Roku is, first and foremost, an advertising platform.
this post was submitted on 31 Dec 2024
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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Never give your TV the wifi password.
The problem is that some TVs (cough Samsung) won't allow you to even use the thing as a monitor until you allow it online.
This is false. I just bought a brand-new current-model Samsung QN90D QLED TV. Like any modern device it nags you to connect to WiFi/Ethernet during the setup, but the "decline" button is not hidden and it's completely optional. Not sure if that's on-par with older models, but I just have it connected to my external Roku and several consoles via HDMI. Completely offline. No ads on the home screen (not that I really use it, I just switch inputs). All features are available: 4K, AI upscaling, HDR+, 144hz gaming mode, etc...
That would have been an instant return for me.
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“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.
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.
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 🤣
The moose is tightening.
I don't connect my Roku TV to the internet, and always use external devi e via HDMI.
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Can't even sniff digital panties in the privacy of your own home what is this world coming to?
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