Stop buying smart TVs. Companies will stop making them if consumers stop buying them and creating a market for them. Look for commercial digital signage displays. You can find dumb TVs with nice screens or ones that just run a stock Android.
This assumes way too much about your average consumer. Most of them from talking to them seem to like their smart TVs.
For myself, I buy the smart TV and then just never connect it to the internet. Mostly because commercial digital signage is either way more expensive or is worse technology (and also more expensive).
People say that while forgetting to mention that you will spend multiples more money for a lower quality viewing experience. Oh, sure, it might be 4K but it won’t have HDR and the like.
Take the subsidized TV and don’t let it anywhere near a network connection. Throw an Apple TV in front of it for streaming.
Another way to kill smart TVs is to buy them at their heavily subsidized prices and then remove all the ad malware. Companies sell those TVs cheap and recover the costs in ads and selling your data so they will lose money.
But it's still driving sales. I'm from genx and did a stint in the corporate world. The decision makers at these corporations are looking at it solely and myopically from an analytics perspective and trying to make the line go up. Make the line go down. That's how you get through to these people.
Doesn’t that line go down if I buy a TV at cost or below, and they never see further revenue because the TV sends nary so much as a byte to the mothership?
Related:
‘Reverse-Engineer Anything’ Is the New Wild West of AI - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50167587 - October 2026
Related:
An ad-free Android TV
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50158942
Stop buying smart TVs. Companies will stop making them if consumers stop buying them and creating a market for them. Look for commercial digital signage displays. You can find dumb TVs with nice screens or ones that just run a stock Android.
This assumes way too much about your average consumer. Most of them from talking to them seem to like their smart TVs.
For myself, I buy the smart TV and then just never connect it to the internet. Mostly because commercial digital signage is either way more expensive or is worse technology (and also more expensive).
Look for commercial digital signage displays.
People say that while forgetting to mention that you will spend multiples more money for a lower quality viewing experience. Oh, sure, it might be 4K but it won’t have HDR and the like.
Take the subsidized TV and don’t let it anywhere near a network connection. Throw an Apple TV in front of it for streaming.
Another way to kill smart TVs is to buy them at their heavily subsidized prices and then remove all the ad malware. Companies sell those TVs cheap and recover the costs in ads and selling your data so they will lose money.
But it's still driving sales. I'm from genx and did a stint in the corporate world. The decision makers at these corporations are looking at it solely and myopically from an analytics perspective and trying to make the line go up. Make the line go down. That's how you get through to these people.
Doesn’t that line go down if I buy a TV at cost or below, and they never see further revenue because the TV sends nary so much as a byte to the mothership?
No because the units sold line goes up but the revenue per device goes down so they will look at ways to extract more money per unit, like ads
Do they sell those at Costco where normal people buy TVs?
Sure, at 4x the price