Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What Vizio was doing behind the TV screen

ftc.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 340 posts

Re: What Vizio was doing behind the TV screen

#191

Post by malz »

jasonwilk wrote: post #21

It's not worth buying any of these 'Smart' TVs. I don't know whether it is a shoddy developer experience provided by the likes of Samsung / Vizeo etc or if it's the developers themselves (Hulu I'm looking at you) who do not maintain their apps which are constantly bug filled. I much prefer my old dumb TV that has a Roku plugged into it. Oh yeah, and I know it's not WATCHING ME.

The Wirecutter's top TV pick is a non-smart one, ironically a Vizio.

"In a departure from the trend toward smarter and smarter sets, the Vizio P-Series lacks built-in smart-TV features. It’s basically a dumb TV, not just lacking apps but also dispensing with a tuner."

http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-tv/

Re: What Vizio was doing behind the TV screen

#193

Post by kchoudhu »

ohyes wrote: post #120
AJ007 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for posting this. When I saw the original FTC story I recalled reading about this once or twice in the past but couldn't think of any key phrases or sources. In response to some of the other comments here, basically what they are guilty of isn't spying but failing to properly disclose and opt-in users. There is a particular major AV vendor who is selling raw clickstream data of millions of their user's interne…

> I had an interesting case with Instagram where after viewing enough pictures of women's butts it started also showing men's bare butts in my feed too.. at least until I never opened any of them, and they disappeared. This truly is technology run amok. "Welcome to buttstagram, for your butt viewing pleasure." When I think about this situation it makes me want to stay entirely away from social media and off the inter…

Wait, what's cloudstagram?

Re: What Vizio was doing behind the TV screen

#194

Post by yincrash »

AJ007 wrote: post #55
mikeryan wrote: post #33

So I have a bit of intimate knowledge of this. Not sure what I can answer but for years my company worked on an Automatic Content Recognition project using tools from a team called Cognitive Networks who were bought by Vizio and makes up the tech that did this. If I understand correctly the founder of Vizio kept this tech for himself in the sale of Vizio. When developing this we would work directly with Cognitive che…

Thanks for posting this. When I saw the original FTC story I recalled reading about this once or twice in the past but couldn't think of any key phrases or sources. In response to some of the other comments here, basically what they are guilty of isn't spying but failing to properly disclose and opt-in users. There is a particular major AV vendor who is selling raw clickstream data of millions of their user's interne…

Surveilling users without their knowledge and consent sure sounds like spying to me

Re: What Vizio was doing behind the TV screen

#195

Post by neotek »

"Smart" TVs are the worst TVs I've ever used, I really don't understand the appeal whatsoever.

They're almost universally clunky and slow with horrific UI / UX choices and painfully high latency on simple things like browsing a list of files or even just registering button presses, provide fuck all useful benefit over and above the regular TV experience, are usually running some long-deprecated version of Android which is riddled with security holes that will never get patched - why does anyone actually want this?

A Raspberry Pi running OSMC is everything you could ever want out of a home media setup, it'll work with good old regular "dumb" TVs that can't invade your privacy, with an interface so simple your grandparents can use it, and can be put together for well under $50.

Re: What Vizio was doing behind the TV screen

#196

Post by ad_tech_ninja »

jasonwilk wrote: post #21

It's not worth buying any of these 'Smart' TVs. I don't know whether it is a shoddy developer experience provided by the likes of Samsung / Vizeo etc or if it's the developers themselves (Hulu I'm looking at you) who do not maintain their apps which are constantly bug filled. I much prefer my old dumb TV that has a Roku plugged into it. Oh yeah, and I know it's not WATCHING ME.

Roku is collecting and sharing information on what you're watching with Nielsen and other analytics providers. I believe they are requiring it of all their developers.

http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/press-room/2015/nielsen-and-rok...

if the FTC had any sense - they should require disclosure at point of purchase.

Re: What Vizio was doing behind the TV screen

#197

Post by 13of40 »

ohyes wrote: post #120
AJ007 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for posting this. When I saw the original FTC story I recalled reading about this once or twice in the past but couldn't think of any key phrases or sources. In response to some of the other comments here, basically what they are guilty of isn't spying but failing to properly disclose and opt-in users. There is a particular major AV vendor who is selling raw clickstream data of millions of their user's interne…

> I had an interesting case with Instagram where after viewing enough pictures of women's butts it started also showing men's bare butts in my feed too.. at least until I never opened any of them, and they disappeared. This truly is technology run amok. "Welcome to buttstagram, for your butt viewing pleasure." When I think about this situation it makes me want to stay entirely away from social media and off the inter…

I had a similar thing happen a year or two ago: At some point in the past I shut down my Facebook page, but a year later I created a new minimalistic one so I could stay in touch with my family. I posted a picture of a Vespa scooter I'd been restoring in the garage, and suddenly my suggested friends list started overflowing with guys in Indonesian scooter gangs and young asian ladies in head scarfs. (I friended one guy and we exchange "likes" every once in a while but even google translate doesn't understand 3/4 of what he says.)

Re: What Vizio was doing behind the TV screen

#199

Post by noonespecial »

jaimex2 wrote: post #123

I caught my TV doing this and went to war. For the last two years I have had a service running that floods garbage data back to the collection point from several addresses throughout the Internet. You're welcome.

It would be nice to rope in some chan-ners and a bot net or two. I think the data should say that the entire country watched a certain Rick Astley video on repeat for the next year.

Re: What Vizio was doing behind the TV screen

#200

Post by noonespecial »

passivepinetree wrote: post #15

The amount of money they made from that data is probably orders of magnitude more than the paltry $2.2 million penalty. I hate to get all paranoid, but it seems like every day there's news of a company's data being hacked, and what information isn't being hacked is being actively sold. What can an average citizen do (short of living Ron Swanson-style in a cabin in the woods) to protect their privacy?

When the penalty is less than the profit, it has a different name. Tax.
Post reply on HN