We've got a bunch of new people now so let's bring back a classic post. What low stakes conspiracy theory do you believe that you cannot prove but feels right to you?
I'll start: I believe that dating apps have made a concerted effort to smear in person meeting people and tie it to being "creepy" through social media so you are forced to meet people online(which was the creepy option just 15 years ago)
This is a big reason that high quality TVs are getting so much more affordable. The revenue from selling data subsidizes the cost to bring the price way down. "Telly" is one such company taking this to the extreme and offering the device to consumers free of charge.
When something is free (or cheap) the consumer is often the product. :sus:
always the product
If someone raids a dumpster successfully, that stuff is technically free.
There's a lot of reasons like improved technology and efficiency but yeah, the ability to play such targeted ads based off what you're doing is pretty insane and they have a vested interest to sell at less profit.
And at the end of the day the amount of people who are willing to just not connect their TV to the internet in the first place or find a way to circumvent them is low. Like it still shocks me every time I see a YouTuber not have adblock on.
is there a way to remove the offending programs from tv sets?
You can start by taking it off the internet completely, I suppose.
Run local DNS server and configure it to block the domains. Pihole is easy one to do this. Can also block advertisement.
If it's an android TV you may be able to use a custom ROM on it, otherwise it's unlikely.