Is there anyone who has done a technical write up and investigation into the firmwares?

Like reverse engineering how the software on the TVs work.

Also what third parties are involved.

I have a feeling there must be some third party vendor selling the same toolkit that manufacturers use.

Would be nice to figure out if it's possible to send junk data to the endpoints.

Me too. I was hoping for a better write up than a pay walled verge article. Yes I'm being lazy but this is hn and I like technical break downs and not just moral panic. I own an older lg tv and I'm not dismissing the societal issues.

Pihole has worked reasonably well upto this point, however the web is catching up, lots of sites that use Admiral refuse to work with piehole running.

I suspect it will only be a matter of time before hardware manufacturers wise up and prevent you from using the TV if you block their ad network traffic.

LG for large parts of the product series use WebOS, which was the OS of the shortlived attempt by Palm to compete in the smartphone market with iPhone, which then changed hands a bit till landing there.