https://yro.slashdot.org/story/18/10...s-from-lawsuit

After it was revealed that Vizio was tracking customers' viewing habits and sharing that data with advertisers, a class-action lawsuit was filed against the company. Now, Ars Technica is reporting that "lawyers representing Vizio TV owners have asked a federal judge in Orange County, California to sign off on [the settlement] with the company for $17 million, for an affected class of 16 million people, who must opt-in to get any money." The company "also agrees to delete all data that it collected." From the report:

Notice of the lawsuit will be shown directly on the Vizio Smart TVs, three separate times, as well as through paper mailings. When it's all said and done, new court filings submitted on Thursday say each of those 16 million people will get a payout of somewhere between $13 and $31. By contrast, their lawyers will collectively earn a maximum payout of $5.6 million in fees.

Eventually, the company agreed to pay $2.2 million to settle a complaint brought by the Federal Trade Commission. However, this new settlement is related to an entirely separate lawsuit, one that was consolidated in federal court in southern California. This $17 million amount is more than Vizio made by licensing the data collected, according to a source with knowledge of the deal.
Rewind a bit before the ruling was issued. Either Visio would have won, or the Lawyers. Either way, we lose. And, we will continue to lose as long as the default of "send everything to parent companies" continues to go unnoticed and unaddressed.

So yet again, why is Privacy important? Think about what George Carlin once said:

“People are wonderful. I love individuals. I hate groups of people. I hate a group of people with a 'common purpose'. 'Cause pretty soon they have little hats. And armbands. And fight songs. And a list of people they're going to visit at 3am. So, I dislike and despise groups of people but I love individuals. Every person you look at; you can see the universe in their eyes, if you're really looking.”
People in groups, united against some specific detail about your life that should have not been known to the groups to begin with, will eventually unify against the individual based on those details. The details about our lives we continue to think "is not wrong". The difference between Right and Wrong is subjective. What happens when you get a very very pissed off group that is either Pro / Anti Union coming after you because you hold dear an ideology opposite of the group? This country has already normalized extremism against the individual based on these subjectively interpreted details. And people are already very very pissed off. Everyone is pissed about something. Redirecting that anger towards individuals whose beliefs oppose their own causes the formation of the groups that destroy individuality.

Might just as well Borgify humanity now and be done with it.