The Alexa feature "Do Not Send Voice Recordings" you enabled no longer available
83 comments
·March 17, 2025DevX101
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.
evrimoztamur
America's lack of customer protection will hurt continue hurting its people. Ladies and gentlemen, please do something about it.
labster
[flagged]
xmprt
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.
z3t4
It was not yours to begin with. Think of it as a service. Just give it back and go to a competitor. Ohh wait, there are no competitors! Monopolies suck! Especially if they are world-wide.
firtoz
There are competitors, even open source ones
beezlewax
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.
atoav
Yeah but the ridiculously anti-consumer US has opted to elect politicians with so much billionaire miney, they'd rather get their moneys worth.
Who needs anti-coruption laws with a society like that? And who expects not to get fucked by coorporations when they have lost every incentive not to?
And the free market isn't the incentive you think it is when your're the monipolists that can crush or buy out the competition.
protocolture
[flagged]
Waterluvian
“Reputation” as a free market remedy is such a poor solution, though, as it lags behind the events that change it.
A badly tuned PID loop is better than nothing, I guess.
Paul-Craft
Pardon my French, but fuck "free market" remedies. The actual "free market remedy" here should theoretically be a lawsuit. But, you and I both know that Amazon's TOS are locked down pretty hard to pre-empt this sort of thing. Even if they weren't, it would take either an individual with deep pockets to pursue such a suit, or it would have to be a class action. Except that neither of those would be likely to succeed, because there's no law that says once a company offers a feature or feature toggle that they have to continue to offer it for the life of the product. And, if there were, that, by definition, wouldn't be a "free market" solution.
The solution here is regulation.
Edit: I forgot to mention that a lawsuit would take years to resolve. Meanwhile, Amazon would continue to benefit from their unfair tactics.
therealpygon
Some people will say just about anything to blame the consumer. You know, like “it’s your own fault for buying a thing from a company.”
isoprophlex
Yes! You knew this was coming, why didn't you buy something from any other huge monopolistic tech-cloud-everything-store?! Oh wait...
benrutter
To continue the metaphor, shouldn't someone close down or regulate "wheel stealing jimmies wheel theft funded auto retailer" so that they don't keep stealing people's wheels?
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observationist
They aren't wheel stealing jimmies, but they're definitely data railing bit bangers itching for their next fix. I think choosing to do business with Amazon comes with the same sort of reasonable assumptions. Lie down with dogs, and all that.
Y'all got some more of that data...?
imoreno
It doesn't sound like a good idea to blame the victim more if the offender is a repeat offender. If anything repeat offenders should be treated harsher.
simion314
>Yes but reputation is a factor. If you bought that car from wheel stealing jimmies wheel theft funded auto retailer you might need to shoulder some of the blame.
You think the same for food and medicine? remove the "evil" regulations and let the reputation be a factor and every individual should do their research ?
imoreno
Don't these usually come with ToS or something that has you agreeing that they can change the service any time?
Taek
ToS have limits, people in a practical sense aren't really able to read and understand the ToS of every product they buy, which means a ToS can only go so far in the ways it allows companies to be predatory against consumers.
hsbauauvhabzb
Has that been tested in court? I would have thought a user wilfully or negligently misreading a ToS would not be a good legal defence (not that I agree with how I think the law would play out)
muzani
I always wonder how valid these actually are. There's probably a reasonable range.
Like a car park can say they're not liable for your car's safety, it doesn't mean they can steal your car. A roller coaster can say they're not liable for injuries but if they didn't inform you it's dangerous for pregnant people or if they violate some safety law, they're probably liable.
The bit about changing terms of service probably gives them some leeway to deal with law changes and stuff. If they're purposely being misleading to play bait and switch, that sounds like it's breaking a law somewhere.
hnlmorg
What you’re describing is that ToS cannot exonerate them from breaking other laws. Which is correct.
However the question is whether other laws have been broken in the first place.
yaur
When you buy a car there is a lot of required paperwork that they don't really give you time to read, so maybe.
mort96
They're not gonna refuse to sell you the car if you take the time to read the paperwork. And it's probably a large enough amount of money that you should take the time to at least skim it.
throwaway48476
You shouldn't sign things you don't read. Cue the centipad.
briandear
That’s generally loan paperwork. And you can take all the time you want to read.
timwis
I switched to Home Assistant a couple months ago (because I didn't like the idea of my voice being sent to amazon constantly) and haven't looked back! Soo much more you can do (including immediately using an LLM, if you like, whether in the cloud or local), and so much more control.
draugadrotten
I am switching out the Alexas in the house to the home assistant voice devices, which can leverage a local LLM without any cloud whatsoever
https://www.home-assistant.io/voice-pe/
The process is still complicated enough to be "enthusiast" (aka nerd) territory but it is getting better with every release. It will still be here in 10 years, nobody can take it away from us.
Mountain_Skies
Home Assistant is a great example of the amazing things the open source community is capable of doing. Hopefully they get the color version stuff worked out. It's too bad it appears that most of Amazon's hardware devices can't be turned to the good side and made to work with Home Assistant.
timwis
What do you mean color version?
As an aside, I get what you mean in the context of my earlier comment, but just to clarify for anyone reading, you can use alexa and Google home devices with home assistant (eg to send commands and as media players, I believe), but you can't "deamazon"/"degoogle" them and just use the hardware with home assistant, which would be great if we could!
october8140
Our longstanding privacy commitment with Siri
https://www.apple.com/jo/newsroom/2025/01/our-longstanding-p...
ohgr
Times come and go.
Never give any data to anyone based on their current policy, because as demonstrated here, it may change. And then you're fucked.
paul7986
As well another one is Siri after 14 years remain not intelligent even with Apple's supposed new Apple Intelligence!
ohgr
It's terrible and always has been. As featured in Curb Your Enthusiasm (contains swearing so don't play it in the office loud): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTefnhbg0Ig
BiteCode_dev
Shank
With all due respect, the link you’ve linked to is reddit, and the underlying story is a 500. Can you provide an available source or alternative, since this one seems broken?
BiteCode_dev
Updated link but it's getting hard to find them.
Eg: I can't find any link about the home button scandal anymore.
People will forget about all the wrong doing and the PR will enventually won.
jisnsm
Your link does not contradict his.
randunel
The link is still relevant, because apple's statement is posted in a manner antithetical to the article when, in fact, apple does the same thing.
The main difference is that apple didn't allow its users to have such a setting in the first place, so amazon used to be better. Until now, when they're equally bad in this respect.
DeathArrow
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?
hiccuphippo
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?
fergie
Mindblowing that people actually use these things
twy1212895
I still remember the time when devices worked for you rather than against you.
But people will put up with anything. You could literally send a note that any Alexa will be equipped with 2kg of Semtex, to be triggered in case of wrongthink in your own home. People would still use Alexa and rationalize the feature.
cphoover
Is all audio up to “Alexa” still processed on device?
gnabgib
Discussion (233 points, 2 days ago, 103 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43367536
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nextts
Alexa: we here for you
Thinking about that picture from a (UK?) hospital breakroom with the sign that said "Please turn off the Echo before discussing sensitive patient information."