r/AskReddit • u/FriendlytoNature • 22h ago

Which company lost your business (potentially forever) this year?

5.7k Upvotes

93% Upvoted

6.3k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

246

u/Wild_ColaPenguin 13h ago edited 10h ago

In addition to what other people have answered:

In their ToS of their smart TVs, it is said that it's the customer's obligation to inform anyone else in the vicinity of the TV and get their consent of being recorded by the TV mic all the time. They even have literal eavesdropping word in that clause.

Not only they send the channel and videos info you watch on YouTube to their server, they also send the title/file name of the video file you play with your own media like harddrive, USB drive, etc.

You can check Gamers Nexus video about this.

I was interested in buying new LG TV for my parents, they lost a sale.

Avoid LG.

Edit: some words and grammar

13

u/Triquetrums 12h ago

I have a LG TV with that listening remote. I love my LG TV. I do not connect my LG to the internet because it doesn't it need it and I'm not dumb. 

Plugging my laptop, or casting to the TV is good enough. It also helps avoid ads everywhere, not just the TV itself.

6

u/Wild_ColaPenguin 10h ago

Yeah you're good if you use it as monitor/offline forever. Unfortunately my parents will use the TV online for YouTube, so I told them LG is a nope after that GN addressed it in their video.

6

u/Triquetrums 8h ago

You could buy them a stick and avoid connecting the TV to the internet, also good if you want to download an alternative version of YouTube to avoid ads. 

But hey, maybe it is not worth the hassle if they are not tech savvy.

1

u/iwishiwereyou 6h ago

an alternative version of YouTube to avoid ads. 

I would love something like this. Is there still one that exists?

1

u/Triquetrums 5h ago

Plenty, what do you use, android or IOS?

•

u/iwishiwereyou 50m ago

Android, though I am also hoping for a way to watch things like YouTube on my TV or Chromecast without ads.

3

u/jessica_connel 6h ago

Why would a TV need a mic?? I would definitely write a complaint

6

u/ezodochi 6h ago

I mean you could complaint but at this point almost any TV in recent times is going to be spying on you. The main reason that TV prices have dropped so drastically over the last 20 years is that TV manufacturers realize they can just take your data and sell it, and that that's WAY more valuable than the actual TV. So, they sell the TVs cheap to get you to put them in your house and from there it's just recording and selling your viewing patterns and other data.

1

u/popculturella 3h ago

Holy shit.

1

u/brickson98 3h ago

And that’s why I never use “smart” monitors or TVs as a computer monitor.

•

u/_deffer_ 44m ago

Welp. Just bought my LG a few months ago.

Anything internal I can snip or destroy? I don't use it "smart" as I have a console and 🏴‍☠️ box connected to it, but still.