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Comment by rkagerer | Hacker News Reader

A long time ago I configured Alexa to only keep my audio recordings for 3 months (the shortest option other than None).

Reviewing the settings today I see Amazon added several new classifications of history (e.g. Smart Home Device History, Recorded Sounds History). Rather than respecting / extrapolating my existing choice, they all defaulted to Forever.

These kind of dark patterns are depressing, but I catch a glimmer of hope when I see people like this raising awareness of them.

To me, it's more than just privacy. It's about simple decency. As a developer I've always felt a strong sense of stewardship for the trust my users have placed in me.

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I have a similar experience with iOS. I have disabled every settings I could find related to iCloud. It is pretty clear that I don't want my data stored there, and yet every new app or service enables the iCloud integration.

I love to find out that iCloud got turned on/enabled for something only when I get a notification that my storage is near full. I didn't want to use you in the first place, fuck off already!

Linkedin has also been doing this for years - tens upon tens of different "communication preference" options. They keep adding more, or renaming existing ones and defaulting them to on.

I wonder if you have the setting to 3 months or none, then later change it to forever, do old recordings suddenly show back up?

I know HN is supposed to give the benefit of the doubt, but this is exactly what I would expect from Amazon at this point: an illusion of choice.

I mean, they are under investigation for lying to Congress, right? If true, what possible reason can we believe that they would not also lie to their customers?

The problem is inability to enforce law when it comes to big corporations. They have enough money to buy entire WH so there is nothing you can do about it apart from just not giving them more money.

App updates on my phone sometimes silently revert permissions back to defaults.

I just turned auto-updates off after that, and stopped downloading apps for stuff that has a perfectly serviceable website.

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