YHK - yet another hacker news clone

I asked every TV manufacturer 17 questions about how they spy on you

55 points Brajeshwar 57 minutes ago 15 comments

tupac_speedrap 43 minutes ago | parent

The problem is the regulators in the US are in bed with the companies so they can say whatever and do the complete opposite and then get fined a trivial amount of money and just keep doing it

forinti 40 minutes ago | parent

Not only that, but most of the public is oblivious or unconcerned about this topic.

noja 40 minutes ago | parent

Because the news is in bed with them too.

giantg2 32 minutes ago | parent

Because most people don't give a shit until something negative happens to them from that direct source.

robot_jesus 28 minutes ago | parent

Yeah. This is exactly the problem. There is too much of a disconnect from the action to the impact in this case. I think if most people saw precisely what data is collected on them and how it is used (and how often it is part of data breaches from these identity resolution platforms and third parties), I think they'd care more.

But nearly everyone has more urgent and pressing concerns like making monthly rent or a medical bill or gas money. So ACR on a TV doesn't register.

giantg2 19 minutes ago | parent

I really don't think most people would care more when you show them examples of others. Some people would, but most would not. We see this all the time with legislation around rights in the US. Much of the voting population lack the capacity for deep critical thought and don't care to practice empathy from even a devil's advocate perspective. Stuff like tracking speech/identity online, abortion debate, gun debate, etc. Nobody cares unless they are directly affected.

Take guns for example. If you use guns, then you see a value to them and generally oppose mire restrictions. If you have been shot or robbed with a gun (or know people who have), then you dont see the value of guns and want more restrictions. If you are neither of these things then its easy to not care and say sure to more restrictions because they don't impact you and aound like they might provide some benefit, especially if just looking at the surfqce level stats. Same concept for abortion and online tracking/identity, especially once you mix in the think-of-the-children arguments in each of these.

DannyBee 31 minutes ago | parent

Because they have other things to worry about. Certainly you realize how privileged a world you have to live in to be able to spend time worrying about whether your TV is spying on you, right?

BLKNSLVR 14 minutes ago | parent

On the flipside, how fucked up the world is that TVs spying on you had become normalized.

The problem isn't with people being too busy, it shouldn't be up to the people, it should be a government regulation problem. There's a lot of 'todo' around potential breaches of PII, so why not do something about the ridiculously large and seemingly increasing trade in exactly that from almost anything you purchase nowadays, including the place you purchase it from. And they're all selling it to aggregators and advertisers and any other shady c*nt with enough cash to buy it.

... and now it's all going to be fed into AI for additional pattern matching and de-aggregation and re-identification, because that's where the return on investment is. And once it's in there, there ain't no cleaning it out again. You're in the corpus, all your personality fingerprints, forever.

Gross governmental negligence across the entire West.

francisofascii 3 minutes ago | parent

[delayed]

andsoitis 20 minutes ago | parent

> unconcerned

One would think that should cause more people who are paranoid to reconsider their assumptions and calibrate their concern-level.

ale42 29 minutes ago | parent

https://archive.is/jBJdd

detourdog 20 minutes ago | parent

I was disappointed that the article described Apple's answers to some questions as not direct. They should have published the indirect answer. Let the reader judge the answers.

ericbarrett 16 minutes ago | parent

Disagree - when a company responds with mealy-mouthed corporate gruel, designed in bad faith to obfuscate and distract, there should be no obligation on the part of the investigator to propagate it.

kevincox 7 minutes ago | parent

Why not both? Have the reporter editorialize in the article itself but link to sources and references including the full response as a way of showing their work and letting readers validate.

Oarch 6 minutes ago | parent

> looks at TV, forgetting its brand.

Toshiba.

Hmm. Not in this list.