You don’t own your [smart] TV

You don’t own your [smart] TV. Why?

Smart TVs Are Dumb

Earlier this month, Vizio’s chief technology officer, Bill Baxter, told The Verge that the reason his company can sell TVs so cheaply now is that it makes up the money by selling bits of data and access to your TV after you purchase it. Baxter called this “post-purchase monetization.” 

“This is a cutthroat industry,” he said. “It’s a 6-percent-margin industry, right? … The greater strategy is I really don’t need to make money off of the TV.” 

This is why your TV was so cheap. But it also changes the relationship the TV makers have with their customers. Consumers are no longer their sole revenue stream, but one among several. CBS and Netflix are more important to their business success than you are.

I have nothing more to add to this article in commentary... Well, other than the fact that I’ve been telling people, for years, about what the computer industry has been doing to every other industry where computers and software have been introduced into products to add marginal consumer utility. EULAs are consumer abuse. Data-mining and consumers-as-cattle, to be sold to advertisers and other entities, is abuse. The current government loves this laissez-faire free-for-all ideology of capitalism. The democrats are just as owned by corporate America, too, so don’t expect that anything will improve just by voting for the other duopoly party.