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Comment by andrewstuart2 | Hacker News Reader

This smells like cheap and irresponsible journalism. For one, the CEO is quoted as saying “There’s an entire ecosystem of things and services that the smart home can deliver once you have a rich map of the home that the user has allowed to be shared.” Further evidence is given in the form of part of the TOS where you essentially agree that if iRobot goes under, the buyer will get all the data. Obviously.

That's one blatant ignoring of the CEO's full statement, and one unfounded misinterpretation of the terms of service. Hardly justification for both the title and the premise of the article.

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The bullet point quoted in the article is not saying "iRobot goes under". Any new sale of shares, even a reorganisation of the company would trigger consent that your data is fair game.

If iRobot agrees that AMZ buys 0.01% of the company, AMZ they get that info and customers already agreed to it. The CEO can now safely say what he said.

While the title may be a little clickbaity, it's important to note that roomba is making it an all or none feature. If you want to use the mapping feature which gives the product better ability to navigate, you must agree to having your info sold. Definitely not cool.

"that the user has allowed to be shared."

I appreciate your optimism, but this is or will be probably part of ToS when registering the app and you can't use the Roomba without "aggreeing to share".

I have one of the offline models which seems to randomly crash around and it really is good enough. I wonder if mapping significantly improves anything to justify paying so much more (and apparently having to share the generated map with the manufacturer). Wouldn't it be invalidated every time you move a chair?

I have a Neato (offline version) it does map the room (each time) which is nice but doesn't upload it.

>This smells like cheap and irresponsible journalism

Of course it does, it's Gizmodo.

Further evidence is given in the form of part of the TOS where you essentially agree that if iRobot goes under, the buyer will get all the data.

As if anyone reads those things.

That's the problem with journalism today though. With ad based revenue platforms, a view is a view. The content itself doesn't matter, only a headline that makes views does.

I really want to see a subscription system that rewards quality over just views.

Get the New York Times? No seriously, there are long form publications that provide what you want with the model you want. I like Gizmodo. They do some interesting pieces once in a while. But I don't see myself paying $5/month for it.

I am not a fan of advertising as a model for the web. It sucks in terms of UX, and it sucks in terms of motivations for the content providers. This is how we get WikiHow and W3School, and Wikipedia clones. Problem is that it's a model that's simply more profitable than anything else we've tried so far. And you can shame people into paying or try to coax them all you want, but it just won't make as much money.

This is one of the reasons I gladly pay for a LWN subscription. I'd love to see more journalism like that, where insiders are paid a small fee to write articles about subjects they're already experts on.

But then again, my interests are much less in world events or pop culture, and much more in science and engineering, where expertise is more easily measured.

> I really want to see a subscription system that rewards quality over just views.

That's called exactly that, subscription. If you like a news source, subscribe to it and pay the subscription. I could get most of the content of The Economist and the NYT for free, but I subscribe to both.

I would like to believe so too, but if you look at what these subscription based media are writing you'll soon realize they are not free from this either.

Subscription based sites are afraid that they will lose their existing use base if they talk about something their users won't like that they tilt towards writing about what their users want to hear. For example, everyone knows that most mainstream media sites tilt heavily towards left to the point where it's not objective anymore and closer to propaganda.

The problem is much deeper than you think. It's not just about ad vs subscription. It's the fact that you can't make enough money with media nowadays regardless of whether it's ad or subscription. Because they don't make enough money but they want to, they end up making bad decisions to extract as much of their reader's attention out to money as possible.

Also, "highest bidder" is ragebait. There's nothing to indicate Roomba is looking to maximize for short-term profit as opposed to, say, selling the data to the third-party that would please its customers the most, or that made the most strategic sense for the future of the company.

They spy on you, but might choose carefully who they reveal your data to? How nice of them.

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