Vizio Shows What Happens When U.S. Fascism And TV Enshittification Meet
from the war-is-peace dept
We’ve noted for years how the “smart” TV sector is at the forefront of enshittification. It’s a sector full of companies that have doubled down on annoying ads and surveillance to the detriment of the customer. And while absolutely fixated on monetizing consumer surveillance data, it routinely fails to put anywhere close to the same attention on consumer privacy, resulting in a lot of scandal.
Most of these companies, like Roku, want to inject ads into everything, from your pause menus and GUI to when the TV goes into standby. We’re long past the point where they make more money off of ads and consumer surveillance than they do off selling the hardware.
Walmart-owned Vizio has been trying to leverage standby mode for a while via what it calls “scenic mode.” Vizio’s “scenic mode” is supposed to display “relaxing, ambient content when your TV is idle for a period of time” which Vizio claims “adds to the environment of your home or office.”
Except one Vizio owner was recently a bit annoyed to leave his room and come back to authoritarian propaganda sponsored by the Department For Homeland Security:
“I left the [TV] idle while I went to the other room to play with my dog. After about a half an hour, I started hearing [US Secretary of Homeland Security] Kristi Noem praising Trump and telling immigrants to get out of America, over and over. I went in to check, and caught this video looping 3 more times before it went back to the nature clips.”
If you’ve been napping, the Trump administration has been “renditioning” people they claim to be illegal immigrants and criminals off the streets and sending them to prisons in El Salvador as part of a lucrative contract with that country’s authoritarian leader. Except when journalists have investigated the renditions they’ve found there’s often no evidence to support any criminal behavior.
Some very ugly “mistakes” are being made, including sending innocent Maryland fathers to prisons in countries they’ve never been to. Whoops a daisy.
It’s unpopular, racist bullshit. But to try and sell this unpopular, racist bullshit, US Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem has been running infomercials threatening illegals that they’ll be “hunted down” if they enter the country illegally. The informercials falsely claim that “weak leadership has left our borders wide open, flooding our communities with drugs, human trafficking, and violent criminals.”
Some of the Reddit users who saw the message say it got stuck in a loop, adding to the dystopian nature of the unpopular, racist bullshit:
It’s entirely possible that the ad was run in error, but it’s hard to confirm since Vizio and parent company Walmart haven’t responded to media requests for comment. Vizio has, at times, bragged about how it can leverage its consumer surveillance and ad technologies to work in partnership with political campaigns and target millions of households with political messaging.
By the way, here’s Consumer Reports’ guide on how to turn off many of your TVs more invasive features.
Filed Under: advertisements, authoritarian, dystopian, enshittification, smart tv, surveillance
Comments on “Vizio Shows What Happens When U.S. Fascism And TV Enshittification Meet”
I’m sorry comrade. Only members of the Inner Party are permitted to truly turn off their telescreens.
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Lol. Inner party member wouldn’t even want to turn off a TV.
But they ARE allowed to have a TV-less room.
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it’s kinda wild that somehow this becomes authoritarian communism when it’s just the US. This type of propaganda has always existed but maybe less so during more dormant periods of america’s latent fascism
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Wrong end of the spectrum, bud.
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You should really learn what communism is.
The ad was run on broadcast television since a while ago. Not sure how it would’ve been an error for Vizio.
Capitalism. It’s called capitalism. But some of you aren’t willing to admit it even after seeing it again and again.
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Half of fascism is capitalism. We’ve noticed, and also understand history and definitions.
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Wait until you get to 10th grade and find out how fascism is related to capitalism.
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Fun fact: Nazis said to be anti-capitalists, as that was a Jewish thing.
Of course, what the actually did was to loot the Jews and share it with Nazi sympathisers.
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Actually, Nazis were anti-communist as it was ‘a Jewish thing’. Read all about the Anti-Comintern pact some time. Eventually it was the impetus for Germany declaring war on the US, and hence the US consequently deciding that maybe they didn’t like Nazis so much after all.
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Fun fact: Germany didn’t declare war on the US, Japan declared war on the US and the US joined in the fighting alongside Europe in response because Japan was allied with Germany at the time as a result of Hitler declaring the Japanese people to be honorary Aryans.
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They called themselves “Socialists”, but such self-applied labels are not known for their accuracy—cf. the various dictatorships with “Democratic” and/or “People’s” in their names. Pay attention to what the people in charge are doing, not what they’re saying (especially when it comes to Trump’s statements: it’s a complete toss-up whether they’ll have any relation to actual policy or reality).
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“Fascism is the absolute complicity between big capital and the State”
– Luis Britto García
https://www.wikiwand.com/en/articles/Definitions_of_fascism#Luis_Britto_Garc%C3%ADa
https://www.salon.com/2020/10/15/how-fascism-has-converged-with-capitalism-to-redefine-government_partner/
But you’re never going to be ready to face that are you kiddo? All you know is so long as you get your treatsies, everything in the world is find. You’ll be a MAGAT in a mater of weeks, if you aren’t already.
Why the screenshot is subtitles in Spanish? Because it only targets Spanish speaking people, because “Spanish-speaking people must be criminal since they don’t speak the language of God” (citation needed)?
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Possibly, it makes sense.
Or they were chosen by the viewer? i don’t remember whether it came with subtitles or not, i was too disgusted to notice a mere few words into that atrocity.
Available here:
https://www.dhs.gov/news/2025/02/17/dhs-announces-ad-campaign-warning-illegal-aliens-self-deport-and-stay-out
But also most of these morons couldn’t speak Spanish if you gave them 20 years to learn.
And not a lot of Brazilians are targeted? i guess?
Won’t help with all the other people they hate who don’t yet also speak English.
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Not likely. Those are “hard” subtitles—i.e., they’re actually part of the video itself instead of optional (“soft”) subtitles that a viewer can potentially style themselves.
Ugh. I’ve been using Onn streaming boxes, a Walmart exclusive, because they’re cheap and actually work nicely with a properly segmented network.
I might actually burn that store down if they start shoving Nazis onto my TV.
Another fine reason to avoid Walmart and Vizio/smart tvs
It’s entirely possible that the ad was run in error, but it’s hard to confirm since Vizio and parent company Walmart haven’t responded to media requests for comment.
If it’s an error I guarantee you it’s the ‘We didn’t think we’d get this much pushback’ sort, not the ‘We didn’t mean to do that’ sort. You don’t accidentally run propaganda pieces on your background noise ‘screensaver’.
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I was already avoiding Walmart (as part of a decades long boycott campaign run by the Autistic community) because they donate to a 501c organization that dedicates fully 48% of its funding to making the public scared of people like me and only 1% to supporting kids (but never adults) like me. I also don’t shop at TJ Maxx or GameStop for the same reason.
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Would said organization be Autism Speaks?
Is 1984 an instruction manual?
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For people who are interested only in dominating others by any means necessary? Yes.
For everyone else? No.
Re: Author: 'This is what NOT to do' Dictators: 'Do this, got it.'
Depends on who you are.
To the general public it’s a warning.
To would-be dictators it’s a how-to manual.
real good for walmart customer base
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It must be. Why else would they keep buying this stuff, right?
You’re mistaken about that “countries they’ve never been to” part, Karl; Abrego Garcia is originally from El Salvador, and there was a protective order in place to prevent the government from returning him because there was credible reason to believe he’d be in danger there.
I had fun
A person was complaining about MEXICANS, Not being religious, and were Just bad people.
I interrupted them, and Told that person, the More Mexican are Catholic then the Same in the USA.
Love to see a person Sputter, and Forget What to say, except “REALLY?”.
Can Someone Point out the Word LATIN, and that its an Old Language and WHO still speaks it.
this totally sucks, but there is in fact an easy way to never see ads or this propaganda crap on your TV at all: Don’t connect it to the internet.
unfortunately, you need a pi-hole plus other ad blocking stuff for anything you DO wanna connect to the internet
Who would trust vizio?
its not that long ago we found hidden webcams and microphones in various Vizo TVs. That were used to illegally harvest video of children getting dressed etc.
vizio
Vizio has been caught MANY times with secret webcams in their tvs. Filming and recording/sending to HQ video of naked children in their homes/people getting changed/couples having sex etc.
Who would ever trust them in 2025?
If you see fascism everywhere, you might be the fascist. Just saying.
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Solid logic there, Sherlock.
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If you don’t see it anywhere, it’s because you’re a fucking dunce.
Its not fascism everywhere.
Deciding someone is not a citizen and laws governing citizens don’t apply – fascist.
putting advertising on “screensaver” is merely extreme capitalism.
so its not all fascism.
I generally feel that fascism can be right or left since its not really either, at that point its the leaders, those that work for the leaders and everyone else, note by default communism is not fascism. its just very easy to take that little step.