Technology

59342 readers

5242 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

224

Alexa Is in Millions of Households—and Amazon Is Losing Billions (www.wsj.com)

submitted 3 months ago by just_another_person@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

90 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] archomrade@midwest.social 27 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I can see why people are quick to think this but I don't see any compelling evidence this is the case, and as others have pointed out it would be impractical for them to do so.

More likely they use it for consumer lock-in and to collect data through its api endpoints. Collecting media activity and smart home device information is valuable enough on its own, before even approaching the value of collecting recorded audio.

They can already intuit consumer habits/word of mouth exposure from other associated data with your online activity. After locking down all my other privacy, the ads I get are far less relevant to me, even though I have a number of smart listening devices in my home

[–] Kimano@lemmy.world 18 points 3 months ago (1 children)

There's also the matter of there being literally hundreds of security and privacy researchers who would love nothing more than to catch Amazon doing this, and no one has in any major way.

[–] Dkarma@lemmy.world -4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

It's always listening. They don't debate that.

[–] Kimano@lemmy.world 11 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Sure, no one is saying that. The point is that it doesn't send anything other than the stuff after the keywords back to company servers.

[–] aStonedSanta@lemm.ee 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Or what it thinks is a keyword. Correct.

[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Well, obviously it operates on what it believes is a keyword. It does not have magically divine insight. Are you trying to imply they make them overly sensitive? I don't see the problem. Imagine the opposite. If they responded to less things they thought were keywords people would just think they're broken.

[–] aStonedSanta@lemm.ee 1 points 3 months ago

Just wanted to highlight they miss trigger.