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The Alexa feature "do not send voice recordings" you enabled no longer available

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Re: The Alexa feature "do not send voice recordings" you enabled no longer available

#221

Post by speed_spread »

deesep wrote: post #82
xmprt wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I should have a bit more faith but at this point I feel like the median voter might see their world getting worse but still be convinced somehow that Democrats are behind it because Republicans have their messaging on point and Democrats are doing the equivalent of a silent protest.

I suspect Democrats remain silent because they believe nothing new can be said about Trump's policies. His supporters will counter any argument, so it's better to step back and let them experience Trump 2.0 without distractions. Over time, they may realize the harm he causes.

Except it won't work, they will retro justify the leopard eating their face to their death bed, taking down everybody with them as they do so. Their reasoning isn't just impervious to logical arguments from others, it also resists the painful reality and consequences of their choices. It's a media induced debilitating mental illness.

Re: The Alexa feature "do not send voice recordings" you enabled no longer available

#222

Post by iamacyborg »

rusk wrote: post #140
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet this is what Tesla did. They sold a car and added a surcharge for full self-driving as a future option, or they added it as an upgrade option. But they never delivered. That's like buying a car with the promise of wheels but the wheels are never delivered (except you actually need the wheels etc). I'm amazed there haven't been major class-action lawsuits raised against Tesla yet, both from consumers for not d…

Correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t Tesla floating on a cushion of private Saudi wealth?

Funding confirmed.

Re: The Alexa feature "do not send voice recordings" you enabled no longer available

#223

Post by elif »

aktuel wrote: post #215

I would like to meet the person who bought an Alexa device at any point in time thinking "now here is finally the privacy protecting AI assistant I have been waiting for."

raises hand

There are exactly two companies which make a device capable of actually integrating with every home automation and voice control, so given the options, I assumed Amazon would have fewer evil ideas than Google, seeing as the mechanism for Amazon profiting off the data directly is clear and the mechanism for Google has 100 teams building different products to consume that data in 1000 ways I can't begin to consider.

So yeah, given the dichotomy, it seemed like a clear privacy decision to me.

Re: The Alexa feature "do not send voice recordings" you enabled no longer available

#224

Post by _heimdall »

qwertox wrote: post #86

What if you bought the device just because it had this option? I have an Echo Dot 2nd Gen which I used for around two months, until it once failed at a command of playing back a radio station but instead started to continuously stream my audio to Amazon, for hours until I noticed it (bandwidth monitoring with InfluxDB and Grafana). Now none of my devices (phones and tablets) listen for hotwords, but at this point the…

At least legally, it likely matters more whether the feature was marketed specifically and whether its considered required for the core functionality of the device.

I think the answer would be no to both, but IANAL.

Re: The Alexa feature "do not send voice recordings" you enabled no longer available

#225

Post by kevincox »

DFHippie wrote: post #212
jonathanstrange wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IANAL but I thought bait and switch is illegal? It definitely is in the EU. Is it not in the US?

[flagged]

It effectively died a long time before that.

Re: The Alexa feature "do not send voice recordings" you enabled no longer available

#226

Post by iamacyborg »

zettabomb wrote: post #92
beezlewax wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are not viable options for the vast majority of users. Most peppe don't have a clue how to set up open source options, let alone set them up with usable hardware. The average consumer wants out of the box solutions that don't require a degree in Computer Science to use.

Home Assistant is getting far easier to set up than you might expect, especially because they now do in fact have out of the box devices. It's not quite as ridiculously simple, not quite yet, but they're rapidly improving and it won't be long until they're better than Amazon Alexa/Google Home/other commercial solutions.

I am relatively tech savvy, installed HA recently in a VM on my media server and the thing was just a massive pain in the arse, particularly trying to migrate Thread devices from Apple Home to HA.

Sure things might be getting easier but they’re certainly not easy.

Re: The Alexa feature "do not send voice recordings" you enabled no longer available

#227

Post by Loughla »

eadmund wrote: post #194
tanepiper wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Laughs in European Consumer Protection How's that "break regulation to innovate" working out for US?

Well, the per-capita GDP of the poorest U.S. state — Mississippi — is greater than that of the U.K., France, Italy, Greece, Spain, Poland and many others, and within 10% of Finland, Germany, Belgium and Austria. 34 of the 47 European states have lower per-capita GDPs than Mississippi. The median per-capita U.S. state GDP is $78,649; the median per-capita European state GDP is $28,713. Sources: https://en.wikipedia.or…

GDP is a trash measure of what life is actually like. It should go away.

Re: The Alexa feature "do not send voice recordings" you enabled no longer available

#228

Post by _heimdall »

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #218
_heimdall wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The car is no longer usable without the wheels, I believe the argument for Alexa would be that the core functionality is still usable without the privacy setting. I don't see why we would need the FTC to fix this. If someone bought Alexa from Amazon and honestly expected it to be privacy focused, they just made a mistake and can learn from it. Problems don't always have to be solved by running to the biggest authorit…

"Do not send voice recordings" back to Amazon HQ =/= "privacy focused." It's arguably a necessary feature for minimal privacy in one's home, and I expect that a lot of people bought those devices with that in mind. If the FTC doesn't fix this kind of spontaneous downgrade, I'm not sure what they're for at all. If somebody falls for a criminal's fraud, I suppose "they just made a mistake and can learn from it"? No nee…

Jumping to criminal fraud feels a bit hasty in this context. It'd be important to know whether Amazon ever marketed this feature specifically, promised privacy, defined what that privacy they promised meant, and whether there's any legal argument to be made that this setting should be considered core to the basic functionality of Alexa.

IMO no one should have ever expected Alexa, or products like it, to be private. The meet fact that it has a microphone, and potentially a camera, and promises to respond simply by you saying something to it means they're always listening. I don't really care what they say they'll do with the recordings, I care what they can do with the recordings without me ever knowing about it.

Re: The Alexa feature "do not send voice recordings" you enabled no longer available

#229

Post by prmoustache »

hiccuphippo wrote: post #42
DeathArrow wrote: post #40

If I buy a car and, after a while, the guy who sold me the car comes in the middle of the night and takes the wheels, isn't it theft?

If you buy the steering wheel of a car and rent the rest of the car and then the owner comes in the middle of the night and takes the wheels, is it theft?

Do people rent their amazon echo or buy it? I had the impression it was the later.

Re: The Alexa feature "do not send voice recordings" you enabled no longer available

#230

Post by amelius »

DevX101 wrote: post #3

Now would be a good time to have a functional FTC commissioner. Doing a bait and switch like on a product that was sold with a set of features should be illegal. If I buy a car and the sales guy stops by my house the next day to take back the wheels, it would rightfully be seen as ridiculous.

I'd be surprised if FTC had any teeth left after DOGE was done with them.
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