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Comment by smileybarry

Your viewing habits are not mined by Apple TV the same way that a smart TV does it.

If you use the Apple TV app and if you give permission to the app in the modal to link your HBO Max/Paramount+/etc. app, then that app can call a special API to donate your viewing history to the Apple TV app. You can just decline the prompt, or you can just not use the Apple TV app, and then the other streaming services have no recipient to give this data to.

Conversely, your TV runs something called ACR or Automatic Content Recognition where a screenshot of your TV input/app is taken every ~x seconds. At best, it distills it into a local signature and ships that off to some amount of servers. At worst (e.g.: laptop HDMI) it can send it for processing. Some TVs take screenshots much more often if you use a device connected by HDMI.[1]

The former is generally used for content recommendation, but we can also assume that it could potentially get pooled into stuff like App Store ads. The latter is also used to discern your political affiliation and target you for political campaign ads, among every other type of ad.

1: https://www.rtings.com/tv/learn/research/smart-tv-data-priva...

parent smileybarry 18 days ago

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