Comment by Brendinooo
25 days ago
>It's mind-blowing how one of the most advanced technology forums on the internet can take privacy for granted
that's not what I did
> just because the marketing
not just because of the marketing
> of a for-profit corporation with previous histories of privacy violations (there's even lawsuits) claims their closed source device connected 24/7 to the internet, is private.
in other words, they are being watched and held accountable when they do screw up, which obviates a lot of the "well maybe they're stealing your data and we don't know about it" nonsense elsewhere in the replies.
I'll ask something specific: We know that Rokus and built-in smart TVs are actively tracking and monetizing everything you do on your television. People can prove this by looking at what calls are made on your network.
Does Apple do the same thing?
Apple literally does do the same thing. Especially (!) with Apple TV. Go read the eula's again. Apple TV, Apple Maps & Apple News all perform data mining largely akin to how their competitors do it. There are specific carve outs for those three services.
A quick search suggests that Roku does ~380 network requests per hour. LG smart TVs running webOS typically generate regular hourly background checks, plus periodic or continuous telemetry and Automatic Content Recognition requests.
Does Apple TV even do ACR in any form? Is it scanning my network and phoning home about it?
Ah nice. You know Apple literally invented Bonjour and mDNS? They know what's on your network. The only difference is that we applaud them for it. Does the apple tv do acr? It has to, to do the first party "magic" it does. Again, we just applaud them for it because they "only use it for first party services." Why are you so offended that Apple is just another for profit megacorp.
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Unlike their competitors, Apple does not do Automatic Content Recognition (ACR). That matters to me.
Knowing Apple, they won't call it ACR. Just like Apple calling AI "Apple Inteligence". They are too hip for using common word.
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> Apple literally does do the same thing. ... all perform data mining largely akin to how their competitors do it.
Funny how the OP carefully skimmed this part out in their reply, but BINGO, I think this is the attitude we should have towards privacy. Sometimes I just feel like we're talking to a bunch of bots on here when it comes to privacy with their blind support towards for-profit corporations that doesn't give a shit about them.
> the OP carefully skimmed this part out
lol
>we're talking to a bunch of bots on here
Ah. Okay. In a different tenor of conversation I'd be happy to clarify but...not when I'm up against this.
One of the products you mentioned is named Home View. It's right there. Both new SKUs ship with their voice assistant interface to Google Gemini (and friends) in an environment where memory and storage availability is being monopolized by cloud infrastructure.
> I can (reasonably) trust to not be mining my viewing habits for data
That's precisely what you did.
The distortion field is powerful.
Keep the firewall of skepticism high.
What is a better solution here? What is something that lets me stream from the major services, has a good-enough remote, and doesn't require any fiddling on my part?
I've always seen Apple TV as the least-bad option compared to Roku/Fire/whatever Google is doing these days/literally any built-in solution.
> I've always seen Apple TV as the least-bad option compared to Roku
If this was your original statement, I think we all would be on your side - I even use an Apple TV 4k personally and love it. It definitely is the best in the market for what it does.
> it's the one box I can (reasonably) trust to not be mining my viewing habits for data.
Instead, you framed it as the only privacy-friendly option and that is logically and factually incorrect.
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I think it depends on what you prioritize. I have an Apple TV, but also LG and Samsung smart TVs as well as Google TV Streamer.
They come with different tradeoffs wrt price, A/V quality, user interface, privacy, etc.
For me, the #1 thing is A/V quality. I don’t care about price, but most people do.
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I believe you could buy a random Android streaming box with an unlocked bootloader, and then install LineageOS on it. Not sure about the “streams from all the major services” part re: LineageOS, but last I heard it’s improving.
(There are also some boxes made specifically for this, usually sold as development platforms for STB products, marketed based on what SoC they contain. Though they’ll tend to be $200, while the random “finished product” streaming box will be more like $30. Both come with decent remotes.)
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> Does Apple do the same thing?
Yes, they did:
https://www.reuters.com/legal/apple-pay-95-million-settle-si...
Can you prove they aren't actively doing it now?
edit: link
https://www.reuters.com/technology/apple-clarifies-siri-priv...
"Apple has never used Siri data to build marketing profiles, never made it available for advertising, and never sold it to anyone for any purpose," Apple said on Wednesday.
Unintentionally activating Siri and then recording is very different from the active listening things going on. Shared with advertisers was speculation.
A billion dollar company's public statement defending itself of a crime it was accused of committing and is sued for, is the source of truth now and what it was actually accused of doing is considered speculation? Sure.
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>Yes, they did
This has nothing to do with the specific question I asked, and I'm not sure why you'd think so unless Roku has some kind of Siri-like feature (which wasn't what I was intending when I asked regardless). (also, that's a dead link)
You did mention "monetizing everything you do (on your television)", my answer was for that part. Again, my question to you is - it's closed source, do you have proof they aren't actually doing it? Or are you going to wait for another half a decade for another lawsuit to find out?
My point is, it's a for-profit corporation. And a really efficient one. They don't care about anyone's privacy or anything else. Only profits. History has proof - battery gate, siri lawsuit, etc.
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