[crazygringo]

That is total unfounded speculation unless you have evidence for it. Do you?

There's been an urban legend going around for years that smart TV's automatically connect to unsecured wifi but nobody's ever been able to demonstrate it a single time. (Probably their kid had connected it intentionally or something.)

So you might be conflating that urban legend with Amazon's network of Ring devices. But that's extremely low bandwidth, and there is zero evidence TV manufacturers are trying to build in automatic connections to it.

Again, if you have actual evidence then please share, otherwise this is just scaremongering and FUD.

[machrider]

https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/28/23659191/amazon-sidewalk-...

I mean, bandwidth doesn't really matter if we're talking about whether the device is sending home private information about what content you watch. It doesn't need to stream video back to Samsung to be basically malware.

[vorpalhex]

https://m.gsmarena.com/huawei_reportedly_working_on_a_5gconn...

https://patents.google.com/patent/CN111885330B/en

Your car already does this. It's trivial for your television to do so as well.

Sidewalk doesn't yet have a TV manufacturer onboarded but an ad profile is well within the size limit for their spectrum. We're talking kb of json.

So it's not unfounded, there are patents. It's not speculation, it seems to be a pretty active area of thought for manufacturers of televisions, and it's used now in your car.

[snvzz]

>There's been an urban legend going around for years that smart TV's automatically connect to unsecured wifi but nobody's ever been able to demonstrate it a single time. (Probably their kid had connected it intentionally or something.)

Your neighbours' smartTV might take on an AP role for yours.

There's no escaping the ads and tracking with these devices.

[crazygringo]

But again, that's total speculation.

You say "there's no escaping" and yet there is. Just don't connect the wi-fi. And done. You've escaped.

[snvzz]

To actually be sure, just invest in a dumb TV or monitor.

SmartTV are not something you want to support with your money anyway.

[throwaway2190]

If Amazon can't do it 5G will, one of the advertised aims is to allow many more types of device to connect without overcrowding the networks.

> When fully operational, 5G networks will have the capacity to connect 500 times more devices than 4G. This is the foundation for the future of Massive IoT—a world with a million or more connected devices per square kilometre.

https://www.rogers.com/business/blog/en/understanding-massiv...

Now for the sentence that will ruin my credibility: they've done a pretty good job of immunising (ha) everyone against any criticism of 5G by associating it with antivaxxers etc.

> By injecting people with a severely weakened dose of fake news (the virus) and refuting it in advance, over time people can develop mental antibodies – psychological immunity – against misinformation.

https://www.cam.ac.uk/stories/foolproof