Amazon is bricking primary feature on $160 Echo device after 1 year | Hacker News Reader

Amazon is bricking primary feature on $160 Echo device after 1 year

arstechnica.com

77 pointsduxup61 comments

How is "photos as home screen" not just a built-in feature? Like, every device with a screen that I've owned for 20 years has this in some form. No cloud services required. What a farce.

It was, until Alexa decided to charge for every "built-in" feature. It's similar to the "perks" of Amazon Prime.

Both products (Alexa and Prime) are subpar, predatory offerings. I've moved on from both. I encourage everyone to do the same.

This is the inevitable endpoint from treacherous computing. If you don’t own the equipment or the software then you are a slave.

Hopefully over the next few years as we see more of this in the post zero interest rate world we will have a new generation of people who learn the hard way that they need sovereignty over the code they run.

Who would pay $2 a month to have a digital photo frame?

That’s like the episode of Always sunny where they rent their couch

Is Amazon actively trying to kill of their Echo/Alexa business? Every story about Alexa for the past six months, maybe a little more, have been about Amazon taking steps to dismantling anything with in their business or product line up that could potentially be useful.

If they aren't making money, and don't believe that they ever will, then why not simply shutdown the whole thing? Is this some weird way of doing that, while not upsetting the stock market for the next quarter?

I need it to turn on/off lights, tell me time/weather, set timers and that's pretty much it. They can shut off everything else for all care. Maybe provide me with a GPT level conversational agent, hell, I take some Llama3.1 with function calling on Amazon Bedrock.

That loses them money and with no way to monetize- they have no incentive to keep it around

Other than the obvious privacy angle, is that why Apple want to do almost everything on device? No services to run, just let people pay the price of actually producing the device and the software and not worry about the running cost?

There never was a business here to begin with. Amazon wants to kill Alexa because they couldn't find a way to monetize it.

But then why not just shut the whole thing down? Tell customers that the services will be shutdown January 1st. 2026 and yank the remaining device from the store? That's where we're heading anyway.

If they do that I'll completely write Amazon off.

Amazon thought people would say "Hey Alexa, buy more paper towels, a pack of soap, rent breaking bad season one, and tell me about the top rated blender in the store"

Instead people say "Hey Alexa, set a timer for 10:00"

The funny thing is, if it wasn't Amazon that Alexa was ordering stuff from, you could bet your ass people would have been using it like that.

But because Amazon sells used diapers, counterfeit items, can have gigantic price swings for some items, and has reviews that are gamed to the gills, no one would ever want to order from there blindly.

I don't think Amazon management is aware of how bad their site as gotten.

presumably because they have people shopping for them

Amazon management is very aware. They just do not care. Legal has even instructed teams in this regard. I hope FTC will drop the hammer on Amazon.

By a mile set timer is my most frequent Siri command.

It’s the only command that even has a chance of working consistently.

I absolutely hate how these products attempt to be good at everything, and therefore suck at anything.

But Alexa devices are so stupid they can't operate without the Internet. So if the Internet/Wifi goes out due to ISP issues or power loss, your devices can't set timers and any previously set alarms (i.e. wake up alarms) will fail to go off.

This article made me aware of this monstruosity: https://www.wired.com/review/amazon-smart-oven/ honestly this gives such a weird unfocused company vibe.

Regarding the Echo show displaying ads, I would advocate anyone to throw it out. It's mind-numbing to me that you can pay for a product only for it to display unwanted ads.

Are there any open source projects that mimic some of the functionality of the Show line?

A screen that shows photos? Absolutely anything. A Raspberry Pi or other SBC can do that with a variety of "screensaver" programs. Or a cheap Android tablet, stick it in a nice picture frame if you want. Or any number of purpose built "digital picture frame" devices (not sure if any of those are open source, per se).

I've had a number of Amazon Echo devices in my household for years, using the platform as a smart home devices. But lately they've been opting each device automatically into new ad related features, and now I see "Sponsored" advertisements on my rotating home screens that are impossible to turn off.

I'm pretty close to removing them because there is literally no way to turn off these ads. I understood the privacy trade off for convenience of the platform, but to essentially see these have been turned into Amazon billboards in my home, that I paid good money for, is a step to far.

This is a classic case of the enshitification of a platform.

It's not a "step to far" if you're only _pretty close_ to removing them. Actually remove them.

Is one not allowed to evaluate their relationship with technology over time?

Maybe Amazon will provide us an option to turn off the ads after enough outcry?

You do you, everybody has different tolerance. I am allergic to ads in any form since I strongly dislike when others try to manipulate me, dont want the extra mental load of ignoring ads in a place that is supposed to be relaxing.

I wouldnt want such a device in my home even if they would pay me the sum that it costs + electric bills, every year.

OpenHome has a great system with good TTS.

Stop buying this junk. Turn off the service. Only revenue loss will motivate better corporate behavior

That’s what makes this sting: the buyers already did pay a price premium (and subscription) to motivate behavior consistent with their preferences.

And even after accepting that premium, the company is just choosing not to deliver on its end anymore. And to be clear, “its end” here is refraining from pushing ads: a twisted state of affairs where the default condition is the company doing the work to force you to see ads, and you’re paying the company not to abuse you.

this reminded me to cancel my Prime free trial. I quit Prime a while back and then got continually harassed with lights-on-nobody-home sales pitches like ‘You spent $42.31 on shipping last year’ (like that’s a reason to buy a subscription that costs 3-4x as much!)

They say you can only get one free trial a year so I figured taking one and canceling might let me shop on AMZN for another 11 months without harassment.

… now I gotta move my last few things in AWS to Azure…

Right, basically a legal form of extortion. "Pay up or we'll employ our best psychological manipulation techniques (invasive ads) to ensure you spend more money with us in the future". Paying to remove ads is such a grotesque result of hyper-capitalism.

Invasive ads are psychological manipulation? Which part is the psychological manipulation, the ads you chose (by not paying, but still using the service)? So the ads aren't really there to sell you something, they're there to punish you for not paying?

I have so many more questions but this is a good start.

This line of thinking is very "yet you participate in society"-esque. It's disingenous to suggest that I explicitly "chose" ads when I dared to view a singular YouTube video out of the thousands I'm linked to or shown thumbnails of on basically every website or social platform. Yeah I can live in the woods and use a browser without JavaScript or images but that's not a realistic or feasible way to participate in modern society, to the extent that I effectively have no choice but to be subjected to the psychological manipulation of advertising, at some point or another. That's part of its coercive nature: the all-permeating ubiquitousness of it.

What has been done is done, no point wasting time waiting for miracles from amoral companies, accept losses and move on.

Want long term quality without ads? Dont look at biggest corporations milking ads where they can, any words they say are just farts in the wind, long term behavior is the only thing that matters. Either find a long term moral manufacturer and pay accordingly, or hack it together yourself if you can.

If none of above is possible, throw it out, its a gimmick at best. I live in Switzerland among pretty wealthy people and in 2024 know absolutely 0 people having any such device. Happiness and quality of life lies completely elsewhere.

A price premium? Are you aware that Amazon sells these at a loss? Amazon wants to kill Alexa because they couldn't find a way to monetize it.

Amazon is not making money on Alex. Thats the problem. They assumed that people would buy a lot more this way, but in reality people just want a robot servant that sets timers and play music.

Being able to yell "Alexa, turn my lights off" has been handy.

Alexa recently interrupting me with notifications that are just "Hey, some garbage you don't want is on sale" has me thinking about throwing the thing out.

I switched to HomePods for exactly this reason, Alexa was constantly upselling me on features and Amazon products. Threw it out.

I did exactly the same and haven't missed it one bit.

I tried the same but I have multiple people in my house so about 20% of the time when I say “turn off the lights” it responds with “who is talking” and goes through a voice calibration exercise.

It’s super infuriating because I guess they want to personalize to the speaker, even when it doesn’t matter. And I suppose I sound similarly to others in my household.

If you don't need personalization, I think you can turn that off in the Home app.

Same here. I have one echo left and using as a fancy kitchen timer with clock.

The nice (ish) thing about Apple is that since they price everything stupidly high, I have some faith they're making a profit.

I don't think Alexa makes money. I'm pretty sure the hardware is sold at a loss, with the intention it gets you to buy shit through Amazon with it. Which - obviously - no. Nobody is shopping via voice, that was always a stupid idea.

The only thing that keeps me on my FireTV is the ability to sideload random APK files. Smarttube is just about the only thing that makes my Smart TV feel smart anymore: https://github.com/yuliskov/SmartTube

>has me thinking about throwing the thing out

Me, as well, but there's got to be someone whose job it is to calculate just how often it can interrupt people with ads without them throwing the device away because I've been saying this for years and I still have my glorified alarm clock/light switch around.

There is no reason why your needs require a datacenter backed device.

I only use mine as a timer/clock and even that is becoming more rare. Every other feature is so add encumbered as to be useless. Echo is dying, quickly.

This feels like a pretty fundamental change in capability. I get that this was an extension by subscription, but a device that can now only blast advertising into my house feels like a substantial loss in value.

They've got to offer a refund, right?

Alexa should just use chatgpt, you would have a trillion dollar empire in 10 minutes. That would useful. Otherwise, alexa is usually dumber than my dog.

How? There’s no monetizing Alexa or ChatGPT in its current form

To have a useful alexa instead of 3 of them unplugged in the garage? I mean... its a step towards making money.

We’re overloading the term Bricking now?

"Bait and Switch" still has its original meaning.

Yeah I wasn't fond of the use of that word in the title but it was the title.

Yeah this case is definitely a stretch of the applicability of the term... It would be more accurate to say something like "canceling", "removing", or "retracting".

No sympathy from me.

If you buy things with unnecessary cloud features it's your fault.

> but cost $10 more. Why? Because of its ability to show photos on the home screen for as long as you want—if you signed up for a $2 monthly subscription to Amazon's PhotosPlus.

Ahahaha imagine paying a subscription fee to display photos on a screen. I bought my gran a "digital picture frame" 15 years ago for 30 bucks which she still uses. $24 a year for 15 years, that would be $360 LMAO

> Amazon never explained why owners of the standard Echo Show 8 couldn't use PhotosPlus or the photo-forward mode. The devices looked identical. It's possible that the Photos Edition used extra hardware...

Why is Ars even humoring such an absurd premise. Extra hardware to... display user images instead of ads? Give me a break.

Yet another reminder about how an OSS option like Chumby was ahead of its time...

I think they should have opted for a more sinister move.

Use AI to Photoshop the family into new clothing and offer a discount on that clothing.

Or use AI to Photoshop them at vacation spots and advertise those spots.

You can all go on vacation! Book now! Grandma (who has been dead for years) looks like she is having the time of her life!

Don't give them ideas lmao.

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