IN SUMMARY
The Secret Business of ACR and the New Digital Colonialism
by Alfredo Cuéllar
Special to DEBATEX and ARJÉ México NOTICIAS
I. The Screen That Also Watches You
For decades, the television was a symbol of domestic intimacy. It brought families together, projected the outside world, and, in its own way, marked the rhythm of our conversations.
Today, that old entertainment box has evolved into a sophisticated instrument of commercial surveillance — capable of recording every image we watch, every sound that fills our living room, and every emotion it stirs within us.
Behind that apparent technological comfort lies a system known as ACR (Automatic Content Recognition) — a mechanism that samples audio and video from everything displayed on your screen—series, films, video games, broadcasts, or even slides connected through HDMI (High-Definition Multimedia Interface)—and compares it with a global database.
The result: a precise digital fingerprint of your habits, your tastes, and, in many cases, your private life.
II. From Shazam to Domestic Surveillance
The origins of ACR date back to 2011, when the British company Shazam—famous for identifying songs in seconds—demonstrated that its algorithm could also be applied to television.
Shortly afterward, TV manufacturers began quietly integrating the technology without informing users.
Its existence went unnoticed until 2017, when the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) fined Vizio millions of dollars for collecting viewing information without the consent of millions of people.
Since then, ACR has become a multi-billion-dollar global business. In 2021, Vizio itself admitted that it earned more money from selling user data than from selling televisions.
III. How Everyday Spying Works
ACR doesn’t need hidden microphones or secret cameras; it simply analyzes the audio and video signals you yourself are playing.
According to studies published in 2024, many smart TVs take samples every 10 milliseconds, encode them, and upload them to the cloud several times per minute.
From that constant flow, the system builds a user profile that can include:
- What programs you watch and when.
- Which brands appear on your screen.
- What political orientation your choices may suggest.
- How long you spend watching TV.
And the most disturbing part: the system isn’t limited to streaming. If you connect a gaming console, a Blu-ray player, or a laptop via HDMI, the television keeps “watching.”
Even if you disconnect it from the internet, ACR continues to record data and automatically uploads it when the device reconnects to perform a software update.
IV. The Real Product Is You
The economic equation is brutally simple: the more your television knows about you, the more profitable you become.
Companies like Telly TV even give away 4K televisions—valued at $1,000—in exchange for answering 120 questions about personal habits.
In this model, each piece of your personal data may be worth five to ten dollars.
The global drop in TV prices is not an act of technological generosity but rather the reflection of a new economic paradigm:
the device is given away; the user is sold.
What once required investment—manufacturing and distributing screens—is now financed through the mass exploitation of personal data.
V. From Marketing to Political Control
At first glance, ACR seems like an innocent tool: it helps deliver “more relevant” ads.
But the problem is not what it promises — it’s what it allows.
If a user watches sexual or intimate content on their television, the system records that too. The technology does not distinguish between a family series and a private scene: everything becomes data, and that data can be sold or analyzed without consent.
The information collected can reveal patterns of age, social class, political affiliation, religion, or education level.
When combined with data from cell phones, tablets, and computers, it forms an invisible map of human behavior that can be politically manipulated.
The same system that shows you a shampoo commercial can be used to target electoral campaigns, shape social perceptions, or spread ideological narratives.
Modern digital campaigns no longer need to censor; they simply segment, isolate, and mold.
In this sense, ACR and similar technologies are part of what can rightly be called digital colonialism — a silent domination in which nations lose control over the flows of information that shape their culture and their thinking.
VI. The New Face of Colonialism
For centuries, traditional colonialism was imposed through territory and weapons.
The new colonialism — digital colonialism — is imposed through algorithms and the mass extraction of data.
Once, empires extracted minerals; today, they extract emotions, habits, and preferences.
Once, they occupied lands; now, they occupy consciences.
The major technology corporations — almost all headquartered in the United States or Asia — hold more information about the citizens of other countries than those nations’ own governments.
That asymmetry represents a new form of power: the ability to predict and manipulate collective behavior.
VII. The Vulnerability of Nations Without Digital Laws
In countries where digital-privacy legislation is weak — such as Mexico and much of Latin America — users are practically defenseless.
Televisions, phones, and digital platforms collect data that is sent to foreign servers without regulation or transparency.
While the European Union advances with the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) and California enforces its own Consumer Privacy Act, most Latin American legal frameworks remain fragmented and outdated.
This gap turns our societies into data colonies — suppliers of information without sovereignty or compensation.
VIII. The Urgency of Legislation
Every nation must now recognize that digital sovereignty is a form of national sovereignty.
Just as there are laws to protect territory or currency, there must be laws to protect citizens’ personal information.
Such measures should:
- Prohibit data collection without explicit consent.
- Require full transparency about how data is used, stored, and transferred.
- Sanction companies that trade sensitive information without authorization.
- Create national technology-audit agencies empowered to inspect algorithms and verify security practices.
- Establish international agreements preventing data transfers to jurisdictions with weaker privacy standards.
Without such measures, every television, phone, or tablet will remain an invisible embassy of foreign power inside our homes.
IX. The Illusion of Free Connectivity
We live in an age in which nearly everything digital appears to be “free.”
But free is the most effective disguise for control.
Applications, services, and devices offer convenience in exchange for the soul of our privacy.
At its core, the business is not entertainment — it is human behavior as a commodity.
The viewer no longer pays with money, but with attention, identity, and consumption patterns.
X. Final Reflection: The Power We Don’t See
Micropolitics — that science which reveals the hidden power in everyday life — teaches us that control is not always exercised through force.
Sometimes it operates through the seduction of comfort, through the glow of a screen that offers everything while asking for nothing, yet in return strips us bare before the market.
ACR is not merely a technological innovation; it is a mirror of our time —
an era in whicå millions live under observation by the very devices that entertain them,
an era in which power no longer descends from above but installs itself in the center of our living rooms.
The real question is no longer whether our televisions spy on us, but what we, as societies, will do now that we know they do.
Because the new independence will not be won with weapons,
but with regulated algorithms, digital sovereignty, and civic awareness.
About the Author
Dr. Alfredo Cuéllar is a specialist in Micropolitics, an academic and international consultant, and the first Mexican to teach at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education.He writes regularly for DEBATEX y ARJE México NOTICIAS, where he analyzes power, education, and the ethical tensions of the digital age.
