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Comment by ysacfanboi | Hacker News Reader

Please realize, for this to be true, there must be another incentive. I.e., Alexa devices are government-subsidized spyware.

What are the advantages for Amazon?

- Mic-popping, Camera-popping, mobile phone backdoor access, network sniffing, device activity monitoring across all wifi/bluetooth connected networks.

- Sidewalk (remember this? Amazon "borrows" your wifi, for free...)

Unplug Alexa devices. Remove the Alexa app from your phone, and factory reset. Otherwise you remain complicit in Amazon surveillance of you and everyone that interacts with you.

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This is hysterical. I never owned one until I worked on the product because I worried it was always recording/transmitting. Turns out it’s not. Promise.

You don’t need a shadowy government cabal to explain Alexa persisting too long in the strategy described in the article. Just a powerful chief executive with an attachment to the product, the sunk cost fallacy, a company with too much revenue to know what to do with, some gameable downstream impact metrics, the inertia of large institutions, and empire building.

It still could’ve become an incredible product if they’d gotten on the LLM chat/agent train early enough, but alas. I mostly use mine to set timers when my hands are full in the kitchen.

To be sure, it's not shadowy. You can track awarded contracts. You can track employment of persons from 3-5 letter agencies into private sector. You can look on Amazon Science page from 2019, where plans for "ambient intelligence" begin.

If you’re right, they did a stellar job of hiding it from the engineers working on the devices!

Or maybe I’m one of the deep state cutouts. One never knows for sure.

Crazy true story: ANOM.

Engineers thought they were building a totally above-water secure corporate internal messaging app and service.

Actual users and customers were mostly organized crime.

Unbeknownst to anyone byut the founder and their lawyer, the whole thing was backdoored and all messages were forwarded in cleartext to the FBI (supposedly they started dark, got caught by the feds on something and struck a deal). They had an entire team of analysts with purpose-built tooling just to digest the material. Who knows what the same teams are working on today...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Trojan_Shield

https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/23/24163389/joseph-cox-dark-...

Put that next to the Snowden leaks and increasing global tensions - is the probability horizon widening?

I'm not saying that smart home stuff isn't amazing for the surveillance state... but I am quite happy to believe a company just made a strategy mistake, no behind-the-scenes government deals needed. We've seen companies build expensive products without monetization plans, especially when they are worried about getting cut-out by a compentitor many times.

If that makes it more palatable for you, then I understand why you need to prioritize this level of reasoning.

Amazon culture is fail fast. Not many products at Amazon last this long, boasting multi-billion dollar losses YoY. Name another product at Amazon that does this, for this long.

Sure. What do I do with all my devices that don't turn them into e-waste?

I've looked for projects but haven't found anything yet.

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