My TCL TV had two spies inside it but I disabled them both ‣ Diverse Daily

I always find it interesting when politicians take China to task for alleged surveillance of American citizens through consumer technology and social media apps. Interesting, because how many times have American companies been caught “leaking” users’ private data, or spying on you through your mobile browser under the guise of having “opt-out” tracking? Then there’s Facebook, which has had numerous run-ins over the years for allegedly violating your privacy.

In this climate, I can see why people are skeptical of companies and their ability not only to protect your data, but also to use what they collect responsibly. At this point, many of our readers have heard about ACR, or “ Automatic Content Recognition,” and often want to know how to disable it. Today, we’re talking about TCL’s newest 2026 TVs and how to disable ACR on them. Let’s talk about privacy and Smart TVs.

Google TV’s “spy network”

Multiple privacy concerns

TCL’s TVs aren’t inherently more of a privacy concern than any other TV. Especially with recent news covering just how deep the rabbit hole goes with LG TVs! What’s happening here with TCL’s Google TV, and others who use the operating system, is that you have data sharing opt-ins that TCL has in their User Agreement, then you turn around and have the same thing from Google for using their products and services on TCL’s hardware.

So, as we look at disabling automatic content recognition, we’re going to have to deal with TCL’s menu settings, then go into the Google software side of things.

TCL settings

It is their TV, afterall

I’m going to tackle these settings as they come up in order on the menus, so first up is “automated adjustments.” The TV uses algorithms to automatically adjust picture and sound by analyzing what’s currently playing on screen. We turn this feature off by:

Tap the cog on your remote, then choose “All Settings.”
Scroll to Display and Sound and select it.
Select Picture next.
Scroll to the bottom of the list of options and deselect the automated content recognition option.

Next, we go to the heart of disabling ACR! While still in the settings menu, scroll to Privacy. This is where we’ll find the Terms & Privacy, or User Agreement. Deselect the options here first. Confirming your choices is confusing on the TCL 75QM7L because there’s no “Save” radio button, just one that says “Agree.” So, you’ll deselect the options in this menu, then choose “Agree” to confirm that you agree to disagree with TCL’s user agreement. Yeah, like I said, it’s confusing.

On this TV, there are only two options to deselect in this menu, with a third being “Select all,” which you don’t want to select, obviously.

Disable another layer of tracking

Now we go into Google’s privacy settings

None of this is 100% clear, to be honest, so if we’re going to go there and disable features that give us a bit of the ick when it comes to privacy, it’s a good idea to be thorough. We’re going to turn off Google’s diagnostics and ad tracking options. Now, you may be asking about Gemini for TV. Afterall, that’s likely a more known privacy concern with all of the media attention that AI is getting these days. We’ll tackle that in a separate article, as there are multiple considerations when it comes to disabling Gemini for TV.

If you’re still in the Privacy menu, go to Usage & Diagnostics and set it to Off.
Now, go to Ads and select whichever of these options shows up on your TCL TV: Reset advertising ID, or Limit ad tracking.

To be thorough, while in the main Privacy menu, scroll down to the Special app access menu, then Usage access, and turn everything off there as well. It says the apps track what you’re watching and doing in other apps, so we’re going to turning that off. Now, back in the main Privacy menu, scroll down to the App permissions menu where you can turn off every app’s ability to have access to the microphone, but I do want that feature for when I use the remote’s microphone button to interact with the 75QM7L via voice. There is a privacy compromise here, though. Simply look to the bottom of the television set, under the TCL branding, and use the physical toggle to turn the microphone off manually, so the TV isn’t “listening” to everything you do or say in your living room.

We can go much deeper down the rabbit hole and jump into dealing with Gemini for TV, which is a new to the Google TV operating system, but there are multiple steps to thoroughly achieve this on the 75QM7L, so we’re going to tackle all of that in a separate article. So, go ahead and perform the steps we’ve outlined here as these are easier, then we’ll get into Gemini which is going to take a little more work. It isn’t difficult, but it will take a bit more time than disabling ACR.