This „we own the glass“ idea is completely insane. How does an industry degenerate to the point where they consider acceptable to base their business model on owning part of the product they sell you?
Big pivotal moment is probably the DMCA and the DRM it's enabled, it's really eroded the concept of ownership in both software and hardware (via firmware), to the point where we've completely lost all control over the devices we buy.
These days devices do what we ask when it benefits their real owners, and refuse to do what we ask of them when it doesn't.
It wasn't an overnight thing, but the temperature in the pot has been increasing for well over a two decades and it's getting more than a bit sweaty.
It's not like Doctorow, the EFF, and a bunch of others didn't warn us. They told us this would happen. Like exactly this.
I don't think "jailbreak and install your own software on your TV" would be common even without the DMCA...and it would still be necessary, nothing would be stopping the companies from writing these stock software systems.
I brought this up all the time I argued with co-workers I advocated for Open Source because I knew where this was headed and every time it played out the exact way this comic did.
Now I just post a link to this comic in discussion about these kind of things.
https://xkcd.com/743/
Open source caused this, as much as anything else did. When you demand that software is free, you kill the market for paid software, leaving only enshittified software to fill the void. This has the dual effect of being worse for both developers and consumers: significantly fewer developers can make a living outside of working for $EvilEnterprise, which have an easier time centralizing and monopolizing the market, and consumers are paying the developers working at $EvilEnterprise with their data and lack of ownership. This is the business model of free software. There was never going to be a world where all software developers worked for free as a hobby, never received compensation, and all software was truly free.
I don't know how you can simultaneously believe that open source is prevalent enough to kill paid software but also non-existent enough that it doesn't itself fill the void it supposedly created.
Because that void is filled by open-source software that, even if it is not itself enshittified, is controlled and funded by big tech. Take languages and compilers, for instance. It is almost[1] impossible to make a living developing languages and compiler software independently or as a small business. So how do compiler developers get paid? By receiving funding from Microsoft, Google, et al. C, C++, Rust, Go, JS, TS, C#, Java, Python are all owned by big tech, who fund them with their revenues from doing exactly the evil big tech things being decried here. Linux funding is the same story. Browser funding is the same story. So too for most open source 'success stories'. There are exceptions, like SQLite, but they are rare. To the extent exceptions exist, it's mostly due to B2B consulting and enterprise contracts, which is not a business model that works for consumer-facing software of any kind.
[1] Zig is, I think, the only living counterexample.
Eh, areas where there was and is still plenty of scope to just charge for a product have also been heavily enshittified, so I don't think you can lay much blame at open source for this.
Open Source never meant having to give your software away for free, it was always free as in speech. In that you could see the crap you got and change it if you wanted to.
But you're right I'm sure that if there hadn't been the GCC there wouldn've been a ton of competing compilers. I'm sure that it was the existence of Apache that ruined computing and brought about the enshittification of the web not MS trying to force everyone to cater to IE and then Google doing the same with Chrome, it's all just because of that evil Open Source.
The freedoms that the GPL gives to users in effect means giving your software away for free (because any single one of them is allowed to republish it openly). I do think there is a possible alternative model which gives most of the user freedom Stallman cared about but which doesn't produce this (something along the lines of being able to view the source code of software you buy, as well as modify it, but only being allowed to share the modifications with others who have bought the software, or only being allowed to distribute the patches as opposed to republishing the full software), but this hasn't really been tried as far as I know.
I guess back when software only came in disks that sounded good business wise. Today if I can get your source I’ll compile it, price a bit lower and publish it in a few hours.
> Open Source never meant having to give your software away for free, it was always free as in speech.
Sure, sure. And how exactly is software not also free-as-in-beer when any consumer can just download it themselves?
> if there hadn't been the GCC there wouldn've been a ton of competing compilers.
As I already noted in reply to your sibling comment, which you conveniently chose to ignore, every single one of those competing compilers bar one is funded by big tech. You can count the number of compiler developers who make a living without being funded by big tech, in the entire world, on your hands. GCC development is itself supported by big tech.
> Google doing the same with Chrome, it's all just because of that evil Open Source.
Do you need to be reminded that Chromium is open-source software? There is no market for competition to Chrome because no browser developer could compete with "free". Firefox is open-source and also propped up by billions in Google funding. There are zero consumer-viable browsers that are not just a Chromium or Firefox reskin.
You even brought up IE, which is an example of the exact principle I'm talking about. It wasn't open-source, but, same as open-source software, it was free, and this big tech-funded free software killed its paid competitor (Netscape). This was a huge deal at the time, enough for the US government to get involved in antitrust. Then MS got let off with a gentle warning, everybody shrugged their shoulders, developed amnesia, and decided actually it's great if we let 5 or so tech monopolies undercut all of their competitors with 'free' software and solidify complete control of the market.
We didn’t have laws but every TV at the dawn of the era came with full schematics and documentation.
That said, I’m not arguing that we don’t need laws today - we do, or at least I have no other idea how to do a course correction from where we are. Preferably wide-range ones that alter the whole consumer-producer relationships.
But the key thing is not the laws, it’s the attitude (individual and corporate) towards others. Can’t legislate that, I’m afraid.
yep one of the first rules of any market should be
you sell a product -> you are responsible about the product
with a ".. -> you must be honest about the product (/what the products does, provides, etc.)"
to see how absurdly not followed this common sense(^1) is in the us look at supplements
1. provider are not hold responsible, non small parts of sold supplements are harmful in one way or another. Even cases like supplements advertised for pregnant woman with highly dangerous components for pregnant woman existed, no major change followed.
2. high amounts (AFIK 80% or so) of supplements sold in the US are severely dishonest and don't quite contain what is advertised. And this isn't just about it technically containing the supplements, but in a form the body can't absurd. But it goes so bad that "it's just sugar pills" is more on the harmless side... (and even that is dangerous given that many people take supplements for fixing health issues caused by to little of what the supplement).
not only has the US not fixed it when it started going out of hand, they went explicitly out of their way to not fix it.
(^1): (Common sense for anyone looking a bit into market dynamics/consumer protection etc.)
I don't think the supplement information you quoted is correct. There are issues, but I don't think it is that prevalent. I subscribe to consumerlab.com, they do regular testing.
(1) is certainly correct, they're poorly understood when it comes to interactions and they almost never have much clinical evidence for claims (thus they say "support"). There are also heavy metal contaminants in all sorts of things, certainly stuff bad for babies.
Just to make clear that while (2) is at least an exaggeration unless you really stretch the issues with GRAS components not being adequately safety tested, it's certainly true that evidence of benefit is thin.
Personally I'd love to see the FDA actually regulate supplements, including actually testing additives for safety rather than falling back on GRAS sketchiness.
But we can't even test food for parasites and bacteria so I guess it falls to the consumer to somehow get enough information to make an informed decision.
Lawmakers should have outlawed EULAs the moment they first showed up in software. The idea that someone could sell you a product which is completely broken until you sign away all your rights on a contract you don't get to see before the purchase is the most anti-consumer thing ever invented. Nothing worked like that before software came along.
The fact that it's now infecting other non-software consumer products is a reason why congress should kill this with fire. Companies are putting screens onto products specifically so they can force an EULA on customers.
Companies are amoral. If killing people boosted their share price they would issue every employee a machine gun in a heartbeat. The only reason this doesn't happen is it's illegal.
Marketing executives thinking “out of the box” is how. Ethics cannot contain them inside. They have breached the perimeter and now trample everyone for MRR.
Literally every business is working towards a solution where consumers own nothing and they own everything. Games, music, movies. They want to sell you subscriptions to use shit like your car or your fridge. They want to double dip on that by making you not only pay for the ability to use the stuff you bought, but also so that they can sell everything you do on it to advertisers. This is even especially true with all the shit people feed LLMs daily for work or personal purposes.
This is the end state of an unregulated capitalist market without consumer protections.
How is it insane. Owning distribution channels has been valuable since the beginning of commerce. It's no different than a newspaper company saying they own the paper so they have the power to print ads in it.
If consumers are unwilling to shell out for a TV priced high enough that the manufacturer doesn't need to do things like this to earn a (decent) profit, then what we've got is what you get.
You could certainly argue that the industry should've held the line, but that ignores human nature. One "innovative" manufacturer was always going to break ranks then the rest would follow, especially since the typical consumer appears (judging by the lack of non smart TV's for sale at consumer prices) to prefer lower prices to lack of tracking features. I think people very much like being able to buy a 65" tv for USD399.
If you want to mandate the sales of TVs that don't track, get a law passed. I suspect it'd be deeply unpopular once the resulting price rises were known.
> If consumers are unwilling to shell out for a TV priced high enough that the manufacturer doesn't need to do things like this to earn a (decent) profit, ...
The problem is, even if the device is priced at cost plus a reasonable margin, they can make more margin by selling data that they acquire by spying. No matter the margin on the sale, there's still more money to make by selling that data. There is no upper limit that magically prevents the manufacturer from looking for other avenues to increase profit. "Premium" device priced 3x the "reasonable" price? Still more money to be made selling data.
Now, factor in the race to the bottom on selling price, and those data sales just look that much more enticing.
What do you mean? I don’t recall ever asking manufacturers if I could trade my privacy for a discount. I don’t remember that at all…people will pay whatever the price is, if inflation hasn’t taught that to you, then I’m not sure what to tell you. The other thing inflation showed us, is that manufacturers will absolutely put a price on what they feel is “decent profit.” Cmon dude. Do you not remember how much we paid for eggs?!
Which, i think it was found later to be that the manufacturers “manufactured,” “scam-bled eggs.”
You know, I’ve been thinking, I don’t think im being paid enough! Im giving myself a raise. We can do that, right?!
> Companies can develop new products without your advice. In fact consumers often don't know what they want.
I'd urge reading up on revealed preference and product discovery. It cuts both ways in that, sure, a company can offer a product on the market that no buyer asked for and have it sell well, but then, the media can expose some rather unsavory facts about that same product and subsequently (consequently?) have it not sell.
> Then why do businesses have sales? If prices don't matter why would businesses choose to make less money per sale?
It's worth picking this apart. Prices not mattering is usually expressed in economics-ese as price-inelastic demand, and that's usually not what's happening. Sales are a mechanism for drumming up demand for a product, with the hope that the additional volume will compensate for the marginally lower margin.
>I'd urge reading up on revealed preference and product discovery
I'm not sure what point you are contesting.
>It's worth picking this apart.
They were rhetorical questions.
>price-inelastic demand
With this you could argue that the absolute price does not matter, but the relative price between products that can substitute each other do. In this comment chain it is being argued that this kind of device wins on relative price.
>Sales are a mechanism for drumming up demand for a product, with the hope that the additional volume will compensate for the marginally lower margin.
It is for increasing demand, but making a higher rate of profit on the item is not the main reason. Things like being able to clear inventory, or to learn about what the current demand curve looks like (to know if prices should be adjusted) are more common purposes.
You're expecting consumers to be able to compare these anti-features that are actively hidden from them. It's like airline seats - airlines get away with continually shrinking them because consumers have no way to actually compare airline seat sizes ahead of time.
This stance is so anti-consumer it's laughable. Are you seriously implying LG doesn't turn a decent profit with their massive empire? There's an issue with capitalism of chasing infinite growth rather than stability, and this is one of the consequences of chasing such growth.
I deeply regret buying my LG. Originally the plan was to never connect it to wifi, and use an external device (chromecast, apple tv, or whatever) but my wife was too excited to try out whatever features. Unfortunately we can't sell the TV for anywhere what we paid for it new (to replace it with a different brand) so we're stuck with it for another ~7-10 years, or whatever the standard TV replacement interval is these days. New "apps" keep showing up on the main screen, which I have to "delete" from the main screen once a month or so (they're not deleted, they're just undeletable apps in some massive library of preinstalled spyware we can fortunately mostly hide). Apparently Sony OLED screens are LG "glass" but without the spyware.
I have a Sony A95K and have kept it in basic mode because I have a shield I like to Game on. The sony is very minimal and after subsequent software updates hasn't offered me any ads, or programs to run even while connected to WiFi.
This is also my question, but I suppose the answer could be that we don't trust LG to actually forget the wifi password (and not use it surreptitiously later). You could also change the wifi info, but that might mean changing a whole lot of devices (including wife's and kids).
If someone is supposedly concerned about being recorded, having their privacy invaded etc. but they're too lazy to change the wifi password and deal with the trivial inconvenience of changing it on other household devices then in this case the revealed preference really is that they don't really care.
As others have said, cut off access and/or factory reset it.
My LG has never been granted net access, firmware upgrades through USB drives, and streaming through Onn 4K box(w/ a 3rd party launcher) and Apple TV. No surprise ads, apps, or anything.
I updated my LG C5 firmware via USB and my Nintendo Switch 2 now says “Switch 2” on the home page instead of “Unknown Device”. So that’s nice I guess. Also it seemed to fix something with the 120hz HDR 10:10:10 signal when connected to my PC if I recall correctly that before resulted in poor image quality.
Mostly bug fixes relevant to higher end home theatre setups. Typically bleeding edge stuff where a TV is released before a new HDMI spec is fully baked or whatnot. One of my older OLED panels needed a number of updates to get proper Dolby Vision profile support a few years back.
Typically not all that relevant most of the time to the average consumer, but if you’re having a persistent annoyance it’s worth looking through release notes from time to time.
This ignores that the vast majority of consumers actually use the smart tv features like the Netflix app. Then updates start to become far more relevant and eventually mandatory.
It feels like there must be multiple completely different implementations of LG OLED TVs. I would not say that my LG has a "main screen" of any kind. When I turn mine on it shows the last input that had been used or, if that thing is off, it shows the bouncy egg and "No Signal". If I press the button on the remote that says RECENTS and has a picture of a house on it, which I guess is the "main screen", it maintains the bouncy egg but shows a ribbon of apps on the bottom. Those are my installed apps: Hulu, Prime, Peacock, YouTube, Netflix, Apple TV, and Disney+ happen to be today's recents. Where is this "main screen" where unbidden appvertisements arise?
Mine has been strictly MRU forever. When I look at this video, it does not resemble the software on my LG OLED TV at all. There must be several platforms or generations.
I asked Claude to scan my network and check if LG tv is sending data, it said yes. Some domains were blocked by my router some were not, now Claude blocked all lg related tracking/ad domains on my router.
I have an older LG Smart TV. It was cheap and big. I have never plugged it into my network, never let it on my wifi. When I turn it on, it complains for 5 sec, then displays what's on hdmi1. Works for me.
TBH only hope at this point is for BOE/PRC panel makers to thoroughly involute and for bare panels + dumb connectors make it to aliexpress, i.e. like we have after market screens for everything else. Buy a screen, buy a case, get your dumb screen. TV manufactures will absolutely not pass up ad monetization, especially Korean ones that can't survive with lower margins.
What you want to look for is called "Commercial Signage Display". These are basically large "TV" monitors that are sold to businesses like sports bars.
I used to go on here about Sceptre TVs, because they are relatively cheap and dumb as a brick. Was just shopping for one because of this LG news (wanted to replace my old one from 2014), and while Sceptre still lists them on their website, they tell me to go to Amazon or Walmart to buy one.
Amazon and Walmart say they are out of stock, with no expected date.
My conclusion is that Sceptre, the last holdout in the dumb TV industry, has quit in favor of focusing on monitors/displays for computers. Now I'm not sure if I'm going to ever replace my TV!
I think this is the important question. I've been searching, but all I found were deprecated and incomplete projects. If anyone knows some actual current development, even incomplete ones, let us know.
I'm so tired of "smart" tech. I don't want my TV, or fridge, or dryer or anything connecting to wifi and bluetooth and having an app to manage settings. It's hard to believe there's demand for any of these terrible "features". The peak of smart tech were watches you could do math on.
Somewhat off topic but also ironic - I recently upgraded my version of Android, and when I opened YouTube for the first time on this video it asked for permission to detect nearby devices. I get why it would need that to cast, but at this point it's not paranoia to think that granting that permission just means it would scan whenever I have the app open and upload the data to YouTube servers for no good reason.
YouTube can cast to TVs on a local subnet and is looking for them. This isn't new. What's new is that Android now warns when an app starts poking around on your LAN.
The crazy part of this is that LG did not fear flat out admitting they do fingerprint the audio of what you watch. I already knew that, but I can't imagine it's common knowledge yet. How long ago was it that that would have been the crazy untrue accusation?
Not defending LG's stance, but hasn't LG always said they do this as part of ACR (automatic content recognition) for the purposes of targeted advertising?
LG says it's opt in, and I think the devil is really in the details about what the consent screen says, but the only way I think it would be a "crazy accusation" is if LG was doing this without consent.
They're not doing it with consent. LG still covertly takes screenshots of everything you display on your screen even when you set every available option that's supposed to stop this:
And there are cases of LG re-enabling these ACR options without your consent when they push firmware updates, and even randomly without updating, at which point the TV will send all the past and present ACR data it's harvested from you to LG, without your consent:
It's almost certainly A/B test. Essentially everyone does it.
You can even sometimes see when a list of videos on YT first loads and a given video has one title, and it suddenly switches to another without you reloading the page.
On several channels I watch, I've noticed the top comment is always along the lines of "who was here when the video title was XYZ" because you know it's going to change.
Have you noticed that has become more common recently? Because I have. It seems over the past 3/4 months, reload and see a new title happens pretty much daily to me (it also seems to work because sometimes it causes me to click the video I didn't click with the old title).
I just had a crazy idea: Are there any ways we (consumers) could leverage the (bad) DMCA "anti-circumvention" laws?
Ex:
1. The noise happening in my house is copyrighted.
2. I protected my copyright by blocking the TV from transmitting it to known manufacturer domains.
3. By switching to obfuscated domains or alternate transmission paths, the manufacturer started circumventing my copyright controls.
... I suppose the boring answer will be that the literally-unreadable stack of Terms Of Service has some "everything we ever do is permitted by you" clause.
This „we own the glass“ idea is completely insane. How does an industry degenerate to the point where they consider acceptable to base their business model on owning part of the product they sell you?
Big pivotal moment is probably the DMCA and the DRM it's enabled, it's really eroded the concept of ownership in both software and hardware (via firmware), to the point where we've completely lost all control over the devices we buy.
These days devices do what we ask when it benefits their real owners, and refuse to do what we ask of them when it doesn't.
It wasn't an overnight thing, but the temperature in the pot has been increasing for well over a two decades and it's getting more than a bit sweaty.
It's not like Doctorow, the EFF, and a bunch of others didn't warn us. They told us this would happen. Like exactly this.
I don't think "jailbreak and install your own software on your TV" would be common even without the DMCA...and it would still be necessary, nothing would be stopping the companies from writing these stock software systems.
Active regulation of the marketplace is needed.
I brought this up all the time I argued with co-workers I advocated for Open Source because I knew where this was headed and every time it played out the exact way this comic did. Now I just post a link to this comic in discussion about these kind of things. https://xkcd.com/743/
I hate that 2010 is 16 years ago
Open source caused this, as much as anything else did. When you demand that software is free, you kill the market for paid software, leaving only enshittified software to fill the void. This has the dual effect of being worse for both developers and consumers: significantly fewer developers can make a living outside of working for $EvilEnterprise, which have an easier time centralizing and monopolizing the market, and consumers are paying the developers working at $EvilEnterprise with their data and lack of ownership. This is the business model of free software. There was never going to be a world where all software developers worked for free as a hobby, never received compensation, and all software was truly free.
I don't know how you can simultaneously believe that open source is prevalent enough to kill paid software but also non-existent enough that it doesn't itself fill the void it supposedly created.
Because that void is filled by open-source software that, even if it is not itself enshittified, is controlled and funded by big tech. Take languages and compilers, for instance. It is almost[1] impossible to make a living developing languages and compiler software independently or as a small business. So how do compiler developers get paid? By receiving funding from Microsoft, Google, et al. C, C++, Rust, Go, JS, TS, C#, Java, Python are all owned by big tech, who fund them with their revenues from doing exactly the evil big tech things being decried here. Linux funding is the same story. Browser funding is the same story. So too for most open source 'success stories'. There are exceptions, like SQLite, but they are rare. To the extent exceptions exist, it's mostly due to B2B consulting and enterprise contracts, which is not a business model that works for consumer-facing software of any kind.
[1] Zig is, I think, the only living counterexample.
Eh, areas where there was and is still plenty of scope to just charge for a product have also been heavily enshittified, so I don't think you can lay much blame at open source for this.
Open Source never meant having to give your software away for free, it was always free as in speech. In that you could see the crap you got and change it if you wanted to.
But you're right I'm sure that if there hadn't been the GCC there wouldn've been a ton of competing compilers. I'm sure that it was the existence of Apache that ruined computing and brought about the enshittification of the web not MS trying to force everyone to cater to IE and then Google doing the same with Chrome, it's all just because of that evil Open Source.
The freedoms that the GPL gives to users in effect means giving your software away for free (because any single one of them is allowed to republish it openly). I do think there is a possible alternative model which gives most of the user freedom Stallman cared about but which doesn't produce this (something along the lines of being able to view the source code of software you buy, as well as modify it, but only being allowed to share the modifications with others who have bought the software, or only being allowed to distribute the patches as opposed to republishing the full software), but this hasn't really been tried as far as I know.
I guess back when software only came in disks that sounded good business wise. Today if I can get your source I’ll compile it, price a bit lower and publish it in a few hours.
> Open Source never meant having to give your software away for free, it was always free as in speech.
Sure, sure. And how exactly is software not also free-as-in-beer when any consumer can just download it themselves?
> if there hadn't been the GCC there wouldn've been a ton of competing compilers.
As I already noted in reply to your sibling comment, which you conveniently chose to ignore, every single one of those competing compilers bar one is funded by big tech. You can count the number of compiler developers who make a living without being funded by big tech, in the entire world, on your hands. GCC development is itself supported by big tech.
> Google doing the same with Chrome, it's all just because of that evil Open Source.
Do you need to be reminded that Chromium is open-source software? There is no market for competition to Chrome because no browser developer could compete with "free". Firefox is open-source and also propped up by billions in Google funding. There are zero consumer-viable browsers that are not just a Chromium or Firefox reskin.
You even brought up IE, which is an example of the exact principle I'm talking about. It wasn't open-source, but, same as open-source software, it was free, and this big tech-funded free software killed its paid competitor (Netscape). This was a huge deal at the time, enough for the US government to get involved in antitrust. Then MS got let off with a gentle warning, everybody shrugged their shoulders, developed amnesia, and decided actually it's great if we let 5 or so tech monopolies undercut all of their competitors with 'free' software and solidify complete control of the market.
If you don't have laws, or don't enforce them, people will do whatever they want.
I can remember when this simple point was obvious to almost everyone.
We didn’t have laws but every TV at the dawn of the era came with full schematics and documentation.
That said, I’m not arguing that we don’t need laws today - we do, or at least I have no other idea how to do a course correction from where we are. Preferably wide-range ones that alter the whole consumer-producer relationships.
But the key thing is not the laws, it’s the attitude (individual and corporate) towards others. Can’t legislate that, I’m afraid.
yep one of the first rules of any market should be
you sell a product -> you are responsible about the product
with a ".. -> you must be honest about the product (/what the products does, provides, etc.)"
to see how absurdly not followed this common sense(^1) is in the us look at supplements
1. provider are not hold responsible, non small parts of sold supplements are harmful in one way or another. Even cases like supplements advertised for pregnant woman with highly dangerous components for pregnant woman existed, no major change followed.
2. high amounts (AFIK 80% or so) of supplements sold in the US are severely dishonest and don't quite contain what is advertised. And this isn't just about it technically containing the supplements, but in a form the body can't absurd. But it goes so bad that "it's just sugar pills" is more on the harmless side... (and even that is dangerous given that many people take supplements for fixing health issues caused by to little of what the supplement).
not only has the US not fixed it when it started going out of hand, they went explicitly out of their way to not fix it.
(^1): (Common sense for anyone looking a bit into market dynamics/consumer protection etc.)
I don't think the supplement information you quoted is correct. There are issues, but I don't think it is that prevalent. I subscribe to consumerlab.com, they do regular testing.
(1) is certainly correct, they're poorly understood when it comes to interactions and they almost never have much clinical evidence for claims (thus they say "support"). There are also heavy metal contaminants in all sorts of things, certainly stuff bad for babies.
Just to make clear that while (2) is at least an exaggeration unless you really stretch the issues with GRAS components not being adequately safety tested, it's certainly true that evidence of benefit is thin.
Personally I'd love to see the FDA actually regulate supplements, including actually testing additives for safety rather than falling back on GRAS sketchiness.
But we can't even test food for parasites and bacteria so I guess it falls to the consumer to somehow get enough information to make an informed decision.
Lawmakers should have outlawed EULAs the moment they first showed up in software. The idea that someone could sell you a product which is completely broken until you sign away all your rights on a contract you don't get to see before the purchase is the most anti-consumer thing ever invented. Nothing worked like that before software came along.
The fact that it's now infecting other non-software consumer products is a reason why congress should kill this with fire. Companies are putting screens onto products specifically so they can force an EULA on customers.
Companies are amoral. If killing people boosted their share price they would issue every employee a machine gun in a heartbeat. The only reason this doesn't happen is it's illegal.
If you do it, you have to be more subtle about it. See Apple.
Sony and Microsoft fought to own the living room in console wars
Marketing executives thinking “out of the box” is how. Ethics cannot contain them inside. They have breached the perimeter and now trample everyone for MRR.
I'm not sure how anyone didn't see this coming.
Literally every business is working towards a solution where consumers own nothing and they own everything. Games, music, movies. They want to sell you subscriptions to use shit like your car or your fridge. They want to double dip on that by making you not only pay for the ability to use the stuff you bought, but also so that they can sell everything you do on it to advertisers. This is even especially true with all the shit people feed LLMs daily for work or personal purposes.
This is the end state of an unregulated capitalist market without consumer protections.
How is it insane. Owning distribution channels has been valuable since the beginning of commerce. It's no different than a newspaper company saying they own the paper so they have the power to print ads in it.
It's not entirely the fault of the industry. Consumer preferences are part of this equation too.
https://www.streamtvinsider.com/advertising/roku-vizio-lean-...
If consumers are unwilling to shell out for a TV priced high enough that the manufacturer doesn't need to do things like this to earn a (decent) profit, then what we've got is what you get.
You could certainly argue that the industry should've held the line, but that ignores human nature. One "innovative" manufacturer was always going to break ranks then the rest would follow, especially since the typical consumer appears (judging by the lack of non smart TV's for sale at consumer prices) to prefer lower prices to lack of tracking features. I think people very much like being able to buy a 65" tv for USD399.
If you want to mandate the sales of TVs that don't track, get a law passed. I suspect it'd be deeply unpopular once the resulting price rises were known.
> If consumers are unwilling to shell out for a TV priced high enough that the manufacturer doesn't need to do things like this to earn a (decent) profit, ...
The problem is, even if the device is priced at cost plus a reasonable margin, they can make more margin by selling data that they acquire by spying. No matter the margin on the sale, there's still more money to make by selling that data. There is no upper limit that magically prevents the manufacturer from looking for other avenues to increase profit. "Premium" device priced 3x the "reasonable" price? Still more money to be made selling data.
Now, factor in the race to the bottom on selling price, and those data sales just look that much more enticing.
What do you mean? I don’t recall ever asking manufacturers if I could trade my privacy for a discount. I don’t remember that at all…people will pay whatever the price is, if inflation hasn’t taught that to you, then I’m not sure what to tell you. The other thing inflation showed us, is that manufacturers will absolutely put a price on what they feel is “decent profit.” Cmon dude. Do you not remember how much we paid for eggs?! Which, i think it was found later to be that the manufacturers “manufactured,” “scam-bled eggs.”
You know, I’ve been thinking, I don’t think im being paid enough! Im giving myself a raise. We can do that, right?!
>I don't recall asking
Companies can develop new products without your advice. In fact consumers often don't know what they want.
>people will pay whatever the price is
Then why do businesses have sales? If prices don't matter why would businesses choose to make less money per sale?
> Companies can develop new products without your advice. In fact consumers often don't know what they want.
I'd urge reading up on revealed preference and product discovery. It cuts both ways in that, sure, a company can offer a product on the market that no buyer asked for and have it sell well, but then, the media can expose some rather unsavory facts about that same product and subsequently (consequently?) have it not sell.
> Then why do businesses have sales? If prices don't matter why would businesses choose to make less money per sale?
It's worth picking this apart. Prices not mattering is usually expressed in economics-ese as price-inelastic demand, and that's usually not what's happening. Sales are a mechanism for drumming up demand for a product, with the hope that the additional volume will compensate for the marginally lower margin.
>I'd urge reading up on revealed preference and product discovery
I'm not sure what point you are contesting.
>It's worth picking this apart.
They were rhetorical questions.
>price-inelastic demand
With this you could argue that the absolute price does not matter, but the relative price between products that can substitute each other do. In this comment chain it is being argued that this kind of device wins on relative price.
>Sales are a mechanism for drumming up demand for a product, with the hope that the additional volume will compensate for the marginally lower margin.
It is for increasing demand, but making a higher rate of profit on the item is not the main reason. Things like being able to clear inventory, or to learn about what the current demand curve looks like (to know if prices should be adjusted) are more common purposes.
You're expecting consumers to be able to compare these anti-features that are actively hidden from them. It's like airline seats - airlines get away with continually shrinking them because consumers have no way to actually compare airline seat sizes ahead of time.
This stance is so anti-consumer it's laughable. Are you seriously implying LG doesn't turn a decent profit with their massive empire? There's an issue with capitalism of chasing infinite growth rather than stability, and this is one of the consequences of chasing such growth.
I deeply regret buying my LG. Originally the plan was to never connect it to wifi, and use an external device (chromecast, apple tv, or whatever) but my wife was too excited to try out whatever features. Unfortunately we can't sell the TV for anywhere what we paid for it new (to replace it with a different brand) so we're stuck with it for another ~7-10 years, or whatever the standard TV replacement interval is these days. New "apps" keep showing up on the main screen, which I have to "delete" from the main screen once a month or so (they're not deleted, they're just undeletable apps in some massive library of preinstalled spyware we can fortunately mostly hide). Apparently Sony OLED screens are LG "glass" but without the spyware.
I have a Sony A95K and have kept it in basic mode because I have a shield I like to Game on. The sony is very minimal and after subsequent software updates hasn't offered me any ads, or programs to run even while connected to WiFi.
>Apparently Sony OLED screens are LG "glass" but without the spyware.
Without independent verification from someone like GN, I wouldn't trust "we installed rootkits" Sony not to be spying too.
Since Sony TVs run Android at least you can probably use ADB to remove a lot of junk.
... if they're rootable ...
... if they're rootable without the ability for Sony to revoke that rootability ...
Sony TVs are handled by TCL now, so time will tell how Sony-branded models act (up) in the future.
https://www.tomsguide.com/tvs/sony-just-handed-its-tv-busine...
What’s stopping you from disconnecting it from wifi mow?
This is also my question, but I suppose the answer could be that we don't trust LG to actually forget the wifi password (and not use it surreptitiously later). You could also change the wifi info, but that might mean changing a whole lot of devices (including wife's and kids).
If someone is supposedly concerned about being recorded, having their privacy invaded etc. but they're too lazy to change the wifi password and deal with the trivial inconvenience of changing it on other household devices then in this case the revealed preference really is that they don't really care.
The gamers nexus thing touched on this.. Apparently some ignore that choice and connect to open wifi or something like Comcasts modem hijacking wifi.
So change the wifi password.
I did bring that up in the second sentence of my two-sentence comment.
As others have said, cut off access and/or factory reset it. My LG has never been granted net access, firmware upgrades through USB drives, and streaming through Onn 4K box(w/ a 3rd party launcher) and Apple TV. No surprise ads, apps, or anything.
What do you get from upgrading the firmware? I have a 10 yo smart tv that I simply treated as a dumb tv. Works fine.
I updated my LG C5 firmware via USB and my Nintendo Switch 2 now says “Switch 2” on the home page instead of “Unknown Device”. So that’s nice I guess. Also it seemed to fix something with the 120hz HDR 10:10:10 signal when connected to my PC if I recall correctly that before resulted in poor image quality.
Mostly bug fixes relevant to higher end home theatre setups. Typically bleeding edge stuff where a TV is released before a new HDMI spec is fully baked or whatnot. One of my older OLED panels needed a number of updates to get proper Dolby Vision profile support a few years back.
Typically not all that relevant most of the time to the average consumer, but if you’re having a persistent annoyance it’s worth looking through release notes from time to time.
This ignores that the vast majority of consumers actually use the smart tv features like the Netflix app. Then updates start to become far more relevant and eventually mandatory.
Sony uses Google TV. Doesn't inspire trust as far as spying and data collection goes.
My Sony with Google TV is pretty good in "Basic Mode" without an internet connection though.
Disconnect it from the internet, buy a streaming device, and use the streaming device. It’s really not that complicated.
If you want a bit complicated, you can probably unscrew the back panel and remove the wifi card.
> It’s really not that complicated.
You can do that no the average joe.
Buy a cast/apple tv anyway and then reset the LG screen to factory. Is that an option?
Why not reset it
It feels like there must be multiple completely different implementations of LG OLED TVs. I would not say that my LG has a "main screen" of any kind. When I turn mine on it shows the last input that had been used or, if that thing is off, it shows the bouncy egg and "No Signal". If I press the button on the remote that says RECENTS and has a picture of a house on it, which I guess is the "main screen", it maintains the bouncy egg but shows a ribbon of apps on the bottom. Those are my installed apps: Hulu, Prime, Peacock, YouTube, Netflix, Apple TV, and Disney+ happen to be today's recents. Where is this "main screen" where unbidden appvertisements arise?
That is WebOS 6.0 or older. Mine is the same. At some point they stopped updating older models. I think all those released before 2021 or so.
That ribbon got slammed full of advertisements at some point, last I knew.
Mine has been strictly MRU forever. When I look at this video, it does not resemble the software on my LG OLED TV at all. There must be several platforms or generations.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8atmvE0ArA
But how do you know which LG model does what?
I don't. That's the point of my thread. But it's clear to me that not every LG owner is seeing the same things.
Hulu, Prime, Peacock, YouTube, Netflix, Apple TV, and Disney+ happen to be today's recents.
Where do you find the time to post on HN?
Those are just all of the apps I used in 9 years in the order that I last opened them.
I asked Claude to scan my network and check if LG tv is sending data, it said yes. Some domains were blocked by my router some were not, now Claude blocked all lg related tracking/ad domains on my router.
Domains which are blocked now.
prov-lg.alphonso.tv au.info.lgsmartad.com kic.cdpbeacon.lgtvcommon.com au.nextlgsdp.com kic.tv.wiselg.com kic.wiseconfig.lgtvcommon.com kic.homeprv.lgtvcommon.com kic.recommend.lgtvcommon.com
You should ask Claude whether your ACME rocket skates are leaking kerosene
I have an older LG Smart TV. It was cheap and big. I have never plugged it into my network, never let it on my wifi. When I turn it on, it complains for 5 sec, then displays what's on hdmi1. Works for me.
Who's selling dumb TV's again, Samsung? Who else? I'll happily pay a thousand bucks to not get screwed by my TV.
TBH only hope at this point is for BOE/PRC panel makers to thoroughly involute and for bare panels + dumb connectors make it to aliexpress, i.e. like we have after market screens for everything else. Buy a screen, buy a case, get your dumb screen. TV manufactures will absolutely not pass up ad monetization, especially Korean ones that can't survive with lower margins.
What you want to look for is called "Commercial Signage Display". These are basically large "TV" monitors that are sold to businesses like sports bars.
On Amazon, you can find a few here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/industrial/18746933011... (which are mostly Samsung).
I used to go on here about Sceptre TVs, because they are relatively cheap and dumb as a brick. Was just shopping for one because of this LG news (wanted to replace my old one from 2014), and while Sceptre still lists them on their website, they tell me to go to Amazon or Walmart to buy one.
Amazon and Walmart say they are out of stock, with no expected date.
My conclusion is that Sceptre, the last holdout in the dumb TV industry, has quit in favor of focusing on monitors/displays for computers. Now I'm not sure if I'm going to ever replace my TV!
In Germany I like the "OK" brand from Saturn/Mediamarkt. They're Ok.
The dumb models are very cheap and the picture is faithful due to lack of framerate-doubler and other picture-enhancement shenanigans.
Don’t you worry, mid/high end TVs cost thousands of bucks and have all the same spyware
panelook.com
Is there an open firmware for LGs?
I think this is the important question. I've been searching, but all I found were deprecated and incomplete projects. If anyone knows some actual current development, even incomplete ones, let us know.
Huh. I never considered this. Hacking TVs with firmware would be a great project for LLMs to fuzz.
Heck, it'd be a great project for people too.
Boy, how I would like LG to be sued out of existence.
I'm so tired of "smart" tech. I don't want my TV, or fridge, or dryer or anything connecting to wifi and bluetooth and having an app to manage settings. It's hard to believe there's demand for any of these terrible "features". The peak of smart tech were watches you could do math on.
Question: if these run Android, and are rootable (unknown to me) is there open source software that can provide basic TV functionality?
Somewhat off topic but also ironic - I recently upgraded my version of Android, and when I opened YouTube for the first time on this video it asked for permission to detect nearby devices. I get why it would need that to cast, but at this point it's not paranoia to think that granting that permission just means it would scan whenever I have the app open and upload the data to YouTube servers for no good reason.
YouTube can cast to TVs on a local subnet and is looking for them. This isn't new. What's new is that Android now warns when an app starts poking around on your LAN.
The crazy part of this is that LG did not fear flat out admitting they do fingerprint the audio of what you watch. I already knew that, but I can't imagine it's common knowledge yet. How long ago was it that that would have been the crazy untrue accusation?
ACR is a documented feature so they can't deny that it exists. https://lgads.tv/technology/ https://www.consumerreports.org/electronics/privacy/how-to-t... (note that this is from a year ago)
Not defending LG's stance, but hasn't LG always said they do this as part of ACR (automatic content recognition) for the purposes of targeted advertising?
LG says it's opt in, and I think the devil is really in the details about what the consent screen says, but the only way I think it would be a "crazy accusation" is if LG was doing this without consent.
They're not doing it with consent. LG still covertly takes screenshots of everything you display on your screen even when you set every available option that's supposed to stop this:
https://www.reddit.com/r/LGOLED/s/x8iBNCPya5
And there are cases of LG re-enabling these ACR options without your consent when they push firmware updates, and even randomly without updating, at which point the TV will send all the past and present ACR data it's harvested from you to LG, without your consent:
https://www.reddit.com/r/webos/s/Vn0jFhKsXO
https://www.reddit.com/r/LGOLED/s/wRFMmQHXHG
Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49645480
Original Youtube title of the video I got a few hours ago was: "LG’s Manipulative, Gaslighting Response to GN Report"
Either they changed it for some legal reason, or Youtube allows for A/B testing of multiple titles for engagement.
Youtube allows you to AB test with up to 3 titles and thumbnails.
It's almost certainly A/B test. Essentially everyone does it.
You can even sometimes see when a list of videos on YT first loads and a given video has one title, and it suddenly switches to another without you reloading the page.
On several channels I watch, I've noticed the top comment is always along the lines of "who was here when the video title was XYZ" because you know it's going to change.
Have you noticed that has become more common recently? Because I have. It seems over the past 3/4 months, reload and see a new title happens pretty much daily to me (it also seems to work because sometimes it causes me to click the video I didn't click with the old title).
It was announced in December and took a while to catch.
https://support.google.com/youtube/thread/393332200/you-can-...
YouTube encourages A/B testing of both titles and thumbnails, but it could be either.
We should start whitelisting the domains that is allowed from router. Otherwise, these smart shitty ads companies will never take responsibility.
I just had a crazy idea: Are there any ways we (consumers) could leverage the (bad) DMCA "anti-circumvention" laws?
Ex:
1. The noise happening in my house is copyrighted.
2. I protected my copyright by blocking the TV from transmitting it to known manufacturer domains.
3. By switching to obfuscated domains or alternate transmission paths, the manufacturer started circumventing my copyright controls.
... I suppose the boring answer will be that the literally-unreadable stack of Terms Of Service has some "everything we ever do is permitted by you" clause.
No.
Now bend over, citizen