this post was submitted on 14 Mar 2025
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[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 minutes ago

This is horrible. Has this not already been happening tho??

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

everything you say to your echo/alexa has always been sent to amazon.

theres literally been leaks proving it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 minutes ago

I thought so… I was like wait what dont they already have to process all that data?! And no doubt its in a db somewhere… thats just how things are done. Even if they werent a malicious company, they would still need to save the data to improve the product and for analytics..

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 hours ago

Who the hell is the manufacture to decide if a remote feature no longer functions? (I'm guessing people don't rent these devices from Amazon - it's your property).

I don't need your concent, it's in your best interests - Amazon

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 hours ago

Duh. This why no one should have this tech as the arbiters can never be trusted with public saftey/good.

[–] [email protected] 39 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

If Corporations were people, they'd be disappeared in the night for stuff like this.

Which is why they're not people.

Why anyone would want some Tech company spybot sifting through their private experiences is beyond me, but that's definitely what they are doing.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 27 minutes ago

Which is why they're not people.

But the C-suite and board are almost like humans. And that's even better for... things.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

There's no way they weren't doing this already.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago) (1 children)

I mean if they were doing this already there would be no point in sending this email out. They would have just happily continued letting people think it wasn’t happening while doing it anyway, while not having to deal with the backlash this will generate.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago) (1 children)

My suspicion is they probably need to announce it now for some legal reason but there's no Amazon device with the power to do this locally so it's definitely always been sent to them.

Now would they delete that right away or analyse it first, I kinda think they would have always done the latter.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 13 hours ago

I mean there’s no legal reason that would exist now that didn’t before.

My guess is that they did honor the setting, but that was because the amount of people that used it was so low vs the total number of people that used the devices. Now with smart speaker adoption rates declining, and their desire to train AI, they have to dip into the pool of people that opted not to share.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 13 hours ago

The setting mentioned in the email was on by default. So they definitely were, they're just removing the ability to turn it off.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 hours ago
[–] [email protected] 10 points 12 hours ago

Great, they made it public.

[–] [email protected] 83 points 18 hours ago (3 children)

If you were using one, you were already okay with this.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 hours ago

My parents have an Alexa and I have no choice in whether they install one in our house or not. I doubt they would be convinced by my pleas about privacy. So unfortunately and reduction in whatever privacy that was left is a shame.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

Which Pinevox or Openvoice may be an alternative one day. I think I recall HomeAssistant had something in the works too.

https://pine64.org/devices/pinevox/

https://www.openvoiceos.org/

[–] [email protected] 23 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah. Hell, chances are they were already

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago) (2 children)

For anyone with existing Home Assistant setup, the Home Assistant Voice Preview is pretty good alternative, when it comes to voice control of HA. The setup is very easy. If you want conversational functionality, you could even hook it up to an LLM, cloud or local. It can also be used for media playback and it's got an aux out port.

I used to use Google Home Mini for voice control of Home Assistant. The Voice Preview replaced that rather nicely.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 13 hours ago (2 children)

The difference between a pi and open voice?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

I'm using a Pi Zero as a voice satellite with an additional mic hat and a speaker hanging off the audio output and it's ... ok

There's definitely much lower WAF with this option

The voice assistant has built-in audio which appears to be high (enough) quality and considering it's case, power, etc, not to mention funding the advancement of open source voice control, it's just overall “better”

If you've got a Pi lying around with a mic & speaker, definitely give it a go

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 hours ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 hours ago

Wife approval factor

[–] [email protected] 2 points 13 hours ago

No idea, haven't used those. The HA Voice is open source through and through.

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah, just avoid the oligarchy tech

[–] [email protected] 10 points 17 hours ago (3 children)

I agree. Although it’s nearly impossible at this point. Especially with Amazon running a significant portion of the internet with AWS. Each one of us most likely touches an Amazon server multiple times a day, even if we don’t have any Amazon subscriptions.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 16 hours ago

That doesn't matter. You only need to worry about boycotting things within your control, like Amazon shopping and their consumer products. AWS is profitable, but so is Amazon.com.

Buying something at a different store is always a dub even if that store is using AWS on the backend.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 16 hours ago

Like the other person said, you can at least control what you interact with directly. So you cancel your Prime subscription and turn your lights with your hand instead of an Echo but you don’t worry so much about trying to figure out if any of the several companies involved in making [product] have some form of attachment to AWS.

And there will be some level of consumption in this horrible system that’s not gunna be good in order for you to not be horribly depressed but people can shed more than they think and alternatives do exist for many of the ones you might put at lower priority.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 16 hours ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 10 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago) (1 children)

🔴 I'm sorry Dave, I can't do that.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 hours ago

alexa! install an oligarchy!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 hours ago

Definitely not a complete FOSS setup but I decided to go the Apple route a self-hosted Homebridge for non Apple home-kit enabled devices.

[–] [email protected] 89 points 23 hours ago (8 children)

Amazon really got people to pay to be spied on. Wild world we live in bois

[–] [email protected] 34 points 21 hours ago (2 children)

If you do not want to set your voice recordings setting to 'Don't save recordings,' please follow these steps before March 28th:

Am I the only one curious to know what these steps are? The image cuts off the rest of the email.

[–] [email protected] 44 points 19 hours ago
  1. Unplug your amazon echo devices
  1. Hit it with a hammer
  1. Send it to an electronics recycler
[–] [email protected] 10 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago) (1 children)

If anyone else is wondering, I’ve not found a verbatim quote of the steps but I did see an article that mentioned the consequences. It seems like you will be able to turn this off but it will disable Voice ID:

anyone with their Echo device set to “Don’t save recordings” will see their already-purchased devices’ Voice ID feature bricked. Voice ID enables Alexa to do things like share user-specified calendar events, reminders, music, and more. Previously, Amazon has said that "if you choose not to save any voice recordings, Voice ID may not work." As of March 28, broken Voice ID is a guarantee for people who don't let Amazon store their voice recordings.

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 21 hours ago (19 children)

How the fuck does anyone even buy one of these

[–] [email protected] 26 points 17 hours ago (2 children)

You can get them on Amazon.

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[–] [email protected] 37 points 22 hours ago

They literally could just leave the feature on the device, but then you can't force your users to send you all their data, voices, thoughts and first borns

Fuck Amazon, fuck Bezos

[–] [email protected] 51 points 1 day ago (4 children)

Want to setup a more privacy friendly solution?

Have a look at Home Assistant! It’s a great open source smart home platform that recently released a local (so not processing requests in the cloud) voice assistant. It’s pretty neat!

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[–] [email protected] 99 points 1 day ago (4 children)

I have always told people to avoid Amazon.

They have doorbells to watch who comes to your house and when.

Indoor and outdoor security cameras to monitor when you go outside, for how long, and why.

They acquired roomba, which not only maps out your house, but they have little cameras in them as well, another angle to monitor you through your house in more personal areas that indoor cameras might not see.

They have the Alexa products meant to record you at all times for their own use and intent.

Why do you think along with Amazon Prime subscriptions you get free cloud storage, free video streaming, free music? They are categorizing you in the most efficient and accurate way possible.

Boycott anything Amazon touches

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