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Apple collects much of the same data (and more) and they use it to push ads at you and for whatever else they want. They also sell that data to third parties including "information about your transactions and viewing activity, as well as aggregated user demographics such as age group, gender (which may be inferred from information such as your name and salutation in your Apple ID account), and region"

See: https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/apple-tv-app/

Remember, what companies consider to be "non-personal information" is often extremely personal. It's often trivial to identify an individual based on "anonymized" or "non-identifying" data, and even aggregated data my not be enough to prevent individuals from being identified.

It's not clear what "disabling ACR when Apple services were in use" actually means in practice. I'd guess it means that Apple TV+ content isn't being snooped on directly by anyone except apple, but it's hard to say.


Personally, I believe Apple is the "least worst" in this regard, and I'm willing to accept that they provide "some non-personal information" to "Apple TV strategic partners, such as content owners, so that they can measure the performance of their creative work, meet royalty and accounting requirements, and improve their associated products and services."

Compare and contrast the Apple TV privacy policy you linked with Roku's, for example: https://docs.roku.com/published/userprivacypolicy/en/us

Quoting from B.1:

We may receive information about the browsers and devices you use to access the Internet, including our services, such as device types and models, unique identifiers including advertising identifiers (e.g., for Roku Devices, the Advertising Identifier associated with that device), MAC address, IP address, operating system type and version, browser type and language, Wi-Fi network name and connection data, and information about other devices connected to the same network. We may also gather the WiFi MAC addresses and broadcast signal strengths of your router and other Wi-Fi routers in your area. For Roku Devices, we may also collect the name of the retailer to whom your Roku Device was shipped, various quality measures, error logs, software version numbers, and device status (including the status of battery-powered accessories). When you enable Bluetooth while using Roku Services, we may collect your Bluetooth usage, such as connection quality, the name of the device connected to your Roku Device, and the start and stop time of your connection.

Quoting from B.3:

If you use the Roku Media Player to view your video or photo files or listen to your music files, Roku will collect data about the files viewed within the Roku Media Player, such as codecs, and other metadata of the local files you play through the Roku Media Player.

When you use a Roku TV with the Smart TV experience enabled, we use Automatic Content Recognition (“ACR”) technology to receive information about what you watch via the Roku TV’s antenna (including live television content and ads), and via devices connected to your Roku TV (including streaming players, consoles and cable and satellite set top boxes). For example, we collect TV viewing information such as the programs, commercials, and channels you view, the date, time and duration of the viewing, and how you use the on-screen TV guide. We collect TV viewing information both when you access live TV directly through your Smart TV’s interface and when you access live TV from within a Third-Party Channel. If the Smart TV experience is enabled on your Roku TV, we will use this information to personalize your TV viewing experience and ads.

Or quoting III.B:

We may disclose personal information (including Roku account registration information when you sign up with the channel or content provider, and information about your interactions with their content and the Roku Services), with partners whose services are available through the Roku Services such as providers of Third-Party Channels, Roku Direct Publisher Channels and other content providers on the Roku Services.

So much "nope" from me...


No doubt apple is better than Roku. Roku is possibly the worst when it comes to privacy. A while back Mozilla reviewed some products for privacy and even then it wasn't pretty:

> One of the researchers working on this guide said, "It had such a scary privacy policy, I didn't even connect it to my TV." Another researcher referred to Roku as a "privacy nightmare." (https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/roku-st...)




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