Tech startup Telly is making a a huge bet: The company’s business model involves giving away a dual-screen, 55”, 4K TV, plus a sound-bar and a teleconferencing camera, music software, games, and more, to the first half a million people who ask for one. Free tech? Score!
Here’s the Telly link if you’re interested, but before you sign up, there’s the catch: The TV may be free, but you’ll still be paying for it, signing yourself up for an advertising scheme that takes data collection to new heights.
Should you enter the Telly-verse, your television will show non-stop ads, no-doubt specifically geared to you, on its lower screen whenever you watch anything—and Telly also plans to run commercials on both screens when the TV isn’t even being watched. “When the Theatre display (top screen) is not in use, the ad unit could come to life in a fun way connecting both,” Telly founder Ilya Pozin explained in a statement. Uncontrollable advertising? Perhaps Pozin and I have different definitions of “fun.”
Turn your living room into a marketing hub
Willingly installing a potentially always-on digital billboard in your living room isn’t the only downside to Telly. The system will also come with a front-facing camera and microphone that will allow you to enjoy Zoom calls, “free advanced motion-tracking fitness programs,” and to control your TV with your voice. In exchange, Telly will collect a ton of information about you, including your listening and viewing choices, how long you watch/listen for, how you interact with your television, and the “physical presence of you and any other individuals using the TV at any given time.”
It’s a free TV, but if that last statement doesn’t make your blood run cold, you haven’t read enough dystopian science fiction. To be fair, Telly does come with a privacy shield, so you don’t have to let it look at you as you binge FBOY Island in your undies. But closing the curtains on the camera and mic are basically the only privacy control allowed; if you opt out of data-collection, you’ll have to either return the TV, or pay $500 for it.
The future of television? Or another nightmarish failure?
Telly founder Ilya Pozin is also the brains behind free-with-ads streaming service PlutoTV, so he has experience in the space—and the recent success of Pluto, FreeVee, Tubi and other subscription-free streamers points to the viability of the ad-supported model. For programming, at least. But giving away the hardware itself and welcoming a TV that you don’t really control into your home feels like taking the “you are the product” ethos of “free” to new levels.
I’m constantly amazed/sickened by the novel ways companies use the data that they scrape, and I’d bet there’s some use for images, sounds, and video of the “physical presence of you and any other individuals using the TV” that I can’t even imagine—but even if there isn’t, this seems like a huge gamble. “We’ll put a camera in your house and you’ll sign over all your data to us” seems like a tough sell for anyone, and previous start-ups that relied on giving away PCs to anyone in exchange for installing adware didn’t exactly disrupt the home computer market.
On the other hand, it’s a new, free TV, and if you aren’t in a place to purchase a 55” 4K flat-screen, this could put one in your living room for nothing. What’s your privacy ever done for you, anyway? Besides, it’s not like all the other devices in your house (that you paid for) aren’t collecting volumes of data on you and transmitting it somewhere so people can “optimize your advertising experience” or whatever. So maybe you should just embrace the machine? There’s a free TV in it for you. (I won’t be signing up.)