I routinely hear people lament and complain about the big tech companies’ never-ending tracking technology that acquires, obtains, and steals our personal data. Did you know your phone is tracked all day long? The apps on your phone are also tracking you. The websites you go to in your browser are tracking you. Your browser is tracking you. If you use Google Assistant (Google), Alexa (Amazon), or Siri (Apple), then those companies are tracking you. I’ve heard repeatedly how a person will say, “I will never have an Alexa in my home spying on me,” all because we as a society know it is tracking us. Even the new cars sold today are all tracking us. You can’t go anywhere without being tracked.
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Tracked To Death
Most people shrug this off and deal with it internally. After all, taken in precise amounts, we’re all used to it. It’s like taxes. You see the tax; you pay the tax. It isn’t until you start putting each instance of it in a list that you realize, “What the heck is going on? This is too much!” In times like this, you want to turn off your phone, shut down your laptop, and turn on the TV to escape the never-ending tracking. Never mind that the individual streaming services are all tracking you too. TV… Please take me away.
Not so fast. Now, your actual TV will be tracking you. Not just the apps you use but the technology that is part and parcel and ingrained in your physical TV. Welcome to the technology from Samba TV, with software included on the following TV brands: AOC, Beko, Element, Finlux, Regal, Grundig, Hitachi, LG, Magnavox, Panasonic, Philips, Sanyo, Seiki, Sharp, Sony, TCL, Toshiba, Vestel, Westinghouse, Techwood, Digihome, Luxor, and JVC. Samba TV will collect data directly from what you watch on your TV.
Samba TV CEO @ashwinnavin and @disneyadsales SVP, Audience Modeling + Data Science, Dana McGraw joined the @CampaignLiveUS Podcast from #Cannes to talk Disney's partnership with Samba TV and reshaping the advertising landscape.
— Samba TV (@samba_tv) June 23, 2022
Listen here 👉 https://t.co/nsUlAsACnR#Cannes2022 pic.twitter.com/i8aEP5wDnt
At what point is the tracking too much? Do we need another technology company to add their adware to our physical TVs and collate every TV show, movie, streaming service, and the app we watch and what video games are being played? From the sounds of it, this is technology you can’t turn off either. At least with Alexa, you can turn the listening off. This is complete data scraping from right inside our living rooms. And who gets this data? What are advertisers buying every viewing moment that we take in? I’m pretty sure we don’t get a say in that either. Where is the opt-out?
We’re beyond the point of all of this tracking being just annoying. Now it is downright overkill and oppressive. It is passed the time for legislation to curb this behavior severely. There is no reason that the consumers have to have their data and metadata harvested like this constantly. It’s too much. The ad companies are drunk on our information.
Final Thought
I don’t know about you, but I’m ready for the end of invasive data, metadata collection, and ad targeting. If that dries up the revenue of several prominent tech companies monopolizing the ad market, I’m perfectly fine with that too. There are ethical ways to do advertising, but this new technology from Samba TV is not it. So buyer beware when you buy TVs from those listed with this technology. Watching TV will now make you the one who is being sold.
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