Smart TVs are watching their viewers and harvesting their data to benefit brokers using the same ad technology that denies privacy on the internet. In a report titled "How TV Watches Us: Commercial Surveillance in the Streaming Era," the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD) outlines the expansive "commercial surveillance system" that has infested Smart TVs – aka connected TVs or CTVs – and video streaming services. "The US CTV streaming business has deliberately incorporated many of the data-surveillance marketing practices that have long undermined privacy and consumer protection in the 'older' online world of social media, search engines, mobile phones and video services such as YouTube," the report [PDF] declares.
"Millions of Americans are being forced to accept unfair terms in order to access video programming, which threatens their privacy and may also narrow what information they access – including the quality of the content itself." The report calls out the proliferation of FAST (Free Advertiser-Supported TV) channels like Tubi which, through its Tubi360 brand and content studio, "enables marketers to engage in enhanced product placement by incorporating their brands directly into programming content to target individual viewers." It also catalogs various mechanisms used for profiling viewers and presenting them with personalized ads.
These include: cookieless IDs; identity graphs that combine various IDs to link activity across devices and locations; automatic co.
