Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/01/15/roku-welcomes-conspiracy-theor.html
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Fortunately, it’s not something that Roku pushes; you have to dig the channel out and add it manually.
Roku also has a problem with a lot of the ‘free’ channels being really low quality, or being nothing BUT ads.
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Have you see the channels Roku adds? I think it’s just a free-for-all. Put your content in their format and submit, as long as it’s not pr0n, of course.
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On one hand I think anyone can add a Roku channel. On the other hand they shouldn’t be promoting it at all.
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Let’s just be grateful that it’s not Alex Jones pr0n!
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shudder
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Does anyone know if Roku hosts the videos or are they just linked and Infowars has to?
If the latter, then it would be easy to add a Pi-hole upstream to block it. (Or just block it at the main router.)
Or just, you know, don’t watch it.
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If it’s a special channel- I think you have to search for it & then add it to your player.
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Et Tu, Roku?
Although, I dunno, I am not sure I have a huge issue with this. Infowars is hosting and streaming everything, right? Roku is just allowing one to have a channel made for one to click on. It isn’t like people are paying Roku to stream it. I mean, we keep harping on more open things is better, which means people will have more access to things, including shit things.
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Yeah, that Roku is open enough that anyone can make a channel, then you just need the number code to add it among the things that lead me to prefer it over many of its competitors. That’s way better than a company that locks down their device in the name of making sure I don’t watch bad-wrong things.
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The phone operator just told me customer.advocate@roku.tv is where to complain.
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So it’s a channel to dissuade folks from viewing pr0n?
Effective.
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So best case scenario their algorithm determined there were no “female-presenting nipples”, added it, and a Twitter bot promoted it to the individual asking them about it? I guess we’ll know one way or another depending on whether it’s gone in a few days when the one rep left in PR gets an email. Welcome to 2019, when the most exculpatory thing you can say about a company is that they lack human oversight.
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I hope you brought enough brain bleach for the whole class.
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Which would involve gay frogs somehow…
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At first I was like, “Those frogs got no dicks”, and then was “why does alex have a sunburned butt and where do you get thigh warmers” and then I was like “oh”, and then I wrote this.
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Nope. Everyone knows trans porn is Alex Jones’s fav.
Just another revolting thing trans women have to put up with.
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Even with this unwelcome news, I still prefer Roku to any of the other streaming platforms. AppleTV, Google Play, Amazon Fire, they all play dirty tricks to lock in users and exclude hardware and/or content from each other. Roku is the only big platform I know if where I can use anyone’s content (except Apple’s), in a neutral environment where everyone maintains their own streaming apps. Roku’s cross-channel search is great too.
Now if Roku were to preinstall the InfoWars channel on new devices, or add it to their “recommended channels” list, I’d have a major problem with that and be contacting them to express my displeasure.
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