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There is a lot of focus on the smart home features in this story but I believe it is a red herring. I’m much more concerned how easy it is for amazon to stop t

There is a lot of focus on the smart home features in this story but I believe it is a red herring. I’m much more concerned how easy it is for amazon to stop trading with someone. A single driver misheard a few words and that is enough to ban you? I live in a flat and whenever I hear the post flap make the characteristic noise of something dropped through it I shout “thank you” to whoever just delivered something to me. What if a delivery driver mishears that one day? I don’t have recording devices on my door, how would I clear my name? What if a delivery driver has a genuienly bad experience somewhere and as they report it they misclick or misremember where it happened and associate my adress with it? What if someone on the street or in the building hassles the delivery driver and they mistakenly associate their trouble with me? (Because for any reason they think they were interacting with me.) Now of course i would survive without Amazon, but it would suck greatly. It is just crazy how easily the whole story could have ended as “amazon banned me. I called them. They told me I am a racist, I don’t think I am. They demanded evidence but there was nothing I could send them. My account remains banned. I don’t understand how it happened.” And how many times might have the above already happened before they did it with someone who had enough online clout to report the situation widely?

jackdawipper 3y ago
if anything they are likely claiming it was the driver, but was more likely the algos listening in to his every conversation through his devices in the home.
- accrual 3y ago
  Listening =/= recording. Although entirely plausible, I've yet to see home assistants implicated in surreptitious recording.
  - scrum-treats 3y ago
    Oh? I invite you to take a job at Amazon, where you will discover more than enough evidence to remove any doubt. Cameras and mic channels can be opened at-will, across all devices (e.g., TVs, laptops, phones, Alexa devices). How? Set up an Echo device. Download the Alexa/Video/Shopping App. Connect your devices via Wifi/Bluetooth. That's it.
ajross 3y ago
> A single driver misheard a few words and that is enough to ban you? Surely that depends on the facts of the case? You'd agree that if a customer did yell racist insults at an employee through a doorbell or not, that Amazon shouldn't be required to do business with them anymore. If you were an employer in some non-tech business, and your delivery employee accused a customer of that, what would you do? This is what's so frustrating about this kind of story. It confirms your priors so well that you don't care if it's true or not. Everyone here is just assuming that the facts are as this article claims. And maybe it's true! But we don't know that, and in the real world there really are terrible people out there. And real businesses need real processes for dealing with real abuse.
- krisoft 3y ago
  > in the real world there really are terrible people out there. And real businesses need real processes for dealing with real abuse. 100%. Absolutely. > Everyone here is just assuming that the facts are as this article claims. I don’t. In fact I am tending toward thinking that there is more to the story. That is why i was entertaining the possibility that maybe the driver received real abuse, did not report it immediately and by the time they reported it they misremembered which of their many addresses from that day it was. That would be very human, for a report to fail that way. But I also don’t believe that made up story! It is just one of the many things which might have happened. What i do know is that I am unlikely to hurl abuse at a delivery driver. So I am not personally worried about being banned from their business for good cause. That leaves us with weird edge cases where some misunderstanding or an abusive neighboor gets me banned. And I have no control over those factors as opposed to my own behaviour which I can control. For that to worry me I don’t need to believe the details of the story, just that amazon has a delivery driver safety system (which is great). They can completely ban you (as opposed to for example marking your address not-safe-for-delivery, which still leaves many alternative options) And in case of a dispute I have no way to prove I am innocent (because I don’t, and can’t record approaches to my place)
Clubber 3y ago
>Now of course i would survive without Amazon, but it would suck greatly. When a business is so big, that not using it would make your day to day life pretty difficult, it's far past time to break them up. I think Walmart falls into the same category. When people in small towns get trespassed in Walmart, what are they going to do?

jackdawipper 3y ago

if anything they are likely claiming it was the driver, but was more likely the algos listening in to his every conversation through his devices in the home.

accrual 3y ago
Listening =/= recording. Although entirely plausible, I've yet to see home assistants implicated in surreptitious recording.
- scrum-treats 3y ago
  Oh? I invite you to take a job at Amazon, where you will discover more than enough evidence to remove any doubt. Cameras and mic channels can be opened at-will, across all devices (e.g., TVs, laptops, phones, Alexa devices). How? Set up an Echo device. Download the Alexa/Video/Shopping App. Connect your devices via Wifi/Bluetooth. That's it.

ajross 3y ago

> A single driver misheard a few words and that is enough to ban you? Surely that depends on the facts of the case? You'd agree that if a customer did yell racist insults at an employee through a doorbell or not, that Amazon shouldn't be required to do business with them anymore. If you were an employer in some non-tech business, and your delivery employee accused a customer of that, what would you do? This is what's so frustrating about this kind of story. It confirms your priors so well that you don't care if it's true or not. Everyone here is just assuming that the facts are as this article claims. And maybe it's true! But we don't know that, and in the real world there really are terrible people out there. And real businesses need real processes for dealing with real abuse.

krisoft 3y ago
> in the real world there really are terrible people out there. And real businesses need real processes for dealing with real abuse. 100%. Absolutely. > Everyone here is just assuming that the facts are as this article claims. I don’t. In fact I am tending toward thinking that there is more to the story. That is why i was entertaining the possibility that maybe the driver received real abuse, did not report it immediately and by the time they reported it they misremembered which of their many addresses from that day it was. That would be very human, for a report to fail that way. But I also don’t believe that made up story! It is just one of the many things which might have happened. What i do know is that I am unlikely to hurl abuse at a delivery driver. So I am not personally worried about being banned from their business for good cause. That leaves us with weird edge cases where some misunderstanding or an abusive neighboor gets me banned. And I have no control over those factors as opposed to my own behaviour which I can control. For that to worry me I don’t need to believe the details of the story, just that amazon has a delivery driver safety system (which is great). They can completely ban you (as opposed to for example marking your address not-safe-for-delivery, which still leaves many alternative options) And in case of a dispute I have no way to prove I am innocent (because I don’t, and can’t record approaches to my place)

Clubber 3y ago

>Now of course i would survive without Amazon, but it would suck greatly. When a business is so big, that not using it would make your day to day life pretty difficult, it's far past time to break them up. I think Walmart falls into the same category. When people in small towns get trespassed in Walmart, what are they going to do?