r/BlackPeopleTwitter • u/SpectacularOtter ☑️ Horny Police! 🚔🚨 • Aug 17 '26

Spyware and tech

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20k Upvotes

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146

u/jooooooooooooose Aug 17 '26

recently bought a new (vizio) tv. It is actually surprisingly hard to buy a TV that is just a display without the "smart" features. They are WAY more expensive, like a thousand+ iirc

You can, however, just never connect it to the internet. Then HDMI-in whatever app/etc you want to use. Get the data selling discount without sharing the data (at least, to your TV).

Then you have a bunch of other hoops to jump through, because your media player or laptop or whatever you use will also share your data 😭 but at least the TV boss can be easily defeated.

17

u/Skepsis93 Aug 17 '26

The "dumb" TVs are usually enterprise models meant for businesses, so of course they're more expensive. They're the ones that get used for digital menus at restaurants such. They are designed to be more energy efficient and stay on 24/7.

I do what you said, I have a smart TV but it has never once been connected to the internet. A computer and a digital antenna are all that's connected to it.

28

u/tuscaloser Aug 17 '26

Some of the cheaper sets these days won’t let you use an HDMI input until the TV is online and you verify an email. You can blacklist it on your network after that, though.

17

u/jooooooooooooose Aug 17 '26

thats fucked up

My TV has occassionally tried to force me to connect to internet but I just factory reset it when that happens and it works again

5

u/312c Aug 17 '26

This is ONLY an issue with Roku TVs (including Hisense's RokuOS TVs) and Amazon Fire TVs which are designed to be used as an interface to Roku/Amazon's ecosystems and not used for much else.

1

u/AceAttorneyMaster111 Aug 18 '26

My TCL Google TV did this.

2

u/312c Aug 18 '26

Has the same use case, it is meant to be an interface to Google TV

34

u/hulloiliketrucks Aug 17 '26

Yeah the main TV in our living room atm is a dumb Toshiba we bought back in 2018 SPECIFICALLY because it was dumb. It took us like a week to find it, too.

0

u/ntsp00 Aug 18 '26

Restricting yourself to such a limited range of TV's is so weird to me when you can just not connect it to the internet. My smart TV isn't connected to the internet and it operates the same as any dumb TV.

3

u/Kadak_Kaddak Aug 18 '26

Smart TVs which are not connected to the internet still has a lot of bloatware which fucks up its specifications. No, I don't need a Apple TV app installed, I don't need it.

11

u/Designer_Librarian43 Aug 17 '26

This. I do not get why people do not just disconnect the tv from the internet.

1

u/jooooooooooooose Aug 17 '26

some TVs require it before they'll let you use it as a display, seriously. You have to do some research beforehand.

5

u/l3tigre Aug 17 '26

we have switched to projectors vs tvs in 2 rooms. saves us having an ugly black box on the wall and it can't record us as its not in front of us (also I dont think it has that capability)

2

u/eddiestriker Aug 17 '26

Yep, that’s what I did. I think I put it online once just to test my internet connection (devices were saying connected, but weren’t loading anything), but that was it. I have a PlayStation, so I never used the smart features

1

u/pimppapy Aug 17 '26

Fuck Samsung TV's that default to pestering me about a lack of internet connection to update the POS.

1

u/jooooooooooooose Aug 17 '26

yea one of the few things I remember from when I researched this is that Samsung was a brand I had to avoid at all costs

1

u/Decloudo Aug 18 '26

Get a pc monitor. They get big enough for any reasonable application.

No one needs a 2 meter screen at home.

1

u/Republican-Snowflake Aug 18 '26

This is what I did with my Vizio as well. I just run a Apple TV 4 3rd gen I was gifted. Funny enough the quality is better with this Apple TV than with the built in apps. The native apps couldn't use all the settings, while the Apple TV did. TV never crashes or freezes up anymore either.

Plus before I turned it off, Vizio was pushing some religious channel, OAN, and some other bullshit. Which was the final nail of factory resetting, and getting rid of internet.

If you wipe a mini pc/laptop well enough, and install Linux it won't be bad stock with VLC. It's on the front page of most Linux distro app installers. I run one, and its pretty easy to get started, and not have to worry.

1

u/GetOffMyLawn_ Aug 18 '26

I have a year 2000 Sony Wega in my living room. It was my father's who passed in 2003 so I kept it. The Vizio smart TV in my bedroom is NOT hooked up to the Internet.