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Please don’t support Amazon from creating another network-effect product that creates vendor lock-in, and privacy issues. Convenience should not be the end-all
by rubatuga 5y ago
Please don’t support Amazon from creating another network-effect product that creates vendor lock-in, and privacy issues. Convenience should not be the end-all goal, as the ad blatantly states, but instead interoperability and open-protocols.
- prox 5y agoConvenience is way too alluring for the general public I am afraid. But I completely agree.
- yunohn 5y ago> Convenience is way too alluring for the general public Despite being technically-savvy, and ready to hack away at systems for max configuration; I too prefer convenience for a lot of things. That’s the magic of modern life, you can save time on so many “complicated” things. Disclaimer: I don’t use Amazon Echo specifically.
- prox 5y agoFor me at some point it became an insight that I don’t always want “faster” or even “simpler” , most things are simple enough already that I don’t need to trade privacy, security, speed or even a nice discount for that latest and greatest product that’s actually just a new sales channel disguised as a product or app.
- yunohn 5y agoI feel like you’re making a tangential observation, rather than a direct response to the concept of “convenience” being useful in modern life. Anyways, could you provide some concrete examples of products where you were able to obtain such privacy and security guarantees with minimal friction?
- christophilus 5y agoMy blender, cutlery, toilet, dishes, and toilet paper. I did have to disable the smart wipe option on the TP, but it was pretty simple.
- prox 5y agoI usually research any product where it comes from, who owns it, what is the angle of the company. In a way that is convenience to me nowadays. Recently I bought a 3d app, and I first checked what the company did, how did it treat its customers. What does its actions look like? This is kind of my standard procedure these days.
- quickthrower2 5y agoThat why I use an iPhone and windows 10 over androids and Linux. I’ve gone more this way as I have gotten older! Don’t want to mess about.
- petee 5y agoI'd wager that at face value most of the public wouldn't want their neighbors sharing internet, if only for the liability risk (who wants to find out the hard way their neighbors kid was downloading kiddie porn)
- schwinn140 5y agoI dont know how i feel about this comment. It's almost as if there's the perception that the general public are a bunch of robots/sheep incapable of making their own decisions. I can sympathize with that perspective but need to draw the line and believe that people have a choice. Perhaps I'm being too naive. If we look beyond Amazon, Apple has basically built their entire business model under the guise of "convenience." It's so convenient that you never will leave their ecosystem. If/when you attempt to leave, they'll make it so painful that you'll give up in frustration.
- KingOfCoders 5y agoThrew out all Echos some years ago. Tired of Alexa not understanding what I wanted.
- niklasrde 5y ago"Alexa, enable privacy" - "I'm sorry Dave, I am afraid I can't do that"
- rolandr 5y agoI generally agree, but on the other hand, from a consumer perspective IoT devices have and continue to be particularly inconvenient. After 15 or so years of IoT devices, what do we have that resembles interoperability or open protocols? Maybe Zigbee? Instead, it seems that each IoT device is a one-off effort by a very small team, and that networking is the part where you cross your fingers, close your eyes, and hold your nose throughout the processes of connecting and diagnosing connectivity issues.
- daniellarusso 5y agoI thought you were describing Bluetooth for a moment.
- jiofih 5y agoWhy isn’t WPS common in IoT? It should solve the majority of cases for the home.
- oflannabhra 5y agoThread and CHiP
- kristofferR 5y ago> After 15 or so years of IoT devices, what do we have that resembles interoperability or open protocols? Thread is what you are talking about. It's awesome. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thread_(network_protocol) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thread_(network_protocol)
- 5y ago
- hsbauauvhabzb 5y agoLol u kidding bro I need to check my IG notifications!1
- notyourwork 5y ago> Convenience should not be the end-all goal For who? Even as a tech savvy person, that is ALL I want. I used to tinker around with home projects, nowadays I want things that work with no fuss. I don't want to play IT support desk for my family, I want their stuff to work. Convenience is exactly what people want who don't understand technology but want to use it for benefit.
- danuker 5y agoI like some privacy to go with the convenience. I want to watch TV, not the other way round.
- notyourwork 5y agoYou're conflating to separate topics. My desire to have things just work has nothing to do with privacy.
- hoppyhoppy2 5y agoYou did just say that convenience is ALL you want... and many of the most convenient tech products these days (e.g. Kindles, Ring doorbells, Facebook, internet-connected TVs, smartphone apps, etc) are not so great for people who value privacy. If we lived in an world where the most convenient products also protected users' privacy then maybe we wouldn't be having this quibble.
- waserwill 5y agoConvenience isn't a goal, per se. It's a by-product of sorts. When things work and are intuitive, they're very convenient. Economically, it can be useful to design many things this way. A good doorknob is ready-at-hand: it's just about invisible to me until it breaks and, suddenly, it's present and bright in my mind. I've been in the woods and become unsafe: everything around becomes suddenly, viscerally present. That's not a feeling I want often. But individual things I attend to (like watching what I eat or trying to ID a bird by its song) make the world much more colorful, and make me feel more a part of it. Plus, as the comments here suggest, immediate convenience can lead to downstream perils (e.g. in terms of data collection).