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I'm happy to see it. They should have included Roku in that too! > Roughly twice per second, a Roku TV captures video “snapshots” in 4K resolution. These snaps
by autoexec 10mo ago
I'm happy to see it. They should have included Roku in that too!
> Roughly twice per second, a Roku TV captures video “snapshots” in 4K resolution. These snapshots are scanned through a database of content and ads, which allows the exposure to be matched to what is airing. For example, if a streamer is watching an NFL football game and sees an ad for a hard seltzer, Roku’s ACR will know that the ad has appeared on the TV being watched at that time. In this way, the content on screen is automatically recognized, as the technology’s name indicates. The data then is paired with user profile data to link the account watching with the content they’re watching.
https://advertising.roku.com/learn/resources/acr-the-future-of-tv-and-audience-data https://advertising.roku.com/learn/resources/acr-the-future-...
I wouldn't be surprised if my PS5 was doing the same thing when I'm playing a game or watching a streaming service through it.
- ms7m 10mo agoThis is especially annoying and just incredibly creepy -- I was watching a clip of Smiling Friends on YouTube (via my Apple TV), and I suddenly got a banner telling me to watch this on HBO Max. I never felt more motivated to pi-hole the TV.
- gruez 10mo ago>I never felt more motivated to pi-hole the TV. Or just disconnect from the internet entirely? You already have an apple tv. Why does your tv need internet access?
- hotstickyballs 10mo agoTVs tend to incessantly ask for internet access, especially android ones.
- loloquwowndueo 10mo agoThen don’t buy an Android tv?
- scheeseman486 10mo agoThe problem with 'well just don't buy it' is that in many product categories, enshittification has become so entrenched that there are no longer options to avoid it. The availablity of product features is driven by market forces, if it's no longer profitable to sell a TV that doesn't require online connectivity for the purposes of ads, then such TVs will no longer be sold. Alternatives like using monitors designed for digital signage come with drawbacks. Expense, they don't have desirable features like VRR, HDR or high refresh rates, since they aren't needed for those use cases. Older TV models will break and supply will dry up. In the long term, this problem, not just TVs but the commercial exploitation of user data across virtually all electronic devices sold, isn't something that can be solved with a boycott, or by consumers buying more selectively. The practice needs to be killed with legislation.
- loloquwowndueo 10mo agoGood point. I’ll just argue about HDR and high frame rates being desirable features :) I don’t even know what VRR is.
- zie 10mo agoVRR is Variable refresh rates, so if there is nothing going on in the content, they can bring the refresh rate down and save processing, thermal issues and energy. If there is a lot going on(say a game), they can ramp the refresh rate back up super high. There are a few different "standards" around VRR, not every device supports all of them.
- loloquwowndueo 10mo agoMeh, I wonder why I care about saving energy or processing on a tv that’s plugged in anyway but hey. Thanks for explaining!
- ziml77 10mo agoTheir explanation of the reason for VRR is bad. The primary reason people want it is gaming where the game is not locked to a specific frame rate. Without VRR, the timing of a frame being delivered isn't necessarily going to match when the display is expecting a new frame. This leads to one of two effects. Either the display is forced to hold an old frame for longer and pick up the new frame on the next refresh cycle, which creates stutter. Or the display switches which frame its using partway through the refresh cycle, which creates a visual tear in the image.
- cluckindan 10mo agoSome TVs have a dedicated mobile connection, there is a SIM card and baseband radio inside. Of course only they can use it, not you.
- gruez 10mo agoSource? This sort of conspiracy started with "smart tvs will connect to open wifi networks", then evolved to "it uses amazon sidewalk", and apparently now morphed into "tvs have 5g modems". Given how poorly supported the prior claims were, that does not bode well for the 5G claim.
- cluckindan 10mo agoYou said 5G, not me
- gruez 10mo agoI agree that I misquoted you, but that's a distinction without a difference in this context. "SIM card and baseband radio inside" means 5G, 4G, 3G, whatever. I still demand that you produce proof that there are TVs with "SIM card and baseband radio inside".
- pests 10mo agoI was curious so I did some research. These devices do seem to be being produced, currently mostly overseas. The inclusion of 5G support does not seem to be hidden or nefarious. They provide a SIM card slot just like your phone would. Some models are incorporating a built-in router to provide connectivity to other devices. It seems like the cellular companies are promoting these TV's too, with built in service. My opinion is this is just a consolidation of devices. I have many friends who live off their phone data plan giving hotspot to the TV and other devices. Now being moved into a common device format, the TV. I don't think they can spy any more effectively this way. Eexcept via the router integration that gives them way more access, but I'm sure this exists already as a wifi feature on tvs. Just technology trudging along. Perhaps they have a secret sim card or esim embedded, that might be a risk as the hardware is already there for a valid reason.
- ribosometronome 10mo agoA banner from Apple or your TV trying to navigate you back to its own HBO app?
- the_gastropod 10mo agoThe latter. In addition to being creepy, it’s such a horrible “feature”. I can’t imagine who thought it was a good idea.
- danielscrubs 10mo agoYou could try getting an European TV, at least then it will ask and you can say no.
- nrhrjrjrjtntbt 10mo agoSo potentially completely noncompliant if used in a business. E.g. it may have HIPAA, top secret etc.
- gruez 10mo agoSending 4k screenshots twice a second to a server would be tremendously bandwidth hungry. My guess is that it's all done locally.
- treyd 10mo agoThere's probably compact signatures extracted from the screenshots (color profiles, OCR, etc) which are then uploaded later in bulk. You don't need the full original image to be able to reliably uniquely identify the content if you have an index of it already.
- floxy 10mo agoI'm wondering if there is some sort of steganographic watermark that broadcasters are including in media, to enable stuff like this. Probably would need to be robust in the presence of re-encoding, more compression, etc..
- inetknght 10mo agoThis has been long solved by YouTube for detecting CP and other non-compliant videos. For example, check out https://github.com/akamhy/videohash https://github.com/akamhy/videohash
- kevin_thibedeau 10mo agoIt is a violation of the VPPA to collect this for streaming services and prerecorded media. Scheduled broadcast and cable TV aren't covered.
- aidenn0 10mo ago
- nitwit005 10mo agoThat sounds so expensive it's hard to see it making money. You'd processing a 2fps video stream for each customer. That's a huge amount of data. And all that is for the chance to occasionally detect that someone's seen an ad in the background of a stream? Do any platforms even let a streamer broadcast an NFL game like the example given?
- marbro 10mo ago[dead]
- 0cf8612b2e1e 10mo agoI assume these systems are calculating an on device perceptual hash. So not that much data needs get flown back to the mothership.
- nemomarx 10mo agoI don't think they mean that kinda streamer - the idea is the roku tv can tell you're watching an ad even if it's on amazon prime, apple tv, youtube, twitch, wherever, and associate the ad watching with your roku account to potentially sell that data somehow? That way they aren't cut out of the loop by you using a different service to watch something and still have a 'cut'.
- nitwit005 10mo agoIt'd make sense if they're using streamer in a different sense than I'm used to. I see that's at the bottom of the definitions Google will produce.
- nemomarx 10mo agoYeah I think they mean "user of a streaming service" here, which would more conventionally be user or watcher or so on.
- htrp 10mo agoAttribution is very painful and advertisers will pay lots of money to close that loop.
- metabagel 10mo agoTime for me to get Apple TV.
- cluckindan 10mo agoAs if it didn’t track your habits as well.
- crazygringo 10mo ago...it doesn't. Like, Apple knows what you're watching within the Apple TV app obviously. But it's certainly not taking screenshots every second of what it displaying when you use other apps -- which shows and ads you're seeing. Nor does Apple sell personal data. Other video apps do register what shows you're in the middle of, so they can appear on the top row of your home screen. But again, Apple's not selling that info.
- lokar 10mo agoHaving each app report what is going on vs figuring it out from a screenshot locally is the same from a privacy POV. But I do trust apple more
- crazygringo 10mo agoA lot of this stuff is actually being used to track which ads are being watched. Apps definitely aren't reporting those.
- autoexec 10mo agoLike all data collection you can bet that the data our smart TVs and devices take from us is (or one day will be) used for a lot more than just ads.
- fn-mote 10mo agoThis is not sufficient because the TV you are showing the video on can (does/will) take the screencaps.
- jgalt212 10mo ago> > Roughly twice per second, a Roku TV captures video “snapshots” in 4K resolution. Isn't that too much data to even begin to analyze? The only winner here seems like S3.
- nativeit 10mo agoIt runs a hashing algorithm locally, I believe, rather than transmitting the entire image. pHash or something similar would work.
- VTimofeenko 10mo agoMost likely case is that the tv is computing hash locally and sending the hash. Judging by my dnstap logs, roku TV maintains a steady ~0.1/second heartbeat to `scribe.logs.roku.com` with occasional pings to `captive.roku.com`. The rest are stragglers that are blocked by `*.roku.com` DNS blackhole. Another thing is `api.rokutime.com`, but as of writing it's a CNAME to one of `roku.com` subdomains. The block rates seem to correlate with watch time increasing to ~1/second, so it's definitely trying to phone home with something. Too bad it can't since all its traffic going outside LAN is dropped with prejudice. If your network allows to see stuff like that, look into what PS5 is trying to do.
- CursedSilicon 10mo agoHashing might not work since the stream itself would be a variable bitrate, meaning the individual pixels would differ and therefore the computed file hash
- micromacrofoot 10mo agoThe PS5 doesn't need to, they get it all in metadata because they control the full stack — TVs do it because they have less control over sources.
- dontlaugh 10mo agoThe PS5 does actually record video all the time in a ring buffer. That’s how when you press the share button, it includes a video of the recent past.
- micromacrofoot 10mo agoright that's the purpose though, they don't need to ship screenshots for monitoring
- brcmthrowaway 10mo agoIs the PS5 not jailbroken?
- autoexec 10mo agoI'm sure somebody's done it, but mine isn't. I do make sure to pull the microphones out of the controllers at least so while they can watch everything I'm doing on my screen they can't listen to the entire house.
- TimPC 10mo agoIt’s far less important for ad-free content. They mainly want to connect your ad watching behaviour to an email and then have loyalty program data connected to the same email so that they can identify which ads convert vs not.
- afavour 10mo agoIt’s still a privacy violation a lot of people would be outraged by if they knew it. Tracking what shows you are watching is a valuable data set.
- sroussey 10mo agoIt’s right there in your TV’s settings though. Personally, I don’t trust them to obey the setting so my TV has no internet and I use an Apple TV.
- rockskon 10mo agoIn your settings under how many nested menus under which deceptively named option? And how many options do you need to toggle to actually opt out?
- sroussey 10mo agoFor my LG TV, it is as deep as you can possibly go! And I think it took two options to fully opt out (including turning off the microphone).
- phyzix5761 10mo agoI'm surprised to see how few of my non-technical friends and family actually care about privacy.
- gausswho 10mo agoI'd like to weaponize all this scanning into a force for good. Instead of phoning home to Roku, send the fingerprints up to an ADID database registering every ad on the planet. Open up an API so that any video stream can detect an ad and inject Max Headroom replacement clips. Come on hackers. We could murder the global economy with this shit.
- lodovic 10mo agoI've been thinking about this as well - make a small device that in real time detects ads and turns off audio an video while it's playing. I'd rather see a blank screen than an ad. That way, the whole ad pyramid scheme stays intact while the conversion rates plummet.
- xnx 10mo agoSame here. I've done this for podcasts (not in real time) and it works great. TV should be easier in some ways since the video stream and captions can also indicate an ad.
- RegW 10mo agoI used to find when listening to a good many podcasts with VLC there would be: > ... See you after the break. brief pause > And we're back ... Unfortunately, most ads are now burnt in. The 10 second advance will skip through them, but as it's usually the host parroting the ad text and it's easy to over shoot.
- Griffinsauce 10mo ago> while the conversion rates plummet. Isn't the segment who will set this up also likely to have a low conversion rate to begin with? You'd need to make it so easy that it becomes fully mainstream. I suspect that's what happened to adblockers, it got a bit too "standard" for (Google's) comfort.
- RataNova 10mo agoThe only real question is whether they're doing screen-level analysis or just relying on app telemetry
- the_gastropod 10mo agoIf I’m understanding you right, I’m confident it’s screen analysis. I have a Hisense Roku TV I exclusively use with an AppleTV. I get creepy intrusive popups telling me: “you could be watching this on other streaming providers!” all the time. So it “knows” what’s being displayed on the screen regardless of what app (or HDMI input) is being used.
- IX-103 10mo agoThey're definitely doing screen level analysis. I work for a company that does some work on Internet advertising and one of the main issues that came up when we discussed supporting smart TV platforms was how we could protect our proprietary advertising audience data while still showing ads on these devices. Knowing what ads we show the user tells them what the user is interested in, which is valuable information for our competitors. Unfortunately, we were not able to solve that problem, and instead to just use lower fidelity user models for advertising on smart TVs. That makes smart TV ads less valuable, but allows us to keep our competitive advantage on desktop and mobile.
- mapt 10mo agoDoes this apply for external video inputs, outside of the smart TV OS? I guess I can always just refuse the TV OS access to the wifi, assuming they're not using 4G modems.
- next_xibalba 10mo agoI'm fairly puzzled by my own reaction to this. I'm indifferent to YouTube have frame-by-frame nanodata about me. But as a Roku user, this snap shotting makes me very angry. Maybe because much of what I watch on my TV via my Roku is content I own and stream from my personal server?
- B-Con 10mo agoFor me, I despise having different abstractions get crossed. I expect my media app, ie. YouTube, to know what I watch from the media app. YouTube knows about YouTube. My operating system, ie. Roku, should not know about what's happening inside a given app. ie. Roku does not know about YouTube. When they start crossing layers, that greatly upsets me.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]