Nothing I've said is "secret" anyone active in the Smart TV or Interactive TV space knew this was going on and how it worked. When I said intimate I didn't mean secret, I mean I actually used the technology being discussed, and at its very nascent stage.

There were multiple ACR Vendors doing the same thing (Gracenote, Samba TV are two at top of my head, there were many failed vendors in this space)

Google ACR on TVs and you'll find all the info you need https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_content_recognition

https://techcrunch.com/2015/01/04/cognitive-networks-ces/

(BTW the app in that techcrunch article is the one we worked on)

What proof could they actually provide? Given the medium, anything they said is probably easily forgeable or illegal to share. That being the case, demanding proof is just a way for you to look "skeptical" without providing much of value to the conversation. I'm guessing you meant well, but apparently others thought differently.

We all know people lie on the internet sometimes. We can't explicitly bring up the possibility everytime someone makes any statement, or half the internet would be "careful, this might not be true!".

Not to mention non-disclosure agreements and such.

What I want to know is, how did Vizio get caught? Was there a whistle blower. This article doesn't mention (unless I just missed it) how the FTC discovered this.

I don't disagree with anything you said. It's just that this is a high-profile case (IMO anyway). I guess I am expecting too much.

Quick tip: If you actually care about being downvoted, dont complain about being downvoted. Many people will do so just for mentioning it, it is against the rules, and it's whining about imaginary, non-transferrable internet points

Personally I think it's fine to complain about being downvoted if no-one has responded constructively.

It might not help, of course.

Moreover, without vote visibility you can't tell if the reason given by one person is supported by others.

> Personally I think it's fine to complain about being downvoted if no-one has responded constructively.

I understand that often often times people will use downvotes as a substitute for disagreeing, despite that being explicitly against its true function. Ultimately, you're complaining about fictitious karma points.

If you are a regular contributor who follows the rules, over time your karma will accrue and this can be a fuzzy way to weigh your importance to the community. The danger of valuing karma too much will cause the system to be gamed by marketers and astroturfers (see Reddit for Example A)

>people will use downvotes as a substitute for disagreeing, despite that being explicitly against its true function. //

Early on with HN pg stated that downvoting for disagreement was proper behaviour on HN. My opinion is that's wrong but, in contrast to other fora, downvoting to disagree is thus explicitly a part of proper behaviour here.

That said, I don't care about the points, it's a matter of social value - if you don't know why people are disagreeing then you can't address that concern or reassess your own position, the downvoted adds no value whilst a comment may.

Corrected. Foreign thinking to me -- but point is taken. Thank you.

As a former Cognitive and Inscape employee, @mikeryan is largely correct. Note that fingerprinting happens on the TV - no actual content was sent back to us. Still absolutely creepy.*

* Not the opinion of my (former) employer.

Once the data is sold, the cat is out of the bag. The service might not send sensitive info by itself but the DBs of the buyers might contain enough data for cross-referencing to personally identify you without a shadow of doubt.

As another poster here asked: were there any ethical discussions in the organization?

Individually yes, organizationally not that I know of.