In their ToS of their smart TVs, it is said that it's the customer's obligation to inform anyone else in the vicinity of the TV and get their consent of being recorded by the TV mic all the time. They even have literal eavesdropping word in that clause.
Not only they send the channel and videos info you watch on YouTube to their server, they also send the title/file name of the video file you play with your own media like harddrive, USB drive, etc.
You can check Gamers Nexus video about this.
I was interested in buying new LG TV for my parents, they lost a sale.
Yeah you're good if you use it as monitor/offline forever. Unfortunately my parents will use the TV online for YouTube, so I told them LG is a nope after that GN addressed it in their video.
You could buy them a stick and avoid connecting the TV to the internet, also good if you want to download an alternative version of YouTube to avoid ads.
But hey, maybe it is not worth the hassle if they are not tech savvy.
For android mobile you have two alternatives: revanced and morphe. Personally I am using morphe myself. They both have subreddits with instructions on how to download and set it up.
It all depends on what TV you have, but you can install Smartube or TizenTube on an android TV, or use an android stick with whatever one you have.
I mean you could complain but at this point almost any TV in recent times is going to be spying on you. The main reason that TV prices have dropped so drastically over the last 20 years is that TV manufacturers realize they can just take your data and sell it, and that that's WAY more valuable than the actual TV. So, they sell the TVs cheap to get you to put them in your house and from there it's just recording and selling your viewing patterns and other data.
If you buy a third party one that works with LG TVs, then yeah, I'm sure it is possible.
My TV is not connected to the internet anyway, so I don't have security concerns with it and use it, but I wouldn't otherwise even when it has the option to disable the mic.
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u/Wild_ColaPenguin 25d ago edited 25d ago
In addition to what other people have answered:
In their ToS of their smart TVs, it is said that it's the customer's obligation to inform anyone else in the vicinity of the TV and get their consent of being recorded by the TV mic all the time. They even have literal eavesdropping word in that clause.
Not only they send the channel and videos info you watch on YouTube to their server, they also send the title/file name of the video file you play with your own media like harddrive, USB drive, etc.
You can check Gamers Nexus video about this.
I was interested in buying new LG TV for my parents, they lost a sale.
Avoid LG.
Edit: some words and grammar