CTV industry’s unprecedented “surveillance”
arstechnica.com
48-page report citing Ars Technica urges FTC, FCC investigate connected TV data harvesting. Gen AI, potentially racially discrimniatory practices head concerns.

48-page report urges FTC, FCC to investigate connected TV industry data harvesting.

The companies behind the streaming industry, including smart TV and streaming stick manufacturers and streaming service providers, have developed a “surveillance system” that has “long undermined privacy and consumer protection,” according to a report from the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD) published today and sent to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Unprecedented tracking techniques aimed at pleasing advertisers have resulted in connected TVs (CTVs) being a “privacy nightmare,” according to Jeffrey Chester, report co-author and CDD executive director, resulting in calls for stronger regulation.

  • TootSweet@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    2 months ago

    Not enough people are talking about the SFC v. Visio case currently being heard in California. Depending on the outcome of the case (and it’s looking fairly good for the Software Freedom Conservancy, not to get anyone’s hopes up), we might have fully-FOSS distros for existing consumer smart TVs sometime in the somewhat-not-too-distant future. Like we have OpenWRT and dd-wrt for routers and Graphine and LineageOS for smartphones. And there are potential implications for other types of consumer hardware devices.

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
      1·
      2 months ago

      That’s a good thing, but Smart TVs should only be a limited option in the first place. Most people do not need them or like them.

      I shouldn’t have to understand how to install a different OS on a TV in order to take the useless “smart” features away.

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
    1·
    2 months ago

    I’m honestly surprised there isn’t some successful startup that markets itself as the “dumb TV company” by now. You can buy dumb TVs if you go out of your way to look, but if you knew there was the FutureCo DumbTV Plus or whatever out there and you didn’t have to do a bunch of searching…

    • CainTheLongshot@lemmy.world
      1·
      2 months ago

      Because selling the data your SmartTV collects, is a massive revenue stream for these companies. Selling only dumb TVs wouldn’t be as profitable as a SmartTV would be.

      Also the ad space that could be projected to these, based on collected data is another massive revenue stream.