25 ms·

The Alexa feature "do not send voice recordings" you enabled no longer available

957 points by luu 2y ago

gnabgib 2y ago
Discussion (233 points, 2 days ago, 103 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43367536 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43367536
DevX101 2y ago
Now would be a good time to have a functional FTC commissioner. Doing a bait and switch like on a product that was sold with a set of features should be illegal. If I buy a car and the sales guy stops by my house the next day to take back the wheels, it would rightfully be seen as ridiculous.
- amelius 2y ago
  I'd be surprised if FTC had any teeth left after DOGE was done with them.
- protocolture 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - benrutter 2y ago
    To continue the metaphor, shouldn't someone close down or regulate "wheel stealing jimmies wheel theft funded auto retailer" so that they don't keep stealing people's wheels?
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - Waterluvian 2y ago
    “Reputation” as a free market remedy is such a poor solution, though, as it lags behind the events that change it. A badly tuned PID loop is better than nothing, I guess.
    - Paul-Craft 2y ago
      Pardon my French, but fuck "free market" remedies. The actual "free market remedy" here should theoretically be a lawsuit. But, you and I both know that Amazon's TOS are locked down pretty hard to pre-empt this sort of thing. Even if they weren't, it would take either an individual with deep pockets to pursue such a suit, or it would have to be a class action. Except that neither of those would be likely to succeed, because there's no law that says once a company offers a feature or feature toggle that they have to continue to offer it for the life of the product. And, if there were, that, by definition, wouldn't be a "free market" solution. The solution here is regulation. Edit: I forgot to mention that a lawsuit would take years to resolve. Meanwhile, Amazon would continue to benefit from their unfair tactics.
    - protocolture 2y ago
      This is actually part of our (Australia's) Australian consumer protection laws, which are considered pretty beastly. Its simply a test of reasonableness. If you had another source of information about a likely fault and you purchased anyway, it can reduce your protection. If you have a reasonable expectation that a brand is really good and often lasts 7 plus years it can also go the other way. Netting you government guaranteed replacements by manufacturers far longer than their competitors.
  - observationist 2y ago
    They aren't wheel stealing jimmies, but they're definitely data railing bit bangers itching for their next fix. I think choosing to do business with Amazon comes with the same sort of reasonable assumptions. Lie down with dogs, and all that. Y'all got some more of that data...?
  - therealpygon 2y ago
    Some people will say just about anything to blame the consumer. You know, like “it’s your own fault for buying a thing from a company.”
    - isoprophlex 2y ago
      Yes! You knew this was coming, why didn't you buy something from any other huge monopolistic tech-cloud-everything-store?! Oh wait...
      - protocolture 2y ago
        Why didnt you just buy an ESP32 or Arduino option. Or like, not purchase the in house recording device. YMMV.
  - simion314 2y ago
    >Yes but reputation is a factor. If you bought that car from wheel stealing jimmies wheel theft funded auto retailer you might need to shoulder some of the blame. You think the same for food and medicine? remove the "evil" regulations and let the reputation be a factor and every individual should do their research ?
    - protocolture 2y ago
      This is actually part of our (Australia's) Australian consumer protection laws, which are considered pretty beastly. Its simply a test of reasonableness. If you had another source of information about a likely fault and you purchased anyway, it can reduce your protection. If you have a reasonable expectation that a brand is really good and often lasts 7 plus years it can also go the other way. Netting you government guaranteed replacements by manufacturers far longer than their competitors. I wasn't applying any free market assumptions here, but the (very popular) regulatory framework I already live under.
  - imoreno 2y ago
    It doesn't sound like a good idea to blame the victim more if the offender is a repeat offender. If anything repeat offenders should be treated harsher.
- imoreno 2y ago
  Don't these usually come with ToS or something that has you agreeing that they can change the service any time?
  - yaur 2y ago
    When you buy a car there is a lot of required paperwork that they don't really give you time to read, so maybe.
    - briandear 2y ago
      That’s generally loan paperwork. And you can take all the time you want to read.
    - mort96 2y ago
      They're not gonna refuse to sell you the car if you take the time to read the paperwork. And it's probably a large enough amount of money that you should take the time to at least skim it.
    - throwaway48476 2y ago
      You shouldn't sign things you don't read. Cue the centipad.
  - Taek 2y ago
    ToS have limits, people in a practical sense aren't really able to read and understand the ToS of every product they buy, which means a ToS can only go so far in the ways it allows companies to be predatory against consumers.
    - hsbauauvhabzb 2y ago
      Has that been tested in court? I would have thought a user wilfully or negligently misreading a ToS would not be a good legal defence (not that I agree with how I think the law would play out)
      - 2y ago
- evrimoztamur 2y ago
  America's lack of customer protection will hurt continue hurting its people. Ladies and gentlemen, please do something about it.
  - labster 2y ago
    I’m afraid the only thing we can do at this point is gun for an economic depression, ride out three years of that just like with Hoover (1929–33), and upgrade to New Deal 2.0 beta. There’s no amount of protests that can convince the median Trump voter that anything is wrong in America unless it affects him personally. And no amount of protest will convince Trump that he has made a single mistake in his entire life.
    - xmprt 2y ago
      I should have a bit more faith but at this point I feel like the median voter might see their world getting worse but still be convinced somehow that Democrats are behind it because Republicans have their messaging on point and Democrats are doing the equivalent of a silent protest.
      - zonkerdonker 2y ago
        Turns out, propoganda really does work. Just takes a few billionaires, a few hostile nations states, and some exploitable algorithms
        alabastervlog 2y ago
        And a multi-decade effort to shift courts toward a certain flavor of right wing perspective, so you can get a ruling like Citizens United, among others.
        amelius 2y ago
        We need to have a close look at free speech, especially now that techniques from psychological warfare are being used, not only in political propaganda but even in advertisements.
- z3t4 2y ago
  It was not yours to begin with. Think of it as a service. Just give it back and go to a competitor. Ohh wait, there are no competitors! Monopolies suck! Especially if they are world-wide.
  - firtoz 2y ago
    There are competitors, even open source ones
    - beezlewax 2y ago
      These are not viable options for the vast majority of users. Most peppe don't have a clue how to set up open source options, let alone set them up with usable hardware. The average consumer wants out of the box solutions that don't require a degree in Computer Science to use.
      - zettabomb 2y ago
        Home Assistant is getting far easier to set up than you might expect, especially because they now do in fact have out of the box devices. It's not quite as ridiculously simple, not quite yet, but they're rapidly improving and it won't be long until they're better than Amazon Alexa/Google Home/other commercial solutions.
        serial_dev 2y ago
        What are these "out of the box devices"? I looked into things a couple of years ago, and back then it was all too much effort to set things up and keep things running and integrated, so I just went with Smart Life stuff from AliExpress. But would love to have Home Assistant if it means I don't need to spend weekends just reading docs, pairing, setting things up, connecting stuff...
        zimpenfish 2y ago
        I've got HA set up (nearly 2 years now with a whole host of things connected: Bluetooth, WIFI, iOS devices, Zigbee, etc.) and I think I'm only just getting to the point now of two weekends worth of reading docs (primarily because their documentation seems to be written by developers rather than technical writers). Most time I've spent tinkering with HA was modifying their embedded `mastodon.py` to make it work with GotoSocial (but I think someone upstreamed a fix for that and it's no longer required.)
- atoav 2y ago
  Yeah but the ridiculously anti-consumer US has opted to elect politicians with so much billionaire miney, they'd rather get their moneys worth. Who needs anti-coruption laws with a society like that? And who expects not to get fucked by coorporations when they have lost every incentive not to? And the free market isn't the incentive you think it is when your're the monipolists that can crush or buy out the competition.
- jonathanstrange 2y ago
  IANAL but I thought bait and switch is illegal? It definitely is in the EU. Is it not in the US?
  - DFHippie 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - kevincox 2y ago
      It effectively died a long time before that.
      - DFHippie 2y ago
        I have no idea what you mean. The executive branch didn't routinely ignore court orders and disregard the constraints set out in the Constitution before that date. The government broke laws, but it was a scandal when it did and people -- the perpetrators, not random civil servants doing the jobs they were hired to do -- got fired for it and sometimes jailed. Now it's just another day that ends in y. In theory Biden could have taken the SCOTUS grant of immunity to disregard the Constitution as Musk and Trump are doing, but he didn't. Trump's taking power was a step change. We still have laws, but the executive branch under Musk/Trump regards them as mere words on a page. They bind others, not them.
  - amelius 2y ago
    It is illegal, but suing is too costly.
- Cthulhu_ 2y ago
  And yet this is what Tesla did. They sold a car and added a surcharge for full self-driving as a future option, or they added it as an upgrade option. But they never delivered. That's like buying a car with the promise of wheels but the wheels are never delivered (except you actually need the wheels etc). I'm amazed there haven't been major class-action lawsuits raised against Tesla yet, both from consumers for not delivering what is promised (full self-driving), and from shareholders for not delivering what was announced years ago (semi, new roadster). And from shareholders for artificially inflating the stock value of Tesla to use as leverage to buy Tesla and / or fund SpaceX.
  - szundi 2y ago
    That’s different, delivering later (for example probably never) is not the same. This is about removing a privacy feature.
  - rusk 2y ago
    Correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t Tesla floating on a cushion of private Saudi wealth?
    - johnhaltonx21 2y ago
      that's rivian ...
      - SideburnsOfDoom 2y ago
        I thought that was Lucid Motors. Source e.g. https://eletric-vehicles.com/lucid/saudi-pif-now-controls-64-3-of-lucid-motors-sec-filing-reveals/ https://eletric-vehicles.com/lucid/saudi-pif-now-controls-64...
    - iamacyborg 2y ago
      Funding confirmed.
- TZubiri 2y ago
  Chill man. Just send back the product and ask for a refund.
  - disattention 2y ago
    This is a kind of stoic virtue signal that may make people feel more mature for agreeing, but fails to fix issues while mocking people who try to make a difference. It's ok for people to feel things, and it's ok for people to want laws addressing anti-consumer behavior.
    - robertlagrant 2y ago
      > This is a kind of stoic virtue signal that may make people feel more mature for agreeing, but fails to fix issues while mocking people who try to make a difference. None of these comments are fixing issues or trying to make a difference. Sending the product back is a really good idea, especially if this change in terms means you can get a refund even if you've had it a long time.
      - flawn 2y ago
        Still not an argument against people being allowed to be mad regarding this. You just can't give a fuck about data privacy and expect people to not oppose this and speak up.
        robertlagrant 2y ago
        > being allowed to be mad No one can stop you being mad. No one's saying it's not allowed. It's possible someone is still young enough to misinterpret adult interactions as parental fiat, but it's not the case.
      - unethical_ban 2y ago
        "We should have a framework that prohibits companies from selling a product with a certain agreement, then changing the agreement unilaterally" That isn't trying to make a difference? Excuse me? Read that back.
- _heimdall 2y ago
  The car is no longer usable without the wheels, I believe the argument for Alexa would be that the core functionality is still usable without the privacy setting. I don't see why we would need the FTC to fix this. If someone bought Alexa from Amazon and honestly expected it to be privacy focused, they just made a mistake and can learn from it. Problems don't always have to be solved by running to the biggest authority that can be found and demanding they solve it for you.
  - A_D_E_P_T 2y ago
    "Do not send voice recordings" back to Amazon HQ =/= "privacy focused." It's arguably a necessary feature for minimal privacy in one's home, and I expect that a lot of people bought those devices with that in mind. If the FTC doesn't fix this kind of spontaneous downgrade, I'm not sure what they're for at all. If somebody falls for a criminal's fraud, I suppose "they just made a mistake and can learn from it"? No need for anybody else, or any authority, to do anything?
    - _heimdall 2y ago
      Jumping to criminal fraud feels a bit hasty in this context. It'd be important to know whether Amazon ever marketed this feature specifically, promised privacy, defined what that privacy they promised meant, and whether there's any legal argument to be made that this setting should be considered core to the basic functionality of Alexa. IMO no one should have ever expected Alexa, or products like it, to be private. The meet fact that it has a microphone, and potentially a camera, and promises to respond simply by you saying something to it means they're always listening. I don't really care what they say they'll do with the recordings, I care what they can do with the recordings without me ever knowing about it.
Legend2440 2y ago
TL;DR Alexa will be cloud-only very soon because it'll be powered by an LLM, which is too big to run on a smart speaker.
- gleenn 2y ago
  While the reason you suggest might be a good one, the repercussions of this change are clearly large. Unknowing customers now have their voice recordings sent to the cloud whoch could be leaked, have law enforcement get a warrant to take it from Amazon, or for it to be abused directly by Amazon. Those are huge. They might just have a good scapegoat.
  - jamiek88 2y ago
    The law enforcement point is an excellent one. They were already caught giving ring footage without warrants.
  - _ink_ 2y ago
    Yeah, but why do people still trust corporations? It's not like this has happened for the first time. Quite the opposite actually. For profit corporations seem to have no moral compass whatsoever and will do anything do increase the margin. People should finally start to act accordingly.
    - acuozzo 2y ago
      > Yeah, but why do people still trust corporations? When most of your time is spent ensuring your material needs are met, then whatever time remains is precious. Telling someone hustling two different "gig economy" jobs sixteen hours per day to give a shit about the long term privacy implications of the stupid smart speaker he got his kid for Christmas is asking… a lot. This is why change through popular political action peaked in the US in the late 1960s/early 1970s. People, on average, had more leisure time on their hands than ever before. More leisure time ⇒ more time to think, organize, unify, and give a shit beyond the immediate here & now.
  - lynx97 2y ago
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
ChrisArchitect 2y ago
[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43365424 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43365424 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43367536 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43367536
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
cphoover 2y ago
Is all audio up to “Alexa” still processed on device?
- Cthulhu_ 2y ago
  It should, but as far as I know you have zero guarantees about that. I just hope there's privacy organizations and / or hackers that continuously verify these claims. Of course, Amazon can push an update at any time to change this, at which point it'll be too late to think "hmm, 1984 warned us about this".
  - iLoveOncall 2y ago
    The insane cost to process all this is the guarantee you need.
timwis 2y ago
I switched to Home Assistant a couple months ago (because I didn't like the idea of my voice being sent to amazon constantly) and haven't looked back! Soo much more you can do (including immediately using an LLM, if you like, whether in the cloud or local), and so much more control.
- Mountain_Skies 2y ago
  Home Assistant is a great example of the amazing things the open source community is capable of doing. Hopefully they get the color version stuff worked out. It's too bad it appears that most of Amazon's hardware devices can't be turned to the good side and made to work with Home Assistant.
  - timwis 2y ago
    What do you mean color version? As an aside, I get what you mean in the context of my earlier comment, but just to clarify for anyone reading, you can use alexa and Google home devices with home assistant (eg to send commands and as media players, I believe), but you can't "deamazon"/"degoogle" them and just use the hardware with home assistant, which would be great if we could!
    - serial_dev 2y ago
      I'd love to de-amazon (neuter) my Alexa's, and somehow flash custom firmware on it. We have some devices around the house, and switching to the linked Home Assistant Voice would be a significant expense now.
      - timwis 2y ago
        You can get an atom echo for $13, if that helps: https://www.home-assistant.io/voice_control/thirteen-usd-voice-remote/ https://www.home-assistant.io/voice_control/thirteen-usd-voi...
    - wccrawford 2y ago
      Home Assistant has physical hardware labeled "green" and "yellow". Beyond that, I assume there's some confusion about what each can and can't do? I certainly can't remember which is which... But I don't actually own one.
october8140 2y ago
Our longstanding privacy commitment with Siri https://www.apple.com/jo/newsroom/2025/01/our-longstanding-privacy-commitment-with-siri/ https://www.apple.com/jo/newsroom/2025/01/our-longstanding-p...
- BiteCode_dev 2y ago
  Yeah right. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jul/26/apple-contractors-regularly-hear-confidential-details-on-siri-recordings https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jul/26/apple-con...
  - Shank 2y ago
    With all due respect, the link you’ve linked to is reddit, and the underlying story is a 500. Can you provide an available source or alternative, since this one seems broken?
    - BiteCode_dev 2y ago
      Updated link but it's getting hard to find them. Eg: I can't find any link about the home button scandal anymore. People will forget about all the wrong doing and the PR will enventually win.
  - jisnsm 2y ago
    Your link does not contradict his.
    - randunel 2y ago
      The link is still relevant, because apple's statement is posted in a manner antithetical to the article when, in fact, apple does the same thing. The main difference is that apple didn't allow its users to have such a setting in the first place, so amazon used to be better. Until now, when they're equally bad in this respect.
- ohgr 2y ago
nextts 2y ago
Alexa: we here for you
AndyMcConachie 2y ago
Am I supposed to have sympathy for people who bought a home snooping device now realizing they're going to be snooped on?
- caseyy 2y ago
  Yes. If, as a culture, we don’t stand up for consumer rights when a seller mistreats others, no one will stand up for us either.
  - dns_snek 2y ago
    I agree with the principle but frankly it doesn't apply here. Privacy conscious people have been sounding the alarm about these devices since their invention and the overwhelming majority of consumers typically respond to those warnings with dismissal or ridicule. There's only so much sympathy and support and standing up for others that I can fit into any given day and I'd rather give it to people who weren't warned about the dangers beforehand.
    - orphea 2y ago
      You probably overestimate how loud are these "Privacy conscious people". I bet if you ask ordinary Joe about privacy concerns with voice assistant devices, he'd tell he had no clue.
      - dns_snek 2y ago
        I'm just extrapolating from my own experience of telling people about various privacy concerns. 99% of the time it's either "I don't care", "I have nothing to hide", or "you're being paranoid".
      - antisthenes 2y ago
        > I bet if you ask ordinary Joe about privacy concerns with voice assistant devices, he'd tell he had no clue. Because Ordinary Joe is willfully ignorant, not because no one was shouting about privacy concerns.
DeathArrow 2y ago
If I buy a car and, after a while, the guy who sold me the car comes in the middle of the night and takes the wheels, isn't it theft?
- hiccuphippo 2y ago
  If you buy the steering wheel of a car and rent the rest of the car and then the owner comes in the middle of the night and takes the wheels, is it theft?
  - KeplerBoy 2y ago
    It's certainly a violation of the rental terms.
    - HPsquared 2y ago
      It's on page 52.
      - randunel 2y ago
        Actually, it's first implied on page 23, but it becomes clear in conjunction with the articles on pages 48 and 49. The article you're referring to on page 52 has provisions regarding confusion and/or impersonation, following the previously mentioned positive affirmation. You need the full context of the T&C's, don't cherry pick.
    - nicce 2y ago
      Rental terms were 1000 page book.
      - blitzar 2y ago
        That's the terms from when you rented the car, we have updated the terms since then.
      - DeathArrow 2y ago
asdf6969 2y ago
The PM who asked for this deserves to be arrested
Mountain_Skies 2y ago
Always assumed Amazon was doing whatever it wanted with Alexa powered devices. I used to have one in the kitchen that I used mainly for timers. The mute button stayed on 99.999% of the time. Needing to unmute to start or stop timers did make it a bit less useful but it was fine. I watched a breakdown of that model of Echo where it looked like the mute was indeed at the hardware level. My EE knowledge is limited but good enough I could follow along. Amazon probably could hide some hidden way to get around the hardware switch if they wanted but the risk for them seems higher than the risk to me, which never really was more than they'd hear me belch while cooking.
ddmma 2y ago
My first tought was in this direction: Amazon’s Echo hardware can be hacked to run your own local voice assistant that never touches the cloud. This involves replacing or modifying the Echo’s firmware to break free of Amazon’s servers, then installing offline voice recognition and AI tools on your local network.
- Mountain_Skies 2y ago
  Do you have a link? Last time I looked a couple of years ago, Amazon's hardware was too locked down to be used for anything other than Amazon's services.
  - ddmma 2y ago
    ... becoming quite interesting topic the more you dig in https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Amazon_Echo_Dot_2nd_gen_(amazon-biscuit) https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Amazon_Echo_Dot_2nd_gen_(...
- tummler 2y ago
  Do you have any details on this? With a quick search I could only find some older attempts at rooting but no custom firmware.
  - ddmma 2y ago
    Here is GPT "deep research" on this topic on Repurposing Amazon Echo for a Local AI Assistant https://airadiohost.com/alexa.html https://airadiohost.com/alexa.html
rvense 2y ago
Thinking about that picture from a (UK?) hospital breakroom with the sign that said "Please turn off the Echo before discussing sensitive patient information."
- Cthulhu_ 2y ago
  I will never have anything voice controlled in my house if I can help it. I mean I have them but they're all turned off. Except for the teenager's iphone, but we troll him by saying stuff like "Hey Siri, how do I stop being annoying?" or something like that.
  - probably_wrong 2y ago
    I am fully in favor of team "I'm never sending my voice anywhere", but assuming a locally-hosted voice control I'll say: voice is a great interface around the house. If I'm preparing to leave and wonder whether I should bring a jacket, yelling "what's the weather like?" is much more convenient than taking out my phone (or go pick it up from the other room), unlock it, go to the home screen, open the weather app, wait 2-3 seconds and then scroll to the full forecast. I'm not saying that checking my phone is an annoyance - it's still much better than checking the newspaper. But being able to keep my uninterrupted focus in what I'm doing is the type of luxury one only notices once it's gone.
    - smitelli 2y ago
      I've never liked any answer I've gotten to questions like "what's the weather like." I look at the forecast in my weather app -- the whole fullscreen thing -- and follow some sort of mental algorithm that I can't fully specify to arrive at the conclusion about what to wear/bring. The spoken data feels like it's missing something, or maybe it's just transmitted in a sequence that my brain can't work with. It's not that I don't trust it, exactly. It's that I can't use it for the task I'm trying to do. Never could. I have this problem with a lot of voice interfaces, and it suggests to me that either a) they're not very good, or b) my brain is not designed for that kind of UX.
twy1212895 2y ago
I still remember the time when devices worked for you rather than against you. But people will put up with anything. You could literally send a note that any Alexa will be equipped with 2kg of Semtex, to be triggered in case of wrongthink in your own home. People would still use Alexa and rationalize the feature.
victor9000 2y ago
Are these devices really worth the hassle?
- ricardobeat 2y ago
  What hassle?
  - victor9000 2y ago
    Having to weigh the pros and cons of eroding privacy protections, where the service is placing its own needs ahead of those already specified by the user. For me the answer is no, but I'm wondering what people get from these devices that make this a worthwhile trade off. I feel like a mobile phone gives me most of the utility, just through a different UX
    - ricardobeat 2y ago
      I use it mostly to play music, get the weather report. We used to play Song Quiz but that is not available anymore. None of this has any privacy implications (assuming it’s not listening in all the time!).
    - jabroni_salad 2y ago
      > Having to weigh the pros and cons of eroding privacy protections The typical consumer doesn't do that, at all. It's a nearly universal blindspot. Here's a fun Q. Do you know how many apps on your phone have business relationships with Gravy Analytics? Why not? The personal detriment is much worse than Amazon.
- literalAardvark 2y ago
  Not even close. They're slightly worse than average music speakers that also make funny noises sometimes.
- Cthulhu_ 2y ago
  I know at least two UK based elderly people who use Alexa on the regular for various reasons. Of course, the device struggles with their accents frequently but that doesn't seem to be enough of a deterrent. For a lot of people, voice commands are easier than figuring out a device.
fergie 2y ago
Mindblowing that people actually use these things
- MrMcCall 2y ago
  People still play the lottery, which one of William Gibson's characters in "The Peripheral" calls "the stupidity tax".
- Mashimo 2y ago
  People still smoke, don't use enough sunscreen and drink alcohol. "People" don't care.
qwertox 2y ago
What if you bought the device just because it had this option? I have an Echo Dot 2nd Gen which I used for around two months, until it once failed at a command of playing back a radio station but instead started to continuously stream my audio to Amazon, for hours until I noticed it (bandwidth monitoring with InfluxDB and Grafana). Now none of my devices (phones and tablets) listen for hotwords, but at this point there's no guarantee that my Pixel phone isn't listening in all the time. That feature where your phone listens to water or an alarm is what I found too sketchy, as if they have been playing around with on-device constant sound recognition for too long and then come up with some silly reason to make you enable it.
- _heimdall 2y ago
  At least legally, it likely matters more whether the feature was marketed specifically and whether its considered required for the core functionality of the device. I think the answer would be no to both, but IANAL.
notachatbot123 2y ago
Is this international or USA only?
- croes 2y ago
  According to Amazon Germany it's US only
voidUpdate 2y ago
Do people really enjoy talking to their home devices? I've always felt really awkward telling my phone to do something, especially in public, like I don't feel like everyone else needs to hear about what I want things to do, so I just prefer to type something. I know there are some people for whom its an accessibility thing, where they have difficulty typing or reading, but I've never really seen the point for average joe/josephine
- itscrush 2y ago
  Yes folks do and I can't understand it either. Have asked / talked through their rationale but frankly humans are irrational is my clear takeaway. I experience it mostly when folks are prompting search in family settings. These usually overlap with the no-earbuds watch-videos crowd while others are reading / napping, etc.
- hiccuphippo 2y ago
  I've had colleagues tell me their young kids try to ask Alexa to play music in school or other places. There's a future when talking with your devices will be normal and people will be puzzled when it doesn't work.
phito 2y ago
I will never understand why anyone would ever want to use voice assistants (other than for accessibility reasons). It is so gimmicky and awkward to use. Android Auto does not even understand the word "no".
- jbaber 2y ago
  If they worked and were local, why not?
- charcircuit 2y ago
  People don't always have their hands free or are able to look at a screen. Not everyone is good at typing.
  - Cthulhu_ 2y ago
    The commenter did mention "except for accessibility reasons".
    - charcircuit 2y ago
      If you consider any advantage of voice as an input modality to be an accessibility reason, then by definition there are no non accessibility reasons to use voice.
    - 0xTJ 2y ago
      Voice input while driving isn't an accessibility reason, but it's an important safety feature. Unfortunately Google's Assistant has only gotten worse, nearing uselessness in anything but setting driving directions.
- dwayne_dibley 2y ago
  This reads more like, 'they're not very good' rather than 'people don't want them'. They could be hugely useful, and even in their current capacity I find are very much so. I find it maddening that my google home, hasn't got a single bit better in the 8 years since it's release, and it's now missing some of my favourite features it had at launch. The whole market has been stagnate ever since they convinced me to put a microphone in my house, it's almost as if that was their end game.
croes 2y ago
US only
serial_dev 2y ago
How much AI computational power do I need to "set a timer for 8 minutes"? It's all just a sham to take away the little privacy you have left.
- kleiba 2y ago
  It's probably a mix. The computational power to run a dialog system is one thing but it's also just more convenient in terms of maintainance to have the system be completely server side. Of course, getting your sweet voice for future training also helps!
  - charcircuit 2y ago
    >Of course, getting your sweet voice for future training also helps! There is a setting to disable having your voice saved along with options to automatically delete it after a number of months.
    - mmarquezs 2y ago
      Ok, but then unfortunately we have the trust issue. Do we trust them, to: a) do it and not just lie about it totally or partially, and we find out later on when somebody does eventually report it/find out/investigate, if ever happens. b) even if they intend to really do it, that they do it properly. If it doesn't reach them, you are 100% sure the data is not there and not at risk (from their end of course). Otherwise is just let's hope for the big corporation with optimizing for most profitability for their stackholders as main objective to do "their best at protecting it's consumers data and privacy". Which sure... hurting consumers and getting fines aint' great, but not always ends up in less profitability than doing the right thing from the beginning. Of course... this is not a big deal compared with other stuff, there are alternatives and it's not something you really depend on day to day. Compared with other stuff that is for sure.
- TZubiri 2y ago
  We have become absolutely spoiled, now talking with a machine feels like something an arm chip should be able to handle
wigster 2y ago
at least the people in power can be trusted not to abuse the situation /s
mihaaly 2y ago
User hostility level +1 But that is of no problem, users seem to enjoy being abused, repeatedly, so they continue giving their money to the organization to come up with further marketing startegy (smaless bullshit lies) to introduce the next one never asked for abuse in the next company output that solves very marginal or no problem of their life.
- A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 2y ago
  I will admit that of all the surveillance technology, this one had me scratching my head, because, while I accept I am not exactly a target audience, I just did not really believe people choose to not just use those devices, but spend money on them. Some time ago, we got free alexa echo dots from contractor. They sold on ebay in record time. My hand is clearly not on the pulse of America.
jpl56 2y ago
Looking forward to the Louis Rossmann video. It may be as long as the fishy one, there is so much to tell about how we're getting effed...
willwade 2y ago
Now is the time to look at Open Home Foundation and their Voice Assistant device which does Speech Processing offline.. Donate! Buy their stuff!
- randmeerkat 2y ago
  > Now is the time to look at Open Home Foundation and their Voice Assistant device which does Speech Processing offline.. Donate! Buy their stuff! What about just not using voice assistants period? Do we really need third party cameras and microphones in every part of our homes?
Juliate 2y ago
That's called a breach of contract. A class action here would be a massive hit.
Codefather_AI 2y ago
[dead]
everdrive 2y ago
People don't really care about privacy, it's as simple as that. Yes, they worry about privacy, and complain about violations of privacy. But if they cared, they never would have purchased this product in the first place. There are bits of technology which violate privacy, but are extremely difficult to fully avoid: Social Media, (I know a lot of HN isn't on it, but how about most of your family and friends?) smart phones, the surveillance of modern stores, etc. All of those are terrifically difficult to fully avoid or mitigate. But not buying an echo is effortless and free. There's no cost associated with not buying one, and not spending the time to set it up. But, despite the fact that it literally costs nothing, these have sold quite well, and if folks haven't got an echo they've got a Google Home, or a Siri, or something else. They just don't care about privacy, and companies know this.
- whiplash451 2y ago
  This kind of apathic statement is not very useful. By your logic, we should not care about climate change either. "People don't care about privacy" doesn't mean that regulators and the tech community should not lead a charge.
  - dangisautism 2y ago
    [dead]
  - _heimdall 2y ago
    People should care about climate change, that's different from whether people do care about it. More importantly though, those that do care should do as much as they're willing to do to help avoid making it worse. For some that means choosing to only buy products made with natural materials, growing/raising their own food, drinking rain water, etc. For others that means not using plastic straws. There's no perfect answer and no one really knows what will happen in the future or how to best change it. Regulators fall into this camp too, they don't know the future and they can't accurately predict precisely what must be don't. Expecting this of them is a fools errand and demanding everyone do what they say is oppressive at best.
martin_a 2y ago
Hm! I like the sound quality of my Echo Dots, so I'd be fine to keep them in "dumb mode" (or even disconnecting their microphones physically), but setting a timer etc. is a useful feature too, when you are running around the house. How good is the sound of the Home Assistant Speakers and can they be used like bluetooth speakers, too? How about multi room sound? Any recommendations on a good solution that focusses on that music part and is not likely to be a victim of getting bricked by a software update?
aktuel 2y ago
I would like to meet the person who bought an Alexa device at any point in time thinking "now here is finally the privacy protecting AI assistant I have been waiting for."
- re5i5tor 2y ago
  [flagged]
- elif 2y ago
  raises hand There are exactly two companies which make a device capable of actually integrating with every home automation and voice control, so given the options, I assumed Amazon would have fewer evil ideas than Google, seeing as the mechanism for Amazon profiting off the data directly is clear and the mechanism for Google has 100 teams building different products to consume that data in 1000 ways I can't begin to consider. So yeah, given the dichotomy, it seemed like a clear privacy decision to me.
  - etrautmann 2y ago
    But why do we need these in the first place? I have a free Apple home that I can’t find much of a use for aside from being a speaker. Is it that hard to get the weather or turn lights off from your phone? I definitely don’t want to order products from an audio interface. What else am I missing?
    - delecti 2y ago
      What if you aren't currently holding your phone, with it unlocked and the (probably slow to load) app open? What if you don't have switched outlets, and want to turn off lights either a) when the room is still dark, or b) when you're leaving the room? Voice assistants are not a revolution in home living, but lets not go too far in the other direction and ignore that they do still have useful features.
      - danaris 2y ago
        I can generally speak to my iPhone and have it recognize and carry out what I say when it's still in its holster on my hip. Anything that's set up in HomeKit is directly accessible through Siri, and IME most smart-home devices these days support HomeKit, even if they have their own apps as well. So I don't need to have any app open, or my phone unlocked or even in my hand, in order to turn on and off the smart outlets I have in my house. (That said, I also have a HomePod mini, because not everyone in my house keeps their phone on their person at all times—plus it's a nice speaker for the kitchen.)
bsenftner 2y ago
This event has been written on the walls of the USA since those smart speakers and cel phones first appeared. The average US citizen has been conditioned to believe the 'regulation' is 'evil government' and not protection from established abusive practices - that's how regulations get created: someone (usually a corporation) abuses a public resource or good so extremely that laws are written to prevent that. Of course, those laws prevent business from exploiting the situations, so of course business educates people that regulation is evil, and the fake to destroyed education system volunteers to educate that lie too. The USA is a destroyed, hollowed out shell that manufacturers morons, on purpose, because they make desperate employees. The fact that almost no Americans can explain themselves without thinking that act is a lead up to a punishment is very telling, and then their explanation cannot be understood by anyone but a career peer because they only speak in non-communicating jargon, a parrot echoes of talking points from media. No self generated thinking, only echoes of media. It's seriously a giant problem. This nation is kaput intellectually.
- A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 2y ago
  George Carlin said something similar: "Governments don't want a population capable of critical thinking, they want obedient workers, people just smart enough to run the machines and just dumb enough to passively accept their situation." If true, one could argue it is a real issue, because it is not clear that the country's 'management' is intellectually on the high end either.
  - influx 2y ago
    So should I be sending my kids to government schools or home schooling?
    - nkrisc 2y ago
      Depends how capable you are as a teacher and instructor. There are brilliant home-schooled kids and home-schooled kids who can barely read. Government run schools are probably better than the education an average home-school parent/guardian can provide.
sriram_malhar 2y ago
Is there a way to use the Echo as a speaker only?
krsdcbl 2y ago
when technological advancements that actually would allow for BETTER privacy and security, and MORE local-only features are misappropriated for constructing bogus and dishonest justifications to rather erode the least-effort user-minded safeguards that already had been present, it's become plain obvious that the claim to create a product that serves the user has always been a lie. It's about capturing data and influence, and always has been
Tewboo 2y ago
Pretty concerning that "do not send voice recordings" got removed. I had hoped it'd protect my privacy!
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
iamleppert 2y ago
They should just update their ToS to allow any kind of software updates without customer notification. The customer has a license to use the product, they don't own the product! Customers need to understand they don't have a choice in these matters and its useless to notify them and stir up controversy when a ToS update will suffice.
- zulban 2y ago
  "stir up controversy" There is no popular controversy - almost nobody notices or cares when these things happen.
oldjim69 2y ago
Alexa should be banned, and Amazon should be broken up into a dozen or so entities
bentt 2y ago
I know this single bit of news isn't the biggest deal. However we were talking at the dinner table, my wife and two kids and I. We just decided we're done with Amazon and Alexa. My wife has always been skeeved out by the devices, and I've reassured her that the wake word is the only time it's recording. Whether this is true or not, it's obvious that the company can no longer be trusted. So yeah we're just going to get a cardboard box, put it in the kitchen, and pile all the Alexa stuff into it and Ebay it. We'll use the $21 we get for all the devices to buy ice cream or something.
- ffhhj 2y ago
  We should make AI generated conversations to overload their surveilance.
- tiahura 2y ago
  Seems kinda paranoid. I've yet to meet anyone, who's met anyone, who's been harmed by not turning that setting off, or been harmed by any assistant listening.
  - ziddoap 2y ago
    >I've yet to meet anyone, who's met anyone, who's been harmed by not turning that setting off I've yet to meet anyone, who's met anyone, who's been harmed in an airplane accident. It still happens. (No, I'm not saying that Alexa data sharing is equal to physical harm in an airplane accident -- just highlighting that this is a silly argument).
  - diggan 2y ago
    You're never met anyone who been able to prove harm. If your insurance payments increases 5% because Amazon sold the data to some broker, who then sold it to your insurance company, who figures you're living a slightly more risky life because you go outside 7% more than the average person, how would you even begin to prove this?
    - edoceo 2y ago
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
getlawgdon 2y ago
And into the trash it goes! (electronics recycling, chill.) ((actually, im going to take it apart first.))
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
sprayk 2y ago
It would be interesting to put an Alexa (or another voice assistant device) in a space with only an audio playback device around to keep it company, with that audio playback device playing sounds associated with various crimes (but never saying the trigger word obviously). I wonder if there are any crimes it thinks it would hear that would result in a police visit. If police were called as a result of this setup, would this constitute a false police report on Amazon's behalf? In the US, because I'm at least reasonably confident that such a setup comes nowhere near any exceptions to free speech protections here.
baskinator 2y ago
What's a good alternative to a FireTV with an alexa-enabled remote?
wnevets 2y ago
I keep being vindicated by banning these type of devices from my home.
reverendsteveii 2y ago
"You know that boundary that we agreed upon a while back? We're gonna violate that boundary now. This is not an opportunity to negotiate a new agreement, we're gonna do whatever we want to you because we're big and you're little." Stuff like this is why I've cut amazon out of my life entirely. No more new devices, no more new purchases, cancelled prime, all of it gone.
- bitmasher9 2y ago
  Amazon is rarely the cheapest way to have a package delivered to your home in less than two days. You can often find people much cheaper if you don’t mind waiting a week or two. I reduced Amazon by 90% when I realized how much money I was wasting over 70-120 packages a year.
  - azinman2 2y ago
    What’s the alternative? Everyone else has you pay for shipping, and it’s slower.
    - reverendsteveii 2y ago
      To my mind that's just what my privacy costs and I'm willing to pay it. Others might not feel the same way, and they're welcome to pawn their data for free fast shipping.
    - wizzwizz4 2y ago
      Everyone has you pay for shipping. Amazon just lies about it, and has contracts that prevent people from selling their wares anywhere else cheaper.
      - azinman2 2y ago
        Amazon spreads the cost across everyone (who is prime). The biggest users pay the least for shipping.
  - gundmc 2y ago
pete1302 2y ago
I was here, I saw the crime.........
seltzered_ 2y ago
Related, here's a comment from 2019 from at the time of writing from someone claiming to be a principal engineer at Amazon, talking about how "I'm proud of the approach that Amazon takes to privacy. Privacy of customer data is considered the most important thing to Amazon, and this customer obsession (the #1 leadership principle) permeates the organization." The comment further talks about the mute button on the original Amazon Echo (i.e. Alexa voice assistant) being hardware-based : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19208670 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19208670
- ffhhj 2y ago
  We should make AI generated conversations to overload their surveilance.
  - CamperBob2 2y ago
    It's all fun and games until the import brokerage calls to ask where to deliver the 850,000 rubber dog turds you ordered.
    - mrighele 2y ago
      Or the 28,000 tons of coal [1]. Unrelated to LLM (except for the part where I asked Gemini to find the link) but somewhat relevant. [1] https://thedailywtf.com/articles/Special-Delivery https://thedailywtf.com/articles/Special-Delivery
- mintplant 2y ago
  Heh. We have a Nest Mini at home that someone gave us, that we use as a smart speaker. Before setting it up, I popped it open and physically scraped out the MEMS microphones. Now that's a hardware mute.
  - daghamm 2y ago
    I like this approach. But can you safely do this with multi room devices?
smrtinsert 2y ago
I unplugged Alexa after a certain guy interfered with a publications op wd section. Doubt I'll ever turn it back on.
hn_acc1 2y ago
Got a free echo dot (not sure they're even supported anymore?) a long time ago through some promotion. Hooked it up with a separate account to let the kids play music that we uploaded on-demand. Then, they took away the "play user-uploaded music" part of it. Probably haven't plugged it in in 5+ years - definitely going to the landfill as soon as I remember..
boopmaster 2y ago
How does this comply with COPPA? Amazon was fined $25mm for failing to comply. Is the setting available, but obfuscated under "a child profile"?
chmod775 2y ago
"North Korea reducing number of approved hair styles by one." Is that really the hill to fight over, or even care about? If you have that thing in your house, you already lost the war.
sotix 2y ago
How do I explain the impacts of this change to my grandmother who has become reliant on it to remind her to take her medication?
Habgdnv 2y ago
The first thing i can think of is this: https://www.5snb.club/posts/2023/do-not-stab/ https://www.5snb.club/posts/2023/do-not-stab/ I never had Alexa and imagine I go now and buy one device, the first thing I can expect from it is to record me? Because I never opted out?

957 points by luu 2y ago

Discussion (233 points, 2 days ago, 103 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43367536 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43367536

DevX101 2y ago

Now would be a good time to have a functional FTC commissioner. Doing a bait and switch like on a product that was sold with a set of features should be illegal. If I buy a car and the sales guy stops by my house the next day to take back the wheels, it would rightfully be seen as ridiculous.

amelius 2y ago
I'd be surprised if FTC had any teeth left after DOGE was done with them.
protocolture 2y ago
[flagged]
- benrutter 2y ago
  To continue the metaphor, shouldn't someone close down or regulate "wheel stealing jimmies wheel theft funded auto retailer" so that they don't keep stealing people's wheels?
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- Waterluvian 2y ago
  “Reputation” as a free market remedy is such a poor solution, though, as it lags behind the events that change it. A badly tuned PID loop is better than nothing, I guess.
  - Paul-Craft 2y ago
    Pardon my French, but fuck "free market" remedies. The actual "free market remedy" here should theoretically be a lawsuit. But, you and I both know that Amazon's TOS are locked down pretty hard to pre-empt this sort of thing. Even if they weren't, it would take either an individual with deep pockets to pursue such a suit, or it would have to be a class action. Except that neither of those would be likely to succeed, because there's no law that says once a company offers a feature or feature toggle that they have to continue to offer it for the life of the product. And, if there were, that, by definition, wouldn't be a "free market" solution. The solution here is regulation. Edit: I forgot to mention that a lawsuit would take years to resolve. Meanwhile, Amazon would continue to benefit from their unfair tactics.
  - protocolture 2y ago
    This is actually part of our (Australia's) Australian consumer protection laws, which are considered pretty beastly. Its simply a test of reasonableness. If you had another source of information about a likely fault and you purchased anyway, it can reduce your protection. If you have a reasonable expectation that a brand is really good and often lasts 7 plus years it can also go the other way. Netting you government guaranteed replacements by manufacturers far longer than their competitors.
- observationist 2y ago
  They aren't wheel stealing jimmies, but they're definitely data railing bit bangers itching for their next fix. I think choosing to do business with Amazon comes with the same sort of reasonable assumptions. Lie down with dogs, and all that. Y'all got some more of that data...?
- therealpygon 2y ago
  Some people will say just about anything to blame the consumer. You know, like “it’s your own fault for buying a thing from a company.”
  - isoprophlex 2y ago
    Yes! You knew this was coming, why didn't you buy something from any other huge monopolistic tech-cloud-everything-store?! Oh wait...
    - protocolture 2y ago
      Why didnt you just buy an ESP32 or Arduino option. Or like, not purchase the in house recording device. YMMV.
- simion314 2y ago
  >Yes but reputation is a factor. If you bought that car from wheel stealing jimmies wheel theft funded auto retailer you might need to shoulder some of the blame. You think the same for food and medicine? remove the "evil" regulations and let the reputation be a factor and every individual should do their research ?
  - protocolture 2y ago
    This is actually part of our (Australia's) Australian consumer protection laws, which are considered pretty beastly. Its simply a test of reasonableness. If you had another source of information about a likely fault and you purchased anyway, it can reduce your protection. If you have a reasonable expectation that a brand is really good and often lasts 7 plus years it can also go the other way. Netting you government guaranteed replacements by manufacturers far longer than their competitors. I wasn't applying any free market assumptions here, but the (very popular) regulatory framework I already live under.
- imoreno 2y ago
  It doesn't sound like a good idea to blame the victim more if the offender is a repeat offender. If anything repeat offenders should be treated harsher.
imoreno 2y ago
Don't these usually come with ToS or something that has you agreeing that they can change the service any time?
- yaur 2y ago
  When you buy a car there is a lot of required paperwork that they don't really give you time to read, so maybe.
  - briandear 2y ago
    That’s generally loan paperwork. And you can take all the time you want to read.
  - mort96 2y ago
    They're not gonna refuse to sell you the car if you take the time to read the paperwork. And it's probably a large enough amount of money that you should take the time to at least skim it.
  - throwaway48476 2y ago
    You shouldn't sign things you don't read. Cue the centipad.
- Taek 2y ago
  ToS have limits, people in a practical sense aren't really able to read and understand the ToS of every product they buy, which means a ToS can only go so far in the ways it allows companies to be predatory against consumers.
  - hsbauauvhabzb 2y ago
    Has that been tested in court? I would have thought a user wilfully or negligently misreading a ToS would not be a good legal defence (not that I agree with how I think the law would play out)
    - 2y ago
evrimoztamur 2y ago
America's lack of customer protection will hurt continue hurting its people. Ladies and gentlemen, please do something about it.
- labster 2y ago
  I’m afraid the only thing we can do at this point is gun for an economic depression, ride out three years of that just like with Hoover (1929–33), and upgrade to New Deal 2.0 beta. There’s no amount of protests that can convince the median Trump voter that anything is wrong in America unless it affects him personally. And no amount of protest will convince Trump that he has made a single mistake in his entire life.
  - xmprt 2y ago
    I should have a bit more faith but at this point I feel like the median voter might see their world getting worse but still be convinced somehow that Democrats are behind it because Republicans have their messaging on point and Democrats are doing the equivalent of a silent protest.
    - zonkerdonker 2y ago
      Turns out, propoganda really does work. Just takes a few billionaires, a few hostile nations states, and some exploitable algorithms
      - alabastervlog 2y ago
        And a multi-decade effort to shift courts toward a certain flavor of right wing perspective, so you can get a ruling like Citizens United, among others.
      - amelius 2y ago
        We need to have a close look at free speech, especially now that techniques from psychological warfare are being used, not only in political propaganda but even in advertisements.
z3t4 2y ago
It was not yours to begin with. Think of it as a service. Just give it back and go to a competitor. Ohh wait, there are no competitors! Monopolies suck! Especially if they are world-wide.
- firtoz 2y ago
  There are competitors, even open source ones
  - beezlewax 2y ago
    These are not viable options for the vast majority of users. Most peppe don't have a clue how to set up open source options, let alone set them up with usable hardware. The average consumer wants out of the box solutions that don't require a degree in Computer Science to use.
    - zettabomb 2y ago
      Home Assistant is getting far easier to set up than you might expect, especially because they now do in fact have out of the box devices. It's not quite as ridiculously simple, not quite yet, but they're rapidly improving and it won't be long until they're better than Amazon Alexa/Google Home/other commercial solutions.
      - serial_dev 2y ago
        What are these "out of the box devices"? I looked into things a couple of years ago, and back then it was all too much effort to set things up and keep things running and integrated, so I just went with Smart Life stuff from AliExpress. But would love to have Home Assistant if it means I don't need to spend weekends just reading docs, pairing, setting things up, connecting stuff...
        zimpenfish 2y ago
        I've got HA set up (nearly 2 years now with a whole host of things connected: Bluetooth, WIFI, iOS devices, Zigbee, etc.) and I think I'm only just getting to the point now of two weekends worth of reading docs (primarily because their documentation seems to be written by developers rather than technical writers). Most time I've spent tinkering with HA was modifying their embedded `mastodon.py` to make it work with GotoSocial (but I think someone upstreamed a fix for that and it's no longer required.)
atoav 2y ago
Yeah but the ridiculously anti-consumer US has opted to elect politicians with so much billionaire miney, they'd rather get their moneys worth. Who needs anti-coruption laws with a society like that? And who expects not to get fucked by coorporations when they have lost every incentive not to? And the free market isn't the incentive you think it is when your're the monipolists that can crush or buy out the competition.
jonathanstrange 2y ago
IANAL but I thought bait and switch is illegal? It definitely is in the EU. Is it not in the US?
- DFHippie 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - kevincox 2y ago
    It effectively died a long time before that.
    - DFHippie 2y ago
      I have no idea what you mean. The executive branch didn't routinely ignore court orders and disregard the constraints set out in the Constitution before that date. The government broke laws, but it was a scandal when it did and people -- the perpetrators, not random civil servants doing the jobs they were hired to do -- got fired for it and sometimes jailed. Now it's just another day that ends in y. In theory Biden could have taken the SCOTUS grant of immunity to disregard the Constitution as Musk and Trump are doing, but he didn't. Trump's taking power was a step change. We still have laws, but the executive branch under Musk/Trump regards them as mere words on a page. They bind others, not them.
- amelius 2y ago
  It is illegal, but suing is too costly.
Cthulhu_ 2y ago
And yet this is what Tesla did. They sold a car and added a surcharge for full self-driving as a future option, or they added it as an upgrade option. But they never delivered. That's like buying a car with the promise of wheels but the wheels are never delivered (except you actually need the wheels etc). I'm amazed there haven't been major class-action lawsuits raised against Tesla yet, both from consumers for not delivering what is promised (full self-driving), and from shareholders for not delivering what was announced years ago (semi, new roadster). And from shareholders for artificially inflating the stock value of Tesla to use as leverage to buy Tesla and / or fund SpaceX.
- szundi 2y ago
  That’s different, delivering later (for example probably never) is not the same. This is about removing a privacy feature.
- rusk 2y ago
  Correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t Tesla floating on a cushion of private Saudi wealth?
  - johnhaltonx21 2y ago
    that's rivian ...
    - SideburnsOfDoom 2y ago
      I thought that was Lucid Motors. Source e.g. https://eletric-vehicles.com/lucid/saudi-pif-now-controls-64-3-of-lucid-motors-sec-filing-reveals/ https://eletric-vehicles.com/lucid/saudi-pif-now-controls-64...
  - iamacyborg 2y ago
    Funding confirmed.
TZubiri 2y ago
Chill man. Just send back the product and ask for a refund.
- disattention 2y ago
  This is a kind of stoic virtue signal that may make people feel more mature for agreeing, but fails to fix issues while mocking people who try to make a difference. It's ok for people to feel things, and it's ok for people to want laws addressing anti-consumer behavior.
  - robertlagrant 2y ago
    > This is a kind of stoic virtue signal that may make people feel more mature for agreeing, but fails to fix issues while mocking people who try to make a difference. None of these comments are fixing issues or trying to make a difference. Sending the product back is a really good idea, especially if this change in terms means you can get a refund even if you've had it a long time.
    - flawn 2y ago
      Still not an argument against people being allowed to be mad regarding this. You just can't give a fuck about data privacy and expect people to not oppose this and speak up.
      - robertlagrant 2y ago
        > being allowed to be mad No one can stop you being mad. No one's saying it's not allowed. It's possible someone is still young enough to misinterpret adult interactions as parental fiat, but it's not the case.
    - unethical_ban 2y ago
      "We should have a framework that prohibits companies from selling a product with a certain agreement, then changing the agreement unilaterally" That isn't trying to make a difference? Excuse me? Read that back.
_heimdall 2y ago
The car is no longer usable without the wheels, I believe the argument for Alexa would be that the core functionality is still usable without the privacy setting. I don't see why we would need the FTC to fix this. If someone bought Alexa from Amazon and honestly expected it to be privacy focused, they just made a mistake and can learn from it. Problems don't always have to be solved by running to the biggest authority that can be found and demanding they solve it for you.
- A_D_E_P_T 2y ago
  "Do not send voice recordings" back to Amazon HQ =/= "privacy focused." It's arguably a necessary feature for minimal privacy in one's home, and I expect that a lot of people bought those devices with that in mind. If the FTC doesn't fix this kind of spontaneous downgrade, I'm not sure what they're for at all. If somebody falls for a criminal's fraud, I suppose "they just made a mistake and can learn from it"? No need for anybody else, or any authority, to do anything?
  - _heimdall 2y ago
    Jumping to criminal fraud feels a bit hasty in this context. It'd be important to know whether Amazon ever marketed this feature specifically, promised privacy, defined what that privacy they promised meant, and whether there's any legal argument to be made that this setting should be considered core to the basic functionality of Alexa. IMO no one should have ever expected Alexa, or products like it, to be private. The meet fact that it has a microphone, and potentially a camera, and promises to respond simply by you saying something to it means they're always listening. I don't really care what they say they'll do with the recordings, I care what they can do with the recordings without me ever knowing about it.

Legend2440 2y ago

TL;DR Alexa will be cloud-only very soon because it'll be powered by an LLM, which is too big to run on a smart speaker.

gleenn 2y ago
While the reason you suggest might be a good one, the repercussions of this change are clearly large. Unknowing customers now have their voice recordings sent to the cloud whoch could be leaked, have law enforcement get a warrant to take it from Amazon, or for it to be abused directly by Amazon. Those are huge. They might just have a good scapegoat.
- jamiek88 2y ago
  The law enforcement point is an excellent one. They were already caught giving ring footage without warrants.
- _ink_ 2y ago
  Yeah, but why do people still trust corporations? It's not like this has happened for the first time. Quite the opposite actually. For profit corporations seem to have no moral compass whatsoever and will do anything do increase the margin. People should finally start to act accordingly.
  - acuozzo 2y ago
    > Yeah, but why do people still trust corporations? When most of your time is spent ensuring your material needs are met, then whatever time remains is precious. Telling someone hustling two different "gig economy" jobs sixteen hours per day to give a shit about the long term privacy implications of the stupid smart speaker he got his kid for Christmas is asking… a lot. This is why change through popular political action peaked in the US in the late 1960s/early 1970s. People, on average, had more leisure time on their hands than ever before. More leisure time ⇒ more time to think, organize, unify, and give a shit beyond the immediate here & now.
- lynx97 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

ChrisArchitect 2y ago

[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43365424 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43365424 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43367536 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43367536

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

cphoover 2y ago

Is all audio up to “Alexa” still processed on device?

Cthulhu_ 2y ago
It should, but as far as I know you have zero guarantees about that. I just hope there's privacy organizations and / or hackers that continuously verify these claims. Of course, Amazon can push an update at any time to change this, at which point it'll be too late to think "hmm, 1984 warned us about this".
- iLoveOncall 2y ago
  The insane cost to process all this is the guarantee you need.

timwis 2y ago

I switched to Home Assistant a couple months ago (because I didn't like the idea of my voice being sent to amazon constantly) and haven't looked back! Soo much more you can do (including immediately using an LLM, if you like, whether in the cloud or local), and so much more control.

Mountain_Skies 2y ago
Home Assistant is a great example of the amazing things the open source community is capable of doing. Hopefully they get the color version stuff worked out. It's too bad it appears that most of Amazon's hardware devices can't be turned to the good side and made to work with Home Assistant.
- timwis 2y ago
  What do you mean color version? As an aside, I get what you mean in the context of my earlier comment, but just to clarify for anyone reading, you can use alexa and Google home devices with home assistant (eg to send commands and as media players, I believe), but you can't "deamazon"/"degoogle" them and just use the hardware with home assistant, which would be great if we could!
  - serial_dev 2y ago
    I'd love to de-amazon (neuter) my Alexa's, and somehow flash custom firmware on it. We have some devices around the house, and switching to the linked Home Assistant Voice would be a significant expense now.
    - timwis 2y ago
      You can get an atom echo for $13, if that helps: https://www.home-assistant.io/voice_control/thirteen-usd-voice-remote/ https://www.home-assistant.io/voice_control/thirteen-usd-voi...
  - wccrawford 2y ago
    Home Assistant has physical hardware labeled "green" and "yellow". Beyond that, I assume there's some confusion about what each can and can't do? I certainly can't remember which is which... But I don't actually own one.

october8140 2y ago

Our longstanding privacy commitment with Siri https://www.apple.com/jo/newsroom/2025/01/our-longstanding-privacy-commitment-with-siri/ https://www.apple.com/jo/newsroom/2025/01/our-longstanding-p...

BiteCode_dev 2y ago
Yeah right. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jul/26/apple-contractors-regularly-hear-confidential-details-on-siri-recordings https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jul/26/apple-con...
- Shank 2y ago
  With all due respect, the link you’ve linked to is reddit, and the underlying story is a 500. Can you provide an available source or alternative, since this one seems broken?
  - BiteCode_dev 2y ago
    Updated link but it's getting hard to find them. Eg: I can't find any link about the home button scandal anymore. People will forget about all the wrong doing and the PR will enventually win.
- jisnsm 2y ago
  Your link does not contradict his.
  - randunel 2y ago
    The link is still relevant, because apple's statement is posted in a manner antithetical to the article when, in fact, apple does the same thing. The main difference is that apple didn't allow its users to have such a setting in the first place, so amazon used to be better. Until now, when they're equally bad in this respect.
ohgr 2y ago

nextts 2y ago

Alexa: we here for you

AndyMcConachie 2y ago

Am I supposed to have sympathy for people who bought a home snooping device now realizing they're going to be snooped on?

caseyy 2y ago
Yes. If, as a culture, we don’t stand up for consumer rights when a seller mistreats others, no one will stand up for us either.
- dns_snek 2y ago
  I agree with the principle but frankly it doesn't apply here. Privacy conscious people have been sounding the alarm about these devices since their invention and the overwhelming majority of consumers typically respond to those warnings with dismissal or ridicule. There's only so much sympathy and support and standing up for others that I can fit into any given day and I'd rather give it to people who weren't warned about the dangers beforehand.
  - orphea 2y ago
    You probably overestimate how loud are these "Privacy conscious people". I bet if you ask ordinary Joe about privacy concerns with voice assistant devices, he'd tell he had no clue.
    - dns_snek 2y ago
      I'm just extrapolating from my own experience of telling people about various privacy concerns. 99% of the time it's either "I don't care", "I have nothing to hide", or "you're being paranoid".
    - antisthenes 2y ago
      > I bet if you ask ordinary Joe about privacy concerns with voice assistant devices, he'd tell he had no clue. Because Ordinary Joe is willfully ignorant, not because no one was shouting about privacy concerns.

DeathArrow 2y ago

If I buy a car and, after a while, the guy who sold me the car comes in the middle of the night and takes the wheels, isn't it theft?

hiccuphippo 2y ago
If you buy the steering wheel of a car and rent the rest of the car and then the owner comes in the middle of the night and takes the wheels, is it theft?
- KeplerBoy 2y ago
  It's certainly a violation of the rental terms.
  - HPsquared 2y ago
    It's on page 52.
    - randunel 2y ago
      Actually, it's first implied on page 23, but it becomes clear in conjunction with the articles on pages 48 and 49. The article you're referring to on page 52 has provisions regarding confusion and/or impersonation, following the previously mentioned positive affirmation. You need the full context of the T&C's, don't cherry pick.
  - nicce 2y ago
    Rental terms were 1000 page book.
    - blitzar 2y ago
      That's the terms from when you rented the car, we have updated the terms since then.
    - DeathArrow 2y ago

asdf6969 2y ago

The PM who asked for this deserves to be arrested

Mountain_Skies 2y ago

Always assumed Amazon was doing whatever it wanted with Alexa powered devices. I used to have one in the kitchen that I used mainly for timers. The mute button stayed on 99.999% of the time. Needing to unmute to start or stop timers did make it a bit less useful but it was fine. I watched a breakdown of that model of Echo where it looked like the mute was indeed at the hardware level. My EE knowledge is limited but good enough I could follow along. Amazon probably could hide some hidden way to get around the hardware switch if they wanted but the risk for them seems higher than the risk to me, which never really was more than they'd hear me belch while cooking.

ddmma 2y ago

My first tought was in this direction: Amazon’s Echo hardware can be hacked to run your own local voice assistant that never touches the cloud. This involves replacing or modifying the Echo’s firmware to break free of Amazon’s servers, then installing offline voice recognition and AI tools on your local network.

Mountain_Skies 2y ago
Do you have a link? Last time I looked a couple of years ago, Amazon's hardware was too locked down to be used for anything other than Amazon's services.
- ddmma 2y ago
  ... becoming quite interesting topic the more you dig in https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Amazon_Echo_Dot_2nd_gen_(amazon-biscuit) https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Amazon_Echo_Dot_2nd_gen_(...
tummler 2y ago
Do you have any details on this? With a quick search I could only find some older attempts at rooting but no custom firmware.
- ddmma 2y ago
  Here is GPT "deep research" on this topic on Repurposing Amazon Echo for a Local AI Assistant https://airadiohost.com/alexa.html https://airadiohost.com/alexa.html

rvense 2y ago

Thinking about that picture from a (UK?) hospital breakroom with the sign that said "Please turn off the Echo before discussing sensitive patient information."

Cthulhu_ 2y ago
I will never have anything voice controlled in my house if I can help it. I mean I have them but they're all turned off. Except for the teenager's iphone, but we troll him by saying stuff like "Hey Siri, how do I stop being annoying?" or something like that.
- probably_wrong 2y ago
  I am fully in favor of team "I'm never sending my voice anywhere", but assuming a locally-hosted voice control I'll say: voice is a great interface around the house. If I'm preparing to leave and wonder whether I should bring a jacket, yelling "what's the weather like?" is much more convenient than taking out my phone (or go pick it up from the other room), unlock it, go to the home screen, open the weather app, wait 2-3 seconds and then scroll to the full forecast. I'm not saying that checking my phone is an annoyance - it's still much better than checking the newspaper. But being able to keep my uninterrupted focus in what I'm doing is the type of luxury one only notices once it's gone.
  - smitelli 2y ago
    I've never liked any answer I've gotten to questions like "what's the weather like." I look at the forecast in my weather app -- the whole fullscreen thing -- and follow some sort of mental algorithm that I can't fully specify to arrive at the conclusion about what to wear/bring. The spoken data feels like it's missing something, or maybe it's just transmitted in a sequence that my brain can't work with. It's not that I don't trust it, exactly. It's that I can't use it for the task I'm trying to do. Never could. I have this problem with a lot of voice interfaces, and it suggests to me that either a) they're not very good, or b) my brain is not designed for that kind of UX.

twy1212895 2y ago

I still remember the time when devices worked for you rather than against you. But people will put up with anything. You could literally send a note that any Alexa will be equipped with 2kg of Semtex, to be triggered in case of wrongthink in your own home. People would still use Alexa and rationalize the feature.

victor9000 2y ago

Are these devices really worth the hassle?

ricardobeat 2y ago
What hassle?
- victor9000 2y ago
  Having to weigh the pros and cons of eroding privacy protections, where the service is placing its own needs ahead of those already specified by the user. For me the answer is no, but I'm wondering what people get from these devices that make this a worthwhile trade off. I feel like a mobile phone gives me most of the utility, just through a different UX
  - ricardobeat 2y ago
    I use it mostly to play music, get the weather report. We used to play Song Quiz but that is not available anymore. None of this has any privacy implications (assuming it’s not listening in all the time!).
  - jabroni_salad 2y ago
    > Having to weigh the pros and cons of eroding privacy protections The typical consumer doesn't do that, at all. It's a nearly universal blindspot. Here's a fun Q. Do you know how many apps on your phone have business relationships with Gravy Analytics? Why not? The personal detriment is much worse than Amazon.
literalAardvark 2y ago
Not even close. They're slightly worse than average music speakers that also make funny noises sometimes.
Cthulhu_ 2y ago
I know at least two UK based elderly people who use Alexa on the regular for various reasons. Of course, the device struggles with their accents frequently but that doesn't seem to be enough of a deterrent. For a lot of people, voice commands are easier than figuring out a device.

fergie 2y ago

Mindblowing that people actually use these things

MrMcCall 2y ago
People still play the lottery, which one of William Gibson's characters in "The Peripheral" calls "the stupidity tax".
Mashimo 2y ago
People still smoke, don't use enough sunscreen and drink alcohol. "People" don't care.

qwertox 2y ago

What if you bought the device just because it had this option? I have an Echo Dot 2nd Gen which I used for around two months, until it once failed at a command of playing back a radio station but instead started to continuously stream my audio to Amazon, for hours until I noticed it (bandwidth monitoring with InfluxDB and Grafana). Now none of my devices (phones and tablets) listen for hotwords, but at this point there's no guarantee that my Pixel phone isn't listening in all the time. That feature where your phone listens to water or an alarm is what I found too sketchy, as if they have been playing around with on-device constant sound recognition for too long and then come up with some silly reason to make you enable it.

_heimdall 2y ago
At least legally, it likely matters more whether the feature was marketed specifically and whether its considered required for the core functionality of the device. I think the answer would be no to both, but IANAL.

notachatbot123 2y ago

Is this international or USA only?

croes 2y ago
According to Amazon Germany it's US only

voidUpdate 2y ago

Do people really enjoy talking to their home devices? I've always felt really awkward telling my phone to do something, especially in public, like I don't feel like everyone else needs to hear about what I want things to do, so I just prefer to type something. I know there are some people for whom its an accessibility thing, where they have difficulty typing or reading, but I've never really seen the point for average joe/josephine

itscrush 2y ago
Yes folks do and I can't understand it either. Have asked / talked through their rationale but frankly humans are irrational is my clear takeaway. I experience it mostly when folks are prompting search in family settings. These usually overlap with the no-earbuds watch-videos crowd while others are reading / napping, etc.
hiccuphippo 2y ago
I've had colleagues tell me their young kids try to ask Alexa to play music in school or other places. There's a future when talking with your devices will be normal and people will be puzzled when it doesn't work.

phito 2y ago

I will never understand why anyone would ever want to use voice assistants (other than for accessibility reasons). It is so gimmicky and awkward to use. Android Auto does not even understand the word "no".

jbaber 2y ago
If they worked and were local, why not?
charcircuit 2y ago
People don't always have their hands free or are able to look at a screen. Not everyone is good at typing.
- Cthulhu_ 2y ago
  The commenter did mention "except for accessibility reasons".
  - charcircuit 2y ago
    If you consider any advantage of voice as an input modality to be an accessibility reason, then by definition there are no non accessibility reasons to use voice.
  - 0xTJ 2y ago
    Voice input while driving isn't an accessibility reason, but it's an important safety feature. Unfortunately Google's Assistant has only gotten worse, nearing uselessness in anything but setting driving directions.
dwayne_dibley 2y ago
This reads more like, 'they're not very good' rather than 'people don't want them'. They could be hugely useful, and even in their current capacity I find are very much so. I find it maddening that my google home, hasn't got a single bit better in the 8 years since it's release, and it's now missing some of my favourite features it had at launch. The whole market has been stagnate ever since they convinced me to put a microphone in my house, it's almost as if that was their end game.

croes 2y ago

US only

serial_dev 2y ago

How much AI computational power do I need to "set a timer for 8 minutes"? It's all just a sham to take away the little privacy you have left.

kleiba 2y ago
It's probably a mix. The computational power to run a dialog system is one thing but it's also just more convenient in terms of maintainance to have the system be completely server side. Of course, getting your sweet voice for future training also helps!
- charcircuit 2y ago
  >Of course, getting your sweet voice for future training also helps! There is a setting to disable having your voice saved along with options to automatically delete it after a number of months.
  - mmarquezs 2y ago
    Ok, but then unfortunately we have the trust issue. Do we trust them, to: a) do it and not just lie about it totally or partially, and we find out later on when somebody does eventually report it/find out/investigate, if ever happens. b) even if they intend to really do it, that they do it properly. If it doesn't reach them, you are 100% sure the data is not there and not at risk (from their end of course). Otherwise is just let's hope for the big corporation with optimizing for most profitability for their stackholders as main objective to do "their best at protecting it's consumers data and privacy". Which sure... hurting consumers and getting fines aint' great, but not always ends up in less profitability than doing the right thing from the beginning. Of course... this is not a big deal compared with other stuff, there are alternatives and it's not something you really depend on day to day. Compared with other stuff that is for sure.
TZubiri 2y ago
We have become absolutely spoiled, now talking with a machine feels like something an arm chip should be able to handle

wigster 2y ago

at least the people in power can be trusted not to abuse the situation /s

mihaaly 2y ago

User hostility level +1 But that is of no problem, users seem to enjoy being abused, repeatedly, so they continue giving their money to the organization to come up with further marketing startegy (smaless bullshit lies) to introduce the next one never asked for abuse in the next company output that solves very marginal or no problem of their life.

A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 2y ago
I will admit that of all the surveillance technology, this one had me scratching my head, because, while I accept I am not exactly a target audience, I just did not really believe people choose to not just use those devices, but spend money on them. Some time ago, we got free alexa echo dots from contractor. They sold on ebay in record time. My hand is clearly not on the pulse of America.

jpl56 2y ago

Looking forward to the Louis Rossmann video. It may be as long as the fishy one, there is so much to tell about how we're getting effed...

willwade 2y ago

Now is the time to look at Open Home Foundation and their Voice Assistant device which does Speech Processing offline.. Donate! Buy their stuff!

randmeerkat 2y ago
> Now is the time to look at Open Home Foundation and their Voice Assistant device which does Speech Processing offline.. Donate! Buy their stuff! What about just not using voice assistants period? Do we really need third party cameras and microphones in every part of our homes?

Juliate 2y ago

That's called a breach of contract. A class action here would be a massive hit.

Codefather_AI 2y ago

[dead]

everdrive 2y ago

People don't really care about privacy, it's as simple as that. Yes, they worry about privacy, and complain about violations of privacy. But if they cared, they never would have purchased this product in the first place. There are bits of technology which violate privacy, but are extremely difficult to fully avoid: Social Media, (I know a lot of HN isn't on it, but how about most of your family and friends?) smart phones, the surveillance of modern stores, etc. All of those are terrifically difficult to fully avoid or mitigate. But not buying an echo is effortless and free. There's no cost associated with not buying one, and not spending the time to set it up. But, despite the fact that it literally costs nothing, these have sold quite well, and if folks haven't got an echo they've got a Google Home, or a Siri, or something else. They just don't care about privacy, and companies know this.

whiplash451 2y ago
This kind of apathic statement is not very useful. By your logic, we should not care about climate change either. "People don't care about privacy" doesn't mean that regulators and the tech community should not lead a charge.
- dangisautism 2y ago
  [dead]
- _heimdall 2y ago
  People should care about climate change, that's different from whether people do care about it. More importantly though, those that do care should do as much as they're willing to do to help avoid making it worse. For some that means choosing to only buy products made with natural materials, growing/raising their own food, drinking rain water, etc. For others that means not using plastic straws. There's no perfect answer and no one really knows what will happen in the future or how to best change it. Regulators fall into this camp too, they don't know the future and they can't accurately predict precisely what must be don't. Expecting this of them is a fools errand and demanding everyone do what they say is oppressive at best.

martin_a 2y ago

Hm! I like the sound quality of my Echo Dots, so I'd be fine to keep them in "dumb mode" (or even disconnecting their microphones physically), but setting a timer etc. is a useful feature too, when you are running around the house. How good is the sound of the Home Assistant Speakers and can they be used like bluetooth speakers, too? How about multi room sound? Any recommendations on a good solution that focusses on that music part and is not likely to be a victim of getting bricked by a software update?

aktuel 2y ago

I would like to meet the person who bought an Alexa device at any point in time thinking "now here is finally the privacy protecting AI assistant I have been waiting for."

re5i5tor 2y ago
[flagged]
elif 2y ago
raises hand There are exactly two companies which make a device capable of actually integrating with every home automation and voice control, so given the options, I assumed Amazon would have fewer evil ideas than Google, seeing as the mechanism for Amazon profiting off the data directly is clear and the mechanism for Google has 100 teams building different products to consume that data in 1000 ways I can't begin to consider. So yeah, given the dichotomy, it seemed like a clear privacy decision to me.
- etrautmann 2y ago
  But why do we need these in the first place? I have a free Apple home that I can’t find much of a use for aside from being a speaker. Is it that hard to get the weather or turn lights off from your phone? I definitely don’t want to order products from an audio interface. What else am I missing?
  - delecti 2y ago
    What if you aren't currently holding your phone, with it unlocked and the (probably slow to load) app open? What if you don't have switched outlets, and want to turn off lights either a) when the room is still dark, or b) when you're leaving the room? Voice assistants are not a revolution in home living, but lets not go too far in the other direction and ignore that they do still have useful features.
    - danaris 2y ago
      I can generally speak to my iPhone and have it recognize and carry out what I say when it's still in its holster on my hip. Anything that's set up in HomeKit is directly accessible through Siri, and IME most smart-home devices these days support HomeKit, even if they have their own apps as well. So I don't need to have any app open, or my phone unlocked or even in my hand, in order to turn on and off the smart outlets I have in my house. (That said, I also have a HomePod mini, because not everyone in my house keeps their phone on their person at all times—plus it's a nice speaker for the kitchen.)

bsenftner 2y ago

This event has been written on the walls of the USA since those smart speakers and cel phones first appeared. The average US citizen has been conditioned to believe the 'regulation' is 'evil government' and not protection from established abusive practices - that's how regulations get created: someone (usually a corporation) abuses a public resource or good so extremely that laws are written to prevent that. Of course, those laws prevent business from exploiting the situations, so of course business educates people that regulation is evil, and the fake to destroyed education system volunteers to educate that lie too. The USA is a destroyed, hollowed out shell that manufacturers morons, on purpose, because they make desperate employees. The fact that almost no Americans can explain themselves without thinking that act is a lead up to a punishment is very telling, and then their explanation cannot be understood by anyone but a career peer because they only speak in non-communicating jargon, a parrot echoes of talking points from media. No self generated thinking, only echoes of media. It's seriously a giant problem. This nation is kaput intellectually.

A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 2y ago
George Carlin said something similar: "Governments don't want a population capable of critical thinking, they want obedient workers, people just smart enough to run the machines and just dumb enough to passively accept their situation." If true, one could argue it is a real issue, because it is not clear that the country's 'management' is intellectually on the high end either.
- influx 2y ago
  So should I be sending my kids to government schools or home schooling?
  - nkrisc 2y ago
    Depends how capable you are as a teacher and instructor. There are brilliant home-schooled kids and home-schooled kids who can barely read. Government run schools are probably better than the education an average home-school parent/guardian can provide.

sriram_malhar 2y ago

Is there a way to use the Echo as a speaker only?

krsdcbl 2y ago

when technological advancements that actually would allow for BETTER privacy and security, and MORE local-only features are misappropriated for constructing bogus and dishonest justifications to rather erode the least-effort user-minded safeguards that already had been present, it's become plain obvious that the claim to create a product that serves the user has always been a lie. It's about capturing data and influence, and always has been

Tewboo 2y ago

Pretty concerning that "do not send voice recordings" got removed. I had hoped it'd protect my privacy!

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

iamleppert 2y ago

They should just update their ToS to allow any kind of software updates without customer notification. The customer has a license to use the product, they don't own the product! Customers need to understand they don't have a choice in these matters and its useless to notify them and stir up controversy when a ToS update will suffice.

zulban 2y ago
"stir up controversy" There is no popular controversy - almost nobody notices or cares when these things happen.

oldjim69 2y ago

Alexa should be banned, and Amazon should be broken up into a dozen or so entities

bentt 2y ago

I know this single bit of news isn't the biggest deal. However we were talking at the dinner table, my wife and two kids and I. We just decided we're done with Amazon and Alexa. My wife has always been skeeved out by the devices, and I've reassured her that the wake word is the only time it's recording. Whether this is true or not, it's obvious that the company can no longer be trusted. So yeah we're just going to get a cardboard box, put it in the kitchen, and pile all the Alexa stuff into it and Ebay it. We'll use the $21 we get for all the devices to buy ice cream or something.

ffhhj 2y ago
We should make AI generated conversations to overload their surveilance.
tiahura 2y ago
Seems kinda paranoid. I've yet to meet anyone, who's met anyone, who's been harmed by not turning that setting off, or been harmed by any assistant listening.
- ziddoap 2y ago
  >I've yet to meet anyone, who's met anyone, who's been harmed by not turning that setting off I've yet to meet anyone, who's met anyone, who's been harmed in an airplane accident. It still happens. (No, I'm not saying that Alexa data sharing is equal to physical harm in an airplane accident -- just highlighting that this is a silly argument).
- diggan 2y ago
  You're never met anyone who been able to prove harm. If your insurance payments increases 5% because Amazon sold the data to some broker, who then sold it to your insurance company, who figures you're living a slightly more risky life because you go outside 7% more than the average person, how would you even begin to prove this?
  - edoceo 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

getlawgdon 2y ago

And into the trash it goes! (electronics recycling, chill.) ((actually, im going to take it apart first.))

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

sprayk 2y ago

It would be interesting to put an Alexa (or another voice assistant device) in a space with only an audio playback device around to keep it company, with that audio playback device playing sounds associated with various crimes (but never saying the trigger word obviously). I wonder if there are any crimes it thinks it would hear that would result in a police visit. If police were called as a result of this setup, would this constitute a false police report on Amazon's behalf? In the US, because I'm at least reasonably confident that such a setup comes nowhere near any exceptions to free speech protections here.

baskinator 2y ago

What's a good alternative to a FireTV with an alexa-enabled remote?

wnevets 2y ago

I keep being vindicated by banning these type of devices from my home.

reverendsteveii 2y ago

"You know that boundary that we agreed upon a while back? We're gonna violate that boundary now. This is not an opportunity to negotiate a new agreement, we're gonna do whatever we want to you because we're big and you're little." Stuff like this is why I've cut amazon out of my life entirely. No more new devices, no more new purchases, cancelled prime, all of it gone.

bitmasher9 2y ago
Amazon is rarely the cheapest way to have a package delivered to your home in less than two days. You can often find people much cheaper if you don’t mind waiting a week or two. I reduced Amazon by 90% when I realized how much money I was wasting over 70-120 packages a year.
- azinman2 2y ago
  What’s the alternative? Everyone else has you pay for shipping, and it’s slower.
  - reverendsteveii 2y ago
    To my mind that's just what my privacy costs and I'm willing to pay it. Others might not feel the same way, and they're welcome to pawn their data for free fast shipping.
  - wizzwizz4 2y ago
    Everyone has you pay for shipping. Amazon just lies about it, and has contracts that prevent people from selling their wares anywhere else cheaper.
    - azinman2 2y ago
      Amazon spreads the cost across everyone (who is prime). The biggest users pay the least for shipping.
- gundmc 2y ago

pete1302 2y ago

I was here, I saw the crime.........

seltzered_ 2y ago

Related, here's a comment from 2019 from at the time of writing from someone claiming to be a principal engineer at Amazon, talking about how "I'm proud of the approach that Amazon takes to privacy. Privacy of customer data is considered the most important thing to Amazon, and this customer obsession (the #1 leadership principle) permeates the organization." The comment further talks about the mute button on the original Amazon Echo (i.e. Alexa voice assistant) being hardware-based : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19208670 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19208670

ffhhj 2y ago
We should make AI generated conversations to overload their surveilance.
- CamperBob2 2y ago
  It's all fun and games until the import brokerage calls to ask where to deliver the 850,000 rubber dog turds you ordered.
  - mrighele 2y ago
    Or the 28,000 tons of coal [1]. Unrelated to LLM (except for the part where I asked Gemini to find the link) but somewhat relevant. [1] https://thedailywtf.com/articles/Special-Delivery https://thedailywtf.com/articles/Special-Delivery
mintplant 2y ago
Heh. We have a Nest Mini at home that someone gave us, that we use as a smart speaker. Before setting it up, I popped it open and physically scraped out the MEMS microphones. Now that's a hardware mute.
- daghamm 2y ago
  I like this approach. But can you safely do this with multi room devices?

smrtinsert 2y ago

I unplugged Alexa after a certain guy interfered with a publications op wd section. Doubt I'll ever turn it back on.

hn_acc1 2y ago

Got a free echo dot (not sure they're even supported anymore?) a long time ago through some promotion. Hooked it up with a separate account to let the kids play music that we uploaded on-demand. Then, they took away the "play user-uploaded music" part of it. Probably haven't plugged it in in 5+ years - definitely going to the landfill as soon as I remember..

boopmaster 2y ago

How does this comply with COPPA? Amazon was fined $25mm for failing to comply. Is the setting available, but obfuscated under "a child profile"?

chmod775 2y ago

"North Korea reducing number of approved hair styles by one." Is that really the hill to fight over, or even care about? If you have that thing in your house, you already lost the war.

sotix 2y ago

How do I explain the impacts of this change to my grandmother who has become reliant on it to remind her to take her medication?

Habgdnv 2y ago

The first thing i can think of is this: https://www.5snb.club/posts/2023/do-not-stab/ https://www.5snb.club/posts/2023/do-not-stab/ I never had Alexa and imagine I go now and buy one device, the first thing I can expect from it is to record me? Because I never opted out?