Comment by dillutedfixer
7 days ago
As an owner of 2 LG OLEDs, I am not surprised at all. I neutered these things the first day I was past the return policy. Opened the back and unplugged the WiFi/BT chip, bought a cheap dumb universal remote with no mic in it, disagreed to all T&C in the TV, updated the firmware via USB and just use an AppleTV over HDMI for streaming. Kind of silly to have to go through all of this but hey thats where we are in 2026 in the US. And I am fully aware that I am typing this on an iPhone thats probably doing the same things that this article is talking about LG doing ;-(
Whether or not you iPhone is also doing that is irrelevant. Two surveillance pathways is still inherently worse than one.
Idk, I have a strong feeling Apple is not doing ACR or covert recording themselves, and the OS provides some strong guarantees that you know when the mic is active.
> OS provides some strong guarantees
How do you audit that ? it's not like they opensource their OS.
> I have a strong feeling Apple is not doing ACR or covert recording themselves
Feel different™
https://www.reuters.com/legal/apple-pay-95-million-settle-si...
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Why not just disconnect it from internet?
Works til they put a 5g modem in the damn things.
My Samsung asked for internet access and I just laughed and said nope.
It exists to displays pixels from a Linux box, utterly sick of living in a world where "is my TV manufacturer bugging our house?" Is a thing anyone has to ask.
> Works til they put a 5g modem in the damn things.
Okay, but it does work until then. "Things could change in the future" is definitionally true.
Never connect the TV in the first place, and you don't need to physically alter the hardware, firmware, or TOS agreements.
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> It exists to displays pixels from a Linux box,
If you're not using the defining feature of a TV (the OTA tuner), why not buy a monitor instead of a TV?
(Next time I have to replace our house's TV, I'm seriously considering buying a separate SBTVD tuner and a monitor instead of a TV, if ignoring the "smart" features of these TVs by not connecting them to a network starts getting too difficult.)
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It's not connected to the internet. The AppleTV is.
My question was about why to go and unplug wifi internally
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Yep, I do the same. There’s no reason for the tv to do anything smart. It exists to display appletv and ps5.
Why wait until after the return policy? Also what firmware did you update to? Also if you could point to a video where it shows how to do all these things that would be amazing
In the future they could make it refuse to boot without all the "required" hardware, like BT/wifi module.
GrapheneOS is such a breath of fresh air, truly you don't need the crApple device.