Smart TVs take snapshots of everything you watch.

Come dive deeper into them with us.

Oct 19-20, Northeastern University, Boston

Did You Know?

Modern smart TVs collect all kinds of data about you, and run things like ACR (Automatic Content Recognition). ACR continuously samples what is displayed on the screen, regardless of input source, and matches it against a catalog to identify the content being watched. That information is often sent to remote servers and used for profiling, targeted advertising, and audience measurement, frequently without the viewer clearly understanding what is collected or when.

Why This Matters

ACR raises real privacy concerns, yet how it actually behaves in the field is poorly documented. Its triggers, the data it transmits, and the conditions under which it activates are not transparent to users, regulators, or researchers. This hackathon exists to close the gap between what our TVs are actually doing and what we understand about it. The aim is to build reproducible experiments and evidence to help expose what these devices do, inform users, and support the broader research and consumer-advocacy community in holding manufacturers accountable.