That's fair, and there are absolutely discussions to be had around the "second hand smoke" kind of impacts these technologies can have. (I really like that meta

That's fair, and there are absolutely discussions to be had around the "second hand smoke" kind of impacts these technologies can have. (I really like that metaphor) But I think it's wrong to throw the baby out with the bathwater here. I agree that there absolutely needs to be more regulation around this area. I'd personally like a law that mandates a tone or sound (and lights) when one of these devices is recording. I'd love some laws on the books in the US that gives those who don't want in this ecosystem a quick and easy way of ensuring they won't end up in them. I also think that there are a LOT of things that all of the big players in this space can do better (like the by-default recording and storing of all the voice data indefinitely). But I also think that there has to be compromises. Saying it's ludicrous that these devices use the internet is the pendulum swinging way too far in the other direction, the internet-connectedness of these is basically the biggest selling point. But I'd be over the moon if they did all of the simple commands "locally", and I'd love if users were given more control over their information (something like a weekly/monthly/quarterly email asking if Google can use the following list of recordings to train their models would be awesome IMO). There is so much hyperbole and just straight up wrong information gets thrown about so often with this stuff, and there's a lot of extremism when it comes to privacy, especially on this website (I know this is a loaded word, and I don't mean to include any additional connotations with it, I just don't know how else to describe this). I also don't want to enable turnkey surveillance, but at the same time I don't want to live as a luddite to prevent it. There has to be some middle ground, and if that means it makes dragnet surveillance easier while improving the lives of many people, then I might be okay with it.