- cross-posted to:
- privacy@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- privacy@lemmy.ml
Earlier this week, Gamers Nexus, Level1Techs, and independent security researchers detailed some alarming findings about how LG’s TVs are logging and uploading data on its users. Now the company is pushing back against those allegations, saying that “Some recent media coverage may have contributed to misconceptions about how LG smart TVs work.”
LG released a statement in which it claims that its “TVs do not continuously record or transmit users’ conversations,” and that wake-word detection is all processed locally. However, the word “continuously” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here as Gamers Nexus demonstrated an LG TV keeping extensive logs of ambient conversations long after one would assume its AI assistant had stopped listening.
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North Korea must be having a field day talking about what it sees as Southern chaebol capitalism hypocrisy.
We investigated ourselves and found no wrong doing.
“Nuh-uh” - LG
Yet another company going “NO WE DIDN’T”, expecting us to believe.
Gamers Nexus: We’ve documented the entire process. There’s irrefutable proof demonstrating that your TVs log conversations.
LG: Nuh-uh.
I bought one of their monitors a few years ago. Regretted that purchase on day one. It had a stuck magenta pixel that never went away. I should’ve returned it but I would’ve had to drive all the way back to microcenter. Now it’s affected by shit like this. The future is dumb.
One thing I think a lot of people tend to miss when dealing with executive interviews, PR statements, and company advertising is that often times how a company defines a given term and how the actual dictionary and everyone in the world defines that term are not the same thing unless it is legally required.
Textbook examples:
Telsa, Musk, and self driving: Musk and Tesla define it as essentially what everyone else called lane assist. Then they have “full self driving” for what is supposed to be the thing everyone else would think of as self driving.
OpenAI, Sam Altman, and AGI (artificial general intelligence): No one in the AI industry has an agreed upon definition of what AGI even means. The AI labs just throw it out there for hype and funding rounds and tweak the meaning to them as they need. To most normal people I would suspect AGI means “a machine that knows its a machine and is at least as smart as the average person”.
Point being when LG says “ its TVs do not continuously record or transmit users’ conversations,” that can mean literally anything they can twist human communication methods to mean in their specific context. And it is usually the one that makes them the most money.
“its TVs do not continuously record or transmit users’ conversations”
Because we all know voice activation isn’t a thing…
It’s not continuous if certain things have to happen for it to start…
at least as smart as the average person.
Ooooh. So that’s why they’re eroding public education: to make AGI achievable sooner!
PR statements always make me think of the sample sentence “I never said you did that,” which can have different implications depending on which word is emphasized.
Haha very happy my LG C1 has never met an Ethernet cable or WiFi connection but honestly wouldn’t be surprised to hear they’re doing shady things anyway like trying to access unlocked connections or recording everything for the future anyway
There’s a conspiracy theory that LG TVs - in the absence of an internet connection - attempt to create an ad-hoc mesh network with any nearby LG sets.
No evidence for that but as conspiracy theories go, it’s believable and juicy, no?
TL;DW: LG is using very weasely wording to misrepresent what they’re doing, and GN calls their bluff (with data and receipts)
“We own the glass” is enough for me to never buy an LG again. I own two never contacted to the internet, but Jesus that’s gross.
The response: “we hear you!”
They’re sooo sorry
If they were actually wrong about anything, LG would be suing the pants off them right now.
Instead LG are “debunking” claims that weren’t actually made.
Exactly this.
If any of GN’s claims were false, it’d be a very serious case of false allegations. LG could easily sue them, win quickly, get a couple million dollars in damages, and more.
The fact that they’re not suing tells us all we need to know.
Yeah, even then lots of times courts are used in asymmetrical economic situations against the smaller party so not always a tell with shitty actors.
I personally have no misconceptions about the intrusive data collecting, aggregating, identifying and reselling that LG is doing with their residential customers via their televisions, nor about the entitled way LG and its corporate representatives and officers have spoken about their right to gather it.
“We own the glass,” they repeat, as though that means they also own whatever is spoken beyond the glass in the same house. In reality, they own neither.
Nor am I misled by LG’s weasel words that address problems not ever specifically raised, while completely swerving around actual problems publicly demonstrated with their products.
But I will say they are laboring under a serious misconception if they think I will ever buy one from them. They can fuck ALL the way off with that shit.
The response, “Look Bryan, you should be the last one to accuse anyone of terrible things when you just casually keep a vibrating replica of smurfette’s genitals in your guest bedroom, in the bottom drawer of the left nightstand.”
Not addressing the other areas amounts to confirmation
