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People regret buying Amazon smart displays after being bombarded with ads

arstechnica.com

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Re: People regret buying Amazon smart displays after being bombarded with ads

#161

Post by ndsipa_pomu »

Andrex wrote: post #56
Terr_ wrote: post #33

We're way overdue to abolish the DMCA, in particular the "anti-circumvention" felonies. It shouldn't be a crime for me to customize the product I purchased. Or to sell people a kit to do the customization themselves.

Throw away the DMCA and you throw away all safe harbors for websites, and then the internet is truly screwed. There's no way the current congress would ever accept such a thing again -- Section 230 has been weaponized against it already. What we should be saying is Improve the DMCA. You've already clued into the biggest thing that needs to change (DRM/anti-anti-circumvention). Let's not throw the baby out with the ba…

> Throw away the DMCA and you throw away all safe harbors for websites, and then the internet is truly screwed

Yet we have plenty of internet outside of the USA where we don't have the DMCA. There are various laws that tackle some parts of it, but there's also consumer-friendly laws as well (e.g. the right to repair although that's for physical goods).

Re: People regret buying Amazon smart displays after being bombarded with ads

#162

Post by noir_lord »

dreamcompiler wrote: post #122

> the company is working to improve the ad experience on Alexa devices There is one and only one way to "improve the ad experience" and we all know what it is but for some strange reason the companies showing the ads never seem to figure it out.

> "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it," (Upton Sinclair)

Time and time again over my career I’ve run into that one.

Re: People regret buying Amazon smart displays after being bombarded with ads

#163

Post by newsclues »

Andrex wrote: post #56
Terr_ wrote: post #33

We're way overdue to abolish the DMCA, in particular the "anti-circumvention" felonies. It shouldn't be a crime for me to customize the product I purchased. Or to sell people a kit to do the customization themselves.

Throw away the DMCA and you throw away all safe harbors for websites, and then the internet is truly screwed. There's no way the current congress would ever accept such a thing again -- Section 230 has been weaponized against it already. What we should be saying is Improve the DMCA. You've already clued into the biggest thing that needs to change (DRM/anti-anti-circumvention). Let's not throw the baby out with the ba…

If there is anything good in the DMCA those sections can be reimplemented in law.

But we should not tolerate broken laws because they have some benefits, when we have the power to remove and replace bad laws with good ones.

Re: People regret buying Amazon smart displays after being bombarded with ads

#164

Post by allarm »

jmyeet wrote: post #139

I've never had a "smart" speaker or a "smart" display or a "smart" fridge and the only "smart" TV I've had has been intentionally not connected to the Internet. I have got a Nest and a "smart" washing machine and dryer. Some random thoughts: 1. I've literally never wanted a cloud-connected always-on microphone in my home and I'm surprised anyone does; 2. All of the home automation software is awful, bar none. The onl…

> All of the home automation software is awful

I understand that you’re referring to major vendor software, but Home Assistant is pretty decent, if not amazing. Try it out, check the success stories; it’s mind blowing what you can do with it.

Re: People regret buying Amazon smart displays after being bombarded with ads

#165

Post by krapp »

gbin wrote: post #67
krapp wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There is no system we can think of to avoid that? There is, but it requires thinking outside the box of "free market" capitalism, something most Americans are incapable of.

Please elaborate.

More socialism, less capitalism.

Believe that governments are capable of more than venal corruption and committing violence against their citizens and build a society in which people have value beyond what the market can extract from them.

Re: People regret buying Amazon smart displays after being bombarded with ads

#166

Post by fainpul »

piggg wrote: post #153
kaonwarb wrote: post #137

I can't reconcile Amazon's growing flood of ads with their famous first Leadership Principle: "Leaders start with the customer and work backwards. They work vigorously to earn and keep customer trust."

"advertisers are customers too"

Exactly. For a company that offers "free", ad-supported services, the customers are the advertisers, not the users.

Re: People regret buying Amazon smart displays after being bombarded with ads

#167

Post by xnx »

Terr_ wrote: post #33

We're way overdue to abolish the DMCA, in particular the "anti-circumvention" felonies. It shouldn't be a crime for me to customize the product I purchased. Or to sell people a kit to do the customization themselves.

The anti-circumvention rule is great, just backwards. There should be penalties for companies that try to prevent their hardware from being modified.

Re: People regret buying Amazon smart displays after being bombarded with ads

#168

Post by tim333 »

kaonwarb wrote: post #137

I can't reconcile Amazon's growing flood of ads with their famous first Leadership Principle: "Leaders start with the customer and work backwards. They work vigorously to earn and keep customer trust."

The main leader is off swanning around on superyachts and giving the customer thing a miss.

Re: People regret buying Amazon smart displays after being bombarded with ads

#169

Post by Nasrudith »

bigiain wrote: post #132
aworks wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you measure greediness? I worked for companies 4 levels removed from the consumer and they were all very motivated to get financial results for the current quarter. Despite their advantages, I assume Amazon is now short-term focused as well. Having said that, I finally tossed my Alexa devices.

> How do you measure greediness? I think a decent first indicator might be "Is the Founder and/or CEO a billionaire?"

That only indicates if they got in early or not. As notorious as CEO pay packages are they won't make you a billionaire.

Really 'greed' in many cases is just envy projected. It doesn't matter how efficient or lazy the subject is, just that it makes the observer mad.

Re: People regret buying Amazon smart displays after being bombarded with ads

#170

Post by Nasrudith »

morkalork wrote: post #88
neverfrankled wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Franklin was a publisher, and sold advertising, no? Washington wasn't much of a Temperance preacher neither.

Now I'm wondering, the first news papers were sold out on the street. How long was it before there were ads in them? And was there the same intellectual hand-wringing about it at the time?

The first newspaper ad was for a book and in the 1620s. I am not certain about intellectual handwringing but there were people who considered making money through commerce at all as morally wrong due to it involving neither toil as they recognized it nor might-makes-right. Based upon some truly stupid ideas of "fair price" and assumptions of fixed universal prices meaning that any merchant had to be a scammer.
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