Bring on the TV firmware. Jailbreak your consoles. Use Linux or steal windows and use tools to completely rip its spyware out of it (e.g. https://revi.cc/).

Custom firmware anywhere and everywhere a device that someone supports with custom firmware is a feature worth researching.

The fucks are only going to jeep doing it. Protect yourself. Push for GDPR like laws in the US. California's privacy laws are headed in the right direction.

EU really should regulate against this kind of behaviour

I think the original coverage from Gamers Nexus should also be linked here:

https://youtu.be/6IFVTcM28KA

accountablity? none. consequences? none (maybe a slap on the wrist at most).

Secretly recording conversations in peoples homes sounds like it should be against the law in a number of countries.

Imagine someone working for the government, security services, or a defence contractor. I suspect LG may be in trouble with a number of National Security agencies.

This is a good time to remind everyone to:

• Install Pi Hole, get LG rules to nerf all the telemetric data going out
• Jailbreak the TV, install SmartTube for your YouTube account without ads and live your best life
• Edit: since some people asked for a Pi Hole configuration, I found a couple of them that I'm going to try out and tweak:
  • https://raw.githubusercontent.com/TheShawnMiranda/LG-TV-Ad-Block/master/list
  • https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Perflyst/PiHoleBlocklist/master/SmartTV.txt

I hope it helps!

"We own the glass, we own the TV, we own the living room. We know who is in an LG home." --LG President of Ads

These are the Gamers Nexus videos btw. Support them and their work. Get some cool shirts and physical media while you're at it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5KnFmKjFTA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IFVTcM28KA

"The toaster is listening" in 2006 🤣

"The toaster is listening" in 2026 😬

Waiting for the "No idea how this happened, we're sorry and promise to make this better in future versions" moment - instead of admitting that this is just part of their business model.

Hoping for prosecution from the EU and at least one other country.

I mean I know it's about LG but they are all doing this.

there was a time.. long past I suppose ..when this would have been an outrage and politicians would be holding press conferences where they took crowbar swings to such devices. Things sure have changed.

My LG TV runs WebOS, which is a linux distro. I have been wondering how hard it is to root and replace with a distro of my own choosing. I had thought because my TV is pretty old that I was safe from the more sophisticated spying, but last week it interrupted what I was watching and would not let me continue using it without agreeing to new terms of use. This revived my interest in rooting it.

I have a Samsung TV that I suspect does this. Once upon a time (back when I was less knowledgeable about this practice) I connected my TV to the internet. I have since been totally I able to forget my network from the TV, even a factory reset didn't wipe the network settings from it. I've had to block it from the network at a router level.

I only discovered it was still doing this when I got a new router, and I had a popup on my TV saying "software update downloaded and complete" and I was wondering how tf it did that even though I'd gone through the process of forgetting the network, and seemingly the settings showed it had been "done".

Shady fucks.

This is why my tv’s don’t get internet access.

This is a felony in most 2 party consent states.

Every day I'm grateful I bought a screen and not a "smart" TV

Suggestions for people who only need and want a good screen instead of an ad infested spy station?

I ran a packet capture on my TV as I left it turned off overnight.

They wake up in the middle of the night, do "stuff" then go back offline. Like a zombie.

I thought I had disabled everything but mine was still connected to WiFi. Thanks for the reminder. I disconnected it and blocked it at the router.

Tired of doing this for so many devices. We truly live in a full on surveillance state.

this is precisely why i never "pair" the voice remote that came with my vizio. just keep using the dumb one from a previous model

in capitalist America , you don't listen to tv , tv listen to you !

Ugh. So blocklists were not enough. Time to isolate my telly on the router.

So this is why every product started to go standby, low power mode, instead of turning off.

And that's why I have a VLAN without outbound connections allowed. Still allows me to cast to the device from a separate vlan but the TV has no internet at all.

Stuff like this is why I'm still holding on to my old TV for dear life. It's seen better days but it's at least easily repairable.

The amp went bad which causes the internal speakers to give up after a couple of minutes, so I just run it with a soundbar. Then one of the cats broke the optical port for it, so now it's taped on lol. The panel still works great, so I think I'll just replace the main board on it to keep it going for a few more years.

Once something on it finally goes where repairing it becomes unviable, then I've no idea where to go from there. I guess I'll just keep buying used TVs and fix them up.

Back in the 90's we had designated computer desks, where the big ass CRT and big ass desktop PC lived. Most people would use a surge protector power strip with a master power switch, and they would use that one switch to turn on and off the CRT monitor, PC, printer, desk lamp, etc..

That seems like a great idea right about how.