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Comment by zephyreon | Hacker News Reader

> Features such as Automatic Content Recognition (ACR), voice recognition, and interest-based advertising are optional. These features are not enabled by default. Users can choose to enable these features and can manage or withdraw consent through TV settings.

They may be optional features but I’m pretty sure when I set up my tv and got to the screen where you are required to agree to the various terms and privacy legalese the “happy path” was to hit the “accept all” button vs use the remote to navigate into each one, read, and only activate the few required to use the tv. I would not call this dark pattern “optional” by default.

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Gamers Nexus paid a lawyer to read the contract and had one of their staff members try to read the entire thing on the TV.

The lawyers conclusion is that a non-lawyer basically has no chance of correctly interpreting the contract and the TV auto-standby almost made it physically impossible for the staff member to even read it.

The „happy path“ is the only path, for all practical purposes.

Not only that but to read every single related T&C from the whole chain of partners, and to keep track of it when it changed, is basically impossible.

This sort of malicious compliance of using T&C to enable bad behaviour by corporations needs to be fixed with laws.

Reminds me of cookie banners, the dark pattern where they've decided to be deliberately verbose and annoying in order to get people to take the easy path and agree to let them continue doing their bad behaviour.

Even some updates will trigger the acceptance screen from time to time, with a second scare confirmation shown when I reject. If my wife or kids were shown that screen when I’m not around they would accept it.

Nearly every notification (new privacy statement, new update, etc) defaults you to clicking accept all, even showing you that you hadn't previously checked them. You have to be vigilant with LG TVs, sadly.

We're singling out LG, but it's also true of Samsung and others.

Maybe Sony is better, based on my memory, but I doubt it now without evidence.

even if you reject, later on some app from their store won't work until you accept

Not only are they enabled by default, you can't easily turn them off. I turn the features off, and every time the firmware updates, they miraculously somehow turn back on. I finally gave up and disconnected the TVs from the internet and put an Apple TV on them instead.

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