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Amazon’s Roomba deal is about mapping your home

160 points by Vaslo 4y ago

chiefalchemist 4y ago
This type of privacy intrusion was mentioned a number of times in "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism" by Shoshana Zuboff. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Age_of_Surveillance_Capitalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Age_of_Surveillance_Capita... It's worth noting: Her "thing" isn't that data is being collected per se, it's that such data is often used against us. So while it's easy to rationalize it with "I've nothing to hide", the Amazons of the world are not countering with "We've only your best interests in mind, certainly not our own." That is, the relationship is asymmetrical, to put it kindly.
- karamanolev 4y ago
  I was briefly in the "I've nothing to hide" camp. To put it more concretely, I didn't actually believe it, but I couldn't pinpoint what's wrong with it. What did it for me is manipulation - everyone can be manipulated with enough knowledge and effort, regardless of how smart they think they are. If you think that you're environment and what you see doesn't affect you, you're just plain lying to yourself. Collecting all this data massively increases the knowledge and reduces the effort necessary for those companies to manipulate you. Manipulate you to buy stuff. Manipulate you to engage, a.k.a. give your time away to make them money and so on.
  - chiefalchemist 4y ago
    That's the crux of surveillance capitalism. You're the product and eventually its victim. Having read the book mentioned, I'd take it a step further and frame the current Gov v Big Tech struggles as Gov realizing that it's losing its grip on control (to Big Tech). So while it might be framed in other ways, ultimately Gov doesn't want to lose its status quo powers.
    - karamanolev 4y ago
      "You're the product" doesn't really give the vibe I want it to. It sounds like someone is making money off of you, which is true, but it doesn't convey the "at your own expense" part. Even by simple things as better targeting, but eventually as main goals or side-effects of better ML/AI, you're manipulated to spend more, to feel worse about yourself so you spend more and so on. There was recently another article about "insight porn". If someone wants your attention and time, that's another way to take it. The better you know someone, the better you can convince them to give you money and time. So whether you're the product or not, you're paying for it.
      - galdosdi 4y ago
        "You're the livestock"
      - chiefalchemist 4y ago
        How about "You're the byproduct."?
      - yunwal 4y ago
        Not only that, but this stuff doesn't need to be 100% effective for it to have massive consequences. If amazon can use data about people to swing 5% of votes, the vast majority of politicians would give them pretty much anything in their power.
        karamanolev 4y ago
        I think using arguments like "Amazon swinging votes" is bad, since it's easily countered with "Amazon is not interested in political elections". Amazon doing whatever they can to take more and more money from you, way beyond your means? Americans (figuratively, some) are already up to their eyeballs in debt. Amazon being able to make it much worse is already a huge drain on society. "A boring dystopia".
        yunwal 4y ago
tablespoon 4y ago
I have a couple of Roombas, but I'm glad I still have older non-mapping, non-internet connected ones. I got them because I didn't want to have to rely on some app that could get discontinued or have to deal with Wifi. I never through Roomba would get acquired like this. Looks like I'll have to switch to a different brand when they break (or try to keep them going, years ago I saw something about people rebuilding the Roomba gearbox with metal gears instead of plastic).
diogenescynic 4y ago
Maybe they'll make a Roomba robot or a Ring door lock that can let Amazon delivery drivers into your home/garage/backyard to drop off a delivery.
- tablespoon 4y ago
  > Maybe they'll make a Roomba robot or a Ring door lock that can let Amazon delivery drivers into your home/garage/backyard to drop off a delivery. Maybe? They've already done that: https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/25/16538834/amazon-key-in-home-delivery-unlock-door-prime-cloud-cam-smart-lock https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/25/16538834/amazon-key-in-h...
Syonyk 4y ago
Yeah. :/ Well, I suppose I'll have to consider if one of the two "smart" devices needs to go, then. It's a bit disturbing just how much you can tell about a house from the floorplan alone, much less if you've set out to use the camera for data collection. I wasn't a huge fan of iRobot's data collection, but now that it'll be going to Amazon, ugh. This is just the end point for any modern gadget. To work against you, to collect data to be used to break your will and make you spend more money to the profit of a handful of big tech companies. Such utopia. Much wow!
- davemp 4y ago
  > I wasn't a huge fan of iRobot's data collection, but now that it'll be going to Amazon, ugh. Yup once data is out there, you should assume it will get into the hands of bad actors. 'Having nothing to hide' from the current data collector doesn't mean that there aren't things you'd want to hide from other parties.
- eclipxe 4y ago
  What is the practical implication of having floor plan data?
  - hedora 4y ago
    It has an upward facing camera, runs in the morning, and I definitely don’t wear undies with my bathrobe. No idea what Amazon will do with the video feeds when they get their hands on this particular surveillance platform. Apparently, all sorts of surveillance that I thought was illegal has been normalized by covid: https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/04/cdt_school_surveillance/ https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/04/cdt_school_surveillan... In addiction to the stats in the register article, apparently principals of schools that use one of the surveillance platforms are routinely sent copies of sexts that minors sent from personal devices. (Can’t find the quote at the moment…). Spyware on school chromebooks are snooping SMS on undisclosed models of phones if you use the chromebook USB port to charge the phone (even after school hours).
- zamalek 4y ago
  Roborock have a better privacy story, but how long it stays that way would be pure speculation. It might possibly become a selling point, much like Apple did [in the past].
gedy 4y ago
I like Home Assistant as an alternative to the cloud-dependant IoT crap software, is there a local-only equivalent yet for robot vacuums yet?
- bo0tzz 4y ago
  https://valetudo.cloud https://valetudo.cloud is the one I know of, although unfortunately it seems that it doesn't work with Roombas.
  - gedy 4y ago
    Thanks, I wonder what they mean by: > "One such demographic that seems to often run into trouble when using Valetudo is apple users. (I know, right?) Specifically, those fully invested into the Apple Ecosystem and way of life." I have macs and iPhone - so is this some technical issue with the hardware or a snark on (some) people's attitude?
henryfjordan 4y ago
The regular old Roomba has a bumper on the front as the only sensor. There's no camera. Some models have LIDAR but that's not able to tell the difference between types of obstacles (like knowing a floor is covered in toys as the article suggests). This is dishonest "journalism". Amazon might be evil and is out to get as much data on you as possible, but let's be real about what is possible.
- falcolas 4y ago
  Modern version do indeed map out your house. No cameras needed. How do I know this? The app associated with our roomba shows the map it's created of our house. And its incredibly accurate, especially since it encourages us to tag spaces in order to set up intelligent vacuuming schedules (i.e. less in the laundry room, more in the kitchen/dining rooms). It's even smart enough to identify temporary obstacles (like toys) and permanent obstacles.
  - henryfjordan 4y ago
    I don't deny that even the basic model can figure out the layout of your house. It can't determine materials. The lidar can't really do that either. Even if it could, whether you buy Charmin or generic toilet paper on Amazon is a better signal of your wealth anyway. Honestly just buying a Roomba is a pretty good signal that you have some money to burn but not so much that you can hire a maid. The article is just FUD
    - SoftTalker 4y ago
      > Honestly just buying a Roomba is a pretty good signal that you have some money to burn but not so much that you can hire a maid. Or you're a sucker for gadgets that are sold at high margins and ultimately don't really improve anything in your life.
      - falcolas 4y ago
        Honestly, this is spoken like someone who has never used a robotic vacuum. Unless you vacuum your house daily, it helps your house look a whole lot better. Visible dirt on the floor has a bigger impact on the look (and frankly hygiene) your house than you might imagine. And even if you do vacuum your house daily, the robotic vacuum will save you hours of time every week. That said, if you don't care about visible dirt on your floors, perhaps you're right, it won't improve your life.
whydid 4y ago
I assumed it was to assist with their warehouse robotics: https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/21/23177756/amazon-warehouse-robots-proteus-autonomous-cart-delivery https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/21/23177756/amazon-warehouse...
- Oarch 4y ago
  The name Proteus must be a reference to Player Piano by Vonnegut. The main character, Paul Proteus, oversees a large industrial facility in a world where largely all work has been automated away.
moomoo11 4y ago
More data for the police state
kodah 4y ago
Are there any servers and firmware that I can use to replace the software on my Roomba? I spent nearly $1k on my Roomba. As a single person with a dog, it helps me a lot. My allergies aren't nearly as bad, I don't have to vacuum by hand nearly as much. I liked that with the map the bot was a lot smarter and didn't bump into or damage my things. I feel like by selling to a company like Amazon that the rug is being pulled out from beneath me. I am truly disappointed in this move and all the people involved.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- prox 4y ago
  We should have laws that allows you to work with a latest version from company X and decide what happens with your data when the company gets sold.
- llaolleh 4y ago
  Imagine if we had a Right to Replace Software.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- SoftTalker 4y ago
  Go into your router and revoke its IP address.
  - newfonewhodis 4y ago
    What does "revoke its IP address" even mean? Do you mean have it return 0.0.0.0 for all *.roomba.com domains? How would that solve anything? I suspect it'll actually make the Roomba not work at all.
    - kredd 4y ago
      Maybe revoking DHCP lease and setting it manual only? But yeah, if the roomba requires internet, it’ll be dead.
jlkuester7 4y ago
At what point can we just conclude we are living in a dystopia? Seems pertinent to note that one of the hallmarks of many fictional dystopias is that most folks don't even recognize there is a problem!
- refulgentis 4y ago
  The article is speculative in nature, despite an obviously unreachable conclusion being the title. As a result I think it's good to be cautious in relying on it for claims, particularly wide ones
- sp332 4y ago
  Ok, so we're living in a dystopia. What does that conclusion do for us?
- allemagne 4y ago
  There are useful ways of calling things out for being "dystopian" but it can also invoke a clarity that is necessary for narrative fiction, but not necessarily a useful lens for specific real life events. The line between a good shorthand and a thought-terminating cliche can be kind of blurry.
- twblalock 4y ago
  I've never heard of a dystopia you could opt out of by simply not buying a consumer product. 1984 and Brave New World would have been very short books if that was the definition of a dystopia.
  - convolvatron 4y ago
    the 'don't collect and correlate data about me' tax is getting pretty high. but for now you can still pay it. no plane travel. can't use a cell phone. no online purchases. obviously no rewards systems. no credit cards.
    - dogman144 4y ago
      This exactly. Trying to live outside the collection is very difficult. A few years ago non-smart phones became untenable for use in basic civil society. More recently, an older smart phone or without face/touch enabled became hard to use. Recently, in cities like NY, due to QR-ification, going out without a smart phone meant issues getting menus. Now, the big ones are starting: end of cash, and civil life tracking. The NYC oyster-card equivalent for subways is per-user and sells data, per the ToS. The tap-to-pay subway turnstiles log per-station use (and therefore your travel) for your credit card provider. Many restaurants can’t do cash easily bc the proliferation of Square and what overworked civil servant is going to force mom and pop coffee shops to take cash? The laws on this got hazy a while back anyway. TSA/clearcheck or w/e in airports that use biometrics. Opt out options, besides being inconvenient, label you as what to the TSA? Drivers license photos are auto-sold to CBP facial rec tools and similar. Where is the opt out for that? This isn’t conspiratorial. it’s just the slow march of clever tech that works well so people who don’t understand the privacy tradeoffs or don’t care buy it, the purchase defines network effects which defines implied user preferences which defines new product choices which defines larger networks… which becomes more and more difficult to opt out of. If you claim this isn’t happening you don’t understand data eng and tech as a whole. The only thing saving us rn is the data eng part is really hard still.
riffic 4y ago
and surely it's not about the robotics in use all across Amazon's warehouses. why the heck does Amazon want to be involved in "mapping your home"?
- falcolas 4y ago
  Money. What does your house look like. What items are in your house (the j- models of Roombas include cameras for object identification). These give Amazon additional leverage in building a customized marketing campaign to your eyeballs.
  - eclipxe 4y ago
    This seems dubious. Having a in-market consumer brand with millions of customers is much more valuable than being able to get X% better at targeted recommendations.
    - falcolas 4y ago
      It's not an either-or. It's a "why not both". More highly targeted data about a consumer will never hurt an advertiser.
treis 4y ago
I'm fairly dubious that there's any useful data here. Square footage, bathroom, bedrooms, and other such stuff is public record. Getting the exact layout of my rooms and furniture doesn't seem to bring any obvious benefit. I guess maybe it can try and identify appliances and such but again not really seeing that as a hugely valuable trove of data.
- msoad 4y ago
  This article is purely speculation. There nothing back up this claim. I have a Roomba and the map is mediocre at best. Will they use iRobot's platform to sell their future data collection initiatives? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe they didn't need this acquisition to sell newer products that does more mapping and data collection. People write articles based on some random thought dump
  - Clubber 4y ago
    >This article is purely speculation. Yes, I was thinking that. It's paywalled for me so I couldn't check if this was based on a leak or anything. I hope this is in the opinion section, because without any sources or leaks, it's just some made up garbage.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- squarefoot 4y ago
  > I'm fairly dubious that there's any useful data here. Your home layout and size speaks about how much is your income, which usually is a superset of what you could spend in online purchases. Also, should they stick a camera or a very advanced lidar in front of the Roomba, they could build a database of what items their customers have -and don't have- (read: could be pushed to purchase through targeted advertising) in their homes. I expect some more room for Roomba competitors here; certainly I wouldn't want a Amazon branded one even for free.
  - gruez 4y ago
notatoad 4y ago
all the coverage of this seems afraid of it. what's the downside to my home automation knowing that my kitchen is next to my living room?
- falcolas 4y ago
  > what's the downside to my home automation knowing Nothing. But, it's not just your home automation. It's the biggest retailers (and one of the bigger ad brokers) in the world knowing the layout of your house, including images of objects in your house if you have a newer version. So, really, it depends on how comfortable you are with Amazon having all that data on you for the secondary purpose of bringing their marketing power to bear against you.
  - twblalock 4y ago
    Until Amazon puts a gun up against someone's head and forces them to buy something, this is a non-issue.
  - notatoad 4y ago
    >including images of objects in your house is there any evidence that roombas actually collect this sort of data?
    - falcolas 4y ago
      Even if they don't today - if all image recognition is done on the machine (which is frankly unlikely) - nothing stops a software update from changing this. That's one of the boons of technology that's also a bust. There's no technological barriers to changing how a product behaves.
TIPSIO 4y ago
I have the latest and greatest Roborock instead for my house ($$$). What’s cool, privacy stuff aside, I can remote control navigate my house with its camera. So I think it makes sense for Roomba to be part of Amazon’s Ring home security most. Way more practical than that giant dumb robot thing they made called Astro. Eventually using sensors to check for floods, motion, oddities, room temperature, etc… all while vacuuming on routine.
alphabetting 4y ago
My guess is Amazon could easily figure out the information a roomba could provide without it (sq ft, etc) which makes me think the title of this article is false.
AriedK 4y ago
https://www.vacuumsguide.com/privacy-robot-vacuum-cleaners/ https://www.vacuumsguide.com/privacy-robot-vacuum-cleaners/ This was already on the radar 5 years ago. Pretty useful data for companies like Ikea to know how people fill their spaces. I am curious if other data is sucked up (now or in the near future). Bluetooth devices in the same room? Wifi SSIDs for precise location? All potentially useful data for a company like Amazon.
keepquestioning 4y ago
What's the best Roomba alternative?
- Finnucane 4y ago
  broom, dustpan, vacuum.
- astura 4y ago
  I have a eufy robotic vacuum made by Anker. It's fine, it was pretty cheap and it just bumps it's way around the house.
jhugo 4y ago
They should have done a deal with Xiaomi or one of the other Chinese brands instead. They're honestly light-years ahead with indoor mapping & navigation. I bought a top-of-the-line Roomba when I moved to London a few years ago and it's honestly primitive by comparison to even a mid-range Xiaomi robot vac.
- protomyth 4y ago
  I'm pretty sure that doing a deal with a Chinese brand would get them additional scrutiny from the US government.
- gre 4y ago
  Thankfully, my Xiaomi won't share my data with the US government.
- upupandup 4y ago
  > They should have done a deal with Xiaomi or one of the other Chinese brands instead. Now this is quite a bad take. 100% those Chinese brands are working side step with the military. Remember, they have no qualms about violating human rights. Marxism's conundrum is that there is no difference between all humans being equal vs not important.
  - jhugo 4y ago
    Honestly, Amazon having the floorplan to my house concerns me far more than the PLA having it. If a state actor wanted the floorplan to my house, they don't need a backdoor to my robot vac to find it out.
protomyth 4y ago
I'm absolutely sure that at some point they will add some chemical sensors of some sort to help with the cleaning process and report that to Amazon. Is there a blog / news site that covers sensors in consumer items and future sensor development?
twblalock 4y ago
Amazon wants to provide total home automation solutions: Ring/Blink for security and doorbells and lighting, Alexa for automation, etc. At one point they even recommended Alexa as the glass break sensor for the Ring Alarm, although they eventually made a standalone device. "Alexa, vacuum the living room" is a nice feature and they can provide that by integrating with Roomba. Home mapping is not as valuable as that kind of integration, and I seriously doubt that home mapping is why Amazon is doing this.
- dgfitz 4y ago
  My robot vacuum can already do that, a neato. https://www.amazon.com/Neato-Robotics/dp/B01MXI58Y7 https://www.amazon.com/Neato-Robotics/dp/B01MXI58Y7
astura 4y ago
Oh, come on, if anyone wanted to get a map of my home they could just get that information on my town's website. It's public information.
jmclnx 4y ago
If you have a roomba, I would think you could block its internet access on your router via its mac address. But for people with Comcast, I wonder if blocked if it could access what I call the "secret wide-open Concast Router" every Comcast Customer has. Sure there are ways around that.
moralestapia 4y ago
Bullshit. Sure there may some data of value but that's not the reason for this. Amazon bought a brand, that's it. Would you buy an Amazon branded robot with Alexa that roams around your house 24/7? No. Would you buy a Roomba that ... wait, you have one already. This is obviously a piece of Amazon's plan to dominate the smart home market.
- hedora 4y ago
  I’ve been a roomba customer for almost twenty years. I no longer am. My current roombas support alexa integration. I didn’t enable it and do not want it. Assuming I can’t figure out how to make the current ones go without wifi, I’ll sell them and go with some hackable Chinese brand.
weezin 4y ago
I had always thought Amazon already owned iRobot. It matches Amazon's existing smart home product line and has a lot of advertisements on Amazon. Speaking so confidently about this being some gather as much data from your home possible play feels like a way of getting clicks via perpetuating the "big tech bad" narrative.
GamerUncle 4y ago
unpaywalled: https://web.archive.org/web/20220807221335/https://www.bloomberg.com/tosv2.html?vid=&uuid=2c45c721-169e-11ed-9725-66736a447647&url=L25ld3MvYXJ0aWNsZXMvMjAyMi0wOC0wNS9hbWF6b24tcy1pcm9ib3QtZGVhbC1pcy1hYm91dC1yb29tYmEtcy1kYXRhLWNvbGxlY3Rpb24= https://web.archive.org/web/20220807221335/https://www.bloom...
mlsu 4y ago
If we are permitted baseless speculation: NO, almost certainly not. Reason #1: Amazon needs robotics people badly. Roomba has a lot of robotics people and expertise. It's a natural fit, and an easy way to acquire a bunch of fully functional robotics teams. Reason #2: Vacuum robots are useful things, especially for people with pets, which is probably most Amazon customers. Chinese companies are eating Roomba's lunch when it comes to cleaning robots (and Amazon knows it!), so Amazon probably thinks they can compete, win, and yield profit on this investment. They'll do it by leveraging their existing warehouse expertise to help the robot clean your house better. Non-Reason #1: They want to sell your home information to the police state. Come on people, your local government already knows the layout of your home, you have to tell them that when you build it! Non-Reason #2: They want to look at products in your home to sell you stuff. Sorry, the embedded systems that are going to be on these things are going to be able to recognize "fridge," "bed," "power strip." Not "Miele SKU #7560, Brand New Condition" or "IKEA Krugsforst Chair, Tattered Underfabric". They are running mobilenet on 512x512 thumbnails, not efficientdet-v7 on 12 megapixel raw input. There is no GTX3080 on board this thing, and they're not gonna stream a high resolution video to AWS. And Lidar cannot tell what color your shoes are, or even that the point cloud is a pair of shoes. Non-Reason #3: They want to know what you own so that they can determine some other information about you. Uh, this thing is going to connect to your router, see a MacBook Pro, and a Sonos speaker connected, and subsequently know your monthly disposable income to the $10's. They already know this information -- they don't to do a bunch of extremely difficult statistics on the huge amount of data this thing could generate to figure these things out. Reason #0: Amazon sells things. This is a thing they can sell. You'll probably buy this thing after they acquire it, make it better, and market it to you.
- godelski 4y ago
  This just sounds like 6 reasons, not 3 reasons and 3 non-reasons.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- TrevorJ 4y ago
  Given Amazon's reliance on consumer data and metrics, as well as their past behavior with alexa and echo I find this viewpoint to be almost stubbornly naïve.
BiteCode_dev 4y ago
It's more than that. First, they will put Alexa on it, so you have it everywhere in your home. Then, they will fill it with as many sensors as they can do give you extra information. It will protect your home against burglars, survey your kids, prevent your cat to scratch the sofa, etc. And with the camera, microphone, lidar and so on, people will happily let the little bugger record their entire life. This will create the most reliable database about consumers including their money, interests, brand loyalty, level of education, people they meet, life rhythm, etc. This alone will make a lot of money. Eventually, it will play contextual ads, in your home. And of course, each one is an entry point for the Amazon domotic ecosystem, giving even more of your life to Amazon.
- closetohome 4y ago
  > money, interests, brand loyalty, level of education, people they meet, life rhythm, etc All of this is widely available from your browsing history and social media. And every marketing database on earth already has your income level.
kirykl 4y ago
Maybe $this is the piece of data that will finally make their product recommendations actually useful
chrisgd 4y ago
There are 4 news organizations saying the same thing. A lot of great reasons on here why they would be interested - robotics expertise, great business that has struggle recently, etc. I think another big reason is putting it at the top of all searches within their app and website. They can sell more by doing that and get a return on investment very quickly. If Chinese companies are collecting this data already, not sure why we would fear Amazon having it.
jrussino 4y ago
I've had a Roomba for years and love it; I was considering upgrading to the newest model this year (mainly for the self-emptying bin) and getting one of the mopping models as well. Now after hearing this news I'm hesitant. A few years ago, right before the start of the pandemic, I had the opportunity to play with an Oculus Quest for a weekend. I loved it. If it wasn't a Facebook product I would have bought one immediately. Why can't we just have nice things?
- 8note 4y ago
  You've added a second requirement to the nice thing. You could just have a nice thing, but your ideology says you cannot. It's entirely your state of mind defining it
monkeydust 4y ago
How much of the IP they brought is Hardware vs Software? Curious if someone knows and can articulate this (appreciate not easy).
in3d 4y ago
I’d be careful about getting any home products under Amazon’s brand after they simply decided to brick security cams they sold for years: https://www.theverge.com/2022/5/30/23147362/amazon-cloud-cam-shutting-down-free-blink-mini-echo-replacement https://www.theverge.com/2022/5/30/23147362/amazon-cloud-cam....
dvh 4y ago
Maybe they buying it for brand name and start selling Chinese home automation gadgets under the Roomba name.
revlolz 4y ago
I would speculate this would be much more beneficial for putting Amazon logo/brands onto roomba and or improving warehouse drones than the claim of household mapping. People love roomba, Amazon loves buying functional brands that can be absorbed into the ecosystem.
ChrisLomont 4y ago
From the article: "The size of your house is a pretty good proxy for your wealth." Amazon already has your address - so they already can get detailed maps of your house, tax records, likely income, and on and on, from other records. They can link to all your public data (Linked In, FB, Zillow, whatever else is for sale) to build massive profiles of you, your purchase history, your neighbor's purchase history, and so on). This purchase is more likely to get more robot expertise, patents, and capability as they want to automate more of their entire pipeline of moving goods. That is where the big money is. Saving a few percent on a several hundred billion pipeline via automation is massive.
goindeep 4y ago
If anyone else said this, we'd call them a conspiracy theorist.
FooBarBizBazz 4y ago
Besides the Roomba, iRobot is a defense contractor. Add to this Amazon's inexplicable push into surveillance with Ring. My conclusion: Amazon is quietly growing a defense arm.

160 points by Vaslo 4y ago

This type of privacy intrusion was mentioned a number of times in "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism" by Shoshana Zuboff. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Age_of_Surveillance_Capitalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Age_of_Surveillance_Capita... It's worth noting: Her "thing" isn't that data is being collected per se, it's that such data is often used against us. So while it's easy to rationalize it with "I've nothing to hide", the Amazons of the world are not countering with "We've only your best interests in mind, certainly not our own." That is, the relationship is asymmetrical, to put it kindly.

karamanolev 4y ago
I was briefly in the "I've nothing to hide" camp. To put it more concretely, I didn't actually believe it, but I couldn't pinpoint what's wrong with it. What did it for me is manipulation - everyone can be manipulated with enough knowledge and effort, regardless of how smart they think they are. If you think that you're environment and what you see doesn't affect you, you're just plain lying to yourself. Collecting all this data massively increases the knowledge and reduces the effort necessary for those companies to manipulate you. Manipulate you to buy stuff. Manipulate you to engage, a.k.a. give your time away to make them money and so on.
- chiefalchemist 4y ago
  That's the crux of surveillance capitalism. You're the product and eventually its victim. Having read the book mentioned, I'd take it a step further and frame the current Gov v Big Tech struggles as Gov realizing that it's losing its grip on control (to Big Tech). So while it might be framed in other ways, ultimately Gov doesn't want to lose its status quo powers.
  - karamanolev 4y ago
    "You're the product" doesn't really give the vibe I want it to. It sounds like someone is making money off of you, which is true, but it doesn't convey the "at your own expense" part. Even by simple things as better targeting, but eventually as main goals or side-effects of better ML/AI, you're manipulated to spend more, to feel worse about yourself so you spend more and so on. There was recently another article about "insight porn". If someone wants your attention and time, that's another way to take it. The better you know someone, the better you can convince them to give you money and time. So whether you're the product or not, you're paying for it.
    - galdosdi 4y ago
      "You're the livestock"
    - chiefalchemist 4y ago
      How about "You're the byproduct."?
    - yunwal 4y ago
      Not only that, but this stuff doesn't need to be 100% effective for it to have massive consequences. If amazon can use data about people to swing 5% of votes, the vast majority of politicians would give them pretty much anything in their power.
      - karamanolev 4y ago
        I think using arguments like "Amazon swinging votes" is bad, since it's easily countered with "Amazon is not interested in political elections". Amazon doing whatever they can to take more and more money from you, way beyond your means? Americans (figuratively, some) are already up to their eyeballs in debt. Amazon being able to make it much worse is already a huge drain on society. "A boring dystopia".
        yunwal 4y ago

tablespoon 4y ago

I have a couple of Roombas, but I'm glad I still have older non-mapping, non-internet connected ones. I got them because I didn't want to have to rely on some app that could get discontinued or have to deal with Wifi. I never through Roomba would get acquired like this. Looks like I'll have to switch to a different brand when they break (or try to keep them going, years ago I saw something about people rebuilding the Roomba gearbox with metal gears instead of plastic).

diogenescynic 4y ago

Maybe they'll make a Roomba robot or a Ring door lock that can let Amazon delivery drivers into your home/garage/backyard to drop off a delivery.

tablespoon 4y ago
> Maybe they'll make a Roomba robot or a Ring door lock that can let Amazon delivery drivers into your home/garage/backyard to drop off a delivery. Maybe? They've already done that: https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/25/16538834/amazon-key-in-home-delivery-unlock-door-prime-cloud-cam-smart-lock https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/25/16538834/amazon-key-in-h...

Syonyk 4y ago

Yeah. :/ Well, I suppose I'll have to consider if one of the two "smart" devices needs to go, then. It's a bit disturbing just how much you can tell about a house from the floorplan alone, much less if you've set out to use the camera for data collection. I wasn't a huge fan of iRobot's data collection, but now that it'll be going to Amazon, ugh. This is just the end point for any modern gadget. To work against you, to collect data to be used to break your will and make you spend more money to the profit of a handful of big tech companies. Such utopia. Much wow!

davemp 4y ago
> I wasn't a huge fan of iRobot's data collection, but now that it'll be going to Amazon, ugh. Yup once data is out there, you should assume it will get into the hands of bad actors. 'Having nothing to hide' from the current data collector doesn't mean that there aren't things you'd want to hide from other parties.
eclipxe 4y ago
What is the practical implication of having floor plan data?
- hedora 4y ago
  It has an upward facing camera, runs in the morning, and I definitely don’t wear undies with my bathrobe. No idea what Amazon will do with the video feeds when they get their hands on this particular surveillance platform. Apparently, all sorts of surveillance that I thought was illegal has been normalized by covid: https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/04/cdt_school_surveillance/ https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/04/cdt_school_surveillan... In addiction to the stats in the register article, apparently principals of schools that use one of the surveillance platforms are routinely sent copies of sexts that minors sent from personal devices. (Can’t find the quote at the moment…). Spyware on school chromebooks are snooping SMS on undisclosed models of phones if you use the chromebook USB port to charge the phone (even after school hours).
zamalek 4y ago
Roborock have a better privacy story, but how long it stays that way would be pure speculation. It might possibly become a selling point, much like Apple did [in the past].

gedy 4y ago

I like Home Assistant as an alternative to the cloud-dependant IoT crap software, is there a local-only equivalent yet for robot vacuums yet?

bo0tzz 4y ago
https://valetudo.cloud https://valetudo.cloud is the one I know of, although unfortunately it seems that it doesn't work with Roombas.
- gedy 4y ago
  Thanks, I wonder what they mean by: > "One such demographic that seems to often run into trouble when using Valetudo is apple users. (I know, right?) Specifically, those fully invested into the Apple Ecosystem and way of life." I have macs and iPhone - so is this some technical issue with the hardware or a snark on (some) people's attitude?

henryfjordan 4y ago

The regular old Roomba has a bumper on the front as the only sensor. There's no camera. Some models have LIDAR but that's not able to tell the difference between types of obstacles (like knowing a floor is covered in toys as the article suggests). This is dishonest "journalism". Amazon might be evil and is out to get as much data on you as possible, but let's be real about what is possible.

falcolas 4y ago
Modern version do indeed map out your house. No cameras needed. How do I know this? The app associated with our roomba shows the map it's created of our house. And its incredibly accurate, especially since it encourages us to tag spaces in order to set up intelligent vacuuming schedules (i.e. less in the laundry room, more in the kitchen/dining rooms). It's even smart enough to identify temporary obstacles (like toys) and permanent obstacles.
- henryfjordan 4y ago
  I don't deny that even the basic model can figure out the layout of your house. It can't determine materials. The lidar can't really do that either. Even if it could, whether you buy Charmin or generic toilet paper on Amazon is a better signal of your wealth anyway. Honestly just buying a Roomba is a pretty good signal that you have some money to burn but not so much that you can hire a maid. The article is just FUD
  - SoftTalker 4y ago
    > Honestly just buying a Roomba is a pretty good signal that you have some money to burn but not so much that you can hire a maid. Or you're a sucker for gadgets that are sold at high margins and ultimately don't really improve anything in your life.
    - falcolas 4y ago
      Honestly, this is spoken like someone who has never used a robotic vacuum. Unless you vacuum your house daily, it helps your house look a whole lot better. Visible dirt on the floor has a bigger impact on the look (and frankly hygiene) your house than you might imagine. And even if you do vacuum your house daily, the robotic vacuum will save you hours of time every week. That said, if you don't care about visible dirt on your floors, perhaps you're right, it won't improve your life.

whydid 4y ago

I assumed it was to assist with their warehouse robotics: https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/21/23177756/amazon-warehouse-robots-proteus-autonomous-cart-delivery https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/21/23177756/amazon-warehouse...

Oarch 4y ago
The name Proteus must be a reference to Player Piano by Vonnegut. The main character, Paul Proteus, oversees a large industrial facility in a world where largely all work has been automated away.

moomoo11 4y ago

More data for the police state

kodah 4y ago

Are there any servers and firmware that I can use to replace the software on my Roomba? I spent nearly $1k on my Roomba. As a single person with a dog, it helps me a lot. My allergies aren't nearly as bad, I don't have to vacuum by hand nearly as much. I liked that with the map the bot was a lot smarter and didn't bump into or damage my things. I feel like by selling to a company like Amazon that the rug is being pulled out from beneath me. I am truly disappointed in this move and all the people involved.

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prox 4y ago
We should have laws that allows you to work with a latest version from company X and decide what happens with your data when the company gets sold.
llaolleh 4y ago
Imagine if we had a Right to Replace Software.
- deleted 4y ago
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SoftTalker 4y ago
Go into your router and revoke its IP address.
- newfonewhodis 4y ago
  What does "revoke its IP address" even mean? Do you mean have it return 0.0.0.0 for all *.roomba.com domains? How would that solve anything? I suspect it'll actually make the Roomba not work at all.
  - kredd 4y ago
    Maybe revoking DHCP lease and setting it manual only? But yeah, if the roomba requires internet, it’ll be dead.

jlkuester7 4y ago

At what point can we just conclude we are living in a dystopia? Seems pertinent to note that one of the hallmarks of many fictional dystopias is that most folks don't even recognize there is a problem!

refulgentis 4y ago
The article is speculative in nature, despite an obviously unreachable conclusion being the title. As a result I think it's good to be cautious in relying on it for claims, particularly wide ones
sp332 4y ago
Ok, so we're living in a dystopia. What does that conclusion do for us?
allemagne 4y ago
There are useful ways of calling things out for being "dystopian" but it can also invoke a clarity that is necessary for narrative fiction, but not necessarily a useful lens for specific real life events. The line between a good shorthand and a thought-terminating cliche can be kind of blurry.
twblalock 4y ago
I've never heard of a dystopia you could opt out of by simply not buying a consumer product. 1984 and Brave New World would have been very short books if that was the definition of a dystopia.
- convolvatron 4y ago
  the 'don't collect and correlate data about me' tax is getting pretty high. but for now you can still pay it. no plane travel. can't use a cell phone. no online purchases. obviously no rewards systems. no credit cards.
  - dogman144 4y ago
    This exactly. Trying to live outside the collection is very difficult. A few years ago non-smart phones became untenable for use in basic civil society. More recently, an older smart phone or without face/touch enabled became hard to use. Recently, in cities like NY, due to QR-ification, going out without a smart phone meant issues getting menus. Now, the big ones are starting: end of cash, and civil life tracking. The NYC oyster-card equivalent for subways is per-user and sells data, per the ToS. The tap-to-pay subway turnstiles log per-station use (and therefore your travel) for your credit card provider. Many restaurants can’t do cash easily bc the proliferation of Square and what overworked civil servant is going to force mom and pop coffee shops to take cash? The laws on this got hazy a while back anyway. TSA/clearcheck or w/e in airports that use biometrics. Opt out options, besides being inconvenient, label you as what to the TSA? Drivers license photos are auto-sold to CBP facial rec tools and similar. Where is the opt out for that? This isn’t conspiratorial. it’s just the slow march of clever tech that works well so people who don’t understand the privacy tradeoffs or don’t care buy it, the purchase defines network effects which defines implied user preferences which defines new product choices which defines larger networks… which becomes more and more difficult to opt out of. If you claim this isn’t happening you don’t understand data eng and tech as a whole. The only thing saving us rn is the data eng part is really hard still.

riffic 4y ago

and surely it's not about the robotics in use all across Amazon's warehouses. why the heck does Amazon want to be involved in "mapping your home"?

falcolas 4y ago
Money. What does your house look like. What items are in your house (the j- models of Roombas include cameras for object identification). These give Amazon additional leverage in building a customized marketing campaign to your eyeballs.
- eclipxe 4y ago
  This seems dubious. Having a in-market consumer brand with millions of customers is much more valuable than being able to get X% better at targeted recommendations.
  - falcolas 4y ago
    It's not an either-or. It's a "why not both". More highly targeted data about a consumer will never hurt an advertiser.

treis 4y ago

I'm fairly dubious that there's any useful data here. Square footage, bathroom, bedrooms, and other such stuff is public record. Getting the exact layout of my rooms and furniture doesn't seem to bring any obvious benefit. I guess maybe it can try and identify appliances and such but again not really seeing that as a hugely valuable trove of data.

msoad 4y ago
This article is purely speculation. There nothing back up this claim. I have a Roomba and the map is mediocre at best. Will they use iRobot's platform to sell their future data collection initiatives? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe they didn't need this acquisition to sell newer products that does more mapping and data collection. People write articles based on some random thought dump
- Clubber 4y ago
  >This article is purely speculation. Yes, I was thinking that. It's paywalled for me so I couldn't check if this was based on a leak or anything. I hope this is in the opinion section, because without any sources or leaks, it's just some made up garbage.
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squarefoot 4y ago
> I'm fairly dubious that there's any useful data here. Your home layout and size speaks about how much is your income, which usually is a superset of what you could spend in online purchases. Also, should they stick a camera or a very advanced lidar in front of the Roomba, they could build a database of what items their customers have -and don't have- (read: could be pushed to purchase through targeted advertising) in their homes. I expect some more room for Roomba competitors here; certainly I wouldn't want a Amazon branded one even for free.
- gruez 4y ago

notatoad 4y ago

all the coverage of this seems afraid of it. what's the downside to my home automation knowing that my kitchen is next to my living room?

falcolas 4y ago
> what's the downside to my home automation knowing Nothing. But, it's not just your home automation. It's the biggest retailers (and one of the bigger ad brokers) in the world knowing the layout of your house, including images of objects in your house if you have a newer version. So, really, it depends on how comfortable you are with Amazon having all that data on you for the secondary purpose of bringing their marketing power to bear against you.
- twblalock 4y ago
  Until Amazon puts a gun up against someone's head and forces them to buy something, this is a non-issue.
- notatoad 4y ago
  >including images of objects in your house is there any evidence that roombas actually collect this sort of data?
  - falcolas 4y ago
    Even if they don't today - if all image recognition is done on the machine (which is frankly unlikely) - nothing stops a software update from changing this. That's one of the boons of technology that's also a bust. There's no technological barriers to changing how a product behaves.

TIPSIO 4y ago

I have the latest and greatest Roborock instead for my house ($$$). What’s cool, privacy stuff aside, I can remote control navigate my house with its camera. So I think it makes sense for Roomba to be part of Amazon’s Ring home security most. Way more practical than that giant dumb robot thing they made called Astro. Eventually using sensors to check for floods, motion, oddities, room temperature, etc… all while vacuuming on routine.

alphabetting 4y ago

My guess is Amazon could easily figure out the information a roomba could provide without it (sq ft, etc) which makes me think the title of this article is false.

AriedK 4y ago

https://www.vacuumsguide.com/privacy-robot-vacuum-cleaners/ https://www.vacuumsguide.com/privacy-robot-vacuum-cleaners/ This was already on the radar 5 years ago. Pretty useful data for companies like Ikea to know how people fill their spaces. I am curious if other data is sucked up (now or in the near future). Bluetooth devices in the same room? Wifi SSIDs for precise location? All potentially useful data for a company like Amazon.

keepquestioning 4y ago

What's the best Roomba alternative?

Finnucane 4y ago
broom, dustpan, vacuum.
astura 4y ago
I have a eufy robotic vacuum made by Anker. It's fine, it was pretty cheap and it just bumps it's way around the house.

jhugo 4y ago

They should have done a deal with Xiaomi or one of the other Chinese brands instead. They're honestly light-years ahead with indoor mapping & navigation. I bought a top-of-the-line Roomba when I moved to London a few years ago and it's honestly primitive by comparison to even a mid-range Xiaomi robot vac.

protomyth 4y ago
I'm pretty sure that doing a deal with a Chinese brand would get them additional scrutiny from the US government.
gre 4y ago
Thankfully, my Xiaomi won't share my data with the US government.
upupandup 4y ago
> They should have done a deal with Xiaomi or one of the other Chinese brands instead. Now this is quite a bad take. 100% those Chinese brands are working side step with the military. Remember, they have no qualms about violating human rights. Marxism's conundrum is that there is no difference between all humans being equal vs not important.
- jhugo 4y ago
  Honestly, Amazon having the floorplan to my house concerns me far more than the PLA having it. If a state actor wanted the floorplan to my house, they don't need a backdoor to my robot vac to find it out.

protomyth 4y ago

I'm absolutely sure that at some point they will add some chemical sensors of some sort to help with the cleaning process and report that to Amazon. Is there a blog / news site that covers sensors in consumer items and future sensor development?

twblalock 4y ago

Amazon wants to provide total home automation solutions: Ring/Blink for security and doorbells and lighting, Alexa for automation, etc. At one point they even recommended Alexa as the glass break sensor for the Ring Alarm, although they eventually made a standalone device. "Alexa, vacuum the living room" is a nice feature and they can provide that by integrating with Roomba. Home mapping is not as valuable as that kind of integration, and I seriously doubt that home mapping is why Amazon is doing this.

dgfitz 4y ago
My robot vacuum can already do that, a neato. https://www.amazon.com/Neato-Robotics/dp/B01MXI58Y7 https://www.amazon.com/Neato-Robotics/dp/B01MXI58Y7

astura 4y ago

Oh, come on, if anyone wanted to get a map of my home they could just get that information on my town's website. It's public information.

jmclnx 4y ago

If you have a roomba, I would think you could block its internet access on your router via its mac address. But for people with Comcast, I wonder if blocked if it could access what I call the "secret wide-open Concast Router" every Comcast Customer has. Sure there are ways around that.

moralestapia 4y ago

Bullshit. Sure there may some data of value but that's not the reason for this. Amazon bought a brand, that's it. Would you buy an Amazon branded robot with Alexa that roams around your house 24/7? No. Would you buy a Roomba that ... wait, you have one already. This is obviously a piece of Amazon's plan to dominate the smart home market.

hedora 4y ago
I’ve been a roomba customer for almost twenty years. I no longer am. My current roombas support alexa integration. I didn’t enable it and do not want it. Assuming I can’t figure out how to make the current ones go without wifi, I’ll sell them and go with some hackable Chinese brand.

weezin 4y ago

I had always thought Amazon already owned iRobot. It matches Amazon's existing smart home product line and has a lot of advertisements on Amazon. Speaking so confidently about this being some gather as much data from your home possible play feels like a way of getting clicks via perpetuating the "big tech bad" narrative.

GamerUncle 4y ago

unpaywalled: https://web.archive.org/web/20220807221335/https://www.bloomberg.com/tosv2.html?vid=&uuid=2c45c721-169e-11ed-9725-66736a447647&url=L25ld3MvYXJ0aWNsZXMvMjAyMi0wOC0wNS9hbWF6b24tcy1pcm9ib3QtZGVhbC1pcy1hYm91dC1yb29tYmEtcy1kYXRhLWNvbGxlY3Rpb24= https://web.archive.org/web/20220807221335/https://www.bloom...

mlsu 4y ago

If we are permitted baseless speculation: NO, almost certainly not. Reason #1: Amazon needs robotics people badly. Roomba has a lot of robotics people and expertise. It's a natural fit, and an easy way to acquire a bunch of fully functional robotics teams. Reason #2: Vacuum robots are useful things, especially for people with pets, which is probably most Amazon customers. Chinese companies are eating Roomba's lunch when it comes to cleaning robots (and Amazon knows it!), so Amazon probably thinks they can compete, win, and yield profit on this investment. They'll do it by leveraging their existing warehouse expertise to help the robot clean your house better. Non-Reason #1: They want to sell your home information to the police state. Come on people, your local government already knows the layout of your home, you have to tell them that when you build it! Non-Reason #2: They want to look at products in your home to sell you stuff. Sorry, the embedded systems that are going to be on these things are going to be able to recognize "fridge," "bed," "power strip." Not "Miele SKU #7560, Brand New Condition" or "IKEA Krugsforst Chair, Tattered Underfabric". They are running mobilenet on 512x512 thumbnails, not efficientdet-v7 on 12 megapixel raw input. There is no GTX3080 on board this thing, and they're not gonna stream a high resolution video to AWS. And Lidar cannot tell what color your shoes are, or even that the point cloud is a pair of shoes. Non-Reason #3: They want to know what you own so that they can determine some other information about you. Uh, this thing is going to connect to your router, see a MacBook Pro, and a Sonos speaker connected, and subsequently know your monthly disposable income to the $10's. They already know this information -- they don't to do a bunch of extremely difficult statistics on the huge amount of data this thing could generate to figure these things out. Reason #0: Amazon sells things. This is a thing they can sell. You'll probably buy this thing after they acquire it, make it better, and market it to you.

godelski 4y ago
This just sounds like 6 reasons, not 3 reasons and 3 non-reasons.
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TrevorJ 4y ago
Given Amazon's reliance on consumer data and metrics, as well as their past behavior with alexa and echo I find this viewpoint to be almost stubbornly naïve.

BiteCode_dev 4y ago

It's more than that. First, they will put Alexa on it, so you have it everywhere in your home. Then, they will fill it with as many sensors as they can do give you extra information. It will protect your home against burglars, survey your kids, prevent your cat to scratch the sofa, etc. And with the camera, microphone, lidar and so on, people will happily let the little bugger record their entire life. This will create the most reliable database about consumers including their money, interests, brand loyalty, level of education, people they meet, life rhythm, etc. This alone will make a lot of money. Eventually, it will play contextual ads, in your home. And of course, each one is an entry point for the Amazon domotic ecosystem, giving even more of your life to Amazon.

closetohome 4y ago
> money, interests, brand loyalty, level of education, people they meet, life rhythm, etc All of this is widely available from your browsing history and social media. And every marketing database on earth already has your income level.

kirykl 4y ago

Maybe $this is the piece of data that will finally make their product recommendations actually useful

chrisgd 4y ago

There are 4 news organizations saying the same thing. A lot of great reasons on here why they would be interested - robotics expertise, great business that has struggle recently, etc. I think another big reason is putting it at the top of all searches within their app and website. They can sell more by doing that and get a return on investment very quickly. If Chinese companies are collecting this data already, not sure why we would fear Amazon having it.

jrussino 4y ago

I've had a Roomba for years and love it; I was considering upgrading to the newest model this year (mainly for the self-emptying bin) and getting one of the mopping models as well. Now after hearing this news I'm hesitant. A few years ago, right before the start of the pandemic, I had the opportunity to play with an Oculus Quest for a weekend. I loved it. If it wasn't a Facebook product I would have bought one immediately. Why can't we just have nice things?

8note 4y ago
You've added a second requirement to the nice thing. You could just have a nice thing, but your ideology says you cannot. It's entirely your state of mind defining it

monkeydust 4y ago

How much of the IP they brought is Hardware vs Software? Curious if someone knows and can articulate this (appreciate not easy).

in3d 4y ago

I’d be careful about getting any home products under Amazon’s brand after they simply decided to brick security cams they sold for years: https://www.theverge.com/2022/5/30/23147362/amazon-cloud-cam-shutting-down-free-blink-mini-echo-replacement https://www.theverge.com/2022/5/30/23147362/amazon-cloud-cam....

dvh 4y ago

Maybe they buying it for brand name and start selling Chinese home automation gadgets under the Roomba name.

revlolz 4y ago

I would speculate this would be much more beneficial for putting Amazon logo/brands onto roomba and or improving warehouse drones than the claim of household mapping. People love roomba, Amazon loves buying functional brands that can be absorbed into the ecosystem.

ChrisLomont 4y ago

From the article: "The size of your house is a pretty good proxy for your wealth." Amazon already has your address - so they already can get detailed maps of your house, tax records, likely income, and on and on, from other records. They can link to all your public data (Linked In, FB, Zillow, whatever else is for sale) to build massive profiles of you, your purchase history, your neighbor's purchase history, and so on). This purchase is more likely to get more robot expertise, patents, and capability as they want to automate more of their entire pipeline of moving goods. That is where the big money is. Saving a few percent on a several hundred billion pipeline via automation is massive.

goindeep 4y ago

If anyone else said this, we'd call them a conspiracy theorist.

FooBarBizBazz 4y ago

Besides the Roomba, iRobot is a defense contractor. Add to this Amazon's inexplicable push into surveillance with Ring. My conclusion: Amazon is quietly growing a defense arm.