Audio, electronic, visual, thermal, olfactory, or similar information.
They removed it, archived here: https://archive.ph/YYBuJ
Every single SmartTV OS does this fyi.
Common tactic is to refuse it wifi connection but looks like they caught on to this too.
How so? What do you mean?
never allow your TV connect to any network but there is another comment up thread stating that some sammy tv won’t permit you to connect HDMI device until you connect tv to internet
That comment is incorrect, at least for current model. Source: Samsung TV is not connected to the internet.
I’ve talked to many people who have modern samsung qd oleds and I’ve literally never heard that once. I’m pressing x to doubt
So return it if you bought a TV like that.
Buy these things with a credit card. If the store refuses a return or demands a restocking fee, credit card dispute. Visa doesn’t fuck around with this stuff.
“They caught on”.
I mean - u don’t use any apps? Netflix, plex, Hulu, Disney, apple tv?
I prefer my console to spy on me
Roku is, first and foremost, an advertising platform.
My friend uses roku and I found it hilariously dystopian that the screen saver is basically just an artistic side scrolling city scape with billboards that advertise shit shows and movies you can stream or pay for.
Plex/Jellyfin is the only way to go.
We have a roku TV that has no internet connection. It did when we first got it and didn’t play as much attention to this kind if thing. It’s now a dumb TV that’ll never get internet again. We run everything through an rpi4 running osmc.
Probably a catch-all for their next generation of Roku devices they’re developing.
It is definitely a catch all, disclosure of this information is required by California law, that is the only reason they even put it in the policy. They seem to have accidentally released it worldwide, which is why they reverted it, now it only shows if you have a California ip.
The moose is tightening.
Smell-O-Vision sounds like a great idea until you think about it while watching a zombie movie.
They pushed these changes on Christmas Day.
Knowing no one would read it, since they’re with family just trying to watch a lovely Christmas movie. Bastards.
Edit: autocorrect
The new section pertains to the California Law about biometric data collection, it seems they removed it because it was applied worldwide and they didn’t want that. I used a California VPN server and the privacy policy changed for me.
my roku TV felt my wrath because it dared to show me a banner ad while I was in the middle of a game.
i promptly disabled internet on it completely. now it’s a dumb TV. and my life is much better.
Yep disabled Internet and I cast video from my phone to the TV so I can control what appears on the screen.
Using screen mirroring or does it still access the home network?
Just screen mirroring iirc.
For reference, I have a Samsung S23, and I use the Smart View function that you can find if you pull down twice the top of the screen and get to the Quick Settings drawer. I think my phone and TV had to be on the same WiFi network at first for the phone to be able to find the TV, but after that I can turn WiFi off on both devices and Smart View still remembers the Roku TV.
Oddly, after screen mirroring begins and I can see my phone screen on the Roku TV, if I scroll down on the Quick Settings drawer it shows the phone’s WiFi is on, but the symbol next to my signal bars is clearly 4G LTE or 5G and not WiFi.
Works pretty well unless you have too much ElectroMagnetic Interference (EMI) in which case the lag sucks and may even cease the connection. I’ve been using screen mirroring for years though and it’s great.
Good luck!
Yeah it probably becomes WiFi Direct once both find the other. In my experience though the quality is pretty bad, might depend on the devices
i’d rather masturbate with a cheese grater than own a “smart” tv….
We’ll have fun all TV’s are smart TVs.
i don’t own a tv… just a computer
Ah an even smarter tv than a tv
yeah but i actually control my computer
And more lies we like to tell ourselves
no like i’ve been a computer nerd my whole life and went to college for computer science… and i control my own computer, unlike almost everyone else.
and at least with a pc you can control it… most people don’t
I want to recommend that you change your WiFi password. Even though you disabled the internet, it may still phone home.
oh it’s a relief that we have recently changed it. the bastard roku is completely locked out.
Better yet, tear the wifi antenna off the board, can’t connect to wifi without any antenna, no matter how hard you try.
When Roku took all four of my set-top roku devices hostage a while back with their forced Terms of Service update, I threw them all in the trash and have warned people against using them since.
Roku is a garbage ad company that will continue to use your devices against you.
If you buy something nowadays and it connects to the Internet, it’s bad. Treat it like it’s bad. VLAN it, firewall it, force it to use your DNS only and block everything until it breaks then figure out what it actually needs.
Don’t give it internet, return it if it “needs” internet.
What you’re doing is a losing battle; once internet connected everything is normalised they’ll stop working if you block tracking and suddenly you’re the weird one.
Instead, vote with your wallet, talk with others about how annoying/bad this is and get them to vote with their wallets, too!
then figure out what it actually needs.
It needs tracking to work.
Also, I hardly see my non tech relatives following your advice 🤣
Any recommended firewall block lists (or allow lists) for Roku?
put it on a damn VLAN with no access to the internet. maybe through a whitelisting proxy. otherwise you won’t know if it just evades your measures by using some encrypted tunnel or anything
“we may collect information about your activities, like the apps you install or access (including usage statistics such as what apps you access, the time you access them, and how long you interact with them), and information about the videos and other content you select and stream within these streaming services.
When you use a smart TV with our operating system (e.g., a Roku TV model) with the Smart TV Experience enabled, we use Automatic Content Recognition (“ACR”) technology to collect information about what you watch or access (e.g., the programs, video games, ads and channels you viewed or accessed, and the date, time and duration of the viewing or access) via your TV’s antenna, cable box, game console, media player or other devices connected to your TV, and we may also collect additional information about the videos and other content you stream. The data collected while the Smart TV Experience is enabled may vary depending on your TV’s model and when you enabled the Smart TV Experience. For information specific to your TV, please see the Privacy > Smart TV Experience section of your TV’s settings menu. If you disable this setting on your TV, Roku will not use ACR on that TV, but Roku still receives information about your interactions and streaming activities on that TV through other methods.
If you use the Roku Media Player to view your video or photo files or listen to your music files, Roku will collect data about the files viewed within the Roku Media Player, such as codecs, and other metadata of the local files you play through the Roku Media Player”
Literally every smartTV OS does this. Roku isn’t special. They all collect image metadata, at least by default.
It is way worse they removed it, but it was archived: https://archive.ph/YYBuJ. Olfactory info gathered.
Alright. I hope they enjoy smelling my dog’s farts all day.
Maybe that’s why they removed it… 🤔
Super weird. I would assume that olfactory sensors would cost more per TV than Roku would make by collecting the data. Afaik there’s no such thing as electronic olfactory sensors per se anyway. In before labs start buying Roku TVs because they all have gas chromatography machines inside them.
It is related to the California Law, there are no sensors in the tv. The strange thing is that they reverted the policy without informing anyone.
https://www.zengrc.com/blog/what-are-the-ccpa-categories-of-personal-information/
Ah. I appreciate the context. Now my confusion is just shifted from Roku to California legislators. I can appreciate future proofing a law, but this seems a bit on the nose.
Also just so you are aware apparently the changes weren’t removed, but only show if you have a US ip. So US have their own privacy policy that differs from the rest of the world. The reason it was included is probably this https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smell-O-Vision.
This is the US policy dated January 2025: https://docs.roku.com/api/v1/published/userprivacypolicy/en/US/text
The rest of the world it is dated 12 December.
I don’t connect my Roku TV to the internet, and always use external devi e via HDMI.
Ok. Which device u connect?
My Roku media player, obviously…
Another device that collects the same shit probably 😂😥
It’s a lot easier and cheaper to replace a small device (Roku, Apple TV, Nvidia Shield, Chromecast, Fire Stick, XBMC box, computer, etc) than it is your entire TV. Once you connect and update your TV, I don’t think you can choose to downgrade it later…
not confirmed but i have no doubt gaming consoles do this too
There’s a reason why they’re so cheap compared to the hardware contained within them.
I mean the list is pretty small. Unless they install Kodi - everything else is compromised.
Laptop, or a mini PC
Sure, but what os u run? The only open source one for home media is Kodi.
I’ve ran it for a while. But it’s a pita.
My most people that also have jobs don’t do that.I run Arch on both my PC and Laptop. I self host a few containers to stream media from. Either use web front end, or native apps.
I both have a job, and maintain all of this. For fun.
Why would I use Roku anyways? It’s such an inferior television operating system.
Look at this guy with choices.
I mean - these days u go to store and buy a tv. Many people don’t even know what os is on it.
LOL fair. If I have a choice (we’ll see when I move out) I take Google TV over Roku everytime. Roku’s software is horrible, Apple got sued over doing far less than what Roku does with their operating system.
I hope you don’t think actually think that Google doesn’t do the same shit.
I do but at least they don’t prevent you from suing them like Roku does.Never mind, I guess they do
https://support.google.com/store/answer/9427031?hl=en
https://www.reddit.com/r/GooglePixel/comments/r265c7/how_to_opt_out_of_googles_binding_arbitration/
The operating system is still better though. Suck it Roku.
All these companies are equally shit ha. Also i’ve found that you can block a lot of the telemetry on all these OS’ with Pihole.
Nah, not really. It’s gonna be cat and mouse with pihole.
Only there will be 5000 cats and 200 mouses.U can’t win fight as a mouse - use a Kodi and don’t play by enemy rules.
If u care as much
I’m not going to argue that Roku’s software is better, it’s definitely worse, but honestly, it’s not that much worse and doesn’t really impact day to day usage.
The voice recognition in the remote is slightly worse, the OS is less pretty and a little slower to navigate, but when 90% of its time being used is either playing something or displaying a screensaver, none of that really matters. It still opens instantly when I turn the Xbox on, it still lets me open whatever app I need and select a show, and it has one feature that Google TV doesn’t have that’s genuinely great which is private listening, where the audio will play from the Roku app on your phone so you can use headphones and not wake anyone.
Honestly, I would buy the best picture quality TV I could and not worry about Google OS or Roku OS at this point. And if you do get a Roku TV, I definitely don’t think it’s worth giving Google more money on top of that.
Hmm I can’t say I’ve ever used the voice features. But I (unfortunately) got my family into the Roku ecosystem awhile ago (before streaming blew up, we had got rid of DirecTV longgggg ago when it became too expensive and my dad had lost his job) and every single Roku device we’ve ever had except for the 2018 Roku Premiere+ just slowly gets more and more broken over time. The interface will take multiple seconds to respond to a button press after a couple years or so. It’s so bad that we have a Roku TV that’s so slow that there’s a Roku device plugged into it that we use instead, and even that device is so slow that I’m washing it got burned with fire. On top of that I can tell that certain apps know that they’re running on crappy hardware and software (particularly the Sling TV app), and deliver footage at a horrendously low video quality as a result.
All models except the Roku Ultra will likely need to be replaced every 12-18 months. After that they start getting incredibly slow. The Ultra’s seem to hang in there for at least 36 months, sometimes longer.
except for the 2018 Roku Premiere+ just slowly gets more and more broken over time. The interface will take multiple seconds to respond to a button press after a couple years or so.
weird, back in 2020 I set up a tv in my office to stream. I pulled an old Roku from who knows when (pre2014 when we moved) and hooked it up and it worked great.
I’ve had good luck with it for years in comparison to Samsungs junk. I only briefly tried LGs when I bought my C3 but fell back to the Roku because it’s simpler to use (as a CEC device to turn on the audio receiver and change inputs automatically) and syncs between other Rokus. It also has the least amount of issues with Plex and all my Linux ISOs since they’re in varying formats that don’t always play nice with other clients (like the god damned POS Xbox client).
I understand there’s a lot of tracking and phoning home but it’s the least worst option in my experience.
If you have files with a bunch of different formats and codecs you don’t want to use anything Roku, your direct play options are extremely limited. This becomes almost a hard requirement when dealing with hevc 4K hdr/dv stuff unless you’ve got a server with quicksync or some oomph.
I’m probably going to get a lot of derision for this because it’s Lemmy, but for wide direct play coverage you either want an Nvidia Shield or an Apple TV 4K. I like the Apple TV solution, and everyone in my household is familiar with the UI. The Shield is the only one of the two to support Atmos audio if you have ceiling or upward firing speakers. It’s also not apple if you’re ideologically opposed to owning Apple products.
I’m not surprised you fell back to a Roku box from the built in TV apps, but if you’re going to go for a dedicated streaming box Roku, Firesticks/Firecubes, and Chromecasts should be the last resort due to ads in the experience and codec support.
The codec support varies from one Roku unit to the next. I have a couple of ultra 4s and they play hevc 4k without problems.
I’ve considered moving to shield, I tried Apple TV and I hated it.
I mean if my options were “Roku level ad invasion” and “Let Tim Apple own this ass every time I boot up an Apple TV” I’d be starting my power bottom fiber regimen yesterday, but you do you boo.
I ain’t reading all that
And you’re someone who cares enough about privacy to subscribe to this community.
Which is why the only actual viable solution is legislation and privacy protection laws.
but also because reading the policy doesn’t help much when there are no options (brands) that are acceptable
OP could have included a summary, description, or quote of what they’re referring to and criticizing. They did not.
If you don’t own a Roku device, there’s no reason to read all that. I certainly don’t want to read the full privacy policy either and then guess what OP opened a discussion about or other commenters talk about.
Also, this community is called piracy, not privacy.
You think your Roku wouldn’t snitch on you?
