a $300 discount in exchange for being forced to watch say 30 hours of ads. Is that really such a fantastic opportunity that I'm going to go cheer for it publicly, or claim it's consumers' fault, or it should be mandatory, or we must just accept it because (whatever)?
Heck if I had strong guarantees that the data generated by ACR was used only to tune recommendations/ads using an anonymous advertising ID like IDFA and not linked to any personally identifying information, I would want that too. But sadly there is no privacy and no way of ensuring that now.
Lemme example. In the weed space, I don't think anybody would take this seriously: "well it's illegal and there's nothing we can do about that so it's pointless to discuss dissenting views." Or "it's going to be legalized and there's nothing anybody can do about that, so there is no possibility of debate." People would just laugh at that.
But when it's normal consumer activity, those same arguments seem to cut ice. Why?
I am a strong privacy advocate, but I also believe in customers choice. Hence, the primary issue I have with this technology is not its existence, but the lack of transparency in the pricing and the inability to truly properly opt out of this data collection.
At some point in the past year, I‘ve read someone suggest a „privacy label“ for electronics, akin to the energy efficiency labels that exist around the world. The manufacturers should be forced to disclose the extend of the data collection as well as the purpose and the ability to opt out on the product packaging, before the customer makes the purchase
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.
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.
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...
I am not convinced of this. there is more recurring revenue involved in spying on people
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.
The only cases where it's clearcut are a few overseas airlines like Singapore Airline who have such a rock solid reputation for great service that people will book them even if the price is 2x.
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.
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.
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?
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
If you want to make a free market argument you need to look up what a free market is. In particular, consumers need to have perfect information. Do you really think if manufacturers were obligated to make these "features" clear that most people wouldn't care?
I appreciate them caring about what you watch being recorded but it’s pretty clear too they only care because the tv manufacturers are not “American Companies”. Walmart is getting special treatment and will be allowed to operate
Also, if i remember what I read well, he may not be aware that Samsung is not Chinese.
This explains why Vizio, who is owned by Walmart, was not sued.
> 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?
Sure the method is different but it’s the same goal. Company x learns your interests so It can monetize you by selling to advertisers
Anyways, the whole thing sucks for consumer privacy and needs to be outlawed. The problem is that companies come up with unique, tricky ways of exploiting you, and people can never fully understand it without a lot of effort. Someone might be ok using Google and seeing contextual ads, but wouldn’t be ok if they knew Google was saving a screenshot of their browser every second and uploading and reselling it. The first can feel innocuous, the second feels evil.
It's all garbage all the way down.
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'm surprised they haven't switched to using DoH, which would prevent this from working.
Modern cars have cellular modems, I unplugged mine, and would not hesitate to take apart a TV and physically rip off the modem.
[1] https://www.derstandard.de/story/3000000298248/hearing-in-la...
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.
This is about being in the news as much as possible. He is in a close 3 way race for the 2026 Republican spot for US Senate. The other two are current old-school conservative senator John Cornyn, and new comer MAGA Wesley Hunt (but not as MAGA as Paxton). Lots of in-fighting over funding, so Paxton is making sure to get in the news as much as possible.
Throughout the year he has been in the news for things that are useful like this and another suit against a utility company for causing a fire and others for typical maga things like lawsuit to stop harris county (Houston) funding legal services for immigrants facing deportation or immigrant-serving nonprofits or a "tip-line" for bathroom enforcement or lawsuits against doctors...it goes on and on and on. It's a page out of the Trump playblook, its like watching a trump clone. And thats the point.
.its an insane lawsuit, there are basically two outcomes crazy side effects from his lawsuit:
Tvs are banned. (Possibly can only texas permitted tv)
Or if he loses, which might be his donors goal of him litigating so terribly, all your data now belongs to the companies.
Theres no consumer friendly option here
I like the suggested "Don't Upload My Bits" backronym.
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.
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.
Yes I know there is a theoretical capability for it to connect to unsecured WIFI. No one still has unsecured WIFI anymore
And instead of a full brick, let's just downgrade to 360p and call it an "expiration of your complementary free Enhanced Video trial".
I isolate smart TVs and other IOT devices to a separate network/subnet, and usually block their network access unless they need an update.
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 only found this out because I thought my 15 year old plasma TV had died, but it ended up being the power cord.
They cost more because they aren’t subsidised by this junk.
As long as there are no clear laws this will only get worse. Imagine a TV with an e-sim. There will be no way to turn the connection off unless you pack it in aluminum foil.
Talking about e-sim, Texas should also sue all modern car brands. Most cars today are online and spy on your driving behavior.
Though I do not understand why this isn't categorizes as illegitimate spying.
Easy fix
https://www.reddit.com/r/VIZIO_Official/search/?q=ads
https://www.reddit.com/r/VIZIO_Official/search/?q=advertisin...
It's amazing to see what they have gotten away with in the last few years. The average consumer has no choice and now way to opt out of the nonsense.
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.
The market probably isn’t big enough yet, but I’ll bet it grows. I mean _Texas_ is bringing it up!
Secret? There's T's&C's that people agree to when starting up their TV that tells them.
That doesn't make it right of course and it shouldn't just be opt-in, it should be banned entirely. If you want to analyse my viewing behaviour, pay me.
I generally agree that reading the T&C is on the user and you cannot blame the lack if transparency onto the company, IF the T&C are sufficiently comprehensible. Some T&Cs I‘ve read are written in obscure enough legalese that it might as well be considered hidden information
But yes.
It's ironic that Sony as a media producer and TV maker could be streaming copyrighted images for an algorithm to use.
Could this be used as an example from AI companies on the use of copyrighted images for training data?
“X + 1”
I hope they’re enjoying the video footage.
What's concerning is when third parties start snooping on transactions that they are not involved in.
I do have a smart TV, but I have no use for it since my NVIDIA Shield does all the lifting.
A good enough android TV dongle will cost €30. So...
What about cars? Tesla, in particular does record an awful lot of personal data about you...
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...
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)
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.
No, Google will copy them and shut them down.
Lmao $2.2m is less than nothing to Walmart.
You need to go to Settings -> All Settings -> General -> System -> Additional Settings to make sure the "Live Plus" option is OFF.
Check it periodically, as it sometimes turns itself back on again after updates.
But, but, but, you agreed to the TOS didn't you, or else you cannot use your TV.
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.
edit: why the downvotes?
/s