I bought my mom an Echo for Christmas last year for the kitchen, since she likes making lists and setting timers for baking and her hands are starting to show their age (she’s 63, ‘bout that time I guess). Really grating that what was at one time a helpful device for older folks is now retroactively being turned into yet another internet surveillance device.
> retroactively being turned into yet another internet surveillance device.
Oh, and an ad-delivery mechanism. Ask Alexa to set a timer, and sometimes she'll rebut with "while you wait why not try Amazon Music!" It's absolutely infuriating.
I emailed jeff@amazon.com (VIP support team) and they confirmed it could not be disabled by normal means. They disabled it on their end but then had to do it again when somehow it got unset.
The "start with the customer and work backward" mantra that used to be strong in the company is now completely ignored for Alexa it seems. The first domino has fallen. I suspect we'll see many more fall as a result.
I have never heard anything like an ad on my Echo. If I ask it to set a timer, it does, and then sounds the alarm x minutes later. Nothing else. If the kids ask it to play a song, it plays that song. If they ask it for an animal fact, they get one. Nothing else. Did I toggle something at setup?
She will sometimes tell you about features related to whatever you asked of her--and sometimes those are paid things she's talking about. For example, playing songs at the tier that comes with Prime and she might talk about Amazon Music.
With all due respect, it’s a microphone connected to the internet that you are meant to install in your home. How are you surprised to see it used as a surveillance device?
no no no, you should not expect people to behave badly.
I agree with the sentiment that it is a crying shame this technology could be used to help people for whom keyboards become complicated but instead it's used to trick them.
> no no no, you should not expect people to behave badly
Should you not?
There’s a bit of a spectrum of that. On one end of the spectrum, we all leave our front doors unlocked and our car keys in our parked cars in case someone is stranded and needs to borrow our car. Most of us don’t do that, but that’s what a truly high trust society looks like.
I think it’s prudent to expect any large tech company to violate our privacy to exactly the degree they are physically capable of. It doesn’t mean we should morally approve of them living down to our low expectations of them, any more than we should morally approve of burglars and car thieves exploiting the naivety of people who think they don’t need to lock up their homes and vehicles.
And yes, it is a crying shame that we live in a low-trust world.
>no no no, you should not expect people to behave badly
you should not excuse people behaving badly because it is to be expected.
if you want to be able to protect against people behaving badly you should learn to expect it of them, expectation of bad behavior enables preparation.
