Texas Is Suing All of the Big TV Makers for Spying on What You Watch
Key topics
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing major TV manufacturers, including Samsung and LG, for allegedly spying on viewers, sparking a lively debate about the motivations behind the lawsuit. Some commenters speculate that Paxton is seeking a bribe or kickback, with one noting that Vizio, owned by Walmart, was curiously left out of the lawsuit. The discussion also veers into Texas politics, with some arguing that the state's actions are unexpectedly libertarian, while others counter that Texas is far from libertarian on issues like abortion. Amidst the banter, one commenter quips that Ken Paxton's actions might be a rare point of agreement.
Snapshot generated from the HN discussion
Discussion Activity
Very active discussionFirst comment
8m
Peak period
101
48-60h
Avg / period
22.9
Based on 160 loaded comments
Key moments
- 01Story posted
Dec 16, 2025 at 4:04 PM EST
17 days ago
Step 01 - 02First comment
Dec 16, 2025 at 4:12 PM EST
8m after posting
Step 02 - 03Peak activity
101 comments in 48-60h
Hottest window of the conversation
Step 03 - 04Latest activity
Dec 21, 2025 at 8:28 PM EST
12 days ago
Step 04
Generating AI Summary...
Analyzing up to 500 comments to identify key contributors and discussion patterns
Want the full context?
Jump to the original sources
Read the primary article or dive into the live Hacker News thread when you're ready.
I think this comes from strictly looking at the world in left/right terms. Texas is a pretty libertarian state. This is probably the entire reason the founders ensconced the states into the union the way they did.
This country is a _spectrum_ of ideas. It's not bipolar. Only the moneyed interests behind political parties want you to think this way.
They tried to fire teachers who spoke bad about a racist podcaster
https://www.texastribune.org/2025/09/15/texas-education-teac...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/11/charlie-kirk...
Weed is still illegal
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabis_in_Texas
You can’t sell liquor on Sunday
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_laws_of_Texas
There is a state law restricting what can be discussed in public schools
https://www.texastribune.org/2025/12/02/texas-public-schools...
And he is pushing for schools to post the 10 commandments
https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/news/releases/attorney-...
There's only so much time in the day, only so much life to live. Could a blog post written by the worst person you know have a good point, even though it's titled something like "An argument in favor of kicking puppies" by Satan himself? I mean, true, I haven't read it, yet. There could be a sound, logical argument buried within.
This is also what "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" teaches, essentially. Trust is hard-won, and easily squandered.
"A lie is around the world before the truth has finished tying its shoes."
"Flood the Zone" is why some of us are so exhausted, though.
In these instances, the argument has to come from someone who is self-aware enough of the short-circuit to say "okay, look, I am going to address that elephant" — but mostly, that's not what happens.
Thankfully in this case, all we need get through is the title.
Roman Polanski and Woody Allen: terrible humans, but they have still made some of the best films that exist.
This guy does nothing good on purpose.
It's always important to read the fine print. That would part part of evaluating an argument on its merits. His lawsuit over Tylenol + autism is easily rejected on its merits. That means nothing about this issue.
.its an insane lawsuit, there are basically two outcomes crazy side effects from his lawsuit:
Tvs are banned. (Possibly can only texas permitted tv)
Or if he loses, which might be his donors goal of him litigating so terribly, all your data now belongs to the companies.
Theres no consumer friendly option here
Paxton, however, doesn't give one iota of damn about individual freedom. So, this is either a misdirection, shakedown or revenge.
Unfortunately, we don't have Molly Ivins around anymore to tell us what is really going on here in the Texas Laboratory for Bad Government.
> In August 2015, Vizio acquired Cognitive Media Networks, Inc, a provider of automatic content recognition (ACR). Cognitive Media Networks was subsequently renamed Inscape Data. Inscape functioned as an independent entity until the end of 2020, when it was combined with Vizio Ads and SmartCast; the three divisions combining to operate as a single unit.[1]
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vizio
If this case succeeds, suing Visio on the same charges would be a cakewalk.
I like the suggested "Don't Upload My Bits" backronym.
Yes I know there is a theoretical capability for it to connect to unsecured WIFI. No one still has unsecured WIFI anymore
I've literally never seen a router with a guest wifi enabled by default, from any ISP or otherwise - is that a common thing where you live?
The trick was finding TV's and what not that don't need an Internet connection. Vizio was the only brand I could find that still had just dumb tv flat screens, believe it or not.
Google devices are out because they are developed by a advertising company.
The Roku CEO outright said they sell Roku devices below costs to advertise to you.
The stick is $30 and trivially replaced. The TV is closer to $1000. Worst-case scenario I'll just hook up an HTPC or Blue-Ray player to the TV.
And instead of a full brick, let's just downgrade to 360p and call it an "expiration of your complementary free Enhanced Video trial".
Same thing that prevents your phone manufacturer from adding a firmware level backdoor that uploads all your nudes to the mothership 1 day after the warranty expires. At some point you just have to assume they're not going to screw you over.
That'd be quite naive in my opinion.
In the life of my last TV (10+ yrs), I've had to switch out that separate box three times. It would have sucked & been way more expensive to have had to replace the TV each time. Of course, every company is trying to be a data broker now though, because they see it as free passive income.
I have a TV that's only about 5-6 years old and has a built in Roku. It mostly works fine, but the built in hardware is simply not fast enough to play some streaming services, specifically some stuff on F1TV. And before anyone asks, it's not a bandwidth problem--I have gigabit fiber and the TV is using ethernet.
Anyway, between that, general UI sluggishness and the proliferation of ads in the Roku interface, I switched to an Apple TV and haven't looked back.
They cost more because they aren’t subsidised by this junk.
It’s a good hypothesis. Every one I’ve seen is the consumer version in a more-rugged exterior running different software, so I’m sceptical.
I isolate smart TVs and other IOT devices to a separate network/subnet, and usually block their network access unless they need an update.
I currently have volume control on my TV, one on the OS on the computer that drives it and one on the application that makes the picture. That is only half the problem
https://www.reddit.com/r/techsupport/comments/pblj86/windows...
I own a 60 year old black and white tv. If the volume knob vanished people would know the problem is in my head.
I only found this out because I thought my 15 year old plasma TV had died, but it ended up being the power cord.
A DUMB TV costs $x, while a badly behaved smart TV costs $y up front, plus $z per hour for the next few years, where y is potentially slightly less than x.
Modern cars have cellular modems, I unplugged mine, and would not hesitate to take apart a TV and physically rip off the modem.
For bandwidth, maybe. It's still going to add cost to the BOM. They'll have to recoup that somehow. Say a 5G modem costs $20 (random number). For it to actually make money, it'll need to be otherwise not connected to the internet, otherwise it can just use wifi instead. Out of 100 people, how many do you think won't connect it to the internet for privacy reasons? 1? 5? 10? Keep in mind, if they don't connect to the internet, they'll need to go out and get another device to watch netflix or whatever, so they're highly incentivized to. Say 10 out of 100 don't, and with this sneaky backdoor you now can sell ads to them. For that privilege, you paid $200 per disconnected TV, because for every disconnected TV with a 5G module, you need to have a 5G module in 9 other TVs that were already connected to the internet. How could you ever hope to recoup that expense?
again the above is the plan, reality often changes.
The most vulnerable part might be the antenna? Required by laws of physics to be a certain size and shape, and is not easily integrated into another more essential component?
If found, it can be removed entirely, or replaced with a dummy load to satisfy any presence detection circuits. But radiation can be minimized or eliminated.
Now obviously a device can choose not to function (or to be especially annoying in its UI) if it doesn't find a network. But people take cars (and TVs) to places with no WiFi or mobile coverage, and I don't know how the device manufacturers deal with that.
https://www.resmed.com/en-us/products/cpap/machines/airsense...
I'm surprised they haven't switched to using DoH, which would prevent this from working.
I used to have a Roku TV, plus a a few of the standalone Roku Ultras for my other (non-Roku) TVs. I got a full page advert when I started up the TV one day and started the process of replacing them all (I think it is when Roku were experimenting with that).
Over about a year I replaced them with Apple TVs* and the user experience is far better, plus the amount of tracking domains reported by Pi-hole dropped precipitously! The TVs don't have internet access at all, they are just driven via the HDMI port now.
* I replaced the Ultras first, and when the Roku TV eventually started acting laggy on the apps I replaced the Roku TV as well.
The market probably isn’t big enough yet, but I’ll bet it grows. I mean _Texas_ is bringing it up!
Another approach is to disallow all DNS or only allow *.netflix.com for the TV. In my experience attempting to only allow certain domains is a game of whackamole where everyone in the house complains their stuff is broken because it needs undocumentedrandomdomain.com.
...not to mention that apps have random third party SDKs that are required, and might not work if you block those domains. A/B testing/feature flags SDKs, and DRMs (for provisioning keys) come to mind.
Good times.
I want smart tv because I want use my streaming services but that’s it. I also want high quality panels. Maybe the solution is high quality TVs where you just stick a custom HDMI device (similar to Amazon fire stick) and use it as the OS. Not sure if there are good open source options since Apple seems to be another company that keeps showing you ads even if you pay shit load of money for their hardware and software, Jobs must turning in his grave
Turned them all off except for trip updates that day.
Best part is- yesterday I received yet another unsolicited spam push message. With all the settings turned off.
So these companies will effective require you to use their app to use their service, then refuse to respect their own settings for privacy.
Also all notifications/etc are silent, except for alarms, pages, phone calls, and specific named people's texts.
Everything else... no. YouTube was the worst offender before for me.
Uber. Hands down. I'm using it a lot less since they started sending ads on the same notification channel as my ride updates.
The main exception to this is the notification spam from Google asking me to rate call quality after every damn call. I don't have my phone rooted, so I can't turn off that category of notification.
It’s the enshitification of the notification system, the apps are already filled with ads and now they’re making you open the app or splash things on your face.
415 more comments available on Hacker News