Smart TVs are like “a digital Trojan Horse” in people’s homes

arstechnica.com CTV industry’s unprecedented “surveillance”

48-page report citing Ars Technica urges FTC, FCC investigate connected TV data harvesting. Gen AI, potentially racially discrimniatory practices head concerns.

48-page report urges FTC, FCC to investigate connected TV industry data harvesting.

The companies behind the streaming industry, including smart TV and streaming stick manufacturers and streaming service providers, have developed a "surveillance system" that has "long undermined privacy and consumer protection," according to a report from the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD) published today and sent to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Unprecedented tracking techniques aimed at pleasing advertisers have resulted in connected TVs (CTVs) being a "privacy nightmare," according to Jeffrey Chester, report co-author and CDD executive director, resulting in calls for stronger regulation.

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25 comments

I hate our TV so much.
I have a HTPC but it takes forever to turn the TV on and switch to HDMI input.
Also my wife refuses to use HTPC.
- Use the HTPC as a Plex or Jellyfin server and plug an Apple TV or something in over HDMI. Much more user friendly
  
  That's what I'm doing?
  Just that I have a shitty TCL TV.
  
  Oh, I thought you had the actual PC plugged into the TV and your wife was struggling with that.
  
  Now I'm confused. I do have the actual PC plugged in to the TV. Isn't that what you were suggesting?
  I have a Lenovo M700 running LibreElec (just enough OS to run Kodi), which passes a HDMI signal to my surround sound receiver.
  When you turn on the TV, it takes about 2 minutes for android to boot up. Then you have to switch it across to HDMI input so you can see the signal from the M700 / Kodi.
  Kodi is pretty great and I do like it. The reason my wife doesn't like this set up is because she likes to watch things on youtube and just let the algorithm choose what to watch next (I know right). You can watch youtube from Kodi, I even scrape youtube channels to my home server for the things my kids watch, but it just doesn't work in this "let the algo feed me more" kind of way.
  
  I’m saying I’d just turn the PC into a headless server and get an Apple TV or something and plug it into the TV. The apps on a streaming box are going to be optimized for couch use, and then she can use the YouTube app with her algorithm if she wants.
  That’s essentially what I have, a Plex server in my office and Apple TVs on each of the TVs around the house. Whether you like Apple or not, their 4K box is powerful enough to decode any media I’ve thrown at it and it supports pretty much all codecs without issue. The remote control is nice as well, but you need an Apple account to set it up.
  How are you controlling Kodi from the couch? Do you have a remote control, or a mouse and keyboard or something? Having to use traditional PC controls in the living room is probably enough friction to turn most people away. You can have the best of both worlds if you get a “normie” streaming stick/box and connect it to your offline media server.
  
  Yeah. All good points. Sorry you threw me earlier when you said something about connecting via HDMI.
  I respect anyone's freedom to choose whatever hardware they want and accept that Apple may be a very good solution, but I just couldn't stomach it myself.
  You can control Kodi from an app on your phone. It's just like a tv remote. I think the UI is pretty great honestly. Hard to imagine anything significantly better or more user friendly.
  I think the basic problem is that we bought the biggest cheapest TV we could. The manufacturer had no budget for UX, so we ended up with a dogs ass.
- This is awful, but our non-dumb TV (we have two TVs) is so damn slow to start and switch over that if we know we're going to watch something on it the next day, we just don't turn it off.
  But that one gets a lot less use, so it's not left on all the time at least.
  
  Yeah. God forbid you have to navigate the UI, it's like wading around in a swamp.

25 comments