General Gaming News and Discussion

Utnayan said:

I remember watching a show with my wife (She loves that Married at First sight show) and all of a sudden I got a pop up on the screen "Would you like to order the outfit they have on?" I was .. "WHAT THE FUCK?" and got to turning off some of that shit immediately. Too bad I couldn't block married at first sight too.

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Did you do a factory reset yet and then refuse to connect it to the network again? Might want to change the network password while you're at it, since Apple and Amazon have already been caught recording network passwords, like a decade or so ago. I also put all that streaming shit on it's own Virtual Network, so changing passwords is easier due to less devices to update.

Hateyou said:

If you watch anything on Amazon prime you get constant ‘buy now’ popups you can click and order shit. It’s gross.

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Set up a mini-pc/server connected to the TV with wireless mouse/keyboard/controller and watch everything through Firefox(with UBlock Origins) or Brave. No ads on anything but of course more of a hassle to use.

Checked my LG OLED and all the really egregious privacy violating stuff was turned off by default. Still shouldn't be there at all, and I'll never use the built-in WebOS shit, but at least they didn't turn it on with the updates too.

I don't get any weird/invasive popups on my Shield TV when I watch Prime Video either. Not sure if it's just not in the app or if it's being blocked by my pi-hole. I had to get rid of the Fire stick on my other TV though; they have completely ruined that with ads everywhere and no way to control the UI at all anymore. And that's an older Fire OS (Android) model, I can't even imagine what the newest Linux-based trash is like with zero ability to sideload at all. Kind of wild having to go back to built-in Roku because it's least enshittified option now.