That was a long two hours. 15 minutes longer than two hours actually. It was well spent overall since Gamers Nexus covered the privacy intrusions that LG has built into the OS for their smart TV line and likely all of their other smart home devices. "We own the glass" and "we own the living room" don't tell the whole story.

The enshittification of TV ownership and usage through smart TVs and the apps and other software that runs without user knowledge is a huge problem wherever these devices are sold. The TVs track and log every device on owner networks - smart watches, thermostats, smart phones, etc, anything that uses wireless or that accesses the internet from inside the home.

I am so glad that I have avoided "upgrading" our TV, almost montly, for years now by simply sending all the Best Buy texts to spam or deleting them. The best way is to opt out of Best Buy communications and after watching that video I will do that.

Our TV is a Panasonic plasma TV from 2012. I need to exit the last streaming service that we subscribe with and that will get it set to an OTA device used when weather int he area is bad enough that having that real-time local weather channel adds value.

From the video - RCE vulnerabilities could allow anyone to drop code on your TV that enables them to use it as a surveillance device. Lots of microphones in the device and no way for the user to disable them. The TV is listening all the time and, using the very sensitive microphones, can detect and record voices in conversations happening in other rooms more than 60' distant. They are effectively whole-house listening devices probably using MEMS microphones due to excellent sensitivity of the devices. Users are fingerprinted and everyone in the house can be identified, even children and those who are frequent enough guests to have been ID'd. Everything that happens triggers the recording.

I suspect Amazon's and Google's devices were the same with their voice triggers. LG does not allow the user to disable that functionality even after the user has disabled it (apparently) through the deeply buried menu option.

LG pushes updates to TVs that improve the tracking ability for LG and their "partners", which includes Microsoft through MS's ownership of Nuance. LG tried to separate their data collection/advert business to circumvent restrictions on ...

Man there is so much there. Fortunately the only LG product I own is a dumb monitor. I will be contacting relatives to offer advice about what to do with their smart devices, LG or others, so I know this starts another round of investigation for me.

No Samsung or LG at my house. Almost done canceling subscription-based "services" like TV content and gaming (XBox) stuff. I don't have software subscriptions so that's great. And, I should be finished with MS OSes pretty soon and flipped to Linux on new devices.

A lot of the shit and shit infrastructure that some of you build is destructive. One day, you will get your just desserts after shafting people with Binding Arbitration agreements, huge TOS and Privacy Policies, and other types of enshittifying end results.