TLDR
There may be no better symbol of modern corporate privacy than a switch labeled:
Do Not Sell My Personal Information
with the switch sitting in the off position.
The words sound protective. The visual state looks inactive. The user has to understand that they are not turning data selling off. They are turning the request not to sell on.
Consumer Reports tells LG owners that they must activate this toggle to make LG limit third parties from commercializing their information.
The Federal Trade Commission has specifically identified this exact kind of double-negative privacy control as confusing. In its dark-pattern report, the FTC uses the example of a Do Not Sell My Information setting paired with an off toggle and explains that consumers may not know whether on or off is the state that actually prohibits the sale.
That could have been written about LG’s menu.
But the problem is larger than LG.
The modern privacy system increasingly works like this: lawmakers create a right, lawyers translate it into compliance language, product teams bury that language inside an interface, and consumers are then expected to successfully navigate the obstacle course if they want the right to mean anything.
LG’s backwards button is the perfect little monument to how ridiculous that system has become.
Somewhere Along the Way, Privacy Became a User Configuration Problem
Think about how bizarre this is.
A company wants to collect, use, share, or commercially benefit from information about you.
Why is your job to find the button that makes it stop?
That assumption is now so normal that almost nobody questions it.
Open Settings.
Find Privacy.
Find another Privacy menu.
Open User Agreements.
Work out which agreements control which data.
Turn some things off.
Turn another thing on.
Discover that advertising has its own menu.
Discover that ACR has another name.
Maybe look up an online guide because the manufacturer’s interface is unclear.
Congratulations.
You have exercised your legal privacy rights.
What a triumph of consumer empowerment.
LG’s Button Is Almost a Parody
Consumer Reports’ LG instructions are straightforward. On current LG webOS televisions, users can go to Privacy & Terms and locate a setting called Do Not Sell My Personal Information. To activate the privacy restriction, the user turns the toggle on.
Grammatically, this makes sense.
The toggle controls the statement.
Do Not Sell My Personal Information = ON.
A privacy lawyer can understand that instantly.
But interfaces are not grammar exercises.
Users encounter the setting alongside other controls where unwanted collection or personalization is reduced by leaving something disabled or refusing the agreement. Then one of the most important privacy rights on the device asks them to reverse the interaction and turn something on.
The menu is asking a human being to solve a double negative encoded into a switch.
That is awful UX.
And because misunderstanding it benefits the company rather than the consumer, it is exactly the sort of awful UX that deserves suspicion.
The FTC Literally Warned About This Exact Design
This is what makes LG’s control so remarkable.
The FTC did not merely issue some broad warning that privacy menus can be confusing.
Its 2022 Bringing Dark Patterns to Light report specifically discusses ambiguous toggle settings. The report gives the example of a Do Not Sell My Information option followed by an off toggle and explains that this double negative can leave consumers unsure which position prevents the sale of their information.
That is about as direct as a regulatory UX warning gets.
The FTC’s broader recommendation is equally sensible: privacy choices should be easy to access and understand, people should not have to search through multiple screens, and toggles should not be ambiguous or confusing.
Somehow, these standards sound revolutionary once you compare them with actual corporate privacy controls.
Read the FTC’s dark-pattern report
Privacy Rights That Require Expertise Are Weak Rights
Imagine a law gives you a right to refuse entry to your home.
Great.
Then imagine the lock on your front door is hidden behind four panels, labeled ambiguously, and requires a 27-step procedure to engage.
Technically, you still possess the right.
Practically, the implementation has weakened it.
Digital privacy works the same way.
A right to opt out matters only if ordinary people can exercise it.
A right to say no is much weaker when users have to know industry vocabulary such as ACR, cross-device advertising, audience segmentation, sale or sharing, interest-based advertising, and advertiser IDs before they can even understand what the settings do.
This is why saying “the option existed” is such a pathetic defense.
Availability is the beginning of good privacy design.
Not the end.
Companies Have Learned to Turn Compliance Into Friction
Privacy regulation created a fascinating corporate response.
Companies could have interpreted new privacy rights as a mandate to collect less information by default.
Instead, many companies built privacy centers.
That phrase sounds wonderful.
Then you open one.
Cookie preference center.
Advertising preferences.
Data-sharing choices.
Partner lists.
Legitimate interests.
Necessary processing.
Analytics.
Personalization.
Sale or sharing.
Consent withdrawal.
Suddenly the citizen exercising a basic right has become an unpaid compliance administrator.
The company already knows exactly what information it collects and why.
The consumer has to reconstruct the system from menus.
That power imbalance is not accidental.
The company designed the architecture.
The consumer is trying to decipher it.
LG Made the Problem Physical
What makes LG such a useful case study is that this is not a website you visit once.
It is a television.
You bought it.
It sits inside your home.
You may own it for a decade.
The privacy settings determine how a physical appliance in one of the most private places in your life interacts with an enormous digital advertising ecosystem.
LG’s current privacy statement says optional ACR can generate viewing information for audience segmentation and viewing analysis, and with additional consent can support interest-based and cross-device advertising. LG also acknowledges that, depending on jurisdiction and agreements, some sharing of ACR-related information may legally count as a sale or sharing of personal information.
That makes the clarity of the Do Not Sell control more important, not less.
We are not talking about choosing whether a shopping website remembers the contents of a cart.
We are talking about a television sitting in your living room.
A Privacy-Respecting Company Would Make the Control Boring
Good privacy design is boring.
That’s the highest compliment I can give it.
The setting should read:
Allow commercial sale or sharing of my personal information
Default:
OFF
Nobody has to think.
Nobody needs Consumer Reports.
Nobody needs a Reddit thread.
Nobody needs to parse a double negative.
Nobody needs to wonder if turning the privacy option off somehow turns the commercial activity back on.
The answer is visually obvious.
If corporations truly valued consumer autonomy, privacy menus would be full of boring controls like that.
Instead, we get legal phrases converted into interface widgets.
Then everybody acts shocked when users do not understand them.
“Do Not Sell” Was a Legal Phrase Before It Was a Good Button Label
This is part of the deeper problem.
Privacy controls are often designed around the language of statutes rather than the language of humans.
Do Not Sell My Personal Information sounds like a legal right because that is what it is.
As a hyperlink on a website, it can be relatively clear: click this link to exercise the right.
As a binary switch, the language becomes much stranger.
Does off mean selling is off?
Or does off mean the prohibition is off?
The law provided the phrase.
Product design still had an obligation to make the interaction understandable.
That is where companies fail.
Compliance is not the same thing as usability.
LG’s Broader Privacy Maze Shows Why This Matters
LG’s Do Not Sell toggle did not exist in isolation.
Texas’s 2025 complaint accused LG of a broader consent architecture in which consumers could encounter six agreements during initial setup and use a Select All control to accept everything. The state alleged that completely unwinding ACR and related advertising permissions later involved roughly 40-plus clicks across several areas of the interface.
Texas called the asymmetry a dark pattern and specifically invoked Privacy Zuckering and the Roach Motel concept: easy to enter, difficult to escape.
That context changes how I view the backwards toggle.
If the rest of the privacy system were beautifully simple and consumer-first, I might shrug and call it one stupid label.
But when the surrounding architecture is also accused of making broad consent easier than withdrawal, the backwards button starts looking less like an isolated mistake and more like a symbol of the philosophy.
Privacy Has Become Something Companies Make You Earn
This is the part I find offensive.
The company begins with the technical capability to collect information.
Then privacy is presented as the thing the customer has to actively achieve.
Find the menu.
Understand the category.
Decline the agreement.
Toggle the switch.
Submit the request.
Wait for confirmation.
Repeat on another device.
Modern privacy often treats corporate data access as the natural state and consumer restraint as an exception that needs to be requested.
That is backwards.
Privacy should be the default state.
If LG wants additional information because it enables a particular optional feature, LG should ask.
If LG wants information for behavioral advertising, LG should ask separately.
If LG wants to sell or share information in a legally meaningful way, the consumer should not have to discover the magic combination of settings that prevents it.
The burden belongs on the party asking for more access.
The FTC’s Advice Is Almost Embarrassingly Obvious
The FTC says companies should collect the information necessary to provide the service the consumer requested and nothing more. It says consumers should not have to navigate multiple screens to find privacy settings, and that choices should be accessible, understandable, and presented in the context where the data decision is being made.
Read that again and marvel at the fact that a federal regulator needs to explain this to major technology companies.
Do not collect unnecessary information.
Do not hide privacy settings.
Do not make toggles confusing.
Tell people what they are agreeing to.
Apparently this is advanced corporate ethics now.
The Best Dark Patterns Are Defensible One Screen at a Time
This is why dark patterns are so slippery.
Look at any individual step and somebody can defend it.
Why is Do Not Sell an ON toggle?
Because the user is enabling the opt-out request.
Why are the agreements separate?
Because granular consent is good.
Why is there a warning when withdrawing consent?
Because some functionality might stop working.
Why are the settings in multiple places?
Because they control different systems.
Every screen has an explanation.
Then step back and look at the complete experience.
One-click enrollment.
Six agreements.
Ambiguous terminology.
Settings spread across menus.
A double-negative Do Not Sell toggle.
Warnings when withdrawing.
Dozens of interactions to maximize privacy.
At some point, the forest matters more than the individual trees.
LG’s Current Changes Show That Simpler Privacy Was Always Possible
LG now says ACR, voice recognition, and interest-based advertising are optional and off by default. Users can withdraw consent, and declining the optional agreements does not prevent core functions such as streaming apps, live TV, HDMI-connected devices, or software updates.
Texas’s May 2026 settlement also required a clearer disclosure and a clear and simple way to opt out of viewing-data collection agreements.
That is an improvement.
It is also proof of something important.
Simpler privacy controls were possible.
The technology was not stopping LG from doing this.
It was a matter of design and policy.
Read LG’s current Smart TV privacy explanation
A Right Hidden Behind Bad UX Is a Second-Class Right
This is the larger philosophical point.
We increasingly regulate privacy by giving consumers rights to request things.
Right to opt out.
Right to delete.
Right to know.
Right to access.
Right to limit.
Those rights matter.
But corporations still control the interfaces through which most people exercise them.
That means interface design quietly becomes part of the law’s effectiveness.
A beautiful statute can create a terrible practical right if the consumer experience is hostile enough.
If opting out takes forty clicks while opting in takes one, the two choices are not meaningfully equal.
If an OFF toggle next to Do Not Sell leaves people wondering which way protects them, the right is weaker than the wording suggests.
If a customer needs Consumer Reports to explain how to use the right, the implementation is failing.
The Button Is Small. The Problem Is Huge.
The LG Do Not Sell button is easy to dismiss because it looks trivial.
It’s one toggle.
Who cares?
I care because that toggle represents the entire modern corporate approach to privacy in miniature.
The company has the data system.
The company understands the system.
The company profits from the system.
The company employs the lawyers.
The company designs the interface.
The company controls the defaults.
And then the consumer gets a little switch and is told:
You are in control.
What generous masters of our own information they have allowed us to become.
Privacy Should Not Require Beating the Company at Its Own Interface
The correct relationship is simpler.
A corporation should collect what is necessary to provide the product the customer requested.
Anything materially beyond that should require clear, specific, informed permission.
Refusing should be effortless.
Changing your mind should be effortless.
And a company should never make more money because its user interface was confusing enough that somebody accidentally left a privacy protection disabled.
That should be the standard.
LG’s backwards Do Not Sell control is memorable because it violates that principle in such a perfectly stupid way.
The user wants less commercialization of personal information.
The television says:
Turn this thing ON.
The user pauses.
The company has already failed.
Privacy rights should not require a second thought about which direction a switch goes.
They should be boring, obvious, and designed around the person exercising the right rather than the corporation reluctantly implementing it.
Until companies start designing privacy that way, the Do Not Sell button will remain a perfect little symbol of everything wrong with the system.
References
Federal Trade Commission, Bringing Dark Patterns to Light, September 2022. The FTC identifies privacy dark patterns including buried choices, ambiguous toggles, difficult opt-outs, and interfaces that steer consumers toward increased data sharing. The report specifically discusses the confusing double negative created by a Do Not Sell setting paired with an off toggle.
Read Bringing Dark Patterns to Light
Consumer Reports, How to Turn Off Smart TV Snooping Features. Explains that LG owners must activate the Do Not Sell My Personal Information control to limit third-party commercialization of their information and documents LG’s other optional privacy agreements.
Read Consumer Reports’ LG privacy guide
State of Texas v. LG Electronics U.S.A., Inc., Original Verified Petition, December 2025. Texas’s complaint alleges dark patterns, a one-click enrollment option, 40-plus-click full opt-out process, buried controls, and privacy choices scattered across the interface.
Read Texas’s complaint against LG
Texas Office of the Attorney General, May 11, 2026. LG’s settlement requires informed consent for ACR viewing-data collection and a clear and simple opt-out.
Read the Texas-LG privacy settlement announcement
LG Electronics, Understanding Privacy on LG Smart TVs, September 12, 2026. LG’s current description of optional services, opt-in consent, ACR, advertising, and withdrawal controls.
Read LG’s current privacy statement
The Markup, Your Smart TV Knows What You’re Watching, December 2023. Earlier reporting documenting the complexity of disabling LG Live Plus and related advertising/privacy functions.
Read The Markup’s Smart TV privacy guide
