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> Despite repeated warnings from the FBI and security industry leaders about the security and privacy risks of using these streaming devices, major e-commerce p
by SoftTalker 3mo ago
> Despite repeated warnings from the FBI and security industry leaders about the security and privacy risks of using these streaming devices, major e-commerce providers like Amazon, Best Buy, Newegg and others continue to sell hundreds of different models and brands
I scanned the comments and I didn't see anyone suggesting that these companies should share any responsibility for selling these harmful products. Why is it that they seem to get a pass? Would we feel the same about giant retailers selling tainted food, or unsafe children's toys?
- eightysixfour 3mo agoProbably because we have little to no way to punish those companies. We can't even stop DJI from shipping their drones under other brands to get around the ban.
- dessimus 3mo agoOur government chooses to not punish those companies. Unfortunately, the lawmakers have decided that the donations to their PACs are more important than actually doing something about it.
- lotsofpulp 3mo agoProbably because most people don’t equate the damages from causing bodily harm to whatever these ad clicking networks do. Voters don’t like seeing themselves or their kids get hurt, but they do like lower cost live sports.
- al_borland 3mo agoOne of the main value propositions for retailers in a world of endless cheap garbage being sold online, is to vet products so customers can trust that what their buying is from a legitimate company and not junk or stuff like these streaming sticks. This is the problem with being an “everything store”. “Everything” includes a lot of things most consumers would like to be protected from, and assume they are due to the long history of retailers standing behind the products they sell. That history seems to have come to an end. They only stand behind it enough to offer a refund if there is a problem, not to ensure it’s good before selling it.
- ephemeral67 3mo agointeresting bit of information: most EV mower companies now do not provide replacement parts - if a mower dies within warranty, a 'certified' warranty repair shop does basic troubleshooting, and if it's beyond a piece of cheap plastic, the mfr just ships a new mower to the 'repair shop'. Once out of warranty, you're on your own.
- drnick1 3mo agoThank you for reminding us that electric mowers are garbage.
- Gigachad 3mo agoEverything is garbage now. It’s the end state of unrestrained capitalism.
- exe34 3mo agoSurely not, the invisible hand of the market should crawl up their arse and make them do the right thing any day now.
- actionfromafar 3mo agoThe invisible hand crawled up the arses of Congress and seems to enjoy it there.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- nullhole 3mo agoI mean, not all of them? Mine's a fancy-pants Stihl battery mower, but it works quite well and has been doing so without problem since I bought it ~4 years ago. The other battery stuff from the same brand (trimmer, chainsaw, kombi-tool) have the same story.
- boondongle 3mo agoJust being realistic here; many of these are of Chinese make so how exactly would you stop it other than blocking them from being sold. They certainly don't advertise to the big box retailer that buys them "and it uses the customer's internet connection for fraud." Hell, there's a section of comments that would probably going "hey, RELAX guy" because it's not US companies doing this. For any American companies that do this though, sure - block/suspend/prosecute.
- malfist 3mo agoIf I open my own line of home improvement stores and do no oversight on what I sell and wind up selling really dangerous lawnmowers, I'm partly responsible. Or if I open up a gas station and allow any company without oversight to sell "supplements" through my shelves and cops arrest me for selling heroin, I don't get a free pass. Why should amazon or Walmart get a free pass just because they sell more items?
- awakeasleep 3mo agoOne problem I see with your analogy is that the dangerous lawnmower can cause an easily quantifiable harm. You have to be able to show damages you incurred and assign a dollar value to them to sue people. That doesn’t work at all for a something that sells your bandwidth to a proxy service. People wouldn’t even be aware that it was happening they weren’t told.
- SoftTalker 3mo agoWhat about when the police show up because some highly illegal content was traced to your IP address? Will they believe that you were the unwitting victim of a rogue proxy server running on your streaming stick? Would you have even been aware of that possibility?
- xorcist 3mo agoThere's also always the flip side: When the police shows up because of your illegal acitivities, you have a rogue proxy server running. All bought in good faith of course. Not legal advice. (It would surprise me greatly if we as a society let these gadgets be sold openly from here on.)
- ryandrake 3mo agoI would very much be in favor of grocery stores sharing responsibility (and regulatory penalties) for selling tainted food! It's kind of mind boggling that this is controversial. "Buyer beware" is not an acceptable basis for society to function.
- SoftTalker 3mo agoI can't think of a case where a supermarket, upon becoming aware of a problem with a food product, didn't immediately pull it from the shelves, post a notice to customers, and offer a full refund to anyone who had purchased it.
- StilesCrisis 3mo agoThis is unfortunately exactly how society operates in China. It is basically on the buyer to confirm that they're getting something acceptable. Once they've paid, it is what it is.
- fragmede 3mo agoNot exactly. In 2008 there was a huge scandal where melamine was in baby's milk, so it isn't always what it is. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal
- StilesCrisis 3mo agoYes, if your malfeasance is large enough to be on the front page of the New York Times, you'll be sentenced to life in prison or even death. But killing babies is a bit more heinous than fraudulent ad clicks! (Also of note: WHY melamine in the baby formula? Because they knew the buyer would check the nitrogen content, because it's a caveat emptor culture.)
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- mattmcknight 3mo agoThis is why I hate the "marketplace" of these stores. In many cases these products never hit their inventory at all, they are functioning like a search engine and payments processor.
- eddythompson80 3mo agoThat’s generally in their definition. “Amazon Marketplace” came out in 2000 allowing 3rd party sellers on their platform. However, until maybe the mid 2010s, they favored product sold by Amazon over 3rd party in their results and recommendations. I remember numerous forum and Reddit posts from the late 2000s about “How Amazon scams 3rd party sellers” by only wanting them there to give the illusion that they have everything but once some category starts selling, they will vendor it too and steal your customers. At some point in the second half of the 2010s Amazon figured out they can’t compete with a million foreign randomly-generated companies on price, and their users didn’t seem to mind too much. They figured their users cared about delivery times, ease of returns, ease of dealing with Amazon instead of dozens of online sellers, etc and they leaned heavily into that. They will handle fulfillment and take their cut and let people buy whatever garbage they want. They still screw sellers too btw. Ask any one who is trying to sell something on Amazon and they will fill your ear with how much leverage amazon has over them. You can check r/FulfillmentByAmazon/ Or r/AmazonSellers for stories.
- bashtoni 3mo agoYes, fascinating that this is apparently all the fault of Chinese companies, and not the American companies distributing and retailing these products.
- themaninthedark 3mo agoUm...If I make an app that reroutes people's payments so that I can skim a percent off the top and release it for Android and IPhone as a shopping app, how would it be Google and Apple's fault? Sure they try to vet the app but how does that absolve me from the liability?
- ChuckMcM 3mo agoIn the US at least there is a lot (and by that I mean like maybe more than half) of civil case law around seller liability for defective or 'dual use' products. In the 70's some cities tried to sue hardware stores for selling spray paint that taggers were using, in several jurisdictions you can find authorities trying to sue vendors of lock picking and/or safe opening tools, etc. My non-lawyer reading of all that is that if it is reasonable to assume that the vendor didn't know, at the time of sale, what the customer was going to do with it, they aren't liable. Once a vendor has been notified that these units are doing these sorts of things they will stop selling them. Its sadly very prescriptive in that if Newegg gets a notice that "WatchFunTV" streaming sticks are doing this, they will remove that brand but if the same hardware shows up from the same vendor as "SuperTVStreamer" or some such, that product won't be banned until someone does the test and then notifies the sellers. It's cat and mouse all the time. Now the people who could do something about it, the ad networks like Google, do not do anything because ad revenue is ad revenue, people buying the ads cannot prove that the click was false so hey who can say it was? Which is why ad fraud is a perennial favorite of crooks. The people being ripped off don't have any way to prove it without a lot of support from the ad network traffic data which is "proprietary". Really stupid ad fraud gets shut down, but put a bit of care into it so that the Ad network and claim ignorance? You can do that all day. Just don't get greedy and try to pull in more than say 30 or 50 thousand dollars a month. Remember, the IAB said in 2025 alone Ad Revenue was $300B[1] so 2% of that is only $6B and any network with 2% or less of undetected fraud is considered a "high quality" ad network. So yeah, ad fraud is the gift that keeps on giving. [1] https://www.iab.com/insights/internet-advertising-revenue-report-full-year-2025/ https://www.iab.com/insights/internet-advertising-revenue-re...
- sneak 3mo agoTainted food and unsafe children’s toys kill people. Sketchy devices on your wi-fi don’t really harm anyone. They’re a minor inconvenience at best, mostly to large corporations that like to discern residential connections from business/corporate ones.
- inigyou 3mo agoI don't know why this is such an unpopular opinion on HN.
- red-iron-pine 3mo agoyou don't get why a news aggregator for tech bros have problems with crappy devices hacking them?
- tclancy 3mo agoThis is one of those things where I, as a suburban white kid, am so happy I discovered Public Enemy and similar bands as a kid. "Money talks. And bullshit brothers walk a marathon."
- tomjen3 3mo agoProbably because doing so would mean a lot fewer product categories. It's a trade-off, to be sure. But if you need that odd thing — a screw of a certain type, a power supply that's 56 volt DC or whatever — then if there's only going to be sold, say, a few thousand of those a year, if Amazon was required to do product safety testing on them, they probably wouldn't be able to sell that category at all. And so the trade-off is they are not required to. Now that's very different from "we are selling things that we know, or have good reason to know, specifically are dangerous" — here they might very well be liable.