This is why I don't own a smart TV: Vizio makes twice the profit on consumer data than on TVs

[thewayne]

This is an old story from last November, I've been slow cleaning up some tabs. Relevant nonetheless. The first paragraph really says it all.

It’s been less than a year since Vizio became a publicly traded company, and one consequence of that is we know more about its business than ever before. The TV maker released its latest earnings report on Tuesday and revealed that over the last three months, its Platform Plus segment that includes advertising and viewer data had a gross profit of $57.3 million. That’s more than twice the amount of profit it made selling devices like TVs, which was $25.6 million, despite those device sales pulling in considerably more revenue.

Now, that's not the only problem with these devices. I believe it was Samsung that rendered useless an entire segment of smart TVs a year or two ago from simply not updating their software. They moved on from that generation of software and let it whither and die and lose all functionality.

The solution? There's two. Well, there's a third and that's to simply let it be if you don't care. If you like your TV being smart and have some tech savvieness, get yourself a RaspberryPi and set up a PiHole. You can trap the ads going to the TV and the telemetry going back to the vendor. That might impair functionality. The simple solution is to ignore the smart TV's functionality and never connect it to WiFi: plug in an Amazon Fire Stick, Google Chromecast, Roku device, or Apple TV device. Or a Play Station or similar gaming console. Use them for your streaming. It's guaranteed that your streaming sites are going to get your data, people like NetFlix or Disney, and you know they're going to monetize it, but why should the TV vendor? Apple has a good privacy policy, and while they're going to monitor your use patterns to see how you use their device, they've never sold information.

Now, keep in mind Vizio is not unique in this: all smart TV makers do this, this is just a nice blatant demonstration of how much your consumer information is worth to them and how much it scales. Next year it will easily be 3:1 instead of 2:1 because those TVs sold last year will still be generating revenue, albeit at a slower pace as some are replaced with non-Vizio TVs. And Google is just as bad at monetizing off your data: when they announced their corporate motto as "Don't be evil", what they meant was "Don't get caught being evil." They monetize the hell out of data through keyword searches of your email and our Google Searches through selling adverts that are vaguely accurate.

Remember: when you're not paying for a service online, YOU are the thing being itemized and being profited from. And that's why Facebook, Google and Amazon are so desperate to track you across everything you do online. All of those behavioral analytics are worth a fortune to them when applied internally to sell you shit or when packaged and sold to advertisers. Facebook can literally sell ad impressions to "30-35 year old stay at home moms in Des Moine who drink wine and lean Conservative". No problem. All through tracked analytics. Easy peasy. And tracking TV viewing is one such method, as is Facebook analytics.

Personally, when I buy a TV I look for the dumb ones. Less stuff to go wrong in the TV and the remotes. It also saves money. If I were ever given a smart one, it would never get connected to my home network. I'd just plug in my Apple TV via HDMI, just like nothing had changed.

https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/10/22773073/vizio-acr-advertising-inscape-data-privacy-q3-2021

Comments

[murakozi]

When I got my most recent TV, I let it do a software update, then shut off wifi. It's not connected to the outside world since. I don't need the 'smart' functionality. I do stream Netflix via an older Roku box, so they're getting some data, but the tv itself isn't getting anything.

Same goes for the bluray player. It got an initial update and then no more net connectivity.

[thewayne]

That's exactly what I did with my Bluray.  If I encounter a BR disc it won't play because of DRM, plug in the Ethernet and do an update.

[mtbc]

Definitely. My current television's around fifteen years old. I don't for a moment expect ones with much built-in software to be kept up to date for anything like that long and I also don't want them to be an entry point for hackers reaching behind my firewall. I like my devices to be separate so that there's less complexity, so less to go wrong, and broken parts can be replaced separately. I similarly have separate printer, scanner, etc., and I dearly hope someday to buy a decent all-electric car that still has fundamentally simple controls too rather than everything being behind some godawful touchscreen UI with automatic things happening to door locks or exterior lights or whatever.

[thewayne]

I learned my lesson many years ago on having a standalone scanner when I went to scan a page on my multifunction and it wouldn't let me because I was out of ink.  It went in the trash and I went and bought a scanner and a laser.  I'm on my second laser and original scanner.  Cost per page is so much cheaper on a laser and I don't need color printing at home: I can do it at work, and if I need to print a photo, email it to Walgreens and get it printed on much better equipment that I don't have to maintain.

[mtbc]

Absolutely, I've had lasers for years for exactly that: well, cost per page, and still printing nicely even after periods of disuse.

[warriorsavant]

It's getting so that someone is going to put microchips in your toothbrush and analyze your toothbrushing habits.

[thewayne]

They do have smartphone-connected electric toothbrushes.  I don't know why, except "because we can!".

[mtbc]

I was surprised to find that my washer and dryer will talk to an app on my cell. So I'm told, it's really not the kind of thing I'm about to try.

[thewayne]

I went to some lengths to avoid that when I replaced my dryer last year.

[warriorsavant]

Clearly in case they want to party with your internet-enabled dishwasher and refrigerator. Wouldn’t want the poor toothbrush to feel left out.

[thewayne]

ROFL!

[bibliofile]

A friend bought a new tv in the last couple-few years and had a hard time finding one that was completely dumb. Managed it, but it took extra effort. (Not even wifi to turn off!)