@@alittlebitintellectual7361 And if the folks behind this have deep enough pockets and connections it won't matter, just like it didn't matter for Uber and Air Bnb to serve as the middleman to people dodging licensing and regulations. Our society is corrupt and declining.
Say you sell your soul for the free TV... then you invite a friend over... that friend hasn't sold their soul yet the TV will spy on them nonetheless. That's the problem I see with this. It's not something that affects just you, it'll spy on everyone.
This is what it's already like though, in homes, in cars, on your phone even your arm, and everywhere in cities. "People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you. You, however, are forbidden to touch them. ... " attributed to Banksy
You guys missed the wildest part, the massively suspect things mistakenly left in the TOS, and the fact this is definitely going to be used to illegally advertise to and collect advertising data from children under 13. Y'all missed some big bits here. It's dumpster fires all the way down!
Wouldn't be surprised if sales of this TV are outright banned in the EU, considering their hardening stance on user privacy and cracking down on big-tech overreach.
@@TheVirtualObserver in the section where they state if they find out any of the data they are collecting is from someone under 13 they will delete it, they left in a section in parentheses (this is not accurate do we have to say this or can we leave this out and not be liable if we don't)
@@randomstuff9005 while it's definitely possible, ive learned not to ascribe to malice what negligence can explain. This feels like an unscrupulous company that is run by greedy management motivated by dollar signs that they chase blind to reason or sense, so cut corners and top down dysfunction go hand and hand with that type of company, hence it was left in the TOS.
Give me your name, phone number, and address. Oh you don't want to post it online on youtube? I can't have access to your facebook and everything else's chatlogs? That's why we have a problem with this. It's the cleverest trick the corpos ever pulled getting you to automatically distrust the government for literally anything while trusting the megacorp more than you trust your own family. The corpo is literally your Big Brother.
Remember, folks, if you ever need a free TV, look at the second hand market! Many people have older TVs that are perfectly functional, but they want to get rid of them because they're upgrading. Sure, you might not get 4K HDR, but a 1080p display with a nice back-light shouldn't be too hard to find. They're all either free or dirt-cheap nowadays.
@@zac8670 True. And also, considering that it's "only" $500 without ads, it's also probably a weaker 4K HDR display, with basically "fake" hdr and is edge-lit. An old premium 1080p display will realistically look much better, just from image uniformity.
Also good old fashioned desktop monitors have come a long way and are great if you've got a smaller setup or don't want to deal with all the spyware and adware packed in smart-TVs. I've got a 27" 4K HDR LG monitor I use for my entertainment that I adore. It's simple to use and has excellent picture quality to boot. Plus it cost about $100 less than this lump of spyware.
Even better. Ask your biggest retailer shop next to you for the products they used in the shops to show the models to the customers. You can get very good deals on practically new televisions. Plus you get the warranty, here it is two years even for those products.
@@KoopstaKlicca Here's a quote from 1984: "The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it, moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment." The comparison is 100% justified.
@@GeoStreber Let's continue that quote shall we. "How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even concievable that they watched everybody at all time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live - did live, from habit that became instinct - in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinised. Winston kept his back turned to the telescreen. It was safer; though, as he well knew, even a back can be revealing."
I'm so used to ad blockers. I went to the theater for the first time in ages tonight, and all the ads beforehand seriously felt like something out of a dystopia. They're not even disproportionate to how they were before I had ad blockers, that's just how ads feel to me now.
I hear that. Whenever I go to my parent's house and they're watching cable tv I notice it. The commercials feel manipulative and designed to turn my brain into mush. After being away from them for so long I can't understand why I ever dealt with them before. Fun fact: When cable tv first came around, there were no ads. That was basically the entire point of it. But of course ads crept their way in.
Part of the issue isn't the privacy thing. Part of the issue, or even really a big deal of the issue is that this is furthering the normalization of advertising being absolutely everywhere in your life. Advertisements on things you did and did not pay for, advertisements on consumer cars, advertisements on the pamphlet a hotel gives you, advertisements on the receipts for your groceries, advertisements on every screen, advertisements everywhere. Advertisements everywhere. If this is to continue, eventually, the next logical step will be advertising to the point where the only way to make it as a tech startup is to be doing something with advertising. Everything will be advertising, you will essentially own nothing because no matter what you buy, some other company has purchased some of that space to advertise to you. RU-vid itself is also getting very aggressive, overly aggressive. I would argue, with advertising and it's not making me want to buy you RU-vid premium. It makes me want to continue using an ad blocker.
My brand new LG has a bunch of advertising. I installed a DNS level filter to remove it, however eventually it broke some of the functionality. Not to mention the AI features, which I suspect ties into data aggregation for marketing. It's not like TVs are cheap, when new. So, what would be the true cost without them baking in advertising? Also, what is the cost without lining the salaries within the company that contribute to the growing wealth divide?
I guarantee you, in like 50 years constant ads will turn out to be for mental health what asbestos is for lungs, and we’ll all be wondering how we couldn’t catch a hint sooner. It is already well known that female ultramodel ads strongly contribute to eating disorders in women.
Soon there will come a day that cyberpunk 2077 is not a fantasy, a hyper exaggerated facsimile of our own world. It will become a prediction. I think that's what sickens me the most. The fact that there is over half a million people on this planet that think it's literally okay to put a spy camera in their living room.
exactly.. it's the normalization.. being submissive "well, it's already happening" or "wellllll I use FB already so what's the diff? so i'll get it".. and people will see "free" and run with it. Especially those who are growing up and "free" is all they know where they don't even think twice or know what ownership/non-ads is.
“He thought of the telescreen with its never-sleeping ear. They could spy upon you night and day, but if you kept your head you could still outwit them. With all their cleverness they had never mastered the secret of finding out what another human being was thinking. . . ." BuT iTs FreE...
Damage the microphone, cover the cameras. Search/Watch history woyld require jailbreaking, but every single smart tv collects and sells that data anyways
@@jjOnceAgain PFsense firewall can cover the data collection by creating specific rules to intercept and hijack and DNS requests to use its own (ea. a pihole)
Honestly, Im not as concerned about people agreeing to this as I am with people NOT agreeing to this. It still would collect data on ANYONE who visits the house, with only the consent of the owner. Imagine having friends over to watch a movie but none of them know they're actively being recorded. Sort of the same problem as apps getting information from contacts on people who never even signed up to consent to their data being collected. This is a very serious and scary issue that has very little discorse- I feel it needs to be talked about way more and something NEEDS to he done about it.
Why not just... cover the camera and desolder/remove the mic? While you're at it, the whole second display can simply be removed or destroyed if you don't want to see ads while watching the TV. Another thing is, a PiHole or some other router-side tool could probably block access to all of the servers the TV would contact for ads (or at least feed it dummy ads).
@@SKCro.Bc I'm sure when you're agreeing to receive it for free you're signing contracts that would make that a non option unless you're okay with being sued or held accountable
@@Tyler-Lord True... Hacking the software is another option though. It could probably be hacked to fake data like location and camera stuff, and to hide ads too :P
This could be a non-problem for those who get it, until you have guests over... Unless you explicitly say that everything you do or say will be recorded and sent to some random company, this could be a catastrophic disaster.
Linus' opinion basically boils down to "well we've already slowly made things worse, let's just keep on going!". Just what these companies want. Us to become used to this shit so they can slooowly make it worse and worse over the years and decades. They get you used to something slightly bad but "eh whatever" and slowly make it worse and worse until you don't even realize it's that bad because you're so used to it.
what these companies want? bro no, he's saying the deal is long done, they already have what they want and wont be doing a tradeback just for our dissenting opinions idk about you but i'm not used to any of this; the hope is that hearing about this stupid tv will be a wakeup call for anyone who is
@@SplendidKunoichi I think what OP means is complacency, maybe not to the point of apathy but to the point of acceptance. "It's just the way things are now, oh well" as if there wasn't a way out or at least a way to cut some of these parasites out of your life. I know that Linus is saying not to give into this stupid TV, but he's also saying "should you really be so upset when you've already done the same if not worse with other devices or services?" when the answer is unequivocally yes.
Agree with you. And I stopped watching TV, RU-vid is less than 30 minutes a day. I support my state parks department with a membership, and go fishing and hiking. We have the power to win individually over this clown nonsense. If we were to all get together and all stop consuming this junk, we would fix the platform, but seeing as that isn't going to happen -- I'm going fishing and taking my personal W.
I think his take is "this is more obvious but you've already accepted worse things, so when does it become too much?" which I think is very interesting to think about.
Idealism is great and all but Linus is being realistic. His point isn't "lets just keep going", it's "this will not get any better." Believe or do what you want, but there is a reason why mass surveillance issue in the first place - because there are a lot of wealthy people and institutions preventing us from having any kind of say in these matters.
15:19 imagine a scenario where the power goes out and you are less worried about ensuring your safety, but rather that you won't go broke because some corporation can't collect your data. This is evil.
The joke about the ringdoor bell had me thinking.... Ad supported rental homes. House is full of tech that did things like that, ordered food when the fridge is empty etc. All for like a 25% discount on your weekly rent.
This TV really made me reflect a lot these past week or so, and I realised that despite the few things I do to have some privacy are nearly not enough. As soon as I'm on vacation I will make the effort to ditch all ads ridden systems I'm on, starting by going from Windows to Linux and installing GrapheneOS on my Pixel. It will probably still just be a drop in the sea, but it's still a start.
@@RogueRen I actually recommend IPhone and I know it's not open source but they make commitments to privacy and it's the only reliable privacy-ish system if you want to use real apps like banking and taking calls plus you won't look like a weirdo
@@VitalVampyr Ther eis sarcasm implied in the use of democratic, but you're right, we lost our democratic republic some time ago, if we ever had it at all. Vampires and parasites now prey on its corpus.
Listening to Linus talk about ad creep throughout the decades has me fully confident that youtube premium will eventually have ads. Cable TV was originally promised as an ad-free experience, but we all know how that went.
I'll be surprised if that ever happens, because probably 90% of people who use premium are using it only for the lack of ads. Even with ads, cable TV has more channels, so it's understandable why some people still have it. Basically everything about RU-vid premium that isn't ad removal is either useless or bad, or can be done with free extensions (including ad blocking, but muh piracy and such). Should ads ever be introduced, subscriptions will plummet.
@@Antigen__ They could add new features and remove features from the free version over time. Maybe increase the amount of adds you are seeing without the premium too
RU-vid premium still has sponsored content, just not content that pays RU-vid I’ve seen people actually complain in RU-vid comments “I paid for RU-vid and I have to see the sponsored portion of your video I’m suing!” Like calm down grandpa just skip 90 seconds like everyone else
@@Antigen__ i mean, if content blockers are "piracy", stuff like smartscreen or other commercial web filtering tools lots of public institutions use are piracy tools... xD
@@sycration And governments are happy because they're held to laws and regulations that reduce their ability (legally) to collect this information, but buying it from a third party? Totally fine! They've been doing this for years with data brokers.
This kind of thing has been going on for a while. High quality TV's have become extraordinarily affordable, and it sort of happened suddenly. It's because the "Smart" TV has a significant amount of pre-installed software, and a myriad of contracts have been signed with other companies. They aren't just selling a TV, they're selling your data. That's where the real money is.
13:45 THAT! THAT RIGHT THERE! The people who'll be most effected don't deserve to be further exploited. The socioeconomic circumstance that lead to some of the most depressing and dire states are perpetuated by this sort of corporate behavior. I live in a relatively rural area. Most of these people don't know what dns is, let alone care about mass data collection. Which is understandable. I've been thinking of providing just a basic door to door service of setting up low power pfSense boxes with dns resolving for some of the houses around me. Like above average, but easy enough that it feels more community service. Hell I've already done it several times at my expense for friends and family. So when I see shit like this, I know exactly who the target audience is and it's disgusting and exploitative.
I agree with you but the ONLY people who can ultimately help those targeted by these types of services or devices, are themselves. There has to be personal responsibility attached and some shared blame between adults regardless of finances.
While at the minute, it's a free TV for your soul. Give it just a few years, and you will buy a brand new Sony TV for thousands of dollars, that essentially does the same damn thing. It would probably have a camera, it will have a Mic, and it will serve you targeted ads.
That's why I don't buy TVs. I buy panels. A few companies sell the same new panels you get with any TV, but for use as advertising billboards and such. They are more expensive without all the stupid smart features, but I'm 1000% ok with that. Hate that stupid garbage.
But if the TV is always on, I wonder what the power usage is. It may be a free TV, but you could be spending a minimum of $100 a year to pay to power their billboard.
You are probably about right or just slightly underestimating it, since it's not just the television consuming excess power. This is still less than $10/month though. The television is the only thing free, right‽ There aren't any free channels or anything else like this, is there?
@@BrandonHuettner I haven't put a meter on my TV to test it but that seems pretty reasonable since my 22" monitor uses about 30W, when it's scaled up it multiplies quite quickly
LTT should pull a Louis Rossmann and start lobbying to make this illegal. I would buy LTT merch to support that. Apparently the privacy policy included a bunch of illegal stuff like spying on children under 13 and accidental comments left in talking about how they were going to try to get around privacy law. If true that sounds like the kind of thing that should get the makers of the TV put on the sex offenders registry 😂
That quote specifically was referring to a theoretical rental service with same-day delivery and retrieval by drone. People would be happy (they imagined) because they would have similar convenience to ownership but at significantly less cost. Basically it's just a prediction that the same thing streaming services did with digital media would happen with physical goods. You can still buy to own movies and music and such if you want by the way.
@@VitalVampyrwrong, while part of it had to do with an appliance rental service, the whole plot of the story took place in a world where the man narrating had no car, no house, no nothing in terms of his own posessions. Storys by ida auken
@@overtxme Not owning a house or car had been very normal for a long time in many cities when that video was made. If public transit is adequate a person can spend substantially less on transportation than if they owned a vehicle. If housing supply is adequate renting housing would be very affordable and home-ownership would not be such a ridiculously profitable investment that the lower and middle class depend on it as their only viable option to build wealth. So with the correct public policy not owning a car or house is something people do by choice. They just have better options, it's not because their corporate overlords nefariously conspired to bleed them dry.
at this point if you tell me 5 years from now there will be part in labs that's just focused on finding out if the company is spying on you I would 100% believe you
@F they're not gonna accept a virtual card. If you somehow managed to use a credit card that isn't linked to you and has no money, they'd still go after you and would probably take it to the court if you still refuse to pay. They can easily find your address as they shipped the TV to you
Besides the children aspect there are issues here with two-party consent states where this could amount to illegal wiretapping. There's also issues with collecting personal information without user consent if people have guests over.
I think what Linus subconsciously referred to at 12:48 is the "I Will Not Bow to Any Sponsor" scene from Wayne's World, specifically Mike Myers' character taking a slice of pizza out of a branded box.
Here's an idea. A sound proof box with a VPN Ethernet bypass for the lower half. The box would display false video and audio info for the TV to gather, maybe AI generated to randomized. The built in sound bar probably is terrible, so just plug in your own. The VPN bypass would give them false location and user meta data, basically creating a fake person. Use services that offer one-time used credit card number with purchase limit, so the TV company can't charge them.
@@aidendamrow3060 They probably have a system to detect disable/blank camera and disable mic. The point is to feed them dummy data to trick them into thinking their ad money is well spent.
@@aidendamrow3060 little mirror at a 45 degree angle to look only at the floor or ceiling. could the user be able to access the wiring to the mic, snip it and hook up a tone generator to it?
The problem I worry about is when it becomes standard and you can't opt out. The dystopian future is that this takes off and then they will do away with TV's that can't spy on you. They are all free at first, then, they will start charging and raising the cost till they are the old price again. We will be back to where we started but lost all of our privacy.
Or you can buy one of the cheaper 50 inch smart TVs and just not connect them to the internet. You get the benefits of the reduced price that comes with integrated ads and data selling subsidies, but they can never actually play ads nor phone home if you never give them the Wifi password.
That should be the kind of thing you get paid to take, If you want a TV for free, you could get a secondhand TV that does not spy on you and not literally play ads on a second screen constantly
Literally just tape over the cameras and damage the Mics. Every single smart TV, from ONN to Samsung, collects and sells your viewing data, so no option there
@@jjOnceAgain There's still plenty of non-smart TVs around so there is still that option. I have an old Samsung plasma from 2013 with no smart TV features, and it was a lot cheaper than buying a new TV.
Things will become like that futurama episode, where ads are put directly in dreams. And it will be fine because "times change" and you agreed to the terms.
yeah overdraft fees are nasty. i’ve heard of companies reordering transactions so that a few big ones go through and then multiple little ones rack up fees, but i don’t remember the details. it’s certainly happened to me on accident, where big recurring charges happen at unpredictable times and so what would be a declined card and i pay some/all in cash becomes a $30 or whatever out of my account
9:46 Imagine an advertiser Cortana going: 'Hey Master Chief, there is a new type of RGB-colored Mjolnir armor, would you like to try it?' IN THE MIDDLE OF A COMBAT!
Phones already does the same thing, the difference here is that you get something in exchange for your information and they tell you what it does upfront
I can't explain how I see it after going through an electrical program that insisted we stay off social media if we wanted to keep working. The IoT seemed to make some of them nervous and paranoid. I remember one instructor saying they couldn't trust any of us. I've seen classmates walk out and quit over certain tech devices being suggested as unsecure and too risky to have on you. One of those instructors went over this whole cellphone thing today being an unsecure super computer and not just a phone. Anyway I didn't really survive the program. I can't imagine what IoT devices on job sites will do but I sure hope it makes it so if any one ever gets hurt working those jobs, they don't say you were never there and take your hard earned credit away and drag you through court.
Honestly, I've said before that if companies are gonna take my info to spam ads to me, they can at least give me a cut, so I'm down with intentionally giving them the info most companies take anyway in exchange for a free tv.
There was some talk about policies with that type of thinking. I think it was in Texas, and they were talking about Google specifically. Basically, if they are making all of this profit off of data farming, shouldn't the citizens involved be getting a cut? I think the argument against it was/is that companies provide a service or product which they deem as equal value.
I don't get why people care, the government already knows everything about you, so I genuinely couldn't care less if some guy was spying on my motion data while watching TV, I'm doing nothing illegal or weird infront of my TV so all he's gonna see is me sitting there... and I get a free TV for it.
I think you should "buy" this TV and make a video about data collection policies and their downsides. And also give alternatives for those device that are more privacy conscious.
@@jjOnceAgain That's what I'm saying! If you must remove them properly, desolder the mic and camera. I think ripping them out should do just fine though.
Honestly, my main problem with it is just that it normalizes this. It normalizes selling your right to privacy in your own living room for a crappy 500 dollar TV. I know that people have been doing that with the voice assistants like the Amazon Echo and Google Nest, but still. Those are at least disguised, with this you're outright admitting "I would rather have a 500 dollar TV then my own privacy" which I think is a really bad thing to let happen. Once this starts happening, who knows where it's gonna go. Maybe companies will start selling free phones in exchange for your calls, texts, and detailed information on what is probably your entire life and every tiny thing you do. I know that sounds like a stretch, but I honestly wouldn't be surprised if that happens. We're already having a problem with people caring about privacy, and I think this is going to make it worse.
All of the super cheap "ONN" brand TVs at Walmart with the integrated Rokus, are always a great deal, but it is constantly mining my data, and I would have had no idea, were it not for Linus showing me Pi-Hole! 😆 I've blocked all those Roku trackers!
It would be great if LTT had a video of alternatives to smart home and QoL stuff that doesn't f**ing leech you of every data that u can provide. Initially his home renovation videos covered some but started to be less mindful of this aspect Edit: I tried some alternatives but they are too limited or too expensive to set up, and that's the hole thing, it's cheap to do it the soul selling way and very expensive to do the "proper" way... Especially for low income ppl
The biggest difference is this is advertised as being a data mine where as most devices you only know what they mine if you jump through tons of menus and settings.
There was a testimony from a Christian in the 80s who saw a vision of the end times. One of the things that stuck with me was that he said that in the end there would be televisions that would monitor and watch you in your home. He also mentioned a lot of other things that have come true today. It’s pretty chilling to see this now.
@@tomasskraban7899 Could be! Or it just could be that George Orwell was really good at predicting the future. So good, that he even predicted types of technology that would exist during Revelations.
Sure. Awesome argument. But it doesnt mean that because its "normal" that we as a society should keep doing... Then you say "dont get it" but once the first one works every TV will start to come with one of those. Just dont buy a TV then? In the near-future if you want some privacy you have to literally wave technology. Start driving 80s cars, find some CRTs and such. Everything else will be a spyware. I dont like that future, sorry.
this TV is marketed at the same people who "buy" rental electronics, then get them taken away once they can no longer pay. btw, rental electronics, if you look at the total price you are paying per week to BUY the item, are easily double their actual value...
I'm enrolled in Screenwise by google. They pay about $30 a month per preson living in the house to track internet usage. They also provide the option to use a guests account for guest. They track by providing you with a router that isninstalled in vhain with your original router. If you really dont want them to track it you can log onto the original router for important things.
The only people who would consider getting one of these are the same people who already willingly give up their privacy. The product is not bad, the people are.
@@zaiquiri1799 You've already given up tons of data by making your RU-vid channel, Google practically knows everything about you without you even realizing, at least with this company you get a free tv.
Oh that poor stoned dude! All of a sudden just geeking cause he's being called out and his TV may be watching him? Man I'm stoned as fuck too and that shit tickled me!
I booted up my old Verizon htc one m8 the other day and reset it to factory and it has ads in the ios. Every 10 minutes there's a full screen ad. I literally only need it for 1 app and that's why I still have it. I don't even connect it to wifi anymore because of it.
3:10 Someone posting everything to Facebook constantly isn't the same as that person installing a device that spies on the *entire household* without their consent at all times. It's not even close.
Although I imagine poor families will be the main consumers of this product. They pay with their privacy and information then get to have the luxery of a tv. Then the TV constant ads play on their tailored desires and sell them on things they can't realisticly afford. This is kind of exploitative in that scenario that I imagine won't be very uncommon.
I dont think many people are gonna get these for themselves. Hotels, Motels, landlords, public waiting rooms, just got a free upgrade. Also may work with the company producing the tvs, get a 10% payout on ad revenue if you put them in 1000 locations, etc. I like to operate on the "would i be ok with this in my honeymoon hotel room?" principle to buying any new tech.
For the overdraft charge my credit union has it as an optional feature. If you turn it off then any charges that would overdraft your account are canceled, if you have it on then it will allow one charge to overdraft the account for a fee. Effectively you are buying the ability to not have to worry about that first charge failing. If for example that charge failing would trigger a late fee which is greater than the overdraft fee then having the overdraft protection would have saved you money. Whether or not that’s a good deal is up to you to decide, and mostly based on how big the fee is. If have it on because they only charge $5 as the fee and that’s seems pretty reasonable to me.
@@realJaneDoe That depends entirely on the transaction. If I’ve got my internet bill on auto pay and that transaction gets canceled, they would just charge a late fee when I eventually get around to paying it.
