I’d like to start a discussion about TV privacy in 2023. I’ve never been interested in having a TV, but recently I was thinking of getting one. Looking into it, the privacy implications seem horrible. All the major brands seem to have cameras, microphones, and content recognition software. I can’t believe how dystopian it is.
I also notice that most of the articles about this are from a few years ago. Are things better now? Do they still collect an Orwellian amount of data?
As I understand it, there are a few mitigation options:
- Leave it disconnected from the internet and use a separate device for streaming. But it sounds like some brands have incessant nag screens, or disable features until connected to the internet. I was looking into the Samsung Frame TV, but I’m not even sure you can use the art mode without internet. Does anyone know?
- Pi-hole set up with a blocklist. It’s disheartening that such a technical solution would be necessary.
- Get a commercial “dumb” display. These are more expensive, and usually thicker.
- Go through the menu and disable privacy violating settings. Does this work? I’m doubtful.
edit: Just to be clear, I am NOT talking about the normal sort of ad tracking that happens when you use streaming services. Netflix knows what you’re watching regardless of what device you use. I’m talking about stuff like a hidden camera recording your facial reactions, microphones recording your private conversations, and screen recording of your viewing activities. This is sci-fi dystopia level creepy.
my tv is less than a year old. four firmware updates (allowed through the pihole to try to fix an audio bug… but no luck there yet) so far and now the ‘smart’ bits are laggy and slow. the one app that i started to actually like over its web site can’t handle more than a few hours now without freezing up (the tv needs to be restarted to ‘fix’). it was fast and fine and could run for days on end before. at the rate its performance is deteriorating, it’ll be unusable before its 2 year warranty is up.
which is all by design, i’m sure. yea, you might ‘force’ me into another tv, but you can’t make me buy another one of your pieces of shit.
if it gets any worse, the tv is getting factory reset and never touching the net again. i might be able to salvage a few years out of it as a monitor before some cheap sub-component inside dies.
May I ask why you updated the firmware? I keep seeing people say that they disconnect the tv from the internet except for firmware updates, but if it works fine on day one and it’s always off line, why upgrade the firmware at all?