It is 100% diminishing the concern. If someone were paid by LG to try to manage this revelation, they would post exactly what touwer posted. Like, there isn't a better way to try to normalize and excuse bad behaviour than doing the incredibly boorish tactic seen above. The "everyone is doing it" excuse is a go to.

I mean, LG would probably also pay someone to run around going "it's just funny, is all" in support if anyone noticed this pathetic astroturfing.

No I disagree here. I would argue that a TV doing this 30 years ago would find themselves in court, whereas now they are all skirting the edge of the law and we accept it because that frog has been boiling for decades.

The idea that logging audio is bad, but cars logging your weight, tvs logging your watch history, scales sending your wifi details, android and apple both mapping your access point to create a pseudo-location tracker without GPS, my mobile network sending me location-based adverts based on tower proximity via sms to a dumbphone are all very very bad.

LG have slightly overstepped the line here, legally, but in my opinion they've overstepped what is OK by a long long way. A website reporting on this while sending your details to hundreds of tracking sites are doing the same thing - abusing what is allowed and I assume only printing the report for more engagement and not because they actually care.

LG need to go a lifetime shit list for this behaviour - there should be outrage like there was about Sony's root kit. But websites like this also need to find out that this behaviour is not ok