In Capitalist Hellscape, You No Watch TV, TV Watch You

I’ve been meaning to write something about how pervasive it has become for “smart TVs” to be sold for cheap, because manufacturers realized they can sell the hardware at a loss and make their profits by selling their customers’ viewing data to advertisers. This story, originally reported by a YouTube channel called Gamers Nexus but summarized by Dominic Preston at The Verge reminded me that I never did so.

LG smart TVs are almost constantly logging and uploading data about owners and their homes, even when offline or on standby mode, according to a new report from YouTube channel Gamers Nexus. The company’s TV sets scan Wi-Fi networks for nearby devices, record audio logs through their microphones, and use audio and video sampling to recognize exactly what you’re watching from across the TV inputs.

Gamers Nexus partnered with fellow YouTubers Level1Techs and independent security researchers for the investigation, which involved testing retail LG OLEDs. Packet captures showed the TVs scanning the local area network for nearby hardware like phones or smartwatches, as well as logging location data and details of nearby Wi-Fi networks, and feeding the information back to LG Ad Solutions. Perhaps more concerningly, the TVs were capable of recording microphone audio when in standby; this continued even after the TV was disconnected from the internet, with audio files stored offline and uploaded once a connection was restored.

What’s not to love?

To be sure, this is not just a problem with LG; other TV brands like Samsung, TCL, Vizio, Hisense, Onn, and others have been engaging in similarly shocking invasions of their customers’ privacy for years.

Below is an excerpt I meant to link to years ago from a 2019 piece by Geoffrey A. Fowler for The Washington Post, giving a little more background on why this has become a standard practice in the industry:

Ever wondered why TV sets are getting so cheap? Manufacturing efficiency plays a role. But to paraphrase political commentator James Carville, it’s the data, stupid. TVs have joined the ranks of websites, apps and credit cards in the lucrative business of harvesting and sharing your information. Americans spend an average of 3½ hours in front of a TV each day, according to eMarketer, the market research company. Your TV records may not contain sensitive search queries or financial data, but that history is a window to your interests, personality, joys and embarrassments.

[…]

Many TV makers say tracking what we watch helps them provide helpful personalized recommendations. Right, and people read Playboy for the articles.

If you have a smart TV, I implore you never connect it to the internet so that these manufacturers can’t do this. And if you already have connected it to your wifi, disconnect and change your wifi password. Then get an Apple TV or other streaming box/plug-in that you trust and get your content that way. To be clear, the Apple TV is the only such device I personally trust. It is more expensive than other options, but that’s because you’re actually paying what the hardware is worth, rather than paying a low price at the cash register and subsidizing the cost by allowing manufacturers to track and monetize everything you watch.