CTV industry’s unprecedented “surveillance”
arstechnica.com
48-page report citing Ars Technica urges FTC, FCC investigate connected TV data harvesting. Gen AI, potentially racially discrimniatory practices head concerns.

48-page report urges FTC, FCC to investigate connected TV industry data harvesting.

The companies behind the streaming industry, including smart TV and streaming stick manufacturers and streaming service providers, have developed a “surveillance system” that has “long undermined privacy and consumer protection,” according to a report from the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD) published today and sent to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Unprecedented tracking techniques aimed at pleasing advertisers have resulted in connected TVs (CTVs) being a “privacy nightmare,” according to Jeffrey Chester, report co-author and CDD executive director, resulting in calls for stronger regulation.

  • @becausechemistry@lemm.ee
    9•6 hours ago

    One even worse thing about smart tv’s - they come with a bunch of free “channels” you can watch. If you have streaming services or cable, who cares?

    Except the people that don’t – rural folk who never would pay for cable – gobble it up. And it’s all right wing propaganda garbage. From Fox News to Newsmax, they’ve got every kind of anxiety-inducing conspiracy-laden “news” you can watch.

  • Flying Squid
    13•9 hours ago

    I’m honestly surprised there isn’t some successful startup that markets itself as the “dumb TV company” by now. You can buy dumb TVs if you go out of your way to look, but if you knew there was the FutureCo DumbTV Plus or whatever out there and you didn’t have to do a bunch of searching…

    • @CainTheLongshot@lemmy.world
      4•2 hours ago

      Because selling the data your SmartTV collects, is a massive revenue stream for these companies. Selling only dumb TVs wouldn’t be as profitable as a SmartTV would be.

      Also the ad space that could be projected to these, based on collected data is another massive revenue stream.

  • @FinishingDutch@lemmy.world
    14•12 hours ago

    I recently purchased a new computer monitor; an LG Ultragear OLED. It’s as dumb as a bag of rocks - which is why I bought it.

    And let me tell you: it’s quite the search to find a monitor that DOESN’T have smart bullshit features built in. Most of them are now set up as if they were a TV first instead of a monitor - as in, you need to go deep into menus to find actual monitor settings.

    I’m glad I was able to find a dumb monitor, but I fear it might not be possible anymore when this needs replacement…

  • @TootSweet@lemmy.worldEnglish
    38•15 hours ago

    Not enough people are talking about the SFC v. Visio case currently being heard in California. Depending on the outcome of the case (and it’s looking fairly good for the Software Freedom Conservancy, not to get anyone’s hopes up), we might have fully-FOSS distros for existing consumer smart TVs sometime in the somewhat-not-too-distant future. Like we have OpenWRT and dd-wrt for routers and Graphine and LineageOS for smartphones. And there are potential implications for other types of consumer hardware devices.

    • Flying Squid
      9•9 hours ago

      That’s a good thing, but Smart TVs should only be a limited option in the first place. Most people do not need them or like them.

      I shouldn’t have to understand how to install a different OS on a TV in order to take the useless “smart” features away.

    • Flying Squid
      5•9 hours ago

      Not generally, no. And they are becoming quite popular with consumers because of it.

  • AlexanderESmith
    6•13 hours ago

    I bought a fantastic 3 laser Samsung projector. Projecting at 123", bright and beautiful (even during the day with all the window blinds open).

    First thing it asked was to set up the wifi. I lul’d and turned it to the HDMI input with a Roku (which started sucking, so I switched to nVidia shield, which is about to be replaced with a Beelink running Linux because I’m tired of the shenanigans and limitations).

    I found out from a friend (who has the same projector) that the little shit shows ads when it has a network connection. I just see a solid green bar, rofl.

  • @ihatetheworld@lemmy.mlEnglish
    5•14 hours ago

    I just wish there are options. I love to have one of those newer LG OLED without all the smart capabilities & additional hardware. Just a good screen that I can hook up to my PC and direct play all my shows and let the GPU handle all the necessary upscaling/tone mapping.