Monitor vendors are playing with fire.
“Ads and OSes could one day help drive down the price of monitors, as they did TVs.” - Don’t buy into this. Ads don’t meaningfully affect the price of anything. It’s just free money for the company and they can charge extra as a “no ads fee” to the people that don’t want them. They’re not getting hundreds of dollars per person.
No they wouldn’t lie and pocket the extra money, as they always do…
But seriously, this is just to accustom the next generation to even worse conditions. And it’s working with the whole enshittification thing.
Why the fuck do I want a smart monitor? I have a computer, and a video card.
You don’t want one yet, but that might change when they’re the only option
Bullshit. You can only go so far jamming shit into people’s faces.
When the alternative becomes just not having a computer, you’ll cave. Everyone will. All they’ll have to do is just stop making monitors without the bullshit. It sounds insane now, but in 10 years either this ads and tracking in monitors will have been fully stamped out, or it’ll be fully ubiquitous.
Why are we not seeing that with speakers or glasses? Or headphones? There are smart speakers that blast ads when used with the “correct” software. That’s been the case since before 2016, but it’s not how things generally are. But I still have my ad-free headphones, ad-free computer, ad-free so on and so forth electronic devices. Nobody knows how libre hardware and infrastructure will advance in the next ten years. Removing ads from a smart monitor, should the tech ever happen to gain dominance, will be as easy as connecting a USB C cable and hitting ‘flash’ on a website.
This belief that everything will turn into a dystopia is as unfounded and unrealistic as the belief that life 10 years from now will be utopian. Just because a news outlet spins up a story does not mean it’s going to be the direction things are headed.
Seemed to work fine for smart tvs
People complain about their smart TVs but you can also just buy a dumb TV. I did in late 2024, expecting tariffs.
TVs have always been standalone products that do more than just display an image. Monitors on the other hand serve only this purpose.
From what I’ve seen, so far is already amazingly far.
I swear they are gonna come out with smart socks any day now
Lightspeed briefs
there are smart socks for babies that measure heart frequency etc.
edit: I just found out that they also have smart socks for running.
That’s an ankle monitor that you pay for
Maybe eventually it’ll morph back into iMacs.
I always thought, if we returned to primitive life, it would be because of a nuclear war or something. Turns out enshitification, will drive people outside to throw Frisbees or something.
that LG might use the app to collect data and share it with advertisers
Jokes on you, the bloatware that comes with Windows drivers does that since 20 years already. Especially Nvidia was always bad there.
I bought an LG monitor two years ago, and it quickly crapped out on me. Considering the bullshit LG is pulling with ads thanks to auto install of their drivers on Windows, their dogshit quality is now inside out.
I wish I hadn’t bought a Dell monitor to replace it considering their heavy hand in the Gaza genocide, but I bought it before I learned that the company was led by murderers.
I bought a monitor at the beginning of the year and it’s a perfectly dumb one. I admit that I have never looked at the windows drivers though. Maybe they do sneaky things.
So the monitor connects via HDMI? And somehow installs something over the HDMI connection? Or is the user conned into installing the LG app under the guise of improved monitor functionality or some such bullshit?
LG lost some trust after a recent report that some of its monitors installed McAfee pop-up ads onto connected computers. Since at least 2024, some of these displays installed an app, LG Monitor App Installer, onto connected computers under the cover of driver updates installed through Windows Update.
Connecting the monitor to the computer triggers a Windows driver update. LG grabs that update request and returns an app that automatically installs itself. The implied consent is willfully connecting the monitor to the computer.
Avoid LG products.
*Avoid Microsoft products too!
That’s called malware this is crazy
In a sane world, LG would be declared a criminal enterprise and executives would go to prison for massively violating the CFAA.
I got a free LG monitor from an office closure near me. Didn’t notice this because I’m a Linux person. Let someone use a Windows laptop with it via HDMI and it did that. Lol
It’s an oligopoly. They do this because they think that prople can’t go to a competitor because Samsung is doing the same thing. The people that’s supposed to keep this from happening hasn’t been doing their job.
Or is the user conned into installing the LG app under the guise of improved monitor functionality or some such bullshit?
According to the article, the add software is installed with the drivers through Microsoft Update.
So Linux users are safe, as always.
Given the recent article about how a website was using a zero volume audio signal to fingerprint browsers it’s probably good to assume that “they” are trying to get you any way “they” can.
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/04/all-about-usb-c-resistors-and-emarkers/
There’s a profit motive and a possible technological path. It’s a safe assumption someone will eventually do it. That doesn’t count bluetooth and wifi that only talks to other BrandX devices looking for a path out, and once 6G cell service becomes common it can be direct-to-device unless you’re in a Faraday cage.
Anything you plug into your computer is going to have some driver associated with it. Even a generic one. The monitor has a MAC address and other data that announces what it is. Your OS sees this and tries to use the appropriate driver’s for the device. Windows will go so far as to try to fetch the drivers via Windows update to keep the device up to date. This is not a bad thing. It’s bad when LG betrays your trust by using it as an attack vector to install spyware. That’s what happened.
HDMI can have ethernet as well, though I’m not sure how common (if at all) it is to route this through a normal video card. That might change if LG asks Asus nicely.
Who’s seriously out here connecting their monitor to the internet?
The monitor is telling Windows to install a driver which has ads in it.
Keyword is Windows thank goodness for alternatives
Agreed - though this is likely the first step towards ads being built-in to the monitor itself.
Yep I agree with you also I never hook up the internet to any display. It makes me sad I just had to give up my pioneer plasma recently.
You’d think so, but getting people to connect their monitor to wifi is going to be a hard sell.
There has to be some useful function to sell people on, otherwise they’ll join the ranks of wifi-equipped fridges and microwaves which almost never actually get connected to wifi.
Among tech-savvy people, maybe… I’d wager that, given a pop-up on the monitor asking for the Wifi credentials, at least 80% of people would oblige it.
And a non-connected monitor could still have ads, they just wouldn’t be able to change them. They could either charge extra for built-in ads, or just advertise their own stuff.
I’d argue that most people would see the pop-up, dismiss it and then be unable to tell you what it said. People have had a lot of practice at ignoring things trying to get their attention, because you need that skill to get through modern life where your attention is considered someone else’s property to be sold to advertisers.
It isn’t enough to show people ads, the manufacturer needs to be able to bill people for the ads. They need telemetry and updated ads. Built in ads aren’t going to fly, especially for the manufacturer’s own stuff which they could sell more effectively by not being shit to use.
Linux becomes popular enough and this enshittification wave comes for us too
By the very nature of Linux it can’t happen from a simple plug and play.
I mentioned it somewhere else, but HDMI can carry an ethernet signal. They could potentially in the future show ads without having to deal with the OS at all. Of course you can just disable the network but most people won’t know how.
My monitor ain’t telling Windows shit.
#BtwIUseArch
It also tells Linux, but Linux doesn’t speak English so it isn’t affected.
You mean enshitlish?
According to the article, the monitor installs software onto connected machines, and it runs ads from there
Fuck it, Im going back to VGA
The monitor is malware. It litterally backdoors software into systems over the hdmi connector. Windows is (stupidly) set up in a way that it just installs whatever “drivers” (ie adware) the monitor says it needs.
Time to start hoarding crts , but knowing then they’ll throw ads into the adapters 4ol5
Linux.
Linux won’t save you from smart monitors. It’ll be like every OS suddenly gets Windows Recall, except LG and Samsung have the database, not you.
Linux absolutely will save you from this, unless you think somehow windows detecting an LG monitor and installing spyware is going to happen on Linux?
I understood this section to mean that the smart monitor runs its own OS and sends its own network traffic, not depending on software running on the PC:
Smart monitors connect to the Internet and run their own operating system (OS) and apps. They can be useful for performing tasks, like video conferencing, watching a show from a streaming service, or managing your smart home without attaching a computer.
LG’s and Samsung’s smart monitors use the same ad-serving OSes that their respective smart TVs do, meaning they’re poised to use automatic content recognition (ACR). Users of LG and Samsung smart monitors, including reviews site RTINGs, have shown the displays being able to track user activity.
So then you’d have the same challenges as with a smart TV: unless you block its network access, it can report on every image you display. And I’ve heard that some smart TVs refuse to function unless you give them internet access, so smart monitors might work similarly. Then the only solution would be not to buy a smart monitor, even if you’re in full control of the PC.
Fair enough if you cant flash them and they wont work without an internet connection then yeah, you wouldnt be able to use that.
I don’t follow.
I plug a monitor into my Linux desktop. Linux kernel and monitor talk. Linux driver for how to use the monitor is installed.
Unless you have some shit ass traitor developers creating the drivers, I don’t see how this is a worry in an open source OS where you can remove any added junk anyway.
I was thinking of the second part of the article, under the heading “Smart monitors”, which talks about monitors running their own independent OS with the ability to report on what you’re doing without going through software running on the computer. That seems like a different threat than those monitors that just cause a malicious driver to be installed in Windows. The monitor’s spying activity would not depend on the host OS or drivers, though it would need its own network connection. The obvious thing would be to block that, but I hear some smart TVs are designed not to function unless they have an internet connection, and they’d probably try that with smart monitors too. Hopefully then they just wouldn’t manage to sell any.
Ya that behaviour doesn’t get my money. I am buying a screen. Not a computer.
I realize how that sounds given our tv stste, though. But I feel like monitors have much less of an excuse because they are literally designed to connect to computers as they always have been.
Just don’t directly connect the monitor to the network (like a smart tv) and Linux absolutely will save you from it.
Yes, as long as the monitor isn’t designed to stop functioning unless it’s given a network connection.
That’s when I return it and go buy a different brand. Fortunately you find that out right away, and since it’s never getting an Internet connection it will never get an update to change that fact.
It would be outrageous if dumb monitors were one day as rare as dumb TVs.
Oh sweet summer child…
I would love to see how these malicious notifications would occur if you are running Linux. I know it’s not the point as it is about the principle but I assume this monitor would effectively become ‘dumb’ if running from an os where it’s not capable of installing any drivers.
Great point
I have a vizio television. It is very sore sometimes that I won’t connect it to the internet, but then I just reset it and it forgets it was sore.
I won’t let it update its firmware because I expect it won’t let me use it without an internet connection if I do.
“Won’t let me use it w/o an internet connection” would be such an insane choice on the part of the manufacturer; I hope you’re wrong!! But yeah, better to not update just to be safe.
It will be big corporations that will go after this. There is no way they will allow a monitor to monitor their business and push ads on company time. Since they buy the most monitors it will be an easy push back.
And before anyone says the regular consumer is the biggest buyer of monitors. I have had the same monitor on my home PC for 10 years. I have gotten 4 new monitors just for my desk in the same amount of time. Plus the site is lousy with monitors for every critical system and the NOC.
laughs in pihole
