this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2025
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Your TV Is Spying On You (www.ludlowinstitute.org)
submitted 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
 

You sit down to relax, put on your favorite show, and settle in for a night of binge-watching. But while you’re watching your TV… your TV is watching you.

Smart TVs take constant snapshots of everything you watch. Sometimes hundreds of snapshots a second.

Welcome to the future of "entertainment."

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago

At this point I'm just going to assume George Orwell was a time traveler. He's been right about everything so far.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

No it’s not.

Still got an old Panasonic plasma from 2010 and it’s going strong.

But I am aware of the “wonders” of post-purchase monetization, which is how they’re printing out so many of these cutting edge OLED big screens for surprisingly low initial purchase prices

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 days ago

Just create a black hole network at your house and connect all 'smart' appliances to that. Block all traffic at the router level. This prevents them trying to connect to open mesh networks and also provides the benefit of cataloging all the traffic

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 days ago (2 children)

I watch TV through my computer using Jellyfin. Am I at danger?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago

Other than your PC or Mac spying on you, you are in no danger.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago
[–] [email protected] 16 points 4 days ago (3 children)

Mine ain't, I'm using an ancient dumb TV.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago

99% of what we watch is from streaming (Netflix, YouTube, etc). A dumb tv with a Chromecast probably isn't any better.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

even better we dont use tv anymore, just a PC.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

Still gonna need a large screen somehow unless you watch all your stuff at the desk or through a laptop.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I'm not, but I've disconnected the Internet from it. It can try all it wants to send the data to the mother ship.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 days ago

Soon they may come with cellular capacity. Cars and e-bikes already do.

You gotta Faraday cage it!

[–] [email protected] 17 points 5 days ago (2 children)

Sometimes hundreds of snapshots a second.

That's a pretty neat FPS for a tv.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 days ago

The article states that's what the privacy policy sais samsung can sample every 500ms and LG every 10ms. It doesn't really mean they are, but it's definitely possible. A very basic way of detecting content is to take a 1000 pixels evenly spaced out over the screen and store the color values. That gives you something you can match against a database. You don't need to process a 4K screenshot for this.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Yeah I'm calling bullshit on that quote, I'd like to see proof of any smart TV having beefy enough hardware to record anything at 100fps+, and even then what would be the point? Nothing played back on the screen will even have a frame rate and 60fps... I'm sure this is a lazy article mistake

EDIT: I take it back, I talked it out with Gemini and understand the logic and realistic implementation now, it's a dedicated part of the SoC design. Still hate the fact that this is a thing, we just need to spread the word about not connecting your actual TV to the internet at all ever.

https://g.co/gemini/share/e37d7882d427

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago

If they were recording so much couldnt tv makers be held liable for recording another companies property.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I guess I'll stick with my 2012 Toshiba 55" dumb TV.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago

We probably have the same model - the one with the big oval stand. Every once in a while I wish it was OLED and/or higher resolution, but it's not worth the expensive or all the modern "features" such as these.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 days ago

I just don’t own a tv. Getting rid of my entertainment and gaming systems and most of social media was my answer to internal peace. I don’t have streaming either.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 days ago (1 children)

The built-in OS on smart TVs almost always sucks. The built-in OS on our LG is slower, has less apps, and has less support for HDR and higher resolutions than our Fire stick.

Just don't use it and instead plug in a Fire stick, turn off its tracking, then sideload apps like BeeTV and HDO Box.

I know Amazon has a bad rep from a privacy standpoint but the Fire stick is super cheap compared to its competition and lets you turn off the tracking in one page of the settings menu.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

The article says the TVs still capture input and do recognition from external sources so using an external device is not helping.

Edit: Unless your tv is not connected to the internet.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 days ago

The TV can still connect via weave, Amazon sidewalk, or other mesh networks through your neighbors doorbell or thermostat or whatever... Even if you never connect it, it could still report. Have to open it up and destroy the antennas.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

On my Sony Bravia running Android you can just disable the Samba app from running same as you'd disable any app in Android.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Jokes on them: I watch videos on my tablet. There’s no way that’s spying on me, right? Right?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago

Not if your tablet runs an open source operating system without tracking. Like GrapheneOS or LineageOS, which both can be set up entirely without Google services, or sandboxing apps.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 days ago

Spy all you want Agent Hisense of the Roku org, I've got you in a black box. Your communications have been cut! You'll never report back to HQ now!

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