The whole POINT of Echo is to always listen and direct your consumer pattern to Amazon and other approved affiliates.
To me it represents pure evil and I don't see how you could defend against it. Except for not buying into this stupid shit.
To me it represents pure evil and I don't see how you could defend against it. Except for not buying into this stupid shit.
Cortana or Siri exist without obvious nefarious purpose. Alex and Google are clearly trying to push advertising. I know which I would prefer to set timers and play music for me.
That targetted selling may have no direct effect through the Echo itself, but the potential is there to increase the influence on you in other channels.
There may be other info, we have 3 kids who use our FireTV: I'd imagine they can estimate the child's age & sex and give targetted advertising in emails/web pages to companies selling toys for those ages. Based on the apps (whatever they call them, skills?), they can probably target that much better.
Now imagine the data they're collecting from their suite of amazon devices, where you can't control the data-mining.
That could be look at what $politicalPartyAffiliates in your area consider important enough to change allegiance, so that a party that's marginal can present themselves as good for $socialGrouping in order to sway the vote. It's not necessarily just about purchasing.
It also allows analysis of other aspects of life, like, say, people who search for drug paraphenalia -- or a step further away, music that's associated [by someone] with people who take drugs -- which festivals are they going to this Summer ...
It's not nefarious, but what happens if you ask a question like "open a website where I can buy music" or "find me a powerful new computer", or whatever. Is there no bias in Cortana/Siri towards MS/Apple? How about if you ask "is Siri or Cortana a better voice assistant?" ...
The fact that you interact with it each morning is more powerful than any print, broadcast, or web ad Amazon can buy. They're gotten into your brain. Even if you never see the device (which is now a visual billboard in your home), when you think about it, you're thinking about Amazon. You've already been commoditized and you don't even realize it.
Do you really not see the inherent problems with these devices, or is the remote start just that nice? =D
For example, by far the most common argument against these devices is that they could be spying on you by listening to your conversations 24/7. This is true, they could be. However, it's also true of cell phones, which 99% of the complainers have had near them 24/7 for the past 10 or 20 years. If you think the Echo is a terrible device because it could spy on you but you keep a cell phone in your pocket all day, you're trying to justify a negative emotional response to the Echo, not rationally analyzing the situation.
The comment I replied to above, by reaperducer, attempts to argue that the Echo is implicitly commoditizing me every day because I interact with it. This may be true, but does that also mean I'm being commoditized by Whirlpool and Moen and Philips and Tesla and Trader Joe's? If yes, then what does that even mean, and how am I meant to avoid it?
You then jump in with a vague hypothetical about a future update making the device start trying to sell me socks. I'm pretty sure Amazon isn't going to start putting ads in with my music or weather reports. If they do, I'll stop using the device. It only cost me $30. I've spent far more on devices that now sit on a shelf unused. That's just the nature of consumer electronics.
If you want to convince me that these devices are inherently bad or have massive inherent problems, it's really simple. All you have to do is tell me what problem they cause me that could be eliminated by getting rid of the device. So far, everyone who's attempted to do this has either stated a problem that wouldn't be eliminated (e.g. the spying potential or the daily interaction getting the brand into my brain) or a problem I don't suffer (e.g. getting ads).
I have an Echo and it is helping Amazon get better at selling me stuff. When I try to list the probable or even possible harms from this, I can't come up with a lot.
Compare that to something like driving my car. 100 people every day are killed in their car. Even so, I still drive because the expected utility of getting to point B is much greater than the expected harm from doing so.
I use a car and the worst case scenario is death or permanent disability, right? People die in their cars every day.
So what's the worst case scenario for using an Echo? How many people a day does that happen to?
What's the worst case scenario from having an Echo? How many people does it affect each year? What's the dollar cost of that damage?
IMO, it isn't an imminent threat. It's not going to kill you. It's not going to cause you any physical harm. It's the slow erosion of privacy which is a detriment to everyone.
I'm going to avoid the cliche Orwellian arguments and the normalizing surveillance arguments. Both of these have been addressed ad nauseaum. I'm going to go a different route and see if it resonates with you at all.
It is incredibly easy for humans to be manipulated. This only gets easier as we have treasure troves of data about individuals. Amazon has many of the smartest people in the world working to manipulate you to do things in their best interest. Sometimes their interests lineup with your best interests and things are great. Other times, their interests will be negative to your life.
It is in their best interest for you to not be content with what you have. It probably is your best interest to be content with what you have. It's not wrong to want things, but things will never fulfill you.
I'm not saying capitalism is evil, Amazon is bad, or that we aren't living in one of the best times in human history. I am saying that putting a marketing device (which is also a privacy concern) in my home is not something I am interested in. Especially when I can do the 90% with my phone in 5 thumb presses.
I like the driving analogy because even though the worst case scenario is about as bad as it gets, it's not all that likely. I think people, even here, have a hard time separating possibility and probability.
A connected speaker has real and immediate benefits for some people. People that use it to buy stuff (I do all the time) aren't going to see ads for associated products like website shoppers do. Frankly, if the Echo scares you, https://amazon.com should scare you even more. I bet they collect a lot more data in a 10 minute browsing session than they do with months of Echo use.
This is somewhat correct but misleading. It's always listening for the "wake word" -- alexa or echo -- and then it processes your request. But it's not sending all conversations up to amazon. Just your alexa requests.
This person gave a very good explanation here:
https://np.reddit.com/r/Showerthoughts/comments/7m91u9/if_go...
I have a bunch, and you only really use them for about 5 things, with the most useful thing being music.
As a note, for non-rooted users, it's common for Android vendors to push mandatory updates. Both my last Android phone and tablet before I left the platform were pending 'mandatory' updates where I had to kill a process after booting to prevent them from executing.
However, this is a device that requires internet to function and is managed by them giving you zero control beyond unplugging it.
Once was when an actual person was speaking and another time was when the TV show 'The Sopranos' was playing in the room. In the latter case, I rewound the show several times and it triggered on the same phrase multiple times (and the character was not saying anything that sounded like Alexa, at least to me)
Think of the children!
It should however come with a severe warning about what it is doing in a way that my mother would understand. Otherwise she would just see it as a nice thing to tell her what to do.