My wife, despite me telling her not to, connected our washing machine to Wi-Fi because that's the only way she could get it to run a custom soak cycle. There was no way I could disconnect it from the Wi-Fi, and it started getting OTA firmware updates. Then it started throwing error codes when I would try to start it. Then one day it was totally dead. It killed the display panel which to replace costs 2/3rd of just buying a new one. Nothing mechanically wrong with it, just the display board that has an ESP-32 in it that got bricked by a firmware update. I went to our local appliance store and just bought a "dumb" washing machine that has actual buttons and no ability to connect to the Internet.
this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2026
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I have actually fully isolated my washing machine from the outside network via pi-hole. I can still start/stop and change cycles on it via WiFi. I also have WireGuard set so I can connect remotely to my local network exactly for such scenarios.
LG: "Diplomatic immunity!"
Anyone with a screwdriver: " It's been revoked!"
I think a common problem on Internet posts, is not enough Lethal Weapon 2 references.
Wow, good job
Just replace the word SMART with SPY and it makes a lot more sense. TVs in particular are one of the few things that have gotten cheaper over time and this is only because of the Automatic Content Recognition systems and the advertising.
I knew a guy years back that would pop open any device with an internet or GPS connection and physically disable it. He was telling us about it at work one day. Most of our coworkers told him it was paranoid overkill. I bet that dude is laughing his ass off right now.
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wE oWn ThE gLAsS
I own a screwdriver
I just can't imagine a jury trial where the TV I bought, have the receipt and possession of, has had its "rights" violated.
Cory Doctorow has imagined it for us:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41085118-unauthorized-bread
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This is Plan B when you already have an LG product.
Plan A is to not buy LG anything, ever.
PS: Just out of curiosity and based on other people pointing out here and in another post of mine how hard is to get a non-smart TV, I looked around and here is the largest non-smart consumer TV I could find (which is 1080p and 40" from what looks like a Spanish manufacturer, for €209 with VAT), here is a non-smart 65" 4K Samsung hospitality display ($1023 in the US) and here is what looks like the same spec consumer TV from Samsung ($379.99 in the US).
So, sorry, it is in fact possible to not just avoid LG products (which itself would be easy, just buy any other brand out there) but even smart TVs altogether, just either pay more (over 2x as more judging by that Samsung TV) or settle for smaller 1080p TVs from smaller TV makers.
They all do this. Why do you think displays are so cheap? The business plan is not the display, it's the data.
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Why not just... you know, don't give it your wifi password.
Hopefully you don't live near any neighbors or open hotspots.
Some will scan for open wifi networks to connect to that you can't disable
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I wonder how much a TV would be if it wasn't subsidized with the data collection revenue? I remember someone offering a TV free of charge but it had a hardware ad bar mounted to the bottom. I paid $1000 for my 65" S90C when S90Ds were already on sale.
It's pretty likely that the TV price is not subsidized. They might just want to squeeze as much money out of you as possible.
I looked up some publicly available Vizio (Walmart) financial presentations. For Q3 2024, their "Device" sales lost money (and that's counting soundbars, which are presumably sold at a profit). They seem to be going all in on whatever cursed thing they call "Platform +".
Note that this is gross profit, i.e revenue minus cost of goods, but not all the overhead from logistics, retail, corporate, etc.
Isn't Vizio like the cheapest brand? Or one of them, at least. Some of the most budget oriented brands might take that approach but I don't see others like Samsung, Sony or LG doing that (at least based on their prices).
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YESSSSSS!
My “smart” tvs all get a firewall rule to ban their MAC address from the outside world
The problem is researchers found out that lg tvs will scan available ssids and connect to any network available to deliver its payload back to LG, without your knowledge or consent
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