This seems to be the worst case scenario, put into practice by a highly popular device manufacturer. Are they doing this with all of their other devices as well? Monitors, washing machines, fridges? If they can fit this into a TV, they can fit it into everything else.

There's also a fair bit of arrogance from LG: "We own the glass..." leading to this great piece of marketing:

"within an LG TV household we can help extend the ad campaign footprint to the other devices in the household" (at ~14:11)

Advertising is a mind virus. These people are fucking gross. And this seems to be what all technology companies are turning into. Advertising is the Paperclip Maximiser of the real world.

I recently divided much of my home network into VLANs (with "Entertainment" devices separated for this very reason), and this makes me happy to have done so, but now makes me want to do the same to my in-laws network, since they have an LG TV and I regularly connect various of my devices through their network...

Tangential point: I recall on a previous article someone commenting on their surprise at how good Gamers Nexus investigative reporting was. This seems to be another example. You go Gamers Nexus. Might have to buy a supporter pack.

▲ jw_cook 19 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> There's also a fair bit of arrogance from LG: "We own the glass..."

The execs shown in those clips used some pretty revealing language. I also had to do a double-take when they described a customer's (compromised) house as an "LG household," where they "know who's in [it], we know which devices are there... we know how to extend that reach into mobile" and tell advertisers they can "own the living room."

The sense of entitlement is so over-the-top that it's difficult to distinguish from satire.

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BLKNSLVR 19 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I shared this thought with a friend of mine recently, primarily in regards to the use of residential proxies:

They don't care about any effect on the individual people.

They view their thing in a vacuum with some kind of religious fervor. It's a form of psychosis, and it seems increasingly prevalent in tech company leadership and so spreads into those who aspire to be tech company leadership types.

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mitxela 19 hours ago | parent [-]

also, residential proxies don't really affect anyone except Cloudflare, who we should rightfully hate anyway. Spying does.

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BLKNSLVR 18 hours ago | parent [-]

Fairly strong disagree. Plenty of damage could be caused to the individual, whether they made the decision to run a residential proxy or not.

Essentially little difference from running a tor exit node.

My position is that I assume that most people running a residential proxy are not aware that they're running a residential proxy. I understand why people use them and how they're useful, but I just don't think there's informed consent. I think they essentially grew out of botnets, or botnets just rebranded into 'residential proxies'.

Having said that, I'm not trying to convince you to change your position. Feel free to continue to disagree with me.

	▲	anon7000 14 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I don’t have a deep understanding of residential proxies. But if you had an internet plan with a data cap, it would surely count against both download and upload, yeah? That alone is a huge violation. These companies need to be fined into the dirt. We need a corporate death penalty, to be honest.

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mitxela 19 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's like AI model collapse, where they're surrounded by feedback they're doing everything right, no matter what, for a long time, the feedback loop just drifts away from baseline reality.

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mitxela 19 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[dead]

▲ hurfdurf 13 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

   Are they doing this with all of their other devices as well? Monitors,

Sort of:

LG monitors silently install software through Windows Update without consent | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48956688

LG monitors installing adware on Windows PCs | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48953226