This was so obviously a bad idea from day one, I was shocked at how widely adopted these were right away. In retrospect I shouldnt have been surprised but somehow I just always expect people to be smarter.
Memes
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All you have to do is not tell any of the customers that it continually listens, by the time the ones who didn't know find out, it's already in their homes, they've already got the app installed, and they've said "I dreamt about something and then saw an ad for it the next day" more than once.

The CIA openly admits to spying on people around the world and everyone's reaction is now 'Oh you'
Somehow (constant media propaganda most likely) they've convinced people that to do ANYTHING you have to get your hands dirty; that 'ANYTHING' however is rarely or only slightly in our benefit, it's of a bigger benefit to an elite few instead. Even if you ascribe to 'the ends justify the means', the ends aren't worth it and the means are just getting more and more horrific and we're assuming the imperial boomerang isn't on its way back.
The vast line of imperial boomerangs have been slamming against our jaws for years now
From what i gather from talking to people is that
A: they don't care Or B: I'm paranoid and it doesn't matter.
I do not understand how people just give up their privacy for nothing
Has there actually been evidence of Alexa or Google homes being used for government surveillance?
Ring doorbells now give their footage to Flock, which can give/sell it to anyone. No warrant necessary. Not exactly what you're asking about, but along the same lines.
And police departments have absolutely bought that information, especially given their notoriously inflated budgets (at least in many cities).
Tbf, it would be pretty strange if law enforcement needed a warrant for flock camera footage, considering they're just freely accessible on the fucking internet /s
Ring, also owned by Amazon, shares their video surveillance with Flock, which contracts with local LE agencies who share it with the feds.
0 warrants required, and ICE is actively using the data against people.
If the data is there a fascist government will absolutely use it. Of course in a democracy that won't happen ... unless you vote for fascists, ooopsie.
Pretty sure it's illegal for them to confirm that this has happened. Most of the spying is to manipulate your shopping patterns and learn how to make the most profit from you.
Think Las Vegas casino levels of manipulation and then some.
They got caught sending info to their data banks they said they would not, and listening all the time even when they said they would not.
All of these smart devices do. If it is connected to the internet, presume it is spying and will sneak the information back.
The feds in the us buy data broker info, all of it, the cia buys and steals foreigners' too, and distribute it to agencies all the way down to notes, not attributed to source, in the local police's lien, law enforcement information network. Their dossiers on everyone. No warrants or judges, blessed by the supreme court for some time this is not new.
An end run around privacy laws and the bill of rights. Just like 5 eyes end runs spy agencies not being allowed to spy on their countries. They let their ally do it, lead it on paper at least, then share it with them.
All a result of being ruled by lawyers working for plutocrats.
An autistic teenage hacker banned from having a computer used a fire stick in a hotel room to hack Rockstar games. I think any given 14 year old war driver can hack these devices and listen to your conversations. If the government will work their butts off to install a tap on a landline, how can they not use an Alexa.
At the very least, there's a teenager in your neighborhood listening to every damn thing you say. If you have cameras in your home, they're watching you.
I actually use mine as a disability aid. My motor control isn’t the best so it’s good just to call out for light and heat adjustments.
But I’ve long since come to terms with the fact that if ICE or whoever wanted to come bust me down, there wasn’t anything stopping them before I got what is essentially a home aide, and there’s nothing stopping them now.
Alexa Home Microphone. They mis-named it as a "home speaker" but actual home speakers have been around for 100+ years. They originally looked like this:

When phones were still tied to a cable, people were freer.
It's fucking wild to me how so many people willingly signed over their privacy so blatantly.
They've been conditioned to not care or even desire it. Smartphones had Siri and Google Assistant as a selling point, which led to ever more intrusive tech that was marketed as a convenience. Facebook took it a step further and had you label people in pictures uploaded to them and you sign away your privacy in their terms and conditions. Advanced marketing techniques were irresistible to social media companies and so consumer profiles of everyone they could get became a thing.
Jokes about seeing ads that smartphones can overhear made the intrusive spying all the more accepted as just a part of life. Android marks your calendar and reminds you of appointments made using your Gmail account when you never asked it to. Ring doorbell cameras quietly sell their video feeds to the highest bidder, often to law enforcement as a convenient means to circumvent the 4th amendment. And now the latest trend is to have your car do everything your phone already does but take it a step further by monitoring your driving habits so insurance companies can justify raising your premiums.
The average person isn't tech savvy enough to understand they're being sold as a product even after paying for their own surveillance gear. They just want modern conveniences without thinking the price they pay beyond the original sale.
I don’t take VACCINES because the GOVERNMENT puts TRACKING CHIPS in them! You can’t trust ANYTHING made by SCIENCE anymore!
- Sent from my iPhone
Authoritarians learned that 1984-style totalitarian control doesn't work anymore; so they tried Brave New World's control through psychological pleasure, and it is more successful than ever imagined.
Really it’s a mixture of both. Brave New World to keep the masses sedated, 1984 for the people who start to question the system.
Your phone is probably worse. Yes, even with GrapheneOS.
The scariest part is when you just think about pancakes and then start seeing ads for flour and maple syrup 10 minutes later. They don't even need the wiretap anymore.
Yeah because they know you like pancakes and can serve you ads to start that train of thought so when you are served the pancake ad you feel like it 'got you' instead of the real fact that you were manipulated into thinking about pancakes so the pancake ad has more possibility of getting engagement from you. This is why you should have ad block on everything you interact with.
yeah people don't realize just how insidious advertisement really is.
your phone isn't "reading your mind," advertisers have such a comprehensive model of you that they're able to predict your thoughts with an incredibly high degree of accuracy before you even have them. There's also obviously a bit of confirmation bias in play, you only remember the times they got it right as opposed to the times they guessed wrong.
I suddenly feel a sharp craving for some ad-block software...
Hey wiretap, I was hitting on my wife's friend in the elevator, I have issues with my wife anyways about that 2k she spent from my account last week if you remember, am I the asshole?
Hey validation machine, can you tell me I am right?
You're absolutely right!
Fuck. I just made apple butter pancakes last night. This is me, except way hotter.
How many of you are responding to this post from your cell phone?
Google search chatgpts work the same way dear computer guys
I think you will find that most “computer guys” on Lemmy do not use google or LLMs unless forced to for work.
With so many methods for global communications in the average persons hands it not a wonder at all. People are not even one iota security conscious until they get tagged and by then its too late