Comment by afavour
25 days ago
I would invite you to read all the investigations that have been done on how much various smart TVs surveil households and exfiltrate all kinds of personal data.
Then find investigations where Apple TVs are proven to do the same, of which there are none.
You’re chalking this up to fanboyism but this is just people making informed choices. In today’s streaming era “just don’t connect anything to the internet” isn’t possible.
> Then find investigations where Apple TVs are proven to do the same, of which there are none.
Instead, Apple sends that straight to the NSA.[0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM
> just don’t connect anything to the internet
A practically e-waste mini-PC running an ordinary Linux distro paired with an airmouse remote is a much better TV box. You don't need streaming apps when you are free to use a Web browser, something Apple won't allow for obvious reasons. No surveillance, no crapware, no ads. It can even double as a console for GOG/Steam.
> The Washington Post indicated that "98 percent of PRISM production is based on Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft"
> Apple: "We have never heard of PRISM" "We do not provide any government agency with direct access to our servers, and any government agency requesting customer data must get a court order."
Yeah, they said the same thing about giving out all your push notifications to the government, before they were caught and admitted they had to keep it secret due to NDAs. Seriously, why do people trust billion dollar corporations to look after the little guy?
"In this case, the federal government prohibited us from sharing any information," the company said in a statement. "Now that this method has become public we are updating our transparency reporting to detail these kinds of requests."
https://www.reuters.com/technology/cybersecurity/governments...
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> A practically e-waste mini-PC running an ordinary Linux distro paired with an airmouse remote is a much better TV box. You don't need streaming apps when you are free to use a Web browser, something Apple won't allow for obvious reasons.
That setup will work in the most basic sense, but browser streaming is often limited (reduced quality, etc) and things like HDR and color spaces are still a mess (though improving) in the Linux world.
Im really not chalking this up to Fanboyism. The same can be said for anyone using a streaming device to avoid plugging their TV into the internet, be it Nvidia or google etc.
I am well aware of the recent LG controversy. However In my opinion if you are happy to sign up to Netflix and Disney+ and use a streaming box to give them all your personal data and viewing habits to allow tracking and ad profiles then its pretty hypocritical to target a single company in the chain and call them out for it.
You really don’t think there’s a difference between a company collecting data about the usage of their own video library and another company tracking audio with microphones, sniffing local network devices, monitoring all video output and selling all of the above to third parties?
Genuinely curious: is there any company caught “tracking audio with microphones”? And what does it mean? Is it about eavesdropping on users or identifying the content being watched?
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Personally I think when you sign up to Disney+ and you give them things like your DOB, bank details, address, phone number, IP address, its a much bigger base for those companies to start building your ad profile much more accurately. If you have kids you then make a family profile to protect them, but in reality all you are doing is feeding the streaming company information about your kids viewing habits to ad to the ad profiles. All of this is being sold to 3rd parties all over the world, for each streaming service you use.
This is without even looking at Apple, who own the hardware you are streaming on and have been caught lying multiple times in the past about data harvesting. After all that, I feel that unplugging the cord on your TV is completely pointless, and it is frustrating how people gloat about it like they are getting around the system. In reality, you are only giving your data to 4 companies in the chain now, instead of 5.
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