TLDR
I think consumers have a strong case for boycotting LG Smart TVs until the company fundamentally changes how it treats privacy, advertising, software control, and security.
That does not mean LG makes bad television panels. It does not. Some of its OLED hardware is excellent. The problem is that buying a great display also means buying into webOS, a connected-TV advertising ecosystem, Automatic Content Recognition, device discovery, software agreements, home-screen advertising, and a company whose privacy practices became serious enough that Texas sued and later forced stronger ACR consent requirements.
LG now says ACR, voice recognition, and interest-based advertising are optional and off by default. That is progress. But it does not erase the company’s history, the manipulative privacy interfaces Texas attacked, the recent security findings, the network scanning researchers demonstrated, or an advertising operation that openly talks about viewing behavior “at the glass level” and tells advertisers to “Own the living room.”
I am not interested in rewarding LG merely for becoming somewhat less intrusive after regulators and researchers dragged its behavior into public view.
If LG wants my money again, the company should earn it.
LG Makes Good TVs. That Is Exactly Why a Boycott Could Matter.
A boycott only matters when people actually want the product.
Nobody needs to organize a boycott of a television nobody wants.
LG’s OLED business is different. The company has spent years building some of the most desirable displays on the market. Independent testing continues to show why. RTINGS describes the LG G5 as an excellent OLED with perfect blacks, strong brightness, impressive HDR performance, excellent gaming features, and outstanding image quality.
That makes LG’s smart-TV behavior more frustrating, not less.
The hardware is good enough that buyers may be tempted to shrug at everything surrounding it. Maybe the advertising isn’t worth worrying about. Maybe ACR can just be turned off. Maybe network discovery is harmless. Maybe the privacy agreements are better now. Maybe security bugs will get patched.
That is exactly how companies get away with bad behavior.
They make one part of the product good enough that customers tolerate everything else.
I don’t think consumers should.
Buying an LG TV Should Not Mean Joining LG’s Advertising Business
The fundamental problem is that LG does not merely sell televisions anymore.
LG also operates a connected-TV advertising company.
LG Ad Solutions openly markets first-party ACR data derived from LG Smart TVs. Its own technology page says that this information provides visibility into viewing behavior “at the glass level.” It promotes targeting based on programs, apps, streaming services, subscriptions, purchases, rentals, specific advertisements viewed, gaming platforms, individual game titles, viewing habits, and location.
That is not a side feature.
That is a business.
The person buying the television may think the transaction is simple: money in exchange for a display.
LG has built an economic model in which the television can continue generating value after that sale through advertising, audience measurement, behavioral information, home-screen inventory, and cross-device marketing.
I think that is parasitic.
A company already received money for the hardware. It should not behave as though the customer has also volunteered to become an advertising asset.
“Own the Living Room” Tells You Whose Interests Matter
LG’s advertiser-facing language is particularly revealing.
Its current sales page tells advertisers that LG’s proprietary ACR captures viewing habits and behavior across linear television and streaming. The company sells advertisements integrated directly into the LG home screen and promotes cross-device campaigns that extend beyond the television.
Then LG tells advertisers to:
“Own the living room.”
It says marketers can surround the connected LG household across mobile, tablet, and desktop devices.
That phrase should bother anyone who actually owns the living room.
The living room is not LG’s.
It is not an advertising agency’s.
It is not a brand’s.
It belongs to the people living there.
The entire idea that a television manufacturer should help advertisers “own” part of that environment demonstrates exactly why the company needs stronger boundaries.
Texas Already Had to Push LG Toward Better Privacy
LG now emphasizes informed consent and optional ACR.
Good.
That improvement did not materialize in a vacuum.
Texas sued LG over smart-TV privacy practices. On May 11, 2026, the Texas Attorney General announced an agreement requiring LG not to use ACR to collect viewing information without informed consent. The agreement also required a clearer pop-up disclosure explaining collection and use and a clear, simple way for consumers to opt out.
The settlement was not a trial verdict proving every allegation Texas made.
It also was not nothing.
Regulators challenged the way LG collected viewing information, and LG agreed to stronger disclosures and consent mechanisms.
That history should matter to consumers deciding whether to trust the company now.
LG should not receive credit merely for moving toward privacy standards that should have existed from the start.
The Privacy Interface Was an Insult to Customers
Texas did not merely challenge ACR itself. Its complaint attacked how LG presented privacy choices.
The state alleged dark-pattern practices including easy broad consent followed by a much more cumbersome withdrawal process. Texas described the system using terms such as Privacy Zuckering and a Roach Motel.
Then there was LG’s absurd Do Not Sell My Personal Information control.
The privacy-protecting action was to turn that switch on, even though other privacy-related options trained users to disable or decline unwanted collection and advertising functions.
That kind of inconsistency should never survive serious usability testing.
LG has not admitted that the design was intentionally deceptive. But LG is not a group of amateurs discovering user-interface design for the first time. It is a massive technology company whose advertising business depends on understanding human behavior.
I find it ridiculous to believe nobody understood what that interface would do.
Researchers Found LG TVs Crawling the Local Network
Privacy is not limited to ACR.
Researchers working with Gamers Nexus and Level1Techs observed LG televisions scanning local networks for other devices. Ars Technica reported that an LG G5 discovered dozens of unrelated devices, including phones and smartwatches belonging to staff who did not even know they were part of the testing environment.
LG acknowledges device-discovery functionality and says it supports connectivity with compatible hardware such as game consoles, set-top boxes, DVD players, and IoT devices. LG also says information from that discovery process is not used for advertising segmentation or household profiling.
There are legitimate reasons for device discovery.
The question is why the scope needs to be broad enough to discover unrelated devices in the first place.
A television should operate on the principle of minimum necessary access.
If I ask it to find my Xbox, find my Xbox.
It does not need to become an amateur network administrator.
LG’s Own Privacy Defense Shows How Much the TV Can Do
LG published a detailed privacy statement on September 12, 2026 in response to the latest controversy.
The document is meant to reassure customers, and some of it does. LG says ACR, voice recognition, and interest-based advertising are optional. It says these features are off by default, can be withdrawn, and are not required for core functionality.
But read what else the statement explains.
LG discusses voice processing, ACR, HDMI-connected sources, nearby Wi-Fi information, approximate-location estimation, device discovery, audience segmentation, cross-device advertising, network information, advertising partners, personal-information opt-outs, security updates, and bug bounty programs.
This is supposed to be a television.
The fact that LG needs such a lengthy technical explanation to reassure consumers illustrates how far the product has drifted from being a simple appliance.
Security Is Another Reason I Would Hold Off
LG’s recent controversy also includes security findings.
Researchers reported vulnerabilities affecting LG televisions, while LG emphasized that ordinary TVs do not continuously record ambient conversations. The distinction matters. Demonstrations involving ambient microphone surveillance on compromised hardware do not prove that an untouched LG television routinely records everything said in the room.
But that still leaves a serious question.
Why can compromising a television produce such serious surveillance consequences?
A smart TV is a network-connected computer. Some models contain microphones. They communicate with cloud services, interact with other devices, and remain inside private homes for years.
That kind of product deserves extremely strong security.
LG itself now acknowledges that no connected product is completely immune from vulnerabilities and says it operates a bug bounty program and currently provides eligible webOS products with security updates for up to five years from the initial release of the relevant webOS version.
Five years may be meaningful in software terms.
Televisions often remain in homes considerably longer.
That mismatch deserves scrutiny too.
Premium TVs Should Not Carry OS Advertising
One of my conditions for buying LG again would be extremely simple:
Stop putting advertising into the operating system of premium televisions.
If LG wants to offer a heavily subsidized $199 TV and disclose that the discount is financed by advertising, fine. Consumers can decide whether they want that bargain.
But when someone spends thousands of dollars on a flagship OLED, the home screen should not double as advertising inventory.
LG Ad Solutions openly sells premium home-screen placements integrated into the Smart TV experience.
I consider that anti-consumer.
I already bought the screen.
Stop selling pieces of it to somebody else.
What LG Would Need to Change Before I Would Recommend It Again
A boycott without conditions is just anger.
So here are the conditions.
Privacy by Default
LG says optional ACR, voice, and interest-based advertising are now off by default. Keep them that way permanently. Do not gradually reintroduce consent through prompts, nag screens, bundled agreements, or feature dependencies.
Privacy should be the factory state.
No Advertising on Premium Hardware
A premium television should not contain operating-system advertising.
If LG wants to monetize an ad-supported hardware tier, label it honestly and lower the price enough that consumers receive something meaningful in return.
A $2,000 or $3,000 OLED should not be an advertising billboard.
Completely Transparent ACR
Do not call it merely Viewing Information.
Call it what it is:
Automatic Content Recognition.
Explain in plain English what sources can be recognized, what fingerprints are generated, what additional device and network information is processed, where information goes, who receives it, how long it is retained, and what commercial uses are possible.
Put all of it on one screen.
One Privacy Dashboard
No scavenger hunts.
No backwards toggles.
No double negatives.
No one-click consent followed by dozens of interactions to reverse it.
LG should provide a single privacy dashboard with obvious controls:
ACR: OFF
Interest-Based Advertising: OFF
Cross-Device Advertising: OFF
Commercial Data Sharing: OFF
Voice Data Retention: OFF
Promotional Home-Screen Content: OFF
That’s how a company behaves when it actually respects customers.
Minimal Network Access
LG should redesign device discovery around explicit user intent.
If I request a connection with a game console, speaker, or phone, the TV can perform the discovery needed for that task.
The default should not be broad curiosity about the LAN.
Independent Security Audits
LG should commission independent security assessments of webOS and publish meaningful summaries of findings and remediation.
Not marketing.
Not “trust us.”
Actual outside review.
Longer Security Support
A television is not a smartphone people replace every few years.
LG should support premium Smart TVs with critical security updates for a period that resembles actual television ownership.
Ten years would be far more defensible than treating five years as generous.
Better Executive Judgment
This matters too.
LG Ad Solutions currently lists Serge Matta as President, Global Ad Sales. Before LG, Matta settled SEC accounting-and-disclosure fraud charges from his time as Comscore CEO. He paid a $700,000 penalty, reimbursed roughly $2.1 million, and accepted a ten-year prohibition on serving as an officer or director of a public company.
That does not prove wrongdoing at LG.
It does tell me something about LG’s standards for putting people in senior positions where consumer trust matters.
LG can make better choices.
A Boycott Does Not Mean Throwing Away an LG You Already Own
If you already own an LG television, throwing a functioning device into a landfill would accomplish very little.
Lock it down instead.
Disable optional ACR and advertising agreements.
Review Do Not Sell controls.
Disable voice features you do not use.
Consider putting the television on an isolated IoT or guest network.
If you do not need webOS, consider using the panel as a display and keeping its network access as limited as practical.
The boycott case is primarily about future purchases.
LG wants repeat customers.
Make the company earn them.
Consumers Have More Power Than They Think
Television manufacturers respond to sales.
If customers continue buying premium LG OLEDs while grumbling about privacy, LG gets the only message corporations reliably understand:
This behavior does not cost us anything.
If buyers start saying:
“I love the panel, but I am buying something else until webOS stops treating my living room like advertising inventory,”
then the privacy problem becomes a revenue problem.
Revenue problems receive executive attention remarkably quickly.
That is why a boycott can matter.
LG Can End This Whenever It Wants
None of the changes I am asking for require LG to abandon Smart TVs.
LG does not need to remove Netflix.
It does not need to eliminate streaming.
It does not need to make the TV dumb.
It simply needs to accept that intelligence does not require surveillance.
Make privacy the default.
Stop putting ads on premium hardware.
Simplify opt-outs.
Reduce network visibility.
Be completely transparent about ACR.
Fund long-term security.
Choose executives who strengthen trust rather than weaken it.
The technology to do all of that already exists.
What is missing is corporate will.
Until Then, LG Does Not Deserve My Money
LG wants consumers to separate the excellent picture from everything happening underneath it.
I won’t.
The software is part of the product.
The privacy design is part of the product.
The advertising is part of the product.
Security is part of the product.
The company’s attitude toward ownership is part of the product.
And when you evaluate the complete product rather than admiring an OLED panel in a dark showroom, LG’s record becomes much harder to excuse.
I do not need LG to promise perfection.
I need LG to demonstrate that the person who bought the television matters more than the advertiser trying to reach them.
Until the company does that convincingly, I think consumers are justified in buying something else.
LG makes great televisions.
It can start respecting the people who buy them whenever it wants.
Until then, boycott the Smart TVs and make the company feel the cost of its own contempt.
References
LG Electronics, “Understanding Privacy on LG Smart TVs,” September 12, 2026. LG’s current response covering ACR, voice recognition, device discovery, nearby Wi-Fi processing, consent, advertising, and security support.
Read LG’s privacy statement
Texas Office of the Attorney General, LG privacy agreement, May 11, 2026. Requires informed consent for ACR viewing-data collection, clearer disclosures, and a simple opt-out.
Read the Texas-LG privacy settlement announcement
LG Ad Solutions, “Trusted ACR Technology.” LG’s advertiser-facing description of glass-level ACR data and audience targeting.
Read LG Ad Solutions’ ACR page
LG Ad Solutions, “Superior Solutions for Performance Advertisers.” Describes home-screen advertisements, ACR, and the “Own the living room” cross-device strategy.
Read LG Ad Solutions’ advertiser pitch
Ars Technica, “LG TV shown scanning LAN for third-party phones and other devices,” September 8, 2026. Covers independent LAN-scanning tests and LG’s response.
Read the Ars Technica investigation
RTINGS, LG G5 OLED Review. Independent testing illustrating why LG’s OLED hardware remains attractive despite the surrounding software concerns.
Read the LG G5 OLED review