I would invite you to read all the investigations that have been done on how much various smart TVs surveil households and exfiltrate all kinds of personal data.

Then find investigations where Apple TVs are proven to do the same, of which there are none.

You’re chalking this up to fanboyism but this is just people making informed choices. In today’s streaming era “just don’t connect anything to the internet” isn’t possible.

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drnick1 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Then find investigations where Apple TVs are proven to do the same, of which there are none.

Instead, Apple sends that straight to the NSA.[0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM

> just don’t connect anything to the internet

A practically e-waste mini-PC running an ordinary Linux distro paired with an airmouse remote is a much better TV box. You don't need streaming apps when you are free to use a Web browser, something Apple won't allow for obvious reasons. No surveillance, no crapware, no ads. It can even double as a console for GOG/Steam.

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stouset 5 hours ago | parent [-]

> The Washington Post indicated that "98 percent of PRISM production is based on Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft"

> Apple: "We have never heard of PRISM" "We do not provide any government agency with direct access to our servers, and any government agency requesting customer data must get a court order."

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alt227 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Yeah, they said the same thing about giving out all your push notifications to the government, before they were caught and admitted they had to keep it secret due to NDAs. Seriously, why do people trust billion dollar corporations to look after the little guy?

"In this case, the federal government prohibited us from sharing any information," the company said in a statement. "Now that this method has become public we are updating our transparency reporting to detail these kinds of requests."

https://www.reuters.com/technology/cybersecurity/governments...

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stouset 5 hours ago | parent [-]

To whatever extent they’ve been required to comply by the legal authority of the government they operate under, it’s also abundantly clear that they’ve repeatedly gone above and beyond in removing their own ability to comply with such things in the future.

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alt227 4 hours ago | parent [-]

You are completely misunderstanding.

Yes they are happy to make a song and dance about not letting authorities into individual phones, the publicity definitely helps them out on that front. However none of it matters because the government already have probes in all their servers, as proved by Edward Snowden, so its game over before you start. Do you understand what NDAs are? It doesnt seem so because you keep quoting Apple while they have been proven to be under NDAs in the past, so how can you trust anything they say in the future?

Its ok, you carry on trusting old Uncle Apple to look after you. I am not trying to convince you of anything. However I am entitled to have my opinion that it is hypocritical to criticise tracking from one company but turn a blind eye to the same thing from another.

I have clarified my opinion many times now, feel free to have the last word.

	▲	stouset 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		If you presume that we have a technologically omnipotent government that can defeat secure enclaves, secure exclaves, private cloud compute, e2e encryption, etc., then there’s no point in even pretending to play the game you’re trying to. Even open source software has to run on chips that you have to trust haven’t been backdoored by Uncle Sam. Even open source chips have to be trusted to have been manufactured faithfully. If you presume the government isn’t technologically all-capable, then technical measures can limit and even defeat the observability that even a wildly tyrannical government has into your computing devices. This mindset is both infinitely more useful than yours and more reflective of the world we actually live in. The government now mostly has to rely on 0-day exploits that they hold close to their chest until a target sufficiently warrants burning it. Your paranoia is beyond hysterical and it presumes that these companies are gleefully giving out our data when it is extremely clear that nothing could be further from the truth. Again, Apple has more than any company proven a track record of tying their own hands when it comes to complying to these kinds of requests. In the absence of perfect options, I’ll happily go with the good ones.

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alt227 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Im really not chalking this up to Fanboyism. The same can be said for anyone using a streaming device to avoid plugging their TV into the internet, be it Nvidia or google etc.

I am well aware of the recent LG controversy. However In my opinion if you are happy to sign up to Netflix and Disney+ and use a streaming box to give them all your personal data and viewing habits to allow tracking and ad profiles then its pretty hypocritical to target a single company in the chain and call them out for it.

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afavour 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You really don’t think there’s a difference between a company collecting data about the usage of their own video library and another company tracking audio with microphones, sniffing local network devices, monitoring all video output and selling all of the above to third parties?

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bgarbiak 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Genuinely curious: is there any company caught “tracking audio with microphones”? And what does it mean? Is it about eavesdropping on users or identifying the content being watched?

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matwood 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> is there any company caught “tracking audio with microphones”?

I think it's become an internet meme because it's hard for the average person to understand the more creepy thing that's happening. All the data points being captured as one goes around the internet allows rich profiles to be built without something as complicated as recording and transcribing audio.

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drdexebtjl 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

LG TVs transcribe conversations you’re having in the room and store them locally. While they haven’t been caught sending that data anywhere AFAIK, there are known vulnerabilities that lets attackers read these transcriptions.

Gamers Nexus had a viral video about them here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IFVTcM28KA

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bgarbiak 4 hours ago | parent [-]

From what I understood, the TV doesn’t actually do that. It can do that when hacked, but that something else entirely.

	▲	duchef 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It does do it but LG claim that it is only used to identify activation words for voice control. It has nothing to do with being 'hacked'.

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alt227 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Personally I think when you sign up to Disney+ and you give them things like your DOB, bank details, address, phone number, IP address, its a much bigger base for those companies to start building your ad profile much more accurately. If you have kids you then make a family profile to protect them, but in reality all you are doing is feeding the streaming company information about your kids viewing habits to ad to the ad profiles. All of this is being sold to 3rd parties all over the world, for each streaming service you use.

This is without even looking at Apple, who own the hardware you are streaming on and have been caught lying multiple times in the past about data harvesting. After all that, I feel that unplugging the cord on your TV is completely pointless, and it is frustrating how people gloat about it like they are getting around the system. In reality, you are only giving your data to 4 companies in the chain now, instead of 5.

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afavour 6 hours ago | parent [-]

You’re talking about “fans” and “gloating” and I really can’t understand why you see things that way. Like I said, people accept that streaming services are an inevitable part of their lives and they’re making informed choices to minimise their exposure. 4 companies is indeed better than 5.

	▲	alt227 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Im pretty sure I never used the word "Fans" anywhere? If I did please point it out as it wasnt intentional. If you think giving data to 4 companies instead of 5 is fine then thats fair enough, its your own data. In my opinion if you happy to give your data to one billion dollar ad profile selling company, then why squabble about another? However I understand this is subjective, and I am not trying to tell anyone they are wrong. I just dont understand it thats all!

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5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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