Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
I just finished setting up a custom router with dns ad blocking. Next comes a media player so I can purge this smart TV filth from my household.
Huge shout out to Louis Rossmann and the FUTO communuty contributors, check out the wiki on self-hosted software if you haven't already.
Is American football not merely a vehicle through which advertising can be pumped? You’d think the entire sport had been designed from the ground up for such a purpose.
Four seconds of action, six minutes of commercials….3.6 seconds of action, 47 replays, five minutes of commercials.
P.S. Smart TVs can eat shit and die.
I went to a game for the first time a few years ago. I recall the moment where everyone was sitting around and not doing anything because they were waiting for the commercials to finish. It felt like watching actors drop their characters the moment they step out of the spotlight.
Disable all internet functionality, set the time to the 1990s to prevent many timers from going off, attach the tv to another device that doesn’t have ads via your cable of choice. But why was your smart tv 1700? Did it have some special features?
Have you ever looked at OLED TV prices? This is absolutely a normal price.
Probably 4k oled
I made my Smart TV into a dumb TV by never activating the smart TV functions. And then I plugged a relatively cheap computer into it. So I don't have this kind of problem.
Your grandma does.
I installed her TV and internet last week. She barely understands the concept of switching TV inputs, and her Roku smart TV doesn't let you rename inputs from HDMI1 to [ISP NAME] unless the thing is connected to the internet. It also defaults out of the box to show the smart TV bullshit every single time you turn it on, instead of just showing the last used input before the TV turned off. So she's completely baffled how to watch simple television channels unless I spend 10 minutes reconfiguring this garbage so it's usable.
Go visit your grandma, everyone. And reconfigure her smart TV. I'm joking but I'm not. I can only visit so many grandmas per day.
I have a very old 4K Toshiba TV with a built in "smart browser" that, due to me never plugging into the Internet, has a home page with news about how well Obama's doing in the polls for being a relatively unknown junior senator.
Which only works for now. They've already gotten you to be ok with the upcharge price for the "smart" hardware. Soon they're going to require online activation for "reasons". So choosing to not connect it won't work. And they'll do regular ad connection checks and if it fails to update ads after so much time the TV will prompt an error to please correct the network.
Hate it all you want, it's going to happen.
A cheap computer/laptop. HDMI cable. Ublock origin (sprinkle some sponserblock and privacy badger in there). A TV that is never connected to the internet. Voila. No ads. None. Zilch. Zero. Ad free.
Streaming platforms that have gone to ad supported formats make me laugh because it's just a 3-5 second black screen, not the ad, and it's back to the content. Been doing it for decades. Don't sit there and get reamed by their bullshit.
AFAIK this will only get you 720p to 1080p depending on the streaming service. No 4K, no HDR.
Plenty of 4k with HDR on Real Debrid. Or even better quality and bitrate ripped from BRs, in the open waters.
What do we do when they come with 5G modems built in?
Razor blade to specific pcb traces?
Detailed instructions for things like this will need to documented. It starts with ads… does it evolve into 1984? Who knows, but it seems more likely in light of recent events.
Don't buy a TV anymore. Seriously though with the direction things have been going in the "tech world" for the last couple years (maybe even decade) it is probably better to start adjusting to some level of digital minimalism. For some of us it will become a necessity for financial reasons anyway...
Apple TV was the best media thing I’ve bought in over a decade. No ads ever, incredibly responsive (league of its own compared to stuff like Roku), and is able to stream from my Jellyfin server. Beautiful interface, fast, clean, simple controller with a battery life that is easily over a year. Just a really good product. Roku can suck by nuts. Literal full page ads in a product that advertises that it has zero of them. Even the most expensive version. Fuck Roku.
Same here. One is the best made TV boxes period.
I agree. I switched from Roku to apple tv recently (and I don't really have apple devices), and it was worth it.
Return it. If you hold on to it (even if you block the ads and all) it will signal the manufacturer, that this practice is fine.
I'd honestly return it as faulty. Preloaded adware shouldn't be acceptable.
It will be a dark day indeed when I allow my TV to connect to the internet. These things are glorified monitors.
Don’t ever connect a “smart” tv to the internet. Period.
Why the fuck does your television have a home page?
Never give the TV the wifi password.
Yo dawg! I heard you like ads. So we put ads in your ads
I bought a new TV last year after my Hisense kicked the bucket and had a similar experience.
Not sure if it applies to your situation, but I just factory reset my TV, never enabled wifi, and hooked up a smart device I had lying around (Nvidia Shield). Now it all works great and if the smart functions upset me I can throw just the smart TV part in the trash and go back to my VCR.
Congratulations! So, how does the TV work with the adblocker set up?
It's absolutely no different! The TV is doing something weird to get around it, or these ads are just cached from earlier. I'm not sure yet. Good news is that the ad blockers definitely works, we're getting 96/100 on https://adblock-tester.com/
Check for HTTPS traffic as well as the regular let 53. They could be doing DNS over HTTPS to get around the block, or a static IP for a nameserver.
That is absolute cancer.
is this about the stupid football thing?
Yeah I guess the superbowl is soon, there's another row of football ads one or two rows up. I'll remind myself that I paid for the TV, the electricity to run it, and the bandwidth to connect it, yet I'm still shown full screen ads first thing when I turn my TV on. And I don't even watch football. And I can't disable it.
Corporate America and gargle my balls
It's come full circle.
Back in the early 00s, I invited my buddy over to watch the super bowl commercials. Neither one of us gave a damn whatsoever about football, put the commercials were always lit.
Tangentally related, FUTO put a bad taste in my mouth when they were harassing the graphene os team https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/113443396794247106
Get a cheap computer and connect the tv to it; get a mouse and bluetooth keyboard or an air mouse if your want to; install kodi perhaps, or just have your bare desktop. Problem solved
Disconnect the tv to wifi too.
meta-ad-ception
Ads within an ad, about about ads.
I recently took my brand new stupid fucking tv off the grid. I use Apple TV so not a big deal with the ads and shit but the damn thing forced an update mid movie, reset, and black screened. Couldn’t get it back on and went to bed, figured I’d deal with it in the morning. Luckily it worked the next day after that no more internet for you.
cant one simple adb debloat any droid device? i mean adb list those packages, maybe even backup some and then remove the obvious ones?!
Not if they're baked into the system. Although that may get into GPL violations, I forget. God knows a device can come with locked firmware though.
People who don't have the tech chops for self-hosting can also check the market for shop displays (like you'd see above the counter in a fast food joint). Those are "dumb" displays, no ads bs built-in because they aren't expected to be used outside of a commercial environment.
They cost more than smart tvs because the ads subsidize consumer models. Rather, they cost as much as tvs this size really cost (after markup). $1700 is not realistic for a huge screen if it didn't have ads. Also, fuck ads.
I have a Philips GoogleTV. I installed a different app launcher on it, now I don't get any ads anywhere anymore.
