This „we own the glass“ idea is completely insane. How does an industry degenerate to the point where they consider acceptable to base their business model on owning part of the product they sell you?
Big pivotal moment is probably the DMCA and the DRM it's enabled, it's really eroded the concept of ownership in both software and hardware (via firmware), to the point where we've completely lost all control over the devices we buy.
These days devices do what we ask when it benefits their real owners, and refuse to do what we ask of them when it doesn't.
It wasn't an overnight thing, but the temperature in the pot has been increasing for well over a two decades and it's getting more than a bit sweaty.
It's not like Doctorow, the EFF, and a bunch of others didn't warn us. They told us this would happen. Like exactly this.
I don't think "jailbreak and install your own software on your TV" would be common even without the DMCA...and it would still be necessary, nothing would be stopping the companies from writing these stock software systems.
I brought this up all the time I argued with co-workers I advocated for Open Source because I knew where this was headed and every time it played out the exact way this comic did.
Now I just post a link to this comic in discussion about these kind of things.
https://xkcd.com/743/
Literally every business is working towards a solution where consumers own nothing and they own everything. Games, music, movies. They want to sell you subscriptions to use shit like your car or your fridge. They want to double dip on that by making you not only pay for the ability to use the stuff you bought, but also so that they can sell everything you do on it to advertisers. This is even especially true with all the shit people feed LLMs daily for work or personal purposes.
This is the end state of an unregulated capitalist market without consumer protections.
yep one of the first rules of any market should be
you sell a product -> you are responsible about the product
with a ".. -> you must be honest about the product (/what the products does, provides, etc.)"
to see how absurdly not followed this common sense(^1) is in the us look at supplements
1. provider are not hold responsible, non small parts of sold supplements are harmful in one way or another. Even cases like supplements advertised for pregnant woman with highly dangerous components for pregnant woman existed, no major change followed.
2. high amounts (AFIK 80% or so) of supplements sold in the US are severely dishonest and don't quite contain what is advertised. And this isn't just about it technically containing the supplements, but in a form the body can't absurd. But it goes so bad that "it's just sugar pills" is more on the harmless side... (and even that is dangerous given that many people take supplements for fixing health issues caused by to little of what the supplement).
not only has the US not fixed it when it started going out of hand, they went explicitly out of their way to not fix it.
(^1): (Common sense for anyone looking a bit into market dynamics/consumer protection etc.)
If consumers are unwilling to shell out for a TV priced high enough that the manufacturer doesn't need to do things like this to earn a (decent) profit, then what we've got is what you get.
You could certainly argue that the industry should've held the line, but that ignores human nature. One "innovative" manufacturer was always going to break ranks then the rest would follow, especially since the typical consumer appears (judging by the lack of non smart TV's for sale at consumer prices) to prefer lower prices to lack of tracking features. I think people very much like being able to buy a 65" tv for USD399.
If you want to mandate the sales of TVs that don't track, get a law passed. I suspect it'd be deeply unpopular once the resulting price rises were known.
> If consumers are unwilling to shell out for a TV priced high enough that the manufacturer doesn't need to do things like this to earn a (decent) profit, ...
The problem is, even if the device is priced at cost plus a reasonable margin, they can make more margin by selling data that they acquire by spying. No matter the margin on the sale, there's still more money to make by selling that data. There is no upper limit that magically prevents the manufacturer from looking for other avenues to increase profit. "Premium" device priced 3x the "reasonable" price? Still more money to be made selling data.
Now, factor in the race to the bottom on selling price, and those data sales just look that much more enticing.
What do you mean? I don’t recall ever asking manufacturers if I could trade my privacy for a discount. I don’t remember that at all…people will pay whatever the price is, if inflation hasn’t taught that to you, then I’m not sure what to tell you. The other thing inflation showed us, is that manufacturers will absolutely put a price on what they feel is “decent profit.” Cmon dude. Do you not remember how much we paid for eggs?!
Which, i think it was found later to be that the manufacturers “manufactured,” “scam-bled eggs.”
You know, I’ve been thinking, I don’t think im being paid enough! Im giving myself a raise. We can do that, right?!
You're expecting consumers to be able to compare these anti-features that are actively hidden from them. It's like airline seats - airlines get away with continually shrinking them because consumers have no way to actually compare airline seat sizes ahead of time.
This stance is so anti-consumer it's laughable. Are you seriously implying LG doesn't turn a decent profit with their massive empire? There's an issue with capitalism of chasing infinite growth rather than stability, and this is one of the consequences of chasing such growth.
Lawmakers should have outlawed EULAs the moment they first showed up in software. The idea that someone could sell you a product which is completely broken until you sign away all your rights on a contract you don't get to see before the purchase is the most anti-consumer thing ever invented. Nothing worked like that before software came along.
The fact that it's now infecting other non-software consumer products is a reason why congress should kill this with fire. Companies are putting screens onto products specifically so they can force an EULA on customers.
Marketing executives thinking “out of the box” is how. Ethics cannot contain them inside. They have breached the perimeter and now trample everyone for MRR.
Companies are amoral. If killing people boosted their share price they would issue every employee a machine gun in a heartbeat. The only reason this doesn't happen is it's illegal.
How is it insane. Owning distribution channels has been valuable since the beginning of commerce. It's no different than a newspaper company saying they own the paper so they have the power to print ads in it.
I deeply regret buying my LG. Originally the plan was to never connect it to wifi, and use an external device (chromecast, apple tv, or whatever) but my wife was too excited to try out whatever features. Unfortunately we can't sell the TV for anywhere what we paid for it new (to replace it with a different brand) so we're stuck with it for another ~7-10 years, or whatever the standard TV replacement interval is these days. New "apps" keep showing up on the main screen, which I have to "delete" from the main screen once a month or so (they're not deleted, they're just undeletable apps in some massive library of preinstalled spyware we can fortunately mostly hide). Apparently Sony OLED screens are LG "glass" but without the spyware.
This is also my question, but I suppose the answer could be that we don't trust LG to actually forget the wifi password (and not use it surreptitiously later). You could also change the wifi info, but that might mean changing a whole lot of devices (including wife's and kids).
As others have said, cut off access and/or factory reset it.
My LG has never been granted net access, firmware upgrades through USB drives, and streaming through Onn 4K box(w/ a 3rd party launcher) and Apple TV. No surprise ads, apps, or anything.
It feels like there must be multiple completely different implementations of LG OLED TVs. I would not say that my LG has a "main screen" of any kind. When I turn mine on it shows the last input that had been used or, if that thing is off, it shows the bouncy egg and "No Signal". If I press the button on the remote that says RECENTS and has a picture of a house on it, which I guess is the "main screen", it maintains the bouncy egg but shows a ribbon of apps on the bottom. Those are my installed apps: Hulu, Prime, Peacock, YouTube, Netflix, Apple TV, and Disney+ happen to be today's recents. Where is this "main screen" where unbidden appvertisements arise?
I have an older LG Smart TV. It was cheap and big. I have never plugged it into my network, never let it on my wifi. When I turn it on, it complains for 5 sec, then displays what's on hdmi1. Works for me.
What you want to look for is called "Commercial Signage Display". These are basically large "TV" monitors that are sold to businesses like sports bars.
I used to go on here about Sceptre TVs, because they are relatively cheap and dumb as a brick. Was just shopping for one because of this LG news (wanted to replace my old one from 2014), and while Sceptre still lists them on their website, they tell me to go to Amazon or Walmart to buy one.
Amazon and Walmart say they are out of stock, with no expected date.
My conclusion is that Sceptre, the last holdout in the dumb TV industry, has quit in favor of focusing on monitors/displays for computers. Now I'm not sure if I'm going to ever replace my TV!
I think this is the important question. I've been searching, but all I found were deprecated and incomplete projects. If anyone knows some actual current development, even incomplete ones, let us know.
I'm so tired of "smart" tech. I don't want my TV, or fridge, or dryer or anything connecting to wifi and bluetooth and having an app to manage settings. It's hard to believe there's demand for any of these terrible "features". The peak of smart tech were watches you could do math on.
Somewhat off topic but also ironic - I recently upgraded my version of Android, and when I opened YouTube for the first time on this video it asked for permission to detect nearby devices. I get why it would need that to cast, but at this point it's not paranoia to think that granting that permission just means it would scan whenever I have the app open and upload the data to YouTube servers for no good reason.
YouTube can cast to TVs on a local subnet and is looking for them. This isn't new. What's new is that Android now warns when an app starts poking around on your LAN.
The crazy part of this is that LG did not fear flat out admitting they do fingerprint the audio of what you watch. I already knew that, but I can't imagine it's common knowledge yet. How long ago was it that that would have been the crazy untrue accusation?
Not defending LG's stance, but hasn't LG always said they do this as part of ACR (automatic content recognition) for the purposes of targeted advertising?
LG says it's opt in, and I think the devil is really in the details about what the consent screen says, but the only way I think it would be a "crazy accusation" is if LG was doing this without consent.
It's almost certainly A/B test. Essentially everyone does it.
You can even sometimes see when a list of videos on YT first loads and a given video has one title, and it suddenly switches to another without you reloading the page.
On several channels I watch, I've noticed the top comment is always along the lines of "who was here when the video title was XYZ" because you know it's going to change.
Have you noticed that has become more common recently? Because I have. It seems over the past 3/4 months, reload and see a new title happens pretty much daily to me (it also seems to work because sometimes it causes me to click the video I didn't click with the old title).
I just had a crazy idea: Are there any ways we (consumers) could leverage the (bad) DMCA "anti-circumvention" laws?
Ex:
1. The noise happening in my house is copyrighted.
2. I protected my copyright by blocking the TV from transmitting it to known manufacturer domains.
3. By switching to obfuscated domains or alternate transmission paths, the manufacturer started circumventing my copyright controls.
... I suppose the boring answer will be that the literally-unreadable stack of Terms Of Service has some "everything we ever do is permitted by you" clause.
This „we own the glass“ idea is completely insane. How does an industry degenerate to the point where they consider acceptable to base their business model on owning part of the product they sell you?
Big pivotal moment is probably the DMCA and the DRM it's enabled, it's really eroded the concept of ownership in both software and hardware (via firmware), to the point where we've completely lost all control over the devices we buy.
These days devices do what we ask when it benefits their real owners, and refuse to do what we ask of them when it doesn't.
It wasn't an overnight thing, but the temperature in the pot has been increasing for well over a two decades and it's getting more than a bit sweaty.
It's not like Doctorow, the EFF, and a bunch of others didn't warn us. They told us this would happen. Like exactly this.
I don't think "jailbreak and install your own software on your TV" would be common even without the DMCA...and it would still be necessary, nothing would be stopping the companies from writing these stock software systems.
Active regulation of the marketplace is needed.
I brought this up all the time I argued with co-workers I advocated for Open Source because I knew where this was headed and every time it played out the exact way this comic did. Now I just post a link to this comic in discussion about these kind of things. https://xkcd.com/743/
5 replies →
I'm not sure how anyone didn't see this coming.
Literally every business is working towards a solution where consumers own nothing and they own everything. Games, music, movies. They want to sell you subscriptions to use shit like your car or your fridge. They want to double dip on that by making you not only pay for the ability to use the stuff you bought, but also so that they can sell everything you do on it to advertisers. This is even especially true with all the shit people feed LLMs daily for work or personal purposes.
This is the end state of an unregulated capitalist market without consumer protections.
If you don't have laws, or don't enforce them, people will do whatever they want.
I can remember when this simple point was obvious to almost everyone.
yep one of the first rules of any market should be
you sell a product -> you are responsible about the product
with a ".. -> you must be honest about the product (/what the products does, provides, etc.)"
to see how absurdly not followed this common sense(^1) is in the us look at supplements
1. provider are not hold responsible, non small parts of sold supplements are harmful in one way or another. Even cases like supplements advertised for pregnant woman with highly dangerous components for pregnant woman existed, no major change followed.
2. high amounts (AFIK 80% or so) of supplements sold in the US are severely dishonest and don't quite contain what is advertised. And this isn't just about it technically containing the supplements, but in a form the body can't absurd. But it goes so bad that "it's just sugar pills" is more on the harmless side... (and even that is dangerous given that many people take supplements for fixing health issues caused by to little of what the supplement).
not only has the US not fixed it when it started going out of hand, they went explicitly out of their way to not fix it.
(^1): (Common sense for anyone looking a bit into market dynamics/consumer protection etc.)
2 replies →
[dead]
It's not entirely the fault of the industry. Consumer preferences are part of this equation too.
https://www.streamtvinsider.com/advertising/roku-vizio-lean-...
If consumers are unwilling to shell out for a TV priced high enough that the manufacturer doesn't need to do things like this to earn a (decent) profit, then what we've got is what you get.
You could certainly argue that the industry should've held the line, but that ignores human nature. One "innovative" manufacturer was always going to break ranks then the rest would follow, especially since the typical consumer appears (judging by the lack of non smart TV's for sale at consumer prices) to prefer lower prices to lack of tracking features. I think people very much like being able to buy a 65" tv for USD399.
If you want to mandate the sales of TVs that don't track, get a law passed. I suspect it'd be deeply unpopular once the resulting price rises were known.
> If consumers are unwilling to shell out for a TV priced high enough that the manufacturer doesn't need to do things like this to earn a (decent) profit, ...
The problem is, even if the device is priced at cost plus a reasonable margin, they can make more margin by selling data that they acquire by spying. No matter the margin on the sale, there's still more money to make by selling that data. There is no upper limit that magically prevents the manufacturer from looking for other avenues to increase profit. "Premium" device priced 3x the "reasonable" price? Still more money to be made selling data.
Now, factor in the race to the bottom on selling price, and those data sales just look that much more enticing.
What do you mean? I don’t recall ever asking manufacturers if I could trade my privacy for a discount. I don’t remember that at all…people will pay whatever the price is, if inflation hasn’t taught that to you, then I’m not sure what to tell you. The other thing inflation showed us, is that manufacturers will absolutely put a price on what they feel is “decent profit.” Cmon dude. Do you not remember how much we paid for eggs?! Which, i think it was found later to be that the manufacturers “manufactured,” “scam-bled eggs.”
You know, I’ve been thinking, I don’t think im being paid enough! Im giving myself a raise. We can do that, right?!
1 reply →
You're expecting consumers to be able to compare these anti-features that are actively hidden from them. It's like airline seats - airlines get away with continually shrinking them because consumers have no way to actually compare airline seat sizes ahead of time.
This stance is so anti-consumer it's laughable. Are you seriously implying LG doesn't turn a decent profit with their massive empire? There's an issue with capitalism of chasing infinite growth rather than stability, and this is one of the consequences of chasing such growth.
Lawmakers should have outlawed EULAs the moment they first showed up in software. The idea that someone could sell you a product which is completely broken until you sign away all your rights on a contract you don't get to see before the purchase is the most anti-consumer thing ever invented. Nothing worked like that before software came along.
The fact that it's now infecting other non-software consumer products is a reason why congress should kill this with fire. Companies are putting screens onto products specifically so they can force an EULA on customers.
If you do it, you have to be more subtle about it. See Apple.
Sony and Microsoft fought to own the living room in console wars
Marketing executives thinking “out of the box” is how. Ethics cannot contain them inside. They have breached the perimeter and now trample everyone for MRR.
Companies are amoral. If killing people boosted their share price they would issue every employee a machine gun in a heartbeat. The only reason this doesn't happen is it's illegal.
How is it insane. Owning distribution channels has been valuable since the beginning of commerce. It's no different than a newspaper company saying they own the paper so they have the power to print ads in it.
I deeply regret buying my LG. Originally the plan was to never connect it to wifi, and use an external device (chromecast, apple tv, or whatever) but my wife was too excited to try out whatever features. Unfortunately we can't sell the TV for anywhere what we paid for it new (to replace it with a different brand) so we're stuck with it for another ~7-10 years, or whatever the standard TV replacement interval is these days. New "apps" keep showing up on the main screen, which I have to "delete" from the main screen once a month or so (they're not deleted, they're just undeletable apps in some massive library of preinstalled spyware we can fortunately mostly hide). Apparently Sony OLED screens are LG "glass" but without the spyware.
>Apparently Sony OLED screens are LG "glass" but without the spyware.
Without independent verification from someone like GN, I wouldn't trust "we installed rootkits" Sony not to be spying too.
Since Sony TVs run Android at least you can probably use ADB to remove a lot of junk.
2 replies →
Sony TVs are handled by TCL now, so time will tell how Sony-branded models act (up) in the future.
https://www.tomsguide.com/tvs/sony-just-handed-its-tv-busine...
What’s stopping you from disconnecting it from wifi mow?
This is also my question, but I suppose the answer could be that we don't trust LG to actually forget the wifi password (and not use it surreptitiously later). You could also change the wifi info, but that might mean changing a whole lot of devices (including wife's and kids).
4 replies →
As others have said, cut off access and/or factory reset it. My LG has never been granted net access, firmware upgrades through USB drives, and streaming through Onn 4K box(w/ a 3rd party launcher) and Apple TV. No surprise ads, apps, or anything.
What do you get from upgrading the firmware? I have a 10 yo smart tv that I simply treated as a dumb tv. Works fine.
1 reply →
Disconnect it from the internet, buy a streaming device, and use the streaming device. It’s really not that complicated.
If you want a bit complicated, you can probably unscrew the back panel and remove the wifi card.
Buy a cast/apple tv anyway and then reset the LG screen to factory. Is that an option?
Sony uses Google TV. Doesn't inspire trust as far as spying and data collection goes.
My Sony with Google TV is pretty good in "Basic Mode" without an internet connection though.
Why not reset it
It feels like there must be multiple completely different implementations of LG OLED TVs. I would not say that my LG has a "main screen" of any kind. When I turn mine on it shows the last input that had been used or, if that thing is off, it shows the bouncy egg and "No Signal". If I press the button on the remote that says RECENTS and has a picture of a house on it, which I guess is the "main screen", it maintains the bouncy egg but shows a ribbon of apps on the bottom. Those are my installed apps: Hulu, Prime, Peacock, YouTube, Netflix, Apple TV, and Disney+ happen to be today's recents. Where is this "main screen" where unbidden appvertisements arise?
That ribbon got slammed full of advertisements at some point, last I knew.
3 replies →
Hulu, Prime, Peacock, YouTube, Netflix, Apple TV, and Disney+ happen to be today's recents.
Where do you find the time to post on HN?
I have an older LG Smart TV. It was cheap and big. I have never plugged it into my network, never let it on my wifi. When I turn it on, it complains for 5 sec, then displays what's on hdmi1. Works for me.
Boy, how I would like LG to be sued out of existence.
Who's selling dumb TV's again, Samsung? Who else? I'll happily pay a thousand bucks to not get screwed by my TV.
What you want to look for is called "Commercial Signage Display". These are basically large "TV" monitors that are sold to businesses like sports bars.
On Amazon, you can find a few here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/industrial/18746933011... (which are mostly Samsung).
Don’t you worry, mid/high end TVs cost thousands of bucks and have all the same spyware
I used to go on here about Sceptre TVs, because they are relatively cheap and dumb as a brick. Was just shopping for one because of this LG news (wanted to replace my old one from 2014), and while Sceptre still lists them on their website, they tell me to go to Amazon or Walmart to buy one.
Amazon and Walmart say they are out of stock, with no expected date.
My conclusion is that Sceptre, the last holdout in the dumb TV industry, has quit in favor of focusing on monitors/displays for computers. Now I'm not sure if I'm going to ever replace my TV!
In Germany I like the "OK" brand from Saturn/Mediamarkt. They're Ok.
The dumb models are very cheap and the picture is faithful due to lack of framerate-doubler and other picture-enhancement shenanigans.
panelook.com
Is there an open firmware for LGs?
I think this is the important question. I've been searching, but all I found were deprecated and incomplete projects. If anyone knows some actual current development, even incomplete ones, let us know.
Huh. I never considered this. Hacking TVs with firmware would be a great project for LLMs to fuzz.
Question: if these run Android, and are rootable (unknown to me) is there open source software that can provide basic TV functionality?
I'm so tired of "smart" tech. I don't want my TV, or fridge, or dryer or anything connecting to wifi and bluetooth and having an app to manage settings. It's hard to believe there's demand for any of these terrible "features". The peak of smart tech were watches you could do math on.
Somewhat off topic but also ironic - I recently upgraded my version of Android, and when I opened YouTube for the first time on this video it asked for permission to detect nearby devices. I get why it would need that to cast, but at this point it's not paranoia to think that granting that permission just means it would scan whenever I have the app open and upload the data to YouTube servers for no good reason.
YouTube can cast to TVs on a local subnet and is looking for them. This isn't new. What's new is that Android now warns when an app starts poking around on your LAN.
The crazy part of this is that LG did not fear flat out admitting they do fingerprint the audio of what you watch. I already knew that, but I can't imagine it's common knowledge yet. How long ago was it that that would have been the crazy untrue accusation?
ACR is a documented feature so they can't deny that it exists. https://lgads.tv/technology/ https://www.consumerreports.org/electronics/privacy/how-to-t... (note that this is from a year ago)
Not defending LG's stance, but hasn't LG always said they do this as part of ACR (automatic content recognition) for the purposes of targeted advertising?
LG says it's opt in, and I think the devil is really in the details about what the consent screen says, but the only way I think it would be a "crazy accusation" is if LG was doing this without consent.
Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49645480
Original Youtube title of the video I got a few hours ago was: "LG’s Manipulative, Gaslighting Response to GN Report"
Either they changed it for some legal reason, or Youtube allows for A/B testing of multiple titles for engagement.
Youtube allows you to AB test with up to 3 titles and thumbnails.
It's almost certainly A/B test. Essentially everyone does it.
You can even sometimes see when a list of videos on YT first loads and a given video has one title, and it suddenly switches to another without you reloading the page.
On several channels I watch, I've noticed the top comment is always along the lines of "who was here when the video title was XYZ" because you know it's going to change.
Have you noticed that has become more common recently? Because I have. It seems over the past 3/4 months, reload and see a new title happens pretty much daily to me (it also seems to work because sometimes it causes me to click the video I didn't click with the old title).
1 reply →
YouTube encourages A/B testing of both titles and thumbnails, but it could be either.
[dead]
We should start whitelisting the domains that is allowed from router. Otherwise, these smart shitty ads companies will never take responsibility.
I just had a crazy idea: Are there any ways we (consumers) could leverage the (bad) DMCA "anti-circumvention" laws?
Ex:
1. The noise happening in my house is copyrighted.
2. I protected my copyright by blocking the TV from transmitting it to known manufacturer domains.
3. By switching to obfuscated domains or alternate transmission paths, the manufacturer started circumventing my copyright controls.
... I suppose the boring answer will be that the literally-unreadable stack of Terms Of Service has some "everything we ever do is permitted by you" clause.
No.
Now bend over, citizen