Why your TV spies on you
Daniel Zender
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By Shira Ovide
We are working, learning, staying in touch and being entertained through screens. But the companies that make those devices don’t have it easy. And that makes our virtual lives creepier and less fulfilling than they could be.
It’s been true for years that for many companies, it’s tough to make money from selling smartphones, personal computers, television sets, streaming TV boxes like Roku and video game consoles. It takes a lot of expertise and cash to efficiently make complex electronics, and it’s a constant fight to beat competitors on price and catch shoppers’ attention.
The dynamic creates two paths for the consumer electronics that many of us rely on. One is for gigantic companies to take over and crowd out everyone else. The other path is for companies to become money grubbing monsters. Either way, it’s not great for us.
It was barely a blip for most of us, but last week the Korean electronics giant LG said it might stop making smartphones. LG was for a long time one of the top phone sellers in the world. Now it’s not. LG made many mistakes, and rivals like Apple, Samsung and Huawei overtook it.
But it’s also true that there’s no room for relative minnows in many categories of consumer electronics. Not too long ago, there were still lots of companies making smartphones, PCs and some other categories of devices like fitness wearables. HTC gave up on smartphones. Sony mostly ditched PCs. Remember Jawbone? Dead. Fitbit is owned by Google now. These gadget categories and more only have room for whales.
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Consolidation is natural when any product goes from the hot new thing to mainstream. I promise you that I’m not nostalgic for old smartphone companies. (Well, maybe I’m still misty-eyed for Palm.) But I know that we lose something when companies with fresh ideas in gadgets have little chance and don’t bother to even try.
And my bigger worry is that the difficulties of making it in hardware are nudging gadget sellers do yucky things to us.
Popular brands of TV sets keep track of what we’re watching and report it to companies that want to sell us new cars or credit cards. (Yeah, it’s gross.) One reason they do it is that selling personal information is pure profit, whereas selling you a TV set is definitely not. Roku also makes its real money not from selling its gizmos that connect our TVs to streaming apps, but from its side gigs including its troves of information about what we watch that it uses to sell ads.
You can think of these consumer electronics companies as basically Facebook that happens to sell us the screens, too. I don’t know about you, but that makes me feel less affectionate about my marathon sessions of “Cobra Kai.”
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Microsoft a few days ago announced — and then quickly backtracked on — a steep price increase for its Xbox online video game subscriptions. The price increase was a bone-headed move, but it also reflected the harsh reality: Selling Xbox video game consoles generates relatively slim profits for Microsoft. Add-ons like online subscriptions are more profitable.
I don’t want to exaggerate what’s happening. In some areas of consumer electronics, there are still plenty of new ideas flourishing. Don’t shed any tears for Apple and its piles of cash. But mostly, hardware is hard. And that makes things tougher on us, too, at a time when we need our gadgets more than ever.
The New York Times
Me: My TV’s are LG – so far as I am aware, they don’t spy on me/us, but how can any of us tell, if that is, or is not, the case?