From a report at the Daily Upside:

The entertainment tech company filed a patent application for a “reinforcement learning model for optimizing long term revenue.” Roku’s system essentially aims to get as much revenue as it can without ruining the user experience.

Roku: Let’s see how far we can take this. How does this system work?

This system monitors the “user state” — the content users are currently watching, as well as profile information such as demographics, tenure, and activeness on the platform — to “personalize user actions based on different tolerance of the advertisement.” Along with tracking this information, Roku’s tech also determines the “revenue value” associated with the user.

Roku’s patent is dishonest on one point. Its so called “users” are its products. Its actual users are its advertising partners. While I know that my approach will not work for everyone, I recommend disconnecting your “smart” TV from the internet and powering it with a privacy-friendly Linux PC. I personally have had good luck with an N100 Beelink mini PC from Amazon, but even an old laptop or something of the like will work. If you have a 4K-or-up display, I recommend going with KDE Plasma as the desktop environment for this use-case (GNOME is also a fair choice but I had more luck getting an aesthetic KDE set-up).