Call it Yakov Smirnoff’s revenge. Back in the Reagan era there was a middling comedian who made a fine living peddling the hilarities of the dystopian surveillance state: “In Soviet Russia, television watches you!”

Har har har.

Fast-forward 40 years and here we are: Vizio, Sony, and other smart TV manufacturers are getting out of the television hardware business. They’re now data capture platforms. They’re watching and recording all of your viewing choices every second your TV is on. And they’re selling that data for a lot of money.

In America, television watches you!

Fortunately, there are some easy steps you can take to disable this surveillance. I’ve linked to them below. Do it.

It started a few years ago when Vizio installed a Russian-reversal operating system it called Platform+. Last year an executive at Vizio explained to the trade publication TVRev.com:

“About six years ago…Vizio was primarily a TV manufacturer, a house brand that made money by selling hardware. But our founder, William Wang, had the foresight to realize there was a better business in monetizing attention—making money every time someone turns on their TV.”

So Vizio began spying on its customers. And it worked.

I took a dive into Vizio’s financials. In its latest available quarterly report, the company actually lost $7 million selling TVs but made $119 million by monetizing the data it captured from TV viewers.

That report was from late 2024, because Walmart purchased Vizio soon after and now the TV maker’s financials are buried within the larger company. Why did Walmart buy Vizio? Not for the TV sales. Walmart saw what was happening with Vizio’s data capture software (now called SmartCast) and leapt at the chance to fold it into its own massive data surveillance operation.

So now if you’re streaming Netflix or watching the local news on a Vizio television, your every click is being fed directly to Walmart. One business publication summed it up in late 2025: “By acquiring Vizio’s SmartCast operating system, Walmart said it aims to own the entire living room from the screen to the checkout process for products households see and want while watching.”

At this point, if you own a smart TV it’s probably spying on you and selling that surveillance. Samsung, LG, Sony, Hisense. They all do it. What began as a pilot project at Vizio has become the industry standard. It’s called Automated Content Recognition (ACR) and it works kind of like the old Shazam app: capturing and analyzing what’s displayed on the screen. It runs continuously in the background unless you disable it.

Consumer Reports, which has recently become one of America’s foremost data privacy advocates, addressed the issue recently:

“We’ve found that you can’t stop all the data collection, but you can reduce the snooping by turning off a technology called automatic content recognition, or ACR. This smart TV technology attempts to identify every show you watch—including programs and movies you get via cable, over-the-air broadcasts, streaming services, and even Blu-ray discs.”

These are the latest and best guides I’ve found to disable ACR on your TV, courtesy of Consumer Reports (click on link for your brand):

Last year I wrote about personal data harvesting through everyday products in Consider the Amish Mattress:

“I believe product designers and marketers will soon find a way to up-value products that aren’t connected to the cloud. Don’t fall for the false “smart-dumb” dichotomy. Learn from the success of organic branding. Call that non-digital thermometer…maybe…a pure product.”

Today it’s nearly impossible to buy a new TV without ACR. But when one does appear: Choose it. When you need a vacuum cleaner: Take the time to identify and buy the pure product.

This is the new organic food battle. When enough people pay that extra 10 cents per pound, banana growers switch to organic methods. Safeway and Trader Joe’s move organic to the featured bins. Your dollar talks.