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Posted by tortilla 12/16/2025

Texas is suing all of the big TV makers for spying on what you watch(www.theverge.com)
1262 points | 642 commentspage 8
dramm 6 days ago|
Excellent. Badly needed. Thank you Texas.
hulitu 6 days ago||
> "This conduct is invasive, deceptive, and unlawful. The fundamental right to privacy will be protected in Texas because owning a television does not mean surrendering your personal information to Big Tech or foreign adversaries."

But, but, but, you agreed to the TOS didn't you, or else you cannot use your TV.

davsti4 6 days ago|
So you buy a big TV, unbox it, and disagree to the TOS. Can it still be used through one of its HDMI ports?
topspin 6 days ago|||
I have a cheap samsung from 5 years ago that pops up a dialog when it boots. I've never read it or agreed to it. It goes away after about 5 seconds. After that I stream using HDMI and all is well. It's also never been connected to a network.

Can't say what other TVs do, but this one works fine without TOS etc. If there is some feature or other that doesn't work due to this, I can say I've never missed it.

aerostable_slug 6 days ago|||
As far as I can tell, I'm doing that right now with a new higher-end Samsung television. The installer showed me how to make it boot directly to the active HDMI source and skip the Samsung smart hub. The TV has never been online and I don't see any reason to change that — what possible improvement could a firmware update bring? I don't use any of the television's software-enabled features.
CGMthrowaway 6 days ago||
Next do Smart TVs listening to you. This is the #1 cause of "uncanny" ads that people get on Facebook, etc. when they think their phone is listening to them. It's usually their TV doing the listening.

edit: why the downvotes?

reallyhuh 12/16/2025||
[flagged]
dang 6 days ago|
Ok, but please don't post unsubstantive comments to Hacker News.
9dev 5 days ago||
In other news, Americans discover why the GDPR isn’t such a bad idea after all!
HardwareLust 5 days ago||
This is yet another case of people clicking through the TOS without reading or understanding it.
Rakshath_1 5 days ago||
[flagged]
Lemonshine 5 days ago||
[dead]
marsven_422 5 days ago||
[dead]
pier25 6 days ago|
It’s not spying. You agree to that in the tos!

/s

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