Telly, a California-based start-up led by Pl🀅uto TV creator Ilya Pozin, wants to give you a TV for free. If you , fill out a questionnaire, and provide it with some personal details, you can get one of 500,000 TVs it’s shipping out later this year, completely for free. Telly describes the free 55-inch 4K HDR display as “the biggest thing to happen to TV since color”. How c✨an a start-up company afford to give away hundreds of thousands of TVs for free? If this whole thing sounds sketchy to you, congratulations, for this ad-driven, dystopian nightmare of a TV.
Pozin says Telly’s free TV would retail for over $1000 were it sold in stores, but that’s hard to believe. TVs are cheaper than ever, and the one Telly distributes isn’t particularly high-end. It’s not an OLED, and it doesn’t even have smart functi🍨ons - a basic feature in even the cheapest TVs sold today - so the company is sending along a chromecast with the screen. It does have a built-in sound bar, but a basic Samsung 55” 4K and soundbar bundle from . But sure, Telly’s telly is worth $1000. So how is the company extracting $1000 in value from its non-customers? Ad revenue and user data of course.
Beneath the soundbar is a second, smaller screen, which can show you things like sports scores, weather info, stock prices, and, I assume, clips of Subway Surfer, while you watch movies and TVs on the main screen. Of course, it will also show you ads. The right edge of the display is a dedicated, always-on ad space, where Telly can transmit targeted ads to you, based on the comprehensive demographic survey you filled out when you signed up for the TV. Additionally, when not using the TV, the main display will also be used to display ads. If you want ๊a TV for free, you’re going to have to live with a permanent billboard in the middle of your living room.
But that’s just the beginning, because everyone knows that when the product is free, you are the product. Telly plans to collect extensive user data from the device, including all of your viewing habits like what shows you watch, when you watch them, and for how long. There’s a camera in the center of the soundbar that can be used for Zoom calls and exercise programs, but it also has a sensor that can track how many peo♔ple are watchinꦰg. Pozin says that Telly’s features comply with privacy regulations, and that the camera comes with a built-in cover, but that doesn’t really make me feel that much better about having a data gathering advertisement machine in my home.
The privacy agreement, which allows Telly to farm user data for whatever purposes it sees fit, is non-negotiable. If you opt-out of the terms, you’ll be required to send the TV back or pay the absurd asking price for it. It’s a laughable proposition, but that hasn’t stopped 100,000 people from signing up for the offer in the first 36 hours. Telly hopes to eventually ship out millions of TVs, and it doesn’t seem like it's going to have a lot of trouble doing that.
We all know why this is bad, right? You can see how the built-in screen for running commercials is just the next evolution of unskippable YouTube ads that eventually leads us to that episode of Black Mirror where the walls are made of screens that turn red and🤪 sound an alarm if you try to look away from the commercials. We’re one step removed from “Drink your verific🧸ation Mountain Dew can to continue” at this point. You couldn’t pay me to accept that level of invasive marketing into my life, yet people are willing to do it for a shitty TV?
The ads aren’t even the truly dystopic part, it's the forfeiting of user data. We should be fiercely protective of our privacy, but instead we willingly hand it over to anyone that asks. I don’t know how else to say this, but you should not put a camera in your home so a corporation can track your TV viewing habits and sell that info to anyone and everyone. I promise you the TV is not worth it. You already have a second screen in your pocket that can show you sports scores and stock prices while you watch TV, and it at least affords you some control over what happens to your data. Not much, but a lot more than this hypercapitalistic nightmare of a TV.