I’m not a Luddite but I feel something like schadenfreude watching people give profit-driven companies access to their private lives for solved problems like “cleaning the floor” and “tuning the radio”.
In this case iRobot didn't exactly lie about collecting data, but how greedy/stupid do you have to be as a company to not ensure that the data collect NEVER EVER leave the servers of your AI/QA/Process-improvement lab? The company know that people are already critical of their data collection, that should have trigged the creation of a process that would ensure that once data has been collected will never leave the department that develops their AI. You know this data is sensitive, and yet you outsource handling of if it, to poorly trained freelancers, who knows nothing of data security, privacy laws or apparently common decency.
https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/30/23486753/anker-eufy-secu...
It takes constant vigilance and sadly the incentives aren’t there.
I think that it's an attractive thing because it pays, and people generally don't care. So it's a free avenue for the company to make additional profits, or, to use this extra profit to lower the margin of the original product, thereby making it more attractive in a price competition.
And the truth is that folks don't get these things - at least not something affordable - unless they are introduced to greater society. That's really the bright side to a lot of As Seen on TV products: they might be lazy or weird for some of us, but for others they grant a bit of independence.
Besides, it isn't like these folks did anything wrong besides not being able to understand the legal language the contracts are written in and doing business with a company that wasn't quite upfront with their intentions as folks would like.
I love how the answer to "modern life doesn't leave enough time to do basic human tasks" is "buy a $1k+ soon to be e-waste LIDAR powered AI enabled fully autonomous vacuum cleaner" instead of "fix the damn system". We truly have completely lost our collective minds somewhere since the 90s
You can't throw people at the problem nowadays, because there are just too few young persons.
Vacuuming robots are great because while they can't replace a fit person with a vacuum, they can do half as good a job daily and largely without supervision.
Getting snarky with people because they are upset about a much smaller, more recent, and more visible change than our gradual slide into late-stage capitalism—and one that might actually be fixable without a complete overhaul of our society and culture—is deeply unhelpful. It's the very picture of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.
You and these people are on the same side, so maybe try showing sympathy and compassion for their frustrations, rather than mocking them for not solely and full-throatedly advocating for an overthrow of the system.
Whether we experience a net gain in saved time for the more important things is dependent on more than just the straightforward subtraction of chores as they exist now. A lot of factors influence that, so you cannot perform simple extrapolations in that manner because the "system" is dynamic. People didn't have washing machines 100 years ago, but they often had more time than we do or claim to do.
The introduction of a labor saving device introduces consequences. Markets and culture respond to the supposedly liberated time. Automation introduces new costs like the need for maintenance. Social activity and arrangements organized around certain activities evaporate and are replaced with new ones. The medium is the message, so to speak.
Indeed how people use their free time varies greatly but that is not a reason to limit people's free time.
I have also never wished for a way to change the radio with voice commands. I’ve seen friends do this and it’s like seeing people ride a unicycle - novel, but it doesn’t offer me anything of value. And of course, the privacy trade off isn’t worth it.
I personally don't want to talk to my appliances any more than I want to talk on the phone. But to be absolutely honest, I know I carry a personal surveillance device around with me. I don't generally want more of it - but if I had a reason for voice commands - and a number of things might fit, so long as it required both hands and took some time - I might change my mind. And if they don't sell the robot vacuum without the camera, I'll probably ignore that. Depending.
BTW there also are more minor annoyances advertised as features. I had hard time finding an electric kettle without a beeper (so it would just stop heatin once done but won't annoy me the way the microwave does or wake me up when I sleep and somebody wants a cup of tea). ~95% have the signal and ~40% don't even mention they do.