Technology

One way to get Congress to act on this would be to remind them of how Robert Bork's video rental history got released. They very quickly realized that they all had the same sleazy movies on their rental list and passed a law making it illegal to share them.

Call your Congressmen and tell them that their smart TV is sending screenshots of whatever they're watching back to home base, including stuff that's not streamed, and there might be swift action.

Better yet, hack Samsung and leak it to the press. That'll definitely light a fire under them.

I blocked my two TVs from phoning home via my pihole. They are the two noisiest devices on my network, by leaps and bounds.

On a day of heavy usage, my phone and desktop may get ~2000 blocked requests combined. That’s high, but not unheard of. It just means I did a lot of browsing, with a lot of blocked ad requests. My TVs average somewhere around 7500 blocked requests per day, on days that I haven’t even turned them on. That’s an attempt to phone home every ~12 seconds. And it is much worse on days that I actually use them.

my TV incurred my wrath by having the gall to show me a banner ad while I was in the middle of a game.

so I promptly cut its balls off. (disabled the internet entirely). now it is a dumb TV. and it behaves like a TV. and not an ad machine.

The situation is really bad for consumers. Even with a Pi-Hole and a dumb TV and something like a Fire TV stick (they tend to send lots of telemetry too and apps like Toggo will nag you to oblivion to consent to data mining - if an app asks at all that is).

I'm slowly building up a Jellyfin library and yeah I jumped the hoops to find a non-smart TV. Wrote about it at https://beko.famkos.net/2022/11/27/on-non-smart-tvs/ and settled with a https://www.homex.eu/u55nt1000.html that ticked all my boxes:

☑ ~~cheap~~ affordable ☑ 4k (UHD) ☑ ~~dumb~~ non-Smart ☑ HDMI ☑ 55″

No idea about it's tuner though[1] alas it's not really any longer available in any market space today and I hope it will not die on us any time soon or the quest to find a new one starts again 🤓

[1] We've a decent external receiver that does all the work and HDMI juggling but even that thing is on the WiFi for software updates and in-house streaming but from what I can tell it behaves at least, which is probably just because it's old by now.

If only our fucking government would do something about this and actually regulate these evil bastards.

can we just ban online features from tvs, cars, printers, light bulbs etc.

I’m more than happy to buy a TV that uses post-purchase monetization, because I am never going to connect that fucker to the internet. It’s a display. I shall use it as a display. I do not care that it can replace my streaming box. I fully control my streaming box, and I will use that.

If I catch it doing any sketchy shit like trying to use unsecured/Comcast/etc WiFi to phone home, it’ll be time to pull out the screwdriver, though.

pi-hole ftw. the vast majority of my pi-hole's DNS drops are from various Roku and Roku-like devices. Also, put all your IoT stuff onto a guest network, or if your gear supports it, on its own VLAN.

Wait until they hear about cell phones.

Why do we continue to be ok with this? Where is the outrage and call for change?

They called me crazy.

For example, Amazon Web Services and ad-tech company TripleLift are working with proprietary models and machine learning for dynamic product placement in streamed TV shows. The report, citing a 2021 AWS case study, says that "new scenes featuring product exposure can be inserted in real-time 'without interrupting the viewing experience.'"

Peacock is also working with TripleLift to develop "In-Scene" Peacock ads that owner NBCUniversal says it's currently testing:

When a user plays episodic content, your brand’s product or message is dynamically placed in the frame of targeted scenes, creating a non-interruptive ad experience that aligns the programming with your campaign theme/goals.

This could be hilarious when your omegaverse softcore porn drama gets plastered with prune juice, old people pill adverts, and trump propaganda on everyone's shirts, tattoos, jock straps, voice lines and whatever else the AI can scrounge up. "It totally fits with the narrative!"

Just disconnect your TV from the Internet and get an Apple TV.

While they are at it take a look at car manufacturers too.

Technical fixes only work for the technical and often it's technically working against the law. We need the law on our side, not the corporations. So we need to engage with law as much as technology. Or we end having to break technologies like secure boot and laws.

Fuckingcapitalists