This sort of thing isn’t new but I’ve seen this particular one all over the place. Was there something different from this experience compared to the times that people have agreed in the past?

What about the one sided ability to change a contract??

A year from now Roku pop up says “Click to Accept” , the text says **"this contract means you’ll have to give us your first born child? ** My reasoning says if they can do one then they can do the other. There is nothing that would prevent them from adding ‘fees’, or ‘subscriptions’ or simply turning off the device. (!)

This is egregious. We bought something. In normal commerce, the contract was set in stone at that moment. The seller can’t roll up 2 years later, change the contract, force you to agree before you can use your device, and then say , well maybe if you beg, you can opt out.

Wait you’re both waiving rights? Does that mean they can’t sue you for copyright or anything also?

I thought I linked to my blog post about it, but it just used the image

Roku’s Ultimatum: Surrender Jury Trial Rights or Lose Access to Your TVs

Smart TV’s are stupid scams. I quit watching the big screens in 2018. My phone is larger, at the distance I am comfortable laying down, than the 72in screen on the wall in front of me right now in my family’s living room. In the USA, without LUFS regulations, I’m not interested in watching any content embedded in corporate media advertising streams. (Tom Scott LUFS YT, Wikipedia: LUFS)

https://community.roku.com/t5/Community-discussions/Roku-disables-player-with-attempt-to-coerce-arbitration-agreement/td-p/950649

That’s why i use a LCD TV with a generic TV Box with Linux installed on It, lol.

I am not a lawyer, but would such a contract be enforceable? To my untrained eye this has a lot of similarity to the unenforceable NDAs I keep on hearing about when people try to bully others into being quiet about crimes.

Recommendations to purchase a smart TV but never connect it to a network are futile, as well. Just like Amazon devices, smart TVs will find an open SSID and then phone home for updates without your knowledge.

My recommendation, when these kind of topics come up, is: either exchange your smart TV for a dumb one, or go to an electronics repair shop to have a board or two exchanged (depending on the make and model, older dumb components may be direct-ish replacements for smart ones).

EDIT: Another option? Try a projector! I was looking for dumb TV options online after writing up this comment, and someone on an old Reddit post recommended it. Great idea.

2nd EDIT: Someone else also recommended buying digital signage, another solid dumb display option.

The bigger thing here is no class arbitration or other representative proceeding. A lot of law firms do arbitration now against companies either with class arbitration or just thousands of individual arbitrations filed en masse. I wonder if this protects them from even the latter approach? It would be shitty if it forced you to do all the legwork on the arbitration yourself.

In any case I get this is happening now and why it’s such a huge ultimatum is they know they’re about to get hit with a ton of Video Privacy Protection Act suits. Turns out in the late 80s the US made video service providers that share video watching/rental/purchase history open to actual damages of $2500. So in the last year or two a ton of law firms have started filing class actions and arbitrations against all the streaming services and platforms.

This is suuuuuuuper common, most software makes you agree to some sort of arbitration clause. It doesn’t mean that you can’t sue them, it’s just an obstacle to deter you.

Is it even possible to like reflash certain TVs cuz it kinda seems like you may be better off buying a large ass monitor with a pi or potato PC attached.

I just posted about this in another community. I’ll just include the link below so I don’t double post.

https://lemmy.world/comment/8117710

These are fun, Australians can’t waive any of their rights, including consumer rights and rights to access the courts.

Shit like this is why my LG C1 is restricted to LAN access only in my router (local network for automation purposes) and can’t communicate with the internet.