Your Smart TV Knows What You’re Watching – The Markup
themarkup.org
Here’s how to turn off “automated content recognition,” the Shazam-like software on smart TVs that tracks what you’re watching

These TVs can capture and identify 7,200 images per hour, or approximately two every second. The data is then used for content recommendations and ad targeting, which is a huge business; advertisers spent an estimated $18.6 billion on smart TV ads in 2022, according to market research firm eMarketer.

  • Metal Zealot
    28•7 months ago

    I have my old (stupid) tv from like 2013, works perfectly fine. No apps, no firmware, no ads, no tracking. Never felt the need to buy a smart tv, but I’m afraid it’d be near impossible to find a new one that isn’t nowadays I’d mine broke down.

    • Max-P
      13•7 months ago

      This is the only reason I have a smart TV. I didn’t want one, in fact it prompted me to make an SSID and VLAN just for it, then applied a bunch of DNS blocks. Unfortunately my old 2012 TV wasn’t worth shipping across the country and the image was getting pretty dim and it had started developing dead pixels.

      If you want anything above 1080p that’s a dumb TV you have to go commercial like the hospitality market and they charge you way more for it. And they won’t even sell it to you without a corporate account in most places.

      The only way to get 4K and HDR without the smarts as a consumer is to buy a giant gaming monitor… and those too ask for quite a premium, because gamers.

        • Max-P
          2•7 months ago

          Yeah but they do still end up pretty expensive. I was able to score a black friday 65" 4K HDR 1000 nits 120 Hz FreeSync TV with local dimming for $700. Not the best but given I don’t use it that often or for very long I didn’t want it to turn into a big investment.

          I’m sure it’s pretty average but for my use case it worked out pretty good.

    • @[email protected]
      3•7 months ago

      Yeah, I’m waiting for the death of my current TV. A LG that’s plain old LCD, but HDR and 4k, no smart shit. Luckily I know hardware and can physically disable things. I break and remove things so hardware is physically incapable of connecting.