5 ms·

Funny, published on a site with 1745 'partners' who fully respect our privacy of course

by touwer 10d ago

Anoian 10d ago
Respect for the consumer has long been gone generally except for a few brands. I am still wondering why consumer respecting brands are not emerging more and thriving.
- usern20260720 10d ago
  A consumer respecting brand sells products. A Consumer selling brand sells consumers so they can be profiled, analysed for weaknesses and exploited economically in the name of Surveillance Capitalism
- DarkUranium 10d ago
  I suspect because it's hard to differentiate between ones that actually respect the consumer vs ones that only say so, but are actually lying to your face. That and not respecting the consumer is more profitable in the short term (only!), which means more marketing money, buying out other brands, lobbying to increase the barrier for entry, et cetera.
- fithisux 10d ago
  That is why politicians get rich. But also, people do not generally hesitate in front of an all-you-can-eat bouffe
- ngcazz 10d ago
  Because there's no incentive to do it. The consequences of being tracked are outta sight outta mind.
- recurseP 10d ago
  The point is: which brands still respect user privacy? If I were to buy a new TV today, which brands-models should I prioritize? Also, are there brands-models that in which it is possible to sideload a different OS like with mobile phones (LineageOS, GrapheneOS, etc.)
  - dwedge 10d ago
    I bought a projector in part because they are behind on this and only seem to have basic software
    - msandford 10d ago
      That's a great idea, thanks for sharing!
  - microtonal 9d ago
    Our Android TV (Sony) has an option to basically make it a dumb TV. Not sure whether that still exists. We use that + simply don't plug a network cable or set up WiFi. As long as they don't add cellular modems, this works.
  - Cider9986 9d ago
    An Apple TV would be the best for privacy you can easily use but not perfect. Don't use streaming services. Torrenting with a VPN would share the least data but Nuvio/Stremio wouldn't share much with adtech. Can't use those on an Apple TV without sideloading :(
  - toofy 9d ago
    > which brands still respect user privacy? does anyone know of a reputable site which rates companies by things such as trustworthiness? are any companies at all trustworthy anymore? like literally any?
    - HDBaseT 9d ago
      rtings is starting to cover some of this stuff now.
- exe34 10d ago
  Machiavelli's flexibility: evil has more options to achieve its goals than good, and therefore it always wins. (The invisible hand of the market is a myth - people don't choose things on principles unless they have money to burn).
- boelboel 9d ago
  The bottom of the line TVs are basically commoditized and are sold at a loss. There's few tv manufacturers and they mostly compete on price, only the top of the line models have pricing power and only for 6-24 months for new models. A supermajority of consumers don't care if they're tracked all the time and a large fraction don't mind ads everywhere either (they're used to it). A new display plant costs multiple billions.
  - FireBeyond 9d ago
    > only the top of the line models have pricing power And they still do it anyway because why wouldn't they? My $4K+ TV still wants all sorts of "personalized viewing experience" access.
  - Cider9986 9d ago
    They would care if they understood it. They shouldn't have to care–they deserve consumer protection regardless.
    - boelboel 9d ago
      Well you can say this about dozens of products. People basically only care about price and perceived status for some products. Repairability, privacy, sustainability ... are not important for 90% of people, when government tries to they get pissed annoyed having to pay more.
      - Cider9986 9d ago
        https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/05/07/only-4-of-ios-users-in-us-are-opting-in-to-ad-tracking-report-says https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/05/07/only-4-of-ios-use...
  - anon7000 9d ago
    > A new display plant costs multiple billions To be fair, most TVs on the market are buying panels from the same few manufacturers. For example, Hisense sources panels from part of LG. I think Samsung is another manufacturer. So a new company could theoretically access these panels to make a privacy friendly TV without as much capital. But like you say, it wouldn’t be able to compete on price, because the ad tech lets other companies sell at a loss.
- johnnyanmac 9d ago
  We're in a recession, in all but official numbers (which are decreasingly credible by the day). Big companies weather a recession and use it to ransack countries, becsuse smaller/mid-size companies are struggling to do the bare minimum, outright shut down, or cannot start up to begin with. There's a lot of moving parts that makes it really hard for ethical newcomers to disrupt in these current times. And that's just one angle.
llm_nerd 10d ago
As always - https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/we-should-improve-society-somewhat https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/we-should-improve-society-som... There is a very I-am-very-smart aspect to these predictable sorts of comments. And weirdly they always seem oddly intended to diminish the core concern being addressed. "Oh your TV is listening to you and mapping your network and exfiltrating your data? Yeah, well, look at that website that has some ads on it! Boom! Give up. The future is lost. Don't sweat the wiretapping TV."
- hk__2 10d ago
  > And weirdly they always seem oddly intended to diminish the core concern being addressed. No they don’t. OP says it’s funny, that’s all.
  - llm_nerd 10d ago
    It is 100% diminishing the concern. If someone were paid by LG to try to manage this revelation, they would post exactly what touwer posted. Like, there isn't a better way to try to normalize and excuse bad behaviour than doing the incredibly boorish tactic seen above. The "everyone is doing it" excuse is a go to. I mean, LG would probably also pay someone to run around going "it's just funny, is all" in support if anyone noticed this pathetic astroturfing.
    - dwedge 10d ago
      No I disagree here. I would argue that a TV doing this 30 years ago would find themselves in court, whereas now they are all skirting the edge of the law and we accept it because that frog has been boiling for decades. The idea that logging audio is bad, but cars logging your weight, tvs logging your watch history, scales sending your wifi details, android and apple both mapping your access point to create a pseudo-location tracker without GPS, my mobile network sending me location-based adverts based on tower proximity via sms to a dumbphone are all very very bad. LG have slightly overstepped the line here, legally, but in my opinion they've overstepped what is OK by a long long way. A website reporting on this while sending your details to hundreds of tracking sites are doing the same thing - abusing what is allowed and I assume only printing the report for more engagement and not because they actually care. LG need to go a lifetime shit list for this behaviour - there should be outrage like there was about Sony's root kit. But websites like this also need to find out that this behaviour is not ok
hn_submit 10d ago
I believe we should push for legislation that prohibits the sale of customer data to third parties. Websites can use the data on their customers but they cannot share it with anyone else. Because aggregators are selling it cross-border after which you lose track and all control over it.
- iso1631 9d ago
  Look at the outrage from US tech bros when the EU passed a law saying that you only had to tell people you were going to do this. Imagine how preventing it would be received.
- titzer 9d ago
  They shouldn't be able to collect it in the first place. The big companies have 10 page agreements that say they "value" your privacy and that they don't sell your data to third parties. They do value it, highly. And they don't sell it--they just hoard it, mine it, and sell increasingly accurate targeting. Why would they give it up? I mean, besides coughing it up with little objection to national security letters.
  - anon7000 9d ago
    The problem is that this includes literally everything on a cloud service. My emails and documents on Gmail/Google Drive is my personal data. My email on Fastmail is my personal data, even if they’re privacy friendly. So that service would be illegal. Even having an account at all, and being able to see that I have a subscription, or that I previously watched that video, is personal data they collected. So the Privacy Policy is what you “agree” to let the company do with that data. How do you even begin to differentiate the superfluous stuff they track just for ads, on a technical level without workarounds? And then think about banning “transferring personal data to a 3rd party.” Does that mean I can’t host account data on AWS, or use a hosted database, be causing I’m transferring data to a different company which can presumably also access it? That’s what the privacy policy has to allow, and why sites have so many “partner services”
    - 7d ago
bilalq 9d ago
The article is just a summary of the original reporting from Gamers Nexus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IFVTcM28KA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IFVTcM28KA
- account42 9d ago
  Which is published on a video streaming website run by one of the biggest tracking and data collection companies, which is used to pay for the creation of the video (in addition to ads embedded in the video itself).
  - MetaWhirledPeas 9d ago
    Not a valid critique when dealing with an oligopoly (YT, Tik Tok, Insta, etc.). You use the platform or you get ignored. Using the platform to criticize the platform or other platforms like it is possibly the best use of the platform.
- ChrisRR 9d ago
  The video is 2 hours long. A summary is not a bad thing

Funny, published on a site with 1745 'partners' who fully respect our privacy of course

by touwer 10d ago

Funny, published on a site with 1745 'partners' who fully respect our privacy of course

Respect for the consumer has long been gone generally except for a few brands. I am still wondering why consumer respecting brands are not emerging more and thriving.

usern20260720 10d ago
A consumer respecting brand sells products. A Consumer selling brand sells consumers so they can be profiled, analysed for weaknesses and exploited economically in the name of Surveillance Capitalism
DarkUranium 10d ago
I suspect because it's hard to differentiate between ones that actually respect the consumer vs ones that only say so, but are actually lying to your face. That and not respecting the consumer is more profitable in the short term (only!), which means more marketing money, buying out other brands, lobbying to increase the barrier for entry, et cetera.
fithisux 10d ago
That is why politicians get rich. But also, people do not generally hesitate in front of an all-you-can-eat bouffe
ngcazz 10d ago
Because there's no incentive to do it. The consequences of being tracked are outta sight outta mind.
recurseP 10d ago
The point is: which brands still respect user privacy? If I were to buy a new TV today, which brands-models should I prioritize? Also, are there brands-models that in which it is possible to sideload a different OS like with mobile phones (LineageOS, GrapheneOS, etc.)
- dwedge 10d ago
  I bought a projector in part because they are behind on this and only seem to have basic software
  - msandford 10d ago
    That's a great idea, thanks for sharing!
- microtonal 9d ago
  Our Android TV (Sony) has an option to basically make it a dumb TV. Not sure whether that still exists. We use that + simply don't plug a network cable or set up WiFi. As long as they don't add cellular modems, this works.
- Cider9986 9d ago
  An Apple TV would be the best for privacy you can easily use but not perfect. Don't use streaming services. Torrenting with a VPN would share the least data but Nuvio/Stremio wouldn't share much with adtech. Can't use those on an Apple TV without sideloading :(
- toofy 9d ago
  > which brands still respect user privacy? does anyone know of a reputable site which rates companies by things such as trustworthiness? are any companies at all trustworthy anymore? like literally any?
  - HDBaseT 9d ago
    rtings is starting to cover some of this stuff now.
exe34 10d ago
Machiavelli's flexibility: evil has more options to achieve its goals than good, and therefore it always wins. (The invisible hand of the market is a myth - people don't choose things on principles unless they have money to burn).
boelboel 9d ago
The bottom of the line TVs are basically commoditized and are sold at a loss. There's few tv manufacturers and they mostly compete on price, only the top of the line models have pricing power and only for 6-24 months for new models. A supermajority of consumers don't care if they're tracked all the time and a large fraction don't mind ads everywhere either (they're used to it). A new display plant costs multiple billions.
- FireBeyond 9d ago
  > only the top of the line models have pricing power And they still do it anyway because why wouldn't they? My $4K+ TV still wants all sorts of "personalized viewing experience" access.
- Cider9986 9d ago
  They would care if they understood it. They shouldn't have to care–they deserve consumer protection regardless.
  - boelboel 9d ago
    Well you can say this about dozens of products. People basically only care about price and perceived status for some products. Repairability, privacy, sustainability ... are not important for 90% of people, when government tries to they get pissed annoyed having to pay more.
    - Cider9986 9d ago
      https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/05/07/only-4-of-ios-users-in-us-are-opting-in-to-ad-tracking-report-says https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/05/07/only-4-of-ios-use...
- anon7000 9d ago
  > A new display plant costs multiple billions To be fair, most TVs on the market are buying panels from the same few manufacturers. For example, Hisense sources panels from part of LG. I think Samsung is another manufacturer. So a new company could theoretically access these panels to make a privacy friendly TV without as much capital. But like you say, it wouldn’t be able to compete on price, because the ad tech lets other companies sell at a loss.
johnnyanmac 9d ago
We're in a recession, in all but official numbers (which are decreasingly credible by the day). Big companies weather a recession and use it to ransack countries, becsuse smaller/mid-size companies are struggling to do the bare minimum, outright shut down, or cannot start up to begin with. There's a lot of moving parts that makes it really hard for ethical newcomers to disrupt in these current times. And that's just one angle.

llm_nerd 10d ago

As always - https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/we-should-improve-society-somewhat https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/we-should-improve-society-som... There is a very I-am-very-smart aspect to these predictable sorts of comments. And weirdly they always seem oddly intended to diminish the core concern being addressed. "Oh your TV is listening to you and mapping your network and exfiltrating your data? Yeah, well, look at that website that has some ads on it! Boom! Give up. The future is lost. Don't sweat the wiretapping TV."

hk__2 10d ago
> And weirdly they always seem oddly intended to diminish the core concern being addressed. No they don’t. OP says it’s funny, that’s all.
- llm_nerd 10d ago
  It is 100% diminishing the concern. If someone were paid by LG to try to manage this revelation, they would post exactly what touwer posted. Like, there isn't a better way to try to normalize and excuse bad behaviour than doing the incredibly boorish tactic seen above. The "everyone is doing it" excuse is a go to. I mean, LG would probably also pay someone to run around going "it's just funny, is all" in support if anyone noticed this pathetic astroturfing.
  - dwedge 10d ago
    No I disagree here. I would argue that a TV doing this 30 years ago would find themselves in court, whereas now they are all skirting the edge of the law and we accept it because that frog has been boiling for decades. The idea that logging audio is bad, but cars logging your weight, tvs logging your watch history, scales sending your wifi details, android and apple both mapping your access point to create a pseudo-location tracker without GPS, my mobile network sending me location-based adverts based on tower proximity via sms to a dumbphone are all very very bad. LG have slightly overstepped the line here, legally, but in my opinion they've overstepped what is OK by a long long way. A website reporting on this while sending your details to hundreds of tracking sites are doing the same thing - abusing what is allowed and I assume only printing the report for more engagement and not because they actually care. LG need to go a lifetime shit list for this behaviour - there should be outrage like there was about Sony's root kit. But websites like this also need to find out that this behaviour is not ok

hn_submit 10d ago

I believe we should push for legislation that prohibits the sale of customer data to third parties. Websites can use the data on their customers but they cannot share it with anyone else. Because aggregators are selling it cross-border after which you lose track and all control over it.

iso1631 9d ago
Look at the outrage from US tech bros when the EU passed a law saying that you only had to tell people you were going to do this. Imagine how preventing it would be received.
titzer 9d ago
They shouldn't be able to collect it in the first place. The big companies have 10 page agreements that say they "value" your privacy and that they don't sell your data to third parties. They do value it, highly. And they don't sell it--they just hoard it, mine it, and sell increasingly accurate targeting. Why would they give it up? I mean, besides coughing it up with little objection to national security letters.
- anon7000 9d ago
  The problem is that this includes literally everything on a cloud service. My emails and documents on Gmail/Google Drive is my personal data. My email on Fastmail is my personal data, even if they’re privacy friendly. So that service would be illegal. Even having an account at all, and being able to see that I have a subscription, or that I previously watched that video, is personal data they collected. So the Privacy Policy is what you “agree” to let the company do with that data. How do you even begin to differentiate the superfluous stuff they track just for ads, on a technical level without workarounds? And then think about banning “transferring personal data to a 3rd party.” Does that mean I can’t host account data on AWS, or use a hosted database, be causing I’m transferring data to a different company which can presumably also access it? That’s what the privacy policy has to allow, and why sites have so many “partner services”
  - 7d ago

bilalq 9d ago

The article is just a summary of the original reporting from Gamers Nexus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IFVTcM28KA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IFVTcM28KA

account42 9d ago
Which is published on a video streaming website run by one of the biggest tracking and data collection companies, which is used to pay for the creation of the video (in addition to ads embedded in the video itself).
- MetaWhirledPeas 9d ago
  Not a valid critique when dealing with an oligopoly (YT, Tik Tok, Insta, etc.). You use the platform or you get ignored. Using the platform to criticize the platform or other platforms like it is possibly the best use of the platform.
ChrisRR 9d ago
The video is 2 hours long. A summary is not a bad thing