10 ms·
Walmart buying TV-brand Vizio for its ad-fueling customer data
- footlose_3815 3y agoHow many times will the same story make it's rounds on the frontpage from different sources? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39440354 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39440354
- johnnyanmac 3y agoFor future reference: [dupe]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39440354 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39440354 (optionally tagging dang depending on the severity) That's all that's necessary. Mods here do have the ability to combine and collapse comment threads into the larger post, so this is a fixable issue on HN.
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago> (optionally tagging dang depending on the severity) There's no such thing as tagging anyone on HN; if you want to get mod attention, there's an email address listed at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- johnnyanmac 3y agoThanks, that's good to know. I didn't think those @ tags did much, but there's so many hidden features of HN that I can never be truly sure.
- nolongerthere 3y agoI always assumed dang has a filter for his name, bec he’s usually pretty prompt in responding.
- defrost 3y ago> p.s. (@dang doesn't work - I only saw this by accident. Well, not by accident because it ended up at the top of the thread) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39426902 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39426902
- ooterness 3y agoIf smart TVs are spying on us so much that the ads are the most valuable part, should we start calling then telescreens? 1984 vibes.
- echelon 3y agoMargins are so thin that the only money to be made is in ads and tracking.
- waynesonfire 3y agoit's a race to the bottom. if your ad riddled, privacy raping tv isn't free, you'll go out of business. we need legislation.
- wincy 3y agoYeah, I’m amazed that such a ubiquitous brand is worth a scant 2 billion dollars, or 1/20th of a Twitter.
- Hamuko 3y agoThat valuation of Twitter was just way too high. Even Twitter is worth like 1/4th of a Twitter.
- TylerE 3y agoA brand is only valuable if the brand is valuable. What consumer gives a shit about the Vizio brand? No one says "Oh boy, I'm so happy I bought a Vizio!". It's cheap and nasty and always has been.
- kredd 3y agoI wonder if there's any way to cause an oversupply of ad information and tracking so data itself would become useless? I'm not sure if I'm making sense, but was thinking in terms of supply and demand. If everyone's data is available for free and everywhere, would that anyhow affect the ad-tech companies?
- bee_rider 3y agoDo these spyware type TVs require an internet connection to start working? For example, can we just buy the spyware TV and connect a Linux computer to it, or will it refuse to function without exfiltrating data?
- wmf 3y agoNo, they don't require Internet. BTW Google TVs have a dumb mode if that's what you want. The other brands will probably annoy you with menus even if you don't want to use the smarts.
- pyuser583 3y agoApple TV is an option. Then all your data is going to Apple instead. They have HDMI input. So you can pipe in what you want.
- taneq 3y agoHonestly, different parts of your life being snooped on and recorded in different silos is less of an issue. The real issue is when all aspects of your life are being collated by the same entity (dammit Google stop creeping) and so they can reconstruct your entire life in minute detail.
- xahrepap 3y agoI bought an LG over a year ago and haven’t connected it to any network ever. Works pretty great. Hasn’t asked me once to connect. Haven’t seen a single ad.
- mschuster91 3y agoIt won't be too long until "cheap" TVs start to ship embedded LTE modems...
- nailer 3y agoGoddamn. Vizio used to have a reputation as a good TV for people that don’t want unnecessary extras.
- genocidicbunny 3y agoReally? It might just be my social circles, but we always thought of Vizio as basically the Walmart special that was somewhere, somehow, going to find a backdoor way to make up the profit margin.
- bushbaba 3y agoVizio was known for good value on price. However tcl and other Chinese brands took over that spot lately and Vizio never managed to recover.
- genocidicbunny 3y agoAdmittedly, I'm a little bit of a snob when it comes to screen quality due to my specialization, but Vizio panels never seemed that good either. It was obvious they were using cheap panels to meet the desired price point. With that said, most people were upgrading from either a CRT or an early 720p flat-panel and to them even the cheap Vizio panels were a big step up, so I don't dispute that there was a lot of value.
- nailer 3y agoI think this may have been ten years ago. During the era of 3DTV and curved displays.
- RF_Savage 3y agoI thought they were reasonably well known to be cheap, so cheap infact that the hardware was sold at or below cost. Thus the actual profit came from advertising and selling usage data.
- mrweasel 3y agoIt was 15 - 20 years ago. For a short period of time tech reviewers where all Vizio fans. Basically all recommendation heavily favored Vizio, then they pretty much disappeared and now they are back in the press, but not for being amazing.
- wincy 3y agoDo people still let their TVs connect to the internet? I had to factory reset my LG tv to get it to stop trying to connect to the WiFi. I’ve also got a block using my router, since my wife connected it to watch PLEX at one point, and it updated the OS, then it “helpfully” started showing ads in the bar AND auto connected to my network share that I had forgotten was sharing some adult content (luckily I caught it before anyone else did!) I use a PS5 for a media center now, I figured it’s the most powerful commodity media machine you could get. Overkill but hey, it doesn’t lag, and it has PLEX on it. It’s a bit annoying that the remote has non programmable buttons for media services we don’t use, but you just can’t win them all these days.
- johnnyanmac 3y agoMy samsung TV's (one from 2018, one from 2022) are used for Youtube 99% of the time. I don't know if I'm just numb to them or something, but I don't directly see ads on them. I'm sure it's phoning home a buncha stuff though. I suppose I tolerate it if it's in the background, but the moment random stuff pops up on me I'd definitely make sure the TV never connects to a wi-fi.
- owenwil 3y agoDisconnect that 2022 model as soon as you can. Samsung can and does deploy permanent, unremovable ads on the system menus that are cached even if the connection is lost. It’s terrible! The only way to avoid them is to not receive one in the first place.
- vladvasiliu 3y agoDo they hang on after you "factory reset" the TV? I've got a TCL TV and wanted to see if I could stop using the Amazon FireTV. It was a laggy mess and started showing ads, and kept showing placeholders and crap like that after I disconnected it. But this all went away after a factory reset.
- elorant 3y agoWho do you define as “people”? Because there are the HN people who probably could even install a separate firewall to block/monitor all outgoing traffic, and then there are normal folks who don’t even know that their TV collects data. The majority of people are technologically illiterate who certainly can’t go into all the trouble of blocking ads and changing dns servers and installing firewalls and what not.
- userbinator 3y agoThere are "universal scaler" boards which are free of this "smartness" and yet have a tuner and other multimedia features you'd want in a TV, and are also quite cheap: https://mysku.club/blog/aliexpress/67872.html https://mysku.club/blog/aliexpress/67872.html http://web.archive.org/web/20190511065920/http://redlightgreen.org/2019/01/obzor-universalnogo-skalera-s-dvb-t2-ds-d3663lua http://web.archive.org/web/20190511065920/http://redlightgre... (translation of above into English) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tst5Xmh3q-A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tst5Xmh3q-A I wonder how popular a service for "upgrading" TVs with those would be. Market it as "spyware delete" and I suspect you might get a lot of business... possibly to the point of causing the manufacturers to take offensive action.
- Mistletoe 3y agoCan't you just not connect it to the internet? I prefer Microsoft to spy on me on my Xbox.
- colechristensen 3y agoIn the days of 5G this is no longer a guarantee. I don’t know if any tvs include this kind of thing yet but 5G modems and service are cheap enough for devices to not need your network to phone home.
- KerrAvon 3y agoThis is a worry, but (a) so far it’s still in the future (b) 5G coverage is not complete enough in residential areas, at least in America. Many houses have extremely poor cell service.
- colechristensen 3y agoA press release from AT&T boasting about 5G IoT progress https://about.att.com/blogs/2023/5g-redcap.html https://about.att.com/blogs/2023/5g-redcap.html
- 3y ago
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- pyuser583 3y agoI was freaked out how nosy Vizios TV OS is. Got an Apple TV make it stop spying.
- throwaway8481 3y agoIf it is internet-connected without the Apple TV, it's likely taking screen captures an identifying what you're watching.
- bozhark 3y agoThis kind of behavior seems entirely anti-consumer. There should be legislation that limits how much literal wattage can be used of a consumer’s device that does not serve the purpose of the consumption and benefits the company financially.
- wildrhythms 3y agoWhy do you assume that would that stop it spying?
- NegativeLatency 3y agoPrivacy concerns aside it’s problematic that a grocery store chain has enough money to buy a TV manufacturer. So many of the brands in our lives have become too big and powerful in my opinion.
- jldl805 3y agoCalling Walmart a "grocery store chain" is like saying GE is a "light bulb company".
- brudgers 3y agoOr Amazon is a bookseller.
- arrosenberg 3y agoSort of the point, innit?
- maximus-decimus 3y agoI don't get your point. Are you saying Walmart shouldn't sell food? Shouldn't be able to sell diverse things? Shouldn't be able to make money by selling things?
- izacus 3y agoNeither of that, you're being deliberately obtuse. Think more on what OP said and don't bring the conversarion down with false accusations.
- mschuster91 3y ago> Shouldn't be able to make money by selling things? There's a point to be made that vertical integration is bad for the system as a whole... and there is historic examples where such schemes got broken up, e.g. by the Paramount case [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pictures,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pic....
- squarefoot 3y agoVizio is among the TV brands that were already caught spying on people through their "Smart" TVs (1). I do my best to stay away from that junk as my Kodi box is more than enough, but if I had one, I'd either never connect it to the Internet, or do that through a huge list of banned IPs, as mere DNS filtering pi-hole style could not be enough. Also beware of Ethernet equipped HDMI cables and unprotected WiFi. 1- https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2017/02/08/shocking-smart-tv-manufacturer-vizio-spies-on-customers-using-advanced-big-data-analytics/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2017/02/08/shocking...
- neurostimulant 3y agoNow that iOS and even Android start to actually care about privacy, smart tvs are the last bastion of hope for advertisers.
- e40 3y agoAnd when will Apple enter the TV market? Seems ripe for them to make a killing.
- TylerE 3y agoEnter? They've been marketing a physical device called the AppleTV for 17 years.
- m-p-3 3y agoHe meant the actual TV, not the box.
- e40 3y agoYes, I did. I thought that would have been obvious....
- inputError 3y ago[dead]
- pauby 3y agoApple is not a poster boy for privacy.
- TylerE 3y agoThis feels like the perfect being the enemy of the good. What other company that actually sells products people want has a privacy record in even the same area code? It sure isn’t Microsoft, Sony, Google, Samsung et al.
- inputError 3y agoif you own a vizio and its connected to the internet, disconnect it. mine made my pihole work overtime redirecting all its phone home requests. hate to think why it wants to call home all the time
- Rudism 3y agoMaybe I'm being cynical, but as long as it doesn't require me to connect to the internet and I can just plug an HDMI cable or two into it and treat it like a monitor, I guess I don't mind so much if the price of a smart TV is supplemented by other people having to look at ads. I get the lower price benefit without the negative side. I've got a couple Vizios right now that are basically just glorified monitors because they stay offline, and they work just fine for me.
- bmicraft 3y agoPlease keep in mind that it might just be connected to the internet over HDMI, even if unlikely (see: HDMI Ethernet Channel)