Most “Smart” TVs use Automatic Content Recognition (ACR), essentially taking snapshots every 10+ms of what you watch and hear, then forwarding & selling that data to companies for ads, etc. I now feel it’s only a matter of time before this “feature” finds its way to our ever “smarter” PC monitors.
LG with the help of Windows is already installing adware when the right Device ID is detected.
☑️ To disable ACR on TV: https://www.zdnet.com/home-and-office/home-entertainment/how-to-disable-acr-tv/
Technically, Ubuntu counts as they have had some ads for commercial (even closed) services. Assuming you wanted to set up your system as pure as possible.
The OS itself doesn’t generally know if the upstream organization pushing updates has broken their promises or not.
Did those ads show up because of something a monitor chose to install?
Not that time, but some Linux distros can also pull additional software automatically for connected hardware
The whole point of this comment thread is that Linux is or isn’t supposedly immune to this type of attack. Has this ever happened to a Linux machine that anyone knows of, that a monitor has installed software like this? If not, I think it’s safe to say we can recommend Linux over others.