Everyone is talking about Amazon promoting their own products, but can we talk about the type of products being promoted in the top 5? Security camera, Ring doorbell, Echos, i.e. all surveillance devices people are willingly and voluntarily putting in their private homes, just waiting for that data to be compromised by hackers, data leaks, you name it.
Call me tinfoil I don't care, but don't invite me to your homes either if the place is going to be bugged, I'm good.
And to think the more people that add these things, the more of a seamless network it creates for "them." If 20% of houses have the ring doorbell (etc), capturing, processing and categorizing everything that goes by it with ML, how long will it take before they are able to track people basically everywhere? Even those who do not own these devices but happen to pass in front of them which will be increasingly impossible to avoid? Their AI will literally be watching you leave your house (from your neighbors) and driving to work, capturing your license plate and knowing who you are via facial recognition, watching (recording) everywhere you go. All nice and tidy with timestamps, stored forever with easy recall. Coupled with the other data they already have. Where where you Jan 27, 2023 at 19:23:43UTC? You'll likely forget by 2024, but Amazon will know and remember forever, thanks to your neighbor. Just think of how much better they can "target ads" with this data, or whatever their justification is, making the world a better place to live. Our antiquated and broken way of lawmaking will take 10 years at least to catch up. That's a lifetime at the current pace.
Can we start calling it the AI? Turns out, the AI uprising we feared isn't some centralized supercomputer that somehow gained consciousness, but millions of otherwise isolated neural networks and tracking databases that are being consolidated by mindless drones (humans) in pursuit of profit.
We are the the missing consciousness that births the AI.
> but millions of otherwise isolated neural networks and tracking databases that are being consolidated by mindless drones (humans) in pursuit of profit.
Our laws will never catch up; those devices watch lawmakers too.
I can imagine a late afternoon meeting in a lawmaker's office. The lobbyist shows the lawmaker almost his entire day, to demonstrate the "benefit" to the lawmaker, from when he leaves his DC apartment in the morning, to his one hour stay at the No-Tell-Mo-Tell, to the video of him being slapped on the back as he pockets another lobbyist's cash.
> Our laws will never catch up; those devices watch lawmakers too.
> I can imagine a late afternoon meeting in a lawmaker's office. The lobbyist shows the lawmaker almost his entire day, to demonstrate the "benefit" to the lawmaker, from when he leaves his DC apartment in the morning, to his one hour stay at the No-Tell-Mo-Tell, to the video of him being slapped on the back as he pockets another lobbyist's cash.
If this data is collected, there is no doubt in my mind that it will be sought after by malicious actors. Maybe then there will be legislation.
I'm convinced all public life will be recorded in the not at all distant future. Cameras are just too cheap and useful. As is storage.
It's not a conspiracy, just an inevitable consequence of technical progress.
The only "countermeasure" I can imagine is to have several independent surveillance networks. If hobbyists put up one for the public, we can at least watch the watchmen as much as they watch us.
> If hobbyists put up one for the public, we can at least watch the watchmen as much as they watch us.
All you'll have is a different viewpoint on the same watched public. "The watchmen" tend to be geographically segregated and use more private modes of transportation.
It can and should be made illegal which is the only practical countermeasure for most things. (I.e. every electronic device manufacturer is relying on EMP disruption devices being illegal.)
In Switzerland it is usually illegal to cover public space with CCTV and one is required to post signs visible before entering a private space with CCTV. AFAIK this rule technically would and should apply to guests and video in the home. It definitely applies to businesses filming employees.
Same thing with Tesla cars: they are already remotely asking their AI in their cars to send back recordings that they are interested in by giving example photos. It's used for improving their self-driving and they say it's "anonymized", but it's a little scary thinking about how it could be used in the wrong hands (if there is a hack, or some agency forces them). For example asking for faces or to detect certain behaviors. It's not just stored data, but it's data ready for querying with powerful distributed AI in a self-driving remotely controllable car.
I sometimes joke that Elon could easily get rid of the people who are getting a free Roadster (through referrals) by sending them an evil version of Autopilot. It's a joke, but there's technically nothing that could stop him.
Your phone can do all the same things as those devices, and it's a better target for attackers because it's always on you.
I just bought into the Nest system (which also had great deals on black friday), and I'm just not worried about it.
In reality, bugging my residence isn't going to result in very interesting data. What exactly do you think is going to happen?
I just assume all of my data is already compromised, and so is yours, and neither of us can do anything about it. I think it's only useful to mitigate real world risks that materialize from compromised data. So PIN-lock your credit to avoid identity theft, physically secure your home to avoid break-ins, block ads to avoid influence campaigns, segment and restrict your IoT devices to avoid jumpboxes inside your network, etc.
If I'm doing something that I do not want recorded, I'd be using linux with a tor connection and strong opsec. The house can still be bugged as long as I don't have a camera pointed at my monitor.
If you're trying to host secret meetings in your house, maybe you should consider building a secure room to facilitate that. There's a reason the feds take this approach with SCIFs, because there's really no other way to do it.
The point is not that privacy is dead. The point is that we are all already carrying around a surveillance device by choice, and so complaining about one more substantially less intrusive one is silly. If you're actually serious about these privacy issues, you should start by getting rid of your smartphone, not complaining about Nest and Alexa.
How is that possible? As best as I can tell, your location is tracked at all times, the OS has telemetry built-in, and lots of telemetry data is going out with every app. Also how do you audit it?
I'm sure my phone is leaking way more data than an Alexa.
There are options. Personally I run Graphene OS on a Pixel 3a. I have no proprietary software (with exception to binary firmware blobs for the modem and other low-level components) installed on my device. All apps are sourced from F-Droid. I've measured very low telemetry data from my device.
If you are not a famous person probably. If the are a target of a government or invested body. It doesn’t matter, they have a depth of zero days they can use.
wow! this needs proof and evidence. you can't just pull this out of nowhere?
afaik it's becoming harder & harder to get data out of your phone without you unlocking them. now, if you choose to share your private information on said phone, that's another discussion.
i want to think that movement tracking and giving away private information about you -- and perhaps not-knowingly about people around you -- are different things!
This is really disingenuous. I'm not arguing "privacy is dead" or "nothing to hide". I'm arguing for understanding how to have privacy when and if you want it, and how to hide things you might not want associated with your public persona.
I believe that privacy can co-exist in your life with listening devices (though maybe not in the same room, if you're concerned about your voice being recorded).
You don't have to have a phone on you all the time. But if you do, it should be considered bugged because you have no way to audit it.
Also, bugging my residence isn't going to result in very interesting data by design. I could have plenty to hide, but I'm not reading my evil plans for world domination aloud.
If you do need to talk about something private, nobody is preventing you from disconnecting all the microphones.
Know what you're trying to prevent, then take actionable steps. Privacy is hard, but not dead.
Most privacy advocates don't defend it because it allows you to scheme against the government, they do it because it protects people from falling too deep in the net of actors that would try to influence their behaviour.
I agree that you're most likely not doing anything interesting in the eyes of the authorities in your home, most people aren't. But advertisers and content creators definitely care, and that's where the true problem is. They shouldn't have the power to anonymously collect all of this data, and then decide through the power of their far-reaching services which products are accessible to you or not, what information is presented to you through means that appear transparent, and so on and so on.
The "I have nothing to hide" argument has never been what today's privacy debate was about.
> In reality, bugging my residence isn't going to result in very interesting data. What exactly do you think is going to happen?
You don't have to be doing anything wrong or "interesting" for that data to be collected and used against you later.
These days your normal everyday activities are being used to calculate things like your "consumer score" which determines things how much you pay for products, what your insurance company will charge you or will cover, what shows up to employers when they do background checks, and that's just on the private industry side of things.
The government is also collecting this data and you've either got an incredibly optimistic outlook or a very limited understanding of history if you think they couldn't ever use that data against you or against anyone who becomes an inconvenience to those in power.
"Congratulations! You have just completed the 'Best Breakfast' achievement by shouting out 'Kellogg's Sugarpuffs is the most important meal of the day!' between 8 and 9 am at over 80db with at least 3 persons present in the room. You have earned the 95% discount coupon on 24 bottles of Nestle's Essentials Vitaplus Water (redeamable for the next 30 minutes), netting you a $456 saving brought to you by Amazon Alexa's Life Essentials Partner Program.
Don't think the privacy people who have gone to great lengths to be off the grid will be first on the list of suspicious people?
And if there's no data available on you, don't you think they'll charge the highest rate anyway?
For the concerns you have, it'd be far better to maintain a socially-optimal profile with data collection, to show what a normal/happy/healthy/productive member of society you are.
I do support regulation on how companies collect and assemble data, but while they're doing it, your best bet is to have lots of uninteresting data collected on you.
Nothing is stopping you from having multiple identities for specific purposes.
> For the concerns you have, it'd be far better to maintain a socially-optimal profile with data collection, to show what a normal/happy/healthy/productive member of society you are.
Surely you understand that many people don't want to live in a world where you have to maintain a false persona 24/7 to avoid being flagged for some unknown perceived infraction. Many people already curate a social media presence for that reason, but are you really okay with extending that to every last facet of your life?
Should you have to worry if some future employer or your insurance company might possibly think that you're buying too much alcohol, are too supportive of the wrong political party, are too gay, opinionated, not social enough, not happy enough, dating too often, eating out to much, etc.?
It doesn't make any sense to try to change your behavior to try to look like a model citizen at all times because you can't know what the criteria is you'll be judged by, how accurate the dossiers on you are, or how they're being used to impact your life.
This is a broken, dystopian, dangerous system and telling people to give up even trying to limit the amount of data they expose and simply accept it is not going to help change anything.
> Surely you understand that many people don't want to live in a world where you have to maintain a false persona 24/7 to avoid being flagged for some unknown perceived infraction.
Yes, but they have no choice today.
> Many people already curate a social media presence for that reason, but are you really okay with extending that to every last facet of your life?
Nobody is forcing you to buy an Alexa. If you want an always-on digital assistant, then yes, you're probably ok with curation of the words you say while at home.
> Should you have to worry if some future employer or your insurance company might possibly think that you're buying too much alcohol, are too supportive of the wrong political party, are too gay, opinionated, not social enough, not happy enough, dating too often, eating out to much, etc.?
Yes, everyone has to worry about this in today's environment. It would be silly not to worry about this with what we know about large scale data collection.
> It doesn't make any sense to try to change your behavior to try to look like a model citizen at all times because you can't know what the criteria is you'll be judged by, how accurate the dossiers on you are, or how they're being used to impact your life.
No model is perfect, but I believe there is safety in numbers. You can't know what you'll be judged by, but the more people who share your views and actions, the less likely you are to attract problems.
> This is a broken, dystopian, dangerous system and telling people to give up even trying to limit the amount of data they expose and simply accept it is not going to help change anything.
I'm not telling people to give up trying to limit the amount of data they expose. I'm saying that everyone should develop their own threat model and see if an always-on listening device at home is appropriate for their needs.
I do not see any future where opting out of Alexa or Google Assistant would mitigate any of the fears you have. I do see a future where knowing how to audit your own security and how to use more than one identity will mitigate your fears.
People are dismissing your response, but nobody is addressing your key point that an always-listening phone is far more of a privacy threat than an Echo. And that the Echo doesn't add THAT much more of a threat if you've got a phone that's listening.
I don't agree there's nothing to be done short of building your own SCIF (laws are a logical place to start), but to me it's more important to point out what a privacy disaster all of our phones are that it makes everything else look much smaller.
This is a terrible argument, ironically coming from a nickname "anonymous-xxx"
Because you close your curtains at night doesn't mean you're committing murder. You just don't want preying eyes into your home that you can't look back at.
How is that ironic? I don't want people associating this account with my real life identity, so I made it separate and access it differently than other identifiable services.
That's the whole point that I'm trying to make. Identify if listening devices are actually a threat to you. Assess the area and see if a listening device would be appropriate before adding it. For most people, who are very insecure anyway, one more listening device is not going to have any significant impact on their threat level.
If anything, what we need is more training available on how they can assess the threats against them in a rational way. And, if they choose, how to mitigate the risks posed by those threats. Sometimes that will include removing listening devices, but for most people, that won't be their largest threat.
I don't understand your argument. Are you pro-listening devices in people's home?
If you could have Alexa that doesn't listen to everything you say and offers the same service without the analytics, treating every request as a blank slate, wouldn't that be better in every possible way?
Sometimes it is convenient to have an internet-connected device that knows all of your preferences. You'll get better answers to your queries that way, and they'll be more personalized to you. That's ok, and I don't think it's something that should be completely rejected.
Google has been personalizing search for years, and that's ok too, because it probably is better for most users. But users also need to know about DDG and private browsing, so they can see unbiased results when they want.
> If you could have Alexa that doesn't listen to everything you say and offers the same service without the analytics, treating every request as a blank slate, wouldn't that be better in every possible way?
It would be worse in almost all ways except privacy. There's an expectation that when I ask for the weather, I mean at my current location. Or if I ask for sports scores, it knows what teams I care about. And most importantly, it should learn and get smarter over time, which you couldn't do with the type of device you propose.
I'd personally rather have areas with absolutely no devices and areas that are essentially public. I can see how some people would want a middle-ground with listening devices but with more privacy than Alexa. That might be possible, but if that's my concern, I'd rather just not have the microphone in the room at all. I think the market for privacy-vetted always-on microphones is small.
> In reality, bugging my residence isn't going to result in very interesting data. What exactly do you think is going to happen?
This is literally "why do you need privacy if you have nothing to hide" in other words. What do I think will happen? I think someone at Amazon might be able to listen in on a conversation I have with my wife. I don't want a third party like Amazon to have a recording of things that I say to my wife because it's none of their business and I don't see a big utility trade-off in being able to ask a voice assistant how many quarts are in a gallon in exchange for letting Amazon record me in my private domicile.
And frankly the only reason I carry a mainstream cell phone is because I'm socially required to do so. I don't find the argument of "Google can hear you already through your phone so why not install more microphones in your house" compelling.
Next time you're having a conversation with your wife, count the number of microphones in the room. I'd be shocked if it's zero.
I'm not asking "why do you need privacy if you have nothing to hide?". I'm asking why don't you have protocols in place that you can enable for private conversations? If I've got my phone on me, I assume Google and governments can hear anything in microphone range. You should too.
Only you can decide how you want to define your threat model, but "Google can hear you already through your phone so why not install more microphones in your house" should be a compelling argument if you've already established which areas of your house are meant to be private.
You could have no IoT devices and demand all occupants and visitors check their phones at the door, if that's how you choose to live. I'm not passing judgment on where to draw the line, but it doesn't make any sense to be afraid of Alexa devices in your living room while you're sitting on your couch scrolling through Facebook on your Android device and watching Netflix on your "smart tv".
You're right it's not anyones business, but in reality it's still not going to be anyones but yours. Unless there is some breach that or bad actor and but as mentioned that could just as easily be done to your phone.
"I just bought into the Nest system (which also had great deals on black friday), and I'm just not worried about it.
In reality, bugging my residence isn't going to result in very interesting data."
You need to be doing everything you can to discourage any sort of data in this data-economy-style world we are pushing ourselves into. And if I want to walk down the street, I sure as hell don't want your camera recording me, especially since knowing the involved company, one way or another that recording WILL get used for a monetary purpose, and I sure as hell didn't sign a model contract, so despite being in public you're still potentially violating some of my rights with your doorbell camera.
I've already given up my location data to Google by using Android with Google's services. It's fine if the doorbell sees me entering and exiting. By adding the doorbell, my threat surface isn't expanded by very much, but I get all this extra doorbell utility.
I don't really have a problem with Google seeing the outside of my home. I wouldn't put a Nest camera inside. Personally, that's my line. The important thing is that I can change it later if I want.
As far as your rights, sure, sue Google or Amazon if you want. It's not really my problem unless the devices get banned, which won't happen. If they do get banned, I'll replace them with whatever the next best thing is, or roll my own.
I understand the frustration, but at this point, the only rational thing to do is adapt.
"It's not really my problem unless the devices get banned,"
I find out it's YOUR camera that was involved in violating my right to control my image, you're an accessory and I would file against you as such in court.
They are also arguing that since they have given up on security and assume they are fully compromised everyone else should give up as well and just buy more of these devices for their homes.
What's the counter argument? A phone is a smaller Google home running the same software and hardware. It's like bolting all the doors except the front. It'll stop a criminal attempting to enter only through the back, but doesn't it seem weird to optimize so much for that?
> it's a better target for attackers because it's always on you
let's not jump to conclusions here.
but if attackers are really targeting your phone, then security and safety should be your first concern. it's beyond "let me have a little privacy" at this point.
in any case, people are conflating that with willingly (or unwillingly) throwing tons of private information about them and people around them at entities who don't know what to do with all that data right now.
>If I'm doing something that I do not want recorded, I'd be using linux with a tor connection and strong opsec. The house can still be bugged as long as I don't have a camera pointed at my monitor.
If the NSA runs a few TOR hops between you and the target it would be unfortunately possible for them to perform a correlation attack on the traffic going through it's network and your confirmed position sitting on your home computer doing stuff, likely with a compromised router confirming TOR packets are leaving your house.
If you were running the Silk Road on TOR and the gov had reason to suspect it was you associated with a very specific illegal event, proving you were there at the right place and time can be enough without the content of the packets itself to sink you. Adrian Crenshaw's talks about Tor are fun for a laugh.
If you have a reputable friend visit your house that has been doing illegal things behind the scenes that you knew nothing about, be prepared for more scrutiny of your videos and potential recording devices. Just like swatting sent an average joe to jail for a few years because some kids called the swat in and they found a few ounces of weed. You may record technical negligence of your own child, forming a verbal contract you did not intend, agreeing or disagreeing to things that may publicly change your reputation and more.
Your images of your loved ones could be deepfaked to make a video phone call with a wavenet faked audio voice claiming to be kidnapped upon travelling through Asia and demand money to get home safe, because your home video system was hacked a week before...
The data of your existence is now an attack-surface intentionally or otherwise that authorities & criminals alike can explore.
Let's say I want to research something in private. I can absolutely connect to tor and have my identity hidden from the surveillance networks that track us all. Of course, I can't hide from the NSA. If the NSA wants me, they're gonna get me.
Also, if Google's devices or networks get hacked and used for extortion, they've got deep pockets. It'd be a cool plot for a movie, but I'm personally unconcerned about that scenario.
Are you implying that Google will shell out for your ransom insurance if they are found to be hacked? I don't think so.
I was using wavenet as an example of the technology that's possible, I don't think you need to compete with google's proprietary software to make a 30second video clip with faked audio.
> If I'm doing something that I do not want recorded, I'd be using linux with a tor connection and strong opsec. The house can still be bugged as long as I don't have a camera pointed at my monitor.
Until the police are looking for evidence to confirm it was you, and they pull footage of you getting home and walking into your "secure room" 5 minutes before the supposed activity started and exiting the room 5 seconds after it stopped. No warrant required of course.
and if they did, they would find a way to get all your photos or personal moments. If you really want to be secure getting rid of amazon assistants isn’t going to move e needle.
My assumption is that Amazon will look to integrate home services (home cleaning, home cooking, etc.) once enough people have installed those surveillance devices.
My idea of their pitch will be: "our home cleaners can access your home while you're away and they will be monitored 100% of the time while in your house, you already have security cameras, etc. installed so there's no need to worry."
That's just great. They're creating this massive underclass of workers that won't be able to afford any of the services they provide. They'll be constantly monitored and any mistake will force them out of the entirely of Amazon's monopolized workforce.
Amazon is playing with fire here. Hopefully these new workers will be able to develop solidarity to resist these actions, because the upper middle class these products are marketed to sure aren't going to care about the implications of the surveillance as long as it means no one can lift their new laptop.
Sure, it's certainly better than nothing. However, it's not really altruistic on Amazon's part. They avoid significant unionization, workplace democratization, or material social change by paying their workers a tiny bit more, while still extracting enormous surplus value from them. Furthermore, when they increased wages they cut benefits.
Regardless, this doesn't invalidate my point. $15/hr is still no where near enough to participate in a lot of these at-home services. I make many multiples of that and find a cleaner + multiple security subscriptions too expensive for my taste.
I certainly wasn't claiming all Amazon products (or even some of the home security products in isolation) were upper middle class.
However, most at-home services _are_ upper middle class, and owning a reasonable number of security products is upper middle class. Furthermore, we're interested in the intersection of those two things, implying an even more well-off group.
Haha you're why the commercials work. Hook line and sinker.
Many 'poor' people are poor because of spending habits and lack of saving discipline, and it's a hall mark of the modern poor in America to drive a car you can't afford, own an expensive phone, have a big TV, etc. Whether buying it on credit, or buying with money that could/should have been used to pay off debt, save fore retirement etc, it's trivial to buy something like an iPhone for almost anyone in America.
iPhones are BELOVED by the poor as a "rich" status symbol, for all the same reasons why you think the poor don't own them.
P.S. you can get a brand new iphone for like $30/mo from any major seller. An 18 year old with their first fast food job can buy a big shiny iPhone today.
P.P.S most of the 'upper middle class' I'm familiar with doesn't do iPhones and especially not brand new ones, they do budget phones or cheaper android devices because you don't get wealthy spending $1000 every 2 years on a device that costs $275 to manufacture.
This is barely worth a reply based on your tone but here we go:
(1) "Poor people make bad financial decisions" is practically a meme at this point. Why do they make those decisions? Perhaps the incessant advertising and rampant consumerism in America? Poor financial education? Why not fix those things instead of demonizing them for enjoying a few minor comforts in their lives?
(2) How does buying an iPhone have anything to do with rent? $500/yr on a phone would barely put a dent in Bay Area or LA rent. Once you include total cost of living the new iPhone is a rounding error, even in 'cheap' places, and especially if you have health problems.
(3) I'm not sure what upper middle class people you're talking about, but all of them I know have new iPhones. You don't save yourself to a $200k/yr income, that's a shitty argument pushed by the "personal financial responsibility" press to make rich people feel justified in their immorality.
You're just looking for reasons to feel justified keeping people poor. If you can't afford to eat, it's not because you're overspending on a car or a phone, you're probably driving a beater you pray every morning will get you to work.
Not only that, you're _still_ missing the point of my post. AT HOME SERVICES and CLOUD SECURITY PRODUCTS are for rich people. No poor person has a cleaner and a fucking ring doorbell, get real.
No they're envisioning Amazon claiming to protect their workers in bad faith in order to protect Amazon from suits for not vetting their workers properly.
Then you (or the market in general) don't use their service, and they'll be forced to change their minds, and have their "independent contractor cleaning partners" sign contracts to agree to surveillance to get any gig at all...
Fuck the grim Amazon future, with cloud feudalism spreading to real life and Jeff Bezos is Emperor..
There is nothing wrong with IoT stuff provided that care is taken in deployment. You can do it yourself or you could get me to install it instead as a ... a ... hmmm ... IoT accredited errr ... what standard is appropriate?
As it turns out I am personally CREST accredited and run a small IT company with ISO9001, 27001 and advise on PCI DSS and the like. I bathe in tin foil.
Anyway, VLANS and firewall and self hosting is the key to my idea of a decent IoT smart home. Also I insist on manual controls if the controller is down. I also do a proper risk assessment on each device.
Yes, but if you carry around a smartphone it’s kind of a moot point. Unfortunately, I think pervasive surveillance is inevitable. Perhaps when video and audio evidence becomes completely unreliable due to deepfakes type shenanigans it will actually be a positive because it will make all the surveillance data worthless? Maybe they are the the answer to each other’s problems?
Only a "smart" phone full of surveillance software from Google, Apple, et al. If your pocket computer is running software under your control, then apart from baseband malware [0], you're only leaking your location data - a far cry from continual audio surveillance.
[0] Who knows how prevalent this is, especially with the popularity of defective by design integrated Qualcomm chipsets etc. But at least this is at the level of national governments, rather than agile consumer companies with stated missions of datamining as much as they can for economic advantage.
Yes, but if you carry around a smartphone it’s kind of a moot point
That's what I tell people when they ask how I can stand having an Echo listening to me in my house -- and then he took out his phone and used Siri to look up the privacy problems. He didn't understand the irony even when I pointed it out.
If you are allowing for non-legal or quasi-legal means, then most of the devices we carry are susceptible to mostly non-video privacy invasion (cell phones, fitbits, implanted medical devices, cars, etc.). Adding the Ring increases video surveillance. An Echo Dot in your home increases your vulnerability by adding another device (increasing your attack footprint), but the similar data and more could be accessed through your phone.
For example: A phone's gyroscope might be able to listen in on you, even if your microphone is off:
Just because a targeted attack could make you vulnerable via existing tech doesn't mean you should invite new products into your home that openly admit to monitoring you.
It just goes to show how much the powers-that-be don't want to talk about data privacy, and just want you to go back to your lives while corporations continue to do whatever they want with their newfound oil. The Snowden revelations are up there with 9/11 in terms of American history significance, and when they happened, barely anything changed, especially in the general public.
No one cares, no one can be bothered to be galvanized to give a shit, and it's because there's too much money to be made from the status quo staying the same.
> The Snowden revelations are up there with 9/11 in terms of American history significance, and when they happened, barely anything changed, especially in the general public.
I'm not sure the American people have the ability to change it at this point. We elected Obama when he campaigned on a promise to end the mass surveillance of American citizens, but once he was in office he expanded the NSAs ability to do just that. James Clapper repeatedly lied to congress about what was happening and has publicly confessed to doing so, yet he faced zero consequences for it.
At this point it doesn't seem like the US government represents our best interests and we have very little ability to change that. We've got actual research showing that:
"Call me tinfoil I don't care, but don't invite me to your homes either if the place is going to be bugged, I'm good."
The funniest part of this opinion is that 95% of the time I hear it, I say, can you take the bugged device out of your pocket before you talk about not being near bugs?
Always with the iPhones and Androids, even though they have the same exact technology for always listening, activating, and sending your data to a database for collection.
Very rarely, they'll pull out a dumbphone and that's respectable since generally only governments bug those, and only once in my entire life have I heard someone criticizing bugs actually not walk with a cellphone at all. Now there's someone who demonstrates their convictions with their actions.
> Always with the iPhones and Androids, even though they have the same exact technology for always listening, activating, and sending your data to a database for collection.
I think there's a fair distinction to be made between a cell phone which you can configure to not listen to your environment 24/7 and even put into airplane mode so it isn't sending data vs intentionally bugging your entire house.
It is certainly possible that my cell phone is lying to me when I tell it not to monitor my every word and it tells me that it isn't, but at that point the fault is on Android and Apple. If I choose to bug my house and send the intimate details of my life to Amazon that's 100% on me.
It's also true that while these days a cell phone is basically required to function in modern society, a smart speaker is not.
Why is airplane mode a fair distinction? You can unplug a listening device or put it on a timer plug so its only active for certain hours.
If it's possible that your cellphone could lie to you and monitor you, then it's equally possible your smart speaker could lie to you and monitor you
Both are managed by the same firms, with the same rules. If one can, both can. If one can't, both can't.
And just because one bug is required for modern life and another bug is not required, doesn't make one bug more acceptable than the other. A bug is a bug is a bug. If you care about bugs, then carrying one around is hilarious silly. Better to re-align your morals so that you are not hypocritically violating them.
Yes, because you are either living off the grid in an underground bunker, or you're be a twenty something techie who buys every new device. Middle ground, what's that?
What even is this comment? If you care about bugs, don't carry one around. Smartphones are beloved by intelligence agencies for their ease of access. Most devices running today are full of unreported zero days up to and including "hot mic" exploits that are routinely used.
If you care, you care. If you don't, don't pretend lol.
I'll add current events to this reply: Donald Trump's use of android cellphones is widely believed by analysts in multiple countries to be listened into by both allied and hostile nations.
He constantly uses an android device and it's believed that France, Israel, Russia and others listen into every call he makes.
Many comments refer to this as "Amazon promoting its own products over competitors" but that's not the right way to look at this. They aren't promoting their own products, they're promoting exclusively the Ring/Blink/Echo family.
In the past I've bought Amazon house brand clothing, batteries, sheets. They aren't promoting similar products that I'm likely to buy. Instead more than half the storefront is devoted to Echo products which I've never bought, and never will.
This isn't a case of "here's something we think you'll like," it's "here's something we want you to have."
Spot on. Also consumers are attracted to tech gadgets during cyber Monday sales so it's even way easier for them to sell those items over non-electronics.
To be the devil's advocate, what if those deals really were the best? What if Amazon sold those items at such a loss that no other deals could compare? (That's probably not the case, but just thinking hypothetically).
Also:
> That potential favoritism can come in varied forms... even right at checkout when an Amazon customer is ready to buy an item from a non-Amazon brand. This last tactic could be compared to a cashier in a physical store showing you a deal for the store’s own brand when you walk up to pay for a competitor’s product.
Would it really be considered anti-competitive if a brick and mortar store did that? I feel like I've had cashiers actually do that before, and I was grateful because usually it's a better deal on some generic stuff where I don't care what brand it actually is.
That's disingenuous. Obviously the echo is capable of far more than purchasing things from amazon. I'd guess that most echo users don't actually ever use voice purchasing.
I've never used mine for purchasing and I use it an absolute ton. Mostly for cooking and converting units so I dont have to put my fish-covered hands on my phone to calculate things. If doing things in the kitchen was the only thing I used it for it would still have been worth the investment.
Amazon Echo devices are so cheap that Amazon probably isn't making any profit at regular prices. Amazon is practically giving them away to generate more sales, more lock in and collect more data, bringing them well beyond a replaceable online store.
Of course when the devices are heavily discounted on Cyber Monday they are among the best possible deals (in terms of hardware per dollar). The only thing I know about that matches this is Valve selling Steam Links (last year) or Steam Controllers (this year) at 90% discount for mostly the same reasons.
This is why avoiding a conflict of interest is generally seen as the right thing to do. Not everyone will (knowingly) take advantage of such a situation, but questions will always be raised that cast doubt on the whole thing.
All five of the devices in the list are surveillance or spy devices which capture data that Amazon likely considers very valuable. As such, Amazon is likely selling many of these devices at cost or below because they provide Amazon with more data.
The list of five devices includes three cameras and two alexa listening devices.
Lots of hyperbole there. Ring doorbells aren’t cheap and I pay for the subscription plan (fairly limited without it). It generates revenue on the subscription not the data.
I agree with your sentiment that their gadgets are mostly glorified surveillance apparatus. However, that's not a valid reason to bar them from promoting those products. It doesn't really have a bearing on the scenario I described.
For me Black Friday and Cyber Monday really didn't have many deals. The Chromebooks I was looking at are all cheaper now than those days. Amazon devices really were discounted heavily though.
I used camelcamelcamel to check prices on a bunch of things I was interested in that were advertised as black friday / cyber monday deals. About 90% of them were the same price as normal or the same price as if you just waited for cyclical discounts to come around. There were a few advertised things that had legitimate deals of about 10-15% off the best price from the last 12 months, though.
Yeah, I had my Black Friday shopping list ready and camelcamelcamel is a great helper in these situations. Easy to see if you're actually getting a real deal or it's better to wait.
I don't browse Amazon, but when I was ordering something their "Cyber Monday Deals" caught my eye. Oh, okay, I'll bite. Every single item under "Electronics" was an Amazon device. Really? Because, for example, $150 off an iPad Pro seems worth a mention (I bought one). Surely there was something that was a deal that didn't have Amazon's logo on it.
I know, I know, smack 'em on the nose. I don't really care about that so much as the fact that Amazon isn't dead to me just yet, but they're on life support and every little niggle such as this gets me closer to pulling the plug.
Supermarkets and drugstores are notorious for this.
Supermarkets will often see a product that is selling well and copy it as closely as they can without going over the line -- similar colors, size, packaging -- then sell it under their own brand right next to the branded product at a more attractive price.
It feels unfair if you're a producer, but it's often just one of the costs of having access to the distribution platform.
the set of folks with a legal obligation to give you good answers to questions is very small and doesn't include amazon.
> misdirects me in order to make more money from me
literally the entire sales profession.
if you want everyone around you to be under some moral obligation to tell you the absolute truth at all times, you've got a larger cultural battle to fight.
The linked article heavily implies that legal action could be taken against Amazon for this, by bringing up other antitrust investigations that are happening. Hence the debate about legality.
No one is saying you should be compelled to like it, they're saying that the fuss over it is moot because it's not as big a deal as it's made out to be.
I don't like it, but I don't fault them for it. My exact thought when browsing their Cyber Monday deals was: "Oh, looks like they're mostly promoting their own stuff. Meh." close tab
I don't get all the fuss over it I suppose. I don't expect Amazon to be impartial. If I want an unbiased source for the best deals, there are plenty of shopping blogs that aggregate that information.
EDIT: Actually, I guess I could see the argument that 3rd party sellers are getting the shaft due to this behavior. I'm not sure what the solution is though, as I still feel Amazon should be able to promote their own products on their own platform. Tough call.
Are 3rd party sellers entitled to fairness? They choose to use Amazon as a platform, they could use ebay, etsy, woocommerce, shopify, bigcommerce? There is also not much but complexity and time stopping them from using a bunch of those services. Theres also things like ecomdash.com that let you treat all the platforms as just another sales channel of your business.
Im not sure how much I feel for the "I sold my soul to the devil for a quick buck and he turned on me, woe is me" crowd. If you dont like the deal, and you dont want to list your product at one of the biggest stores in the world, nobody is forcing you to.
There may absolutely be some anti-competitive behavior happening. Im not sure how I feel about amazon watching trends and then cloning products. Being paid by their competitors to be fed market research. But its not a unique business model to Amazon, Wal-mart has been doing it forever. If this behavior type needs correcting, correct the rules, not haphazard sanctions after the fact.
I'm honestly not sure if they're entitled to fairness. Sure, I guess they choose to use Amazon so they could just as well choose not to. But Amazon's massive market presence means that small sellers could take a huge hit by not being a part of it. Sometimes their livelihood depends on their Amazon sales.
But now that I brought it up, I feel like that's a different issue than what's being mentioned in the article: Amazon gadgets getting promoted on Cyber Monday. By itself, the whole issue the article gets after doesn't seem like a big deal to me.
>But Amazon's massive market presence means that small sellers could take a huge hit by not being a part of it.
Does Amazon have a social responsibility. Do they own people the opportunity to profit as reseller
>Sometimes their livelihood depends on their Amazon sales.
Get a different job? Not trying to be too curt but, if you cant be profitable without amazon, maybe something else is wrong. If you want to dance with amazon for MORE profit, that is your choice.
I tend to agree with you, but I think this lends itself to a bigger philosophical debate of how much social responsibility a company has when it wields the incredible amount of power that Amazon does. And to that I have no answer.
Didn't Google get into trouble for putting their own shopping results above other search results? It seems like Amazon should seriously be penalized for this. It's completely anticompetitive.
Amazon is not the only search-for-something-to-buy-company. Amazon and Google can't both have a monopoly over the same market.
There's a lot of stuff that's allowed when you're a normal company and forbidden when you have a monopoly. Some courts declared google a monopoly, and that's why they are restricted in what they can display on their search pages.
(not trying to pass judgement here as to what either company should be allowed to do, just saying that's why it is the way it is.)
Car manufacturers are legally barred from owning dealerships, it’s the individual dealership groups who decide what to sell. Car manufacturers selling directly to the public decreased competition as the manufacturers didn’t have any incentive to undercut their own prices between dealerships selling their own products.
No they shouldnt, that is anti-competitive. Grocery store shelf placement is paid for my brands. If Kirkland pays for better placement they get better placement. Not just because they are the inhouse brand.
They do by soft power -- leveraging their position in the market to make the alternatives completely unprofitable, thus literally preventing you from selling on other platforms.
the word monopoly gets mistakenly used in place of anti-competitive all the time.
Are you describing predatory pricing? Where they sell at a loss to put competition out of business or to grow faster? Or are you trying to say its not profitable to sell on ebay or shopify instead of amazon? Amazon using its scale to clone products and sell them with low margins, in an effort to prevent competition from springing up is anti-competitive, but its not them being a monopoly.
Are you asking whether promotion of an in-house brand is anti-competitive behavior that should be subject to antitrust laws? That’s really not a question that’s been decided by society already, certainly not something that should just be assumed to be a positive trend.
The trend is quickly becoming stores that sell almost exclusively store brand, augmented by other companies products to fill their cracks. Target, Walmart, and Costco would prefer to be Ikea than ebay. In many ways, I like it. I want target products, I go to target. I trust them to stand behind the quality of their product. Same goes for Kirkland. I dont go to Amazon to buy Kirland, anymore than I go to Best Buy to buy an Echo. Great Value I expect to be cheap but safe and not counterfit. Sure Wal-Mart might not be the most ethical business partner, and might be putting companies out of business, but I expect their store brand products to be what they say on the label.
The stores pushing their brand helps with the paradox of choice, comparison shopping, recommendations and reivews, and blame when something goes wrong. I expect them to do the work of selecting the best product and standing behind it. Its department store scale boutiques, store brand product curation (basically white label rebranding, maybe custom runs off the factory lines) is a feature, not a bug.
Amazon is doing a very similar thing by buying brands. Hopefully someday there is more to Alexa than voice, and there is a single something that allows you to see basic status and config of all your amazon products and services, whether they be Echo, Fire, Ring, Eero, Twitch etc.
> I dont go to Amazon to buy Kirland, anymore than I go to Best Buy to buy an Echo
I actually do go to Amazon to buy Kirkland. The nearest Costco is far enough away and not sufficiently cheaper than the Walmart supercenter a mile from my place to justify a Costco membership.
Best Buy is actually a good place to buy Amazon devices if you have a nearby Best Buy. They price match so the price is generally the same (and better if it happens to be a time when Best Buy is having a sale and Amazon is not), and you get the thing right away. Oh, and Best Buy takes Apple Pay and cash.
Buying Kirkland on Amazon, means someone walked into a costco, bought it, and resold it. From both a cost effective and auditing a warranty trail standpoint, that sucks. Incentivizing people to stock their homes full of costco products to resell is a market failure, we shouldnt encourage that behavior, but instead address the market failure. You can buy costco products at costco.com without a membership.
It depends on the dealer, but for multi-brand sellers you can expect them to push whatever has the most profit margin for them, in the case of a Ford dealer that sells multiple brands (new, Im not talking used) I'd expect them to push Ford for the margin, just like Amazon is going to push their brand. But Amazon is a market-place (whereas I cannot go to this Ford dealership and list my own car for sale) and this is anti-competitive .
Ford isn't a platform for selling cars. If Ford was a company that made it's revenue sold Chevy, Dodge, Volkswagen, Bentley, etc. and it's own cars, then they would be analogous to Amazon.
EU considered it anticompetitive because of Google's marketshare in search (something like >80% in the EU). Amazon doesn't have nearly the same marketshare in retail.
Google shopping results are search ads with pictures. Every single listing is paid to be there. They're literally set up in the same place that the rest of Google ads are. EU wasn't able to distinguish this so they slapped them on the wrist.
Amazon isn't promoting sponsored products, they're promoting their own. That would be like Google only showing Pixel 4 as a result for "buy smartphone".
That's not the context of what I replied to. The context was what they got in trouble with, which was was they do today, but with some exclusivity clauses.
Amazon also slapped the "Deal of the day" label on many products during black Friday and cyber Monday, even though the prices for those products were still the same as before. No price drops but good at creating FOMO for consumers.
My local supermarket is a marketplace for lots of brands. They heavily promote their own generic brands. What kind of punishment should they get from the government?
If Ford dealerships were a marketplace for vehicles other than Fords, I'd agree with this comment.
The issue I have with Amazon is that for many folks, they ARE the marketplace to buy goods. Pushing their own products as the "best Cyber Monday deal" is when things get a bit suspect, at least for me. And honestly, what represents "Best"? Best for the consumer? Or, best for Amazon?
(My cynicism is probably due to working retail (Staples) and having managers push us to sell Staples-branded items due to higher margins for the store/company (and we sales were happy to comply due to the higher spiffs). While I truly enjoy on-line shopping since I no longer deal with sales people, I'm fully aware that the algorithm pushing that "BEST CHOICE" IS the new "sales person". And they know more about me than any sales person in a physical store would ever know...scary.)
Used cars are a thing. Albeit not identical, dealerships definitely do sell other vehicles and will almost always push the new model of their brand over the used model of the other brand.
> Albeit not identical, dealerships definitely do sell other vehicles and will almost always push the new model of their brand over the used model of the other brand.
I'd argue this will vary with dealerships. And, the pushiness would be more sales person, rather than the dealership.
For new cars, there are a couple reasons why a dealership may push a new car over a used car. The manufacturer may be providing volume incentives and the dealership needs to sale a certain number of models to meet that incentive. Or, a new vehicle has been sitting on the lot for too long and the dealership needs to move the vehicle (this is more true for used cars).
But, USED cars are a cash cow for dealerships. Either through trade-ins or auction purchases (based on the type of dealership), there's WAY more margin in a used vehicle than there is in a new car.
Unless it's a purely volume-driven dealership, dealerships will be perfectly happy to push a used car over a new car.
...was just going to say the same thing. I don't understand how that even surprises anyone.
What I find more troubling is that the default sort order for browsing search results and categories etc is stuff like "Sort by: Featured", "Bestseller", interleaved with "Sponsored Results", bla, bla, bla. What I want to know is which button to click for "please make a goddamn effort to show me the stuff where it's in my best interest to see it, given the query I gave you, or given the category I browsed into, rather than in your best interest or in the interest of someone who paid for the privilege of my attention" -- A long time ago, I had some level of trust that online shops were able to deliver on that. But that's no longer true with Amazon.
The post above describes a hypothetical universe where Ford sells "all cars," not "one out of three cars." And not "one out of three cars, sold via one particular channel that accounts for a small minority of cars sold."
I keep seeing this way too frequently - Amazon pushing everything towards a dystopian environment. These posts gets highly voted and then its as if we forget and move on let things be the way they were. Amazon has gained too much momentum and now its way too difficult to stop it.
These are two completely different businesses. Amazon is a marketplace that sells basically anything sold by anyone. Apple is a manufacturer who lists their own products or accessories for their own products.
When I walk into my local grocer, they offer better deals on the house brand and advertise as such. Why does Amazon need to push people toward someone else’s product? We don’t hold any other retailer I can think of to this standard.
Well in this case, the primary issue is around anti-trust and competition. Given that amazon has a bout a 50% share of e-commerce, this kind of behavior could be harmful to competition and well functioning markets. The counter argument is to say that their space is not e-commerce but all retail and thus Amazon is not a monopolist, but I would argue that this not a good precedent to set for a well functioning economy.
Most tech companies have avoided anti-trust by arguing that they don't hold monopoly power, but I think we are behind the game in terms of regulation. Again, I wouldn't have a problem with Amazon promoting their own products if it didn't have a strong effect on competition and how well markets operate, but I really believe that a lot of the placers are exhibiting monopolist behavior.
There's a difference between stocking your own products alongside the alternatives and marketing your own products to the exclusion of the alternatives.
If you're doing only one or the other, there's no problem. If you're doing both, there's a serious asymmetry and you are taking money from the alternatives' suppliers under false pretenses. The suppliers expect to be on equal footing with its competitors. At this stage, Amazon's products should be considered one supplier out of many and shouldn't be offered special treatment because it belongs to the retailer.
When you walk into your local grocer, they aren't putting all the house brand stuff in the front and hiding the name brand stuff in a stockroom where you need to specifically ask for it.
Can you buy Amazon products anywhere except Amazon?
I feel like this would be more legitimately "anti-competitive" if these products were available in all sorts of places (like most of Amazon's merchandise). But the only place to buy Kindles and Echos is Amazon.
You can buy Kindles and Echos and Rings at Best Buy, Target, and Office Depot. You can also buy Echos and Rings, but not Kindles, at Lowes. Home Depot has Rings, but not Echos or Kindles as far as I can tell.
Call me tinfoil I don't care, but don't invite me to your homes either if the place is going to be bugged, I'm good.