Wonderful! Thanks for the added info.

Pretty good collection for an old clunker!

Nice. Seems like a more direct version of a Joplin list.

Absolutely counts! Never even imagined that as an option.

This is awesome.

That’s very cool!

I have an Invidious instance going, and a boatload of MP3s from the last 30 years… Tell me more.

I kind of love this.

Hey, so first, off, I watched the entire GN video today. You’re correct about the SSID and MAC address stuff - fair point. And holy shit, LG. It’s like a creepy fuck competition.

Something that’s interesting is that it’s not always for every single TV from the company. FWIW.

From this manual on Samsung TVs on how to turn off the microphone (I’ve had a good run with Samsung equipment (I know, I know) which I never let touch the internet. Maybe I just bought my last TV from them).

You can turn on or off the microphone by using the switch at the bottom of the TV. If microphone is turned off, All voice and sound features using microphone are not available.

This function is supported only in QN7C/QN8C/QN9**C/ Q7C/Q8C/QN8C/QN9C/S9*C Series.

https://manuals.plus/samsung/q60c-qled-4k-smart-tv-manual

Which is only 70+ inch TVs. I went looking for one on my TV, and there isn’t a switch - but there’s also no voice options for me to enable, either. Meaning there’s no microphone to start with. I don’t even have enough money to creep on, I’m only buying some pissant, baby-sized TV! (It’s also the biggest TV I’ve ever owned).

I’m also not in the US, so it’s possible that privacy laws being what they are in some places, it’s not universal.

But the TV will think it’s their conversations, that Bob Jones. It has no way to know it moved houses. It will attribute it all to someone else.

Also, just get power strip with an off switch and cut power to the TV when not in use. No power, no data collection.

Once again, a solvable problem if you just think it through.

Sure, but you’re selling a TV to someone else. What better way to obfuscate your own data then letting someone else have their “Bob Jones TV” connected to Bob_JonesWifi, and wow, we got 3 years of data? It’s not exactly going to catch you.

This is sort of a solvable problem is the thing. If you just check there’s no open networks in/near your home, and do a factory reset when you sell it, you’re covering both of the hypotheticals you mentioned.

If the TV can’t talk to anyone, it can’t talk to anyone. It’s too expensive to insert complements into millions of units for edge cases when so many people connect their TVs anyway.

Right. So, I’m a privacy advocate, and there’s a looooooot of conspiracy theory stuff like this out there. Yes, there are real versions of this, but companies are also notoriously cheap. There’s a point of diminishing returns on how many components they’re going to slap on a board in hopes of netting data on 1000 more users. Something that costs 2 cents more per board will go into millions of devices and cost hundreds of thousands over a production run… To net $30,000 of data? Experiments usually fizzle based on that math. They’re very often glad to have the fools that connect the TV themselves, which is an increasing proportion of consumers, I think about 65%+ of them last I checked. They’re already eating well without getting overly silly and crazy about how these things work.

Is there evidence of that? Or is this also like saying an unconnected TV might be slipped the WiFi password by a connected dishwasher through a series of ultrasonic beeps? Sure, not impossible, but also not likely in every home.