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in the US. My LG TV has put up a giant TOS agreement thing and I can't use any apps until I agree. So I unplugged the ethernet cable and bought an Apple TV. pr

in the US. My LG TV has put up a giant TOS agreement thing and I can't use any apps until I agree. So I unplugged the ethernet cable and bought an Apple TV. problem solved?

microtonal 28d ago
For now. I wouldn't surprised that if enough people start doing this, they'll just put a cheap cellular modem in the TV. Or find open access points. Or make a deal with Amazon and others to exfiltrate information via a smart home speaker/assistant. Technical solutions only go so far, at some point you have to put in place a regulatory framework that requires consent. The divergences between US-EU privacy policies, configuration screens, etc. show that the GDPR is slowly starting to do its work.
rickdeckard 28d ago
What LG (and Samsung and all the other electronics companies) are doing is profiling the user to sell targeted advertising. This is technically not personal information, and that's a grey area for those companies when communicating to the public. People here generally don't like to hear that, but Apple is doing the very same. There's even a study-paper on how they do this without collecting personal information [0] So when a company yells out how it's not collecting your "personal information", the statement actually doesn't cover what has been discovered here from all I can decipher from this "research" [0] https://machinelearning.apple.com/research/learning-with-privacy-at-scale https://machinelearning.apple.com/research/learning-with-pri...
drnick1 28d ago
> So I unplugged the ethernet cable and bought an Apple TV. What makes you think the Apple TV is any better? I'd wager that Apple collects just as much telemetry.
- sgerenser 28d ago
  No, I don’t think they do. That’s why AppleTV is so expensive compared to a Roku.
- qwytw 27d ago
  Apple has little incentives to do that, though? They make money from selling hardware and are able to charge a premium (more than they could making by stealing and selling private user information) because they have a reputation. It would be very unwise to compromise that for pennies. LG and other consumer electronics manufacturers have tiny margins compared to Apple so that extra percent or two they can make from stuff like this is pretty big for them.

in the US. My LG TV has put up a giant TOS agreement thing and I can't use any apps until I agree. So I unplugged the ethernet cable and bought an Apple TV. problem solved?

microtonal 28d ago

For now. I wouldn't surprised that if enough people start doing this, they'll just put a cheap cellular modem in the TV. Or find open access points. Or make a deal with Amazon and others to exfiltrate information via a smart home speaker/assistant. Technical solutions only go so far, at some point you have to put in place a regulatory framework that requires consent. The divergences between US-EU privacy policies, configuration screens, etc. show that the GDPR is slowly starting to do its work.

rickdeckard 28d ago

What LG (and Samsung and all the other electronics companies) are doing is profiling the user to sell targeted advertising. This is technically not personal information, and that's a grey area for those companies when communicating to the public. People here generally don't like to hear that, but Apple is doing the very same. There's even a study-paper on how they do this without collecting personal information [0] So when a company yells out how it's not collecting your "personal information", the statement actually doesn't cover what has been discovered here from all I can decipher from this "research" [0] https://machinelearning.apple.com/research/learning-with-privacy-at-scale https://machinelearning.apple.com/research/learning-with-pri...

drnick1 28d ago

> So I unplugged the ethernet cable and bought an Apple TV. What makes you think the Apple TV is any better? I'd wager that Apple collects just as much telemetry.

sgerenser 28d ago
No, I don’t think they do. That’s why AppleTV is so expensive compared to a Roku.
qwytw 27d ago
Apple has little incentives to do that, though? They make money from selling hardware and are able to charge a premium (more than they could making by stealing and selling private user information) because they have a reputation. It would be very unwise to compromise that for pennies. LG and other consumer electronics manufacturers have tiny margins compared to Apple so that extra percent or two they can make from stuff like this is pretty big for them.