Comment on Roku wants you to see a lot more AI-generated ads
muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works 3 days agoThe funny thing is you can just use an external box and never connect your tv to the internet at all. Let it collect all the data it wants. It’s not like it can tell anybody.
foggenbooty@lemmy.world 2 days ago
It may not be that way for much longer. Take a look at Amazon Sidewalk. They’re using low power, long range mesh technology so Ring Doorbells and Echos can communicate without access to the internet. That may not sound like a big deal, but the potential is huge.
If companies like Amazon/Google are able to create a “side network” they could use it to provide low bandwidth backhaul for other companies that want to get telemetry from their airgapped devices.
So, for example, you get a new Roku smart TV and don’t connect it to your Wi-Fi, but your neighbour has a Ring doorbell so it just uses that.
Mesh tech is awesome, and so is tech in general, but we are so slow at regulating it. This stuff needs to be opt in at the absolute minimum.
muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
While that is concerning, it’s not something that would scale well. Mesh networks don’t have the bandwidth for all the telemetry data from tons of users all at once. It wouldn’t work unless they cut back on the amount of data they wanted to get and they will never be asking for less data.
foggenbooty@lemmy.world 1 day ago
The data would have to be scaled back, no doubt about that. Right now they collect everything under the sun because they can. Remember, this would be data they otherwise wouldn’t get at all.
If I were to predict how it would work I would say they would continue to send back full fidelity data over Wi-Fi the same as today, but mesh would be used as a fallback if nothing is available. That data could be bundled to once a day, or week or whatever they decide makes sense and would only include summary information like, how much time spent on each channel per day, SSIDs scanned in the area, etc.