What we found
Amazon Fire TV Stick: DWatches what you watch. ACR captures your viewing habits and sells them to advertisers.
FTC/DOJ found Amazon violated COPPA by retaining children's Alexa voice recordings indefinitely even after parents requested deletion. Amazon gave 30,000 employees access to voice recordings without business need. Over 800,000 children had Alexa profiles. Settlement: $25 million penalty. Fire TV uses Alexa as its primary voice interface.
YouTube: DIn 2019 YouTube paid $170 million for tracking children.
In 2019, the FTC fined Google $170 million for collecting children's data on YouTube for targeted ads. In 2025, a judge ruled Google knowingly engaged in highly offensive conduct, leading to a $30 million class action settlement. Disney was fined $10 million in December 2025 for mislabeling children's content which let Google's trackers collect data on kids.
Streaming Stick 4K: DTwo U.S.
Michigan AG filed a COPPA lawsuit (April 2025) alleging Roku collects children's names, device IDs, locations, voice recordings, IP addresses, and browsing histories without parental consent, then shares this data with third-party advertisers. Florida filed the first-ever enforcement action under its Digital Bill of Rights (October 2025) with penalties up to $150,000 per violation involving known children. Two state attorneys general independently concluded Roku violates children's privacy.
Chromecast with Google TV: DTracks everything you watch and feeds it into Google's ad profile. The TV dongle that watches you back.
FTC fined Google $170M (2019) for violating COPPA on YouTube by collecting children's data (persistent identifiers, cookies, IP addresses) without parental consent and using it for behavioral advertising, earning ~$50M from the practice. Chromecast with Google TV uses the same Google Account system. Google can collect location, voice, activity data, and app usage from children under 13 via Family Link. No age-gating or children's profile protections exist on the Google TV platform beyond Family Link.
LG Soundbar: DSoundbar with always-on microphone that sends voice data to LG and third parties.
App permissions include RECORD_AUDIO (dangerous-level permission). Hardware review confirms: "no microphone arrays here as the unit lacks any kind of voice control functionality" (SP7Y review, H-M Entertainment). The S75Q also lacks built-in microphones. RECORD_AUDIO permission is unnecessary for soundbar control — the app is recording audio from the phone microphone, not the soundbar. This grants LG the ability to capture ambient audio from the user phone while the app is in use.
Apple TV 4K (3rd gen): DApple says Siri data is not linked to your account.
The Lopez v. Apple ($95M settlement) litigation revealed Apple retained Siri recordings with device identifiers and enough metadata to identify users. Third-party contractors (grading Siri accuracy) heard identifiable conversations including medical discussions, drug deals, and intimate encounters. If data were truly not associated with accounts, it could not have been routed to specific device types (including Apple TV) or linked to user contexts. The claim of non-association is contradicted by the settlement's own factual findings.
Twitch: DIn 2021, Black and LGBTQ+ Twitch streamers were bombarded with coordinated hate raids — thousands of bots flooding chats with racial slurs and death threats.
In 2021, Twitch faced an epidemic of hate raids — coordinated bot attacks flooding Black, LGBTQ+, and marginalized streamers' chats with racist and threatening messages. Streamers RekItRaven, ShineyPen, and LuciaEverBlack organized #ADayOffTwitch. A class-action lawsuit was filed. Twitch didn't implement basic anti-raid tools for months.
Spotify: DEvery December, 350 million people eagerly share proof of how thoroughly Spotify monitors them.
Spotify Wrapped 2025 generated 1.4 billion personalized reports for 350 million users using AI to craft narratives about listening habits. Users eagerly share these on social media, advertising the depth of surveillance. Wrapped reveals Spotify tracks what you listen to, when, how many times, in what order, on what device, and in what emotional context.