Yes, Your Amazon Echo Is an Ad Machine (gizmodo.com) 177
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: CNBC reports that Amazon is in discussions with huge companies that want to promote their goods on Echo devices. Proctor & Gamble as well as Clorox are reportedly in talks for major advertising deals that would allow Alexa to suggest products for you to buy. CNBC uses the example of asking Alexa how to remove a stain, with Alexa in turn recommending a Clorox product. So far it's unclear how Amazon would identify promoted responses from Alexa, if at all. Here's the really wacky thing: Amazon has already been doing this sort of thing to some degree. Currently, paid promotions are built into Alexa responses, but maybe you just haven't noticed it. CNBC uses this example: "There are already some sponsorships on Alexa that aren't tied to a user's history. If a shopper asks Alexa to buy toothpaste, one response is, 'Okay, I can look for a brand, like Colgate. What would you like?'" So it seems like Amazon wants to get you coming and going. Not only does the company want to let you buy stuff with your voice. Jeff Bezos and friends also want to make money by suggesting what to buy and even by pushing those products higher up in the search results so that you're more likely to do it.
SHOCKED! (Score:5, Funny)
No. Frelling. Way.
That can't possibly be true. Biased suggestions? An attempt to sell stuff from a company that, well, sells stuff? No! I am verily astonished!
Amazon pays you if you can pull more ads (Score:2, Informative)
If you can make new 'skills' for Amazon's gadget which result in more ads being delivered to users, Amazon will pay you
https://www.techspot.com/news/72465-here-what-people-behind-alexa-skills-get-paid.html
Everything from Amazon, Google, Facebook, is ad-related
You are not their customers, you are their product
Re: Amazon pays you if you can pull more ads (Score:5, Insightful)
Just because you're paying doesn't mean you're a customer. Especially if someone else is paying more.
For reference, see politics.
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Just because you're paying doesn't mean you're a customer. Especially if someone else is paying more.
Someone else does not need to pay more, just extra -- on top of what you or anyone else pays. Amazon will happily use it to get money from many sources. The thing that I find galling is the lack of transparency, many will assume that ''their Alexa'' is acting in their best interests; it is not.
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...if they're trying to get me to buy things, instead of trying to get things to buy me, I'm breddy sure I'm still the customer.
Maybe of the people you buy the actual things from but you are very much amazon's et al product.
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Obviously, Amazon's little surveillance puck isn't in your house as a favor to you; but, unlike other advertising outfits, Amazon also sells a fairly gigantic amount of stuff, some house brand; all presumably more or less profitable for them based on the difference between the price they pay their vendor and the price you pay them.
Given that, it isn't necessarily to be expected that Amazon would offer the abi
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They could do that yes, but if they decided to go that route they'd be handing chips over to competitors like Google who have no qualms about selling ad space on these devices. The echo is the most popular device of its kind currently and I assume Amazon'
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if they can't serve ads for nearby restaurants and services they're essentially throwing out money.
Not "throwing out money": providing the customer the functionality that the customer paid for when they purchased the Alexa box.
I for one want an HONEST agent which will make its best effort to suggest to me the BEST options for me: NOT prioritize suggestions that may be less good for me but are better monetized for Amazon.
I say it is an unreasonable conflict of interest to be offering a "personal
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When someone produces a non-cloud device, buy that. Sending your data back to a company for central processing is ALWAYS going to be subject to irresistible sponsorship temptation.
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Exactly!
It's like asking your butcher if eating meat is good for you.
Expect a biased answer.
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the device is also spying on their home 24/7
That has to be the least important aspect of all. If you have a contamination of some kind and you ask your friendly household information device for 'something to kill bacteria' and instead of a useful product, it tells you to use the most highly paid for response, and you buy something that smells pretty but kills no bacteria at all, then you have just been fucked by the advertising regime. Who gives a fuck about being 'spied on' if families are being misled and given bad solutions to their problems bec
I always thought these were a great idea (Score:5, Insightful)
But I could never understand why *I* should pay *them* for it. It always seemed that it should be the other way around....
Re:I always thought these were a great idea (Score:5, Funny)
I feel this way about a lot of advertising on items I own.
We were given a set of 'Coca Cola' mixing bowls for the kitchen as wedding presents. I learned that the Coke logo could be fairly easily abraded off the glazed surface of the bowls.
Coca-Cola was waaay behind on their payments for the ad space in our kitchen.
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Why? It's a waste basket and that way everyone knows that it is.
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Coca-Cola did an even more amazing trick here: They turned their vintage logos and designed into desired decoration items. I even can remember my parents at end 70s getting Coca-Cola glasses for their hobby room bar. (they are still there and still would sell better than any other merch throwarounds.)
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That's either a personal little rebellion agains the system or another case of brands becoming a generic.... Like googleing on yahoo....
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Yes, but when you google on yahoo, yahoo still sees your search terms and google knows it came from yahoo.
The only thing that might change is google might not be able to track you, since you are yahoos product they may hide you from google.
How long before duck duck go starts selling information?
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For the same reason one might buy a Kindle, which is nice e-reader, but also happens to be a platform for buying Amazon e-books. The important distinction is that the platform tie-in is just *one* of the device features, not the only one.
Similarly, Amazon Echo is a general-purpose voice-control unit that can do or control a lot of other stuff. Buying things from Amazon is just one of its many functions.
If Amazon gets too obnoxious with pushing ads, you might see some consumer backlash. These sorts of dev
Re:I always thought these were a great idea (Score:4, Informative)
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Wait, wait, what else can you do with them?
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Yes, give us the machines for free is the advertising is worth so much to the companies that they are willing to be douches about the whole thing. Having to pay AND receive ads is ridiculous and I don't know why some people put up with that sort of abuse.
Ad-driven model ruined everything (Score:2)
But I could never understand why *I* should pay *them* for it. It always seemed that it should be the other way around....
That's because the internet ad-driven revenue model has ruined everything. People are so used now to get a "free" service (e.g. Gmail, Youtube, whatever) in exchange for being subjected to a barrage of advertising (and giving up their personal data to the provider of the service) that this is now becoming commonplace in services and products you actually pay upfront for, in real currency. People are so used to ads everywhere that they just ignore it, and the distinction is lost on them. So I pay $100 for a
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Now you never see one. My guess is all the patents expired, everyone implemented everyone else's patents, and all toothpaste is essentially the same nowdays. So buy the cheapest tube you can, cuz it ain't gonna matter.
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In the UK, toothpaste ads are quite common, so I think that your theory is incorrect. Perhaps they simply spend their marketing budget elsewhere, for example, paying for prime shelf space in supermarkets?
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In the UK, toothpaste ads are quite common, so I think that your theory is incorrect. Perhaps they simply spend their marketing budget elsewhere, for example, paying for prime shelf space in supermarkets?
In the UK, they still have toothpaste ads because ... no, I can't ... it's just too easy ...
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Not sure where you're going with this. The Brits generally have good dental care but don't tend to spend money on purely cosmetic dentistry so they have more natural looking teeth, whereas here in NA we do a lot of cosmetic dentistry, even to the point of weakening our teeth to make them look better.
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When's the last time you saw a toothpaste ad on TV.
Probably last week? here's a fairly recent one, [youtube.com] and it's for a normal variety. Nowadays, Crest and Colgate are always plugging their whitening/hyper breath freshening varieties.
I certainly saw a Listerine ad on TV tonight, and I definitely already knew about the existence of mouthwash without those ads, too.
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Yesterday. For a toothpaste that allegedly lets you brush some "artificial enamel" onto your teeth.
But aside of that, yes, the toothpaste ads have vanished. Or my mental ad blocker already registers all of them and throws them away instead of allowing them to be noticed.
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Some toothpaste is definitely better than the basic stuff, especially if you have specific issues like sensitive or stained teeth.
What you should really be asking is why do you need advertising? Adverts are mostly lies, what you need are honest appraisals and tests.
In the end I had to test several toothpaste products myself, because there wasn't much reliable information several years ago.
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But the ad said it was "clinically proven" and even showed some people in white lab coats!!
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Ads are bad for your teeth?
Dude, you're not supposed to chew them, they want you to swallow that shit.
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I've found it's a good idea to chew over anything you hear, particularly ads, before you swallow it. That is absolutely in spite of what the advertiser would prefer you do.
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Aha, there's the problem! You see, I'd prefer you to buy my toothpaste.
Now just do what I say, and nobody has to get hurt. We need not resort to violence for you to pay me. Instead, I could occasionally gently remind you to buy my toothpaste. I think we all agree this is a better situation than me having to stick a gun in your face.
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I don't think advertising is inherently evil, however I think the methods being employed this last decade absolutely is evil. Advertising should not involve an invasion of privacy.
Now you say there is money being made. That is true. However I'm unsure the money is where people think it is. Yes, Amazon is making big money, just like any advertising agency. I do not think however that Colgate is necessarily getting its money's worth here. After all, if the advertising is worth that much to the companies
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I had some visitors with a young 11-ish child, and the TV was on (which wasn't my choice) but when the ad break came on I hit the mute button so we could talk. The child went ape-shit crazy cos she couldn't hear the ads. It's like she needed the audio fix that came with them or something. It was scary and reminded me why I don't make a habit of watching real time TV.
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The child went ape-shit crazy cos she couldn't hear the ads. It's like she needed the audio fix that came with them or something. It was scary and reminded me why I don't make a habit of watching real time TV.
Should also have reminded you why you shouldn't have children in this day and age.
Luckily for the future of humanity we're not all asocial asexual workaholic cockwombles..
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Advertising to raise awareness to a product's existence is fine. But do you really think anyone still doesn't know what detergents there are?
Re:Agreed. (Score:5, Insightful)
The problems with advertising started after the second world war, when advertisers started adopting techniques developed for propaganda. Lots of people will tell you that adverts have no effect on them, but ask them to name three brands of toothpaste and I can guarantee that they'll all be ones that they've seen adverts for, that they'll buy one of the first three that pops into their heads, and that they won't be able to cite a single clinical study that tells them that it's better than (or even as good as) any other one.
This got far worse with modern Internet advertising. Broadcast adverts (billboards, TV, Radio, and so on) had to work with an average psychological profile, but companies like Google, Facebook and Amazon can collect enough information about individuals to put them into one of a hundred or a thousand far more accurate buckets so that adverts can be tailored directly to manipulate them.
These days, advertising is basically evil. The days when an advert was telling you about a product and giving you information to make an informed decision are long gone.
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Lots of people will tell you that adverts have no effect on them,
These are the kind of people that advertising has the best effect on. People who refuse to believe they can be influenced. Advertising has a huge effect on me, which is why I go out of my way to avoid/block it. However because I'm concious of the effect, I can control it somewhat. In fact I have a list of brands I'll never buy because one of their ads has really annoyed me.
These days, advertising is basically evil. The days when an advert was telling you about a product and giving you information to make an informed decision are long gone.
This... and its why we have an Advertising Standards Agency in the UK (and most other developed countries). I've never understood why A
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Lots of people will tell you that adverts have no effect on them,
These are the kind of people that advertising has the best effect on. People who refuse to believe they can be influenced.
Advertising has a huge effect on me, which is why I go out of my way to avoid/block it. However because I'm concious of the effect, I can control it somewhat. In fact I have a list of brands I'll never buy because one of their ads has really annoyed me.
/quote
It depends on your personality. Some people are more open to suggestion than others. Hypnotism in magic acts is one example of this. Some people are easily "hypnotized" while others, like myself, are so skeptical and grounded in reality that it just doesn't work. Advertising is similar. It works on some people much better than others.
Advertising has a minor effect on me. It makes me aware of products that I didn't know about and I tend to notice Ads for products that I've already bought, especially expensive items (part of the post purchase confirmation bias). Beyond that, I always assume that everything in an Ad is a lie in some form or another. Perhaps this is because I understand how marketing works from having a Business Degree and am aware of the techniques being deployed.
In many ways, advertising is a lot like "fake news". A little bit of skepticism goes a long way....
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I'm curious... can you cite a decent clinical study that suggests using any toothpaste is better than none at all? The American Dental Association's removal of the recommendation to floss due to a complete absence of evidence that it is beneficial comes to mind.
The evil didn't start after WWII, it just got more distilled. People who want to sell you stuff have always exploited our bias towards credulity. Where it gets really evil is when they start sponsoring school programs, or whole schools. Unfortunat
Inevitable (Score:5, Insightful)
These devices are true "Trojan Horses". You invite them into your home, and they inevitably start sucking money through their channels for items you normally would buy at a bricks-and-mortar store. Dog food, tissues, a pizza, whatever. Sooner or later you will buy something from the small value category that Amazon (a merchandising company) or Google (an advertising company) don't normally sell in significant volume, or can't sell through their normal commerce channels due to perishability. If you're a retailer and you're not part of these ecosystems, your bottom line will be declining as of today.
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If it's money you'd be spending anyway on Dog-Food tissues and pizza, there is not much sucking involved as you're already spending that money. "funneling" would be a better word. But then, if their offer is "better" than what you get at a brick-and-mortar store, then it's competition and considered fair in a capitalist system. (or any system that puts more weight on the self-regulating power of market than the cases where that intrinsic balance tips over, the system runs away and becomes self destructive)
"
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Re: Trojan horses (Score:4)
Hate to burst your bubble but that argument is by no means championed by millenials. In fact, whenever our rights get carved up again, it's usually the baby boomers I hear spouting that hogwash. Less so gen x.
Then again hating on millenials is so much easier than confronting one's own failings...
Re: Trojan horses (Score:5, Interesting)
If they still may, yes, they will.
At what point will acceptance be high enough that you'd already raise suspicion by not inviting the trojan horse into your home? And at what point will you pretty much become a social pariah if you don't?
We already see something like this happen with Facebook. Quite a few companies already don't really have their own homepages anymore. You want to deal with them, you have questions, you have complaints? Better have a Facebook account or you won't. Any promotion will also only happen with Facebook, and by now you also already have webpages that require you to have an account there to log in to them because they want to avoid the hassle of having to deal with their own user database.
And of course if most people you know use Facebook to organize events, guess what you'll have to have to be invited, because it's so comfortable and hassle free to create a group and just invite all the people on the list?
It reminds me more and more of the former East Bloc. A lot of things were not outright outlawed or mandated, but failing to do what The Party wanted usually resulted in you miraculously being sidelined.
Do many people use it for shopping? (Score:2)
Do most people use it for shopping? I tried it a couple times, but seems inconvenient since I rarely re-order the same item twice, so I can't say "Alexa, re-order toothpaste" -- I generally want to browse around and read reviews and look at prices from non-prime shippers.
The only thing I use my Echo for is listening to music, turning the lights off, and sometimes the weather. Oh and and a kitchen timer.
If it starts playing ads for any of those uses, I'll stop using it.
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Who wants to go to a convenience or grocery store once a week, when you can do it from a web browser and not stand in line, not waste time looking up and down aisles, and have it delivered to your door?
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Re:Do many people use it for shopping? (Score:4, Interesting)
Let me explain this: if I want fresh blueberries, I don't need them some time in the next 48 hours. I need them now, so I can have them for breakfast tomorrow. Since there will be at least one such purchase per week, might as well go to the store and buy the rest.
Also, I can pay good, old-fashioned, cold, hard cash in the store. Not have my shopping habits sliced, diced, tracked, and otherwise microscopically examined by marketeering pieces of trash.
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These things seem oriented to the "Prime" member. People who honestly believe deep in their hearts that Amazon is an awesome company and that driving to actual stores to support a local economy is for old losers. They do buy the same stuff over and over from Amazon. Need toilet paper? Get Amazon to buy it. Need another liter of soda? Get Amazon to deliver it (and enter your house while you're gone to put it in the fridge). These are the people who scream at others "The $99 a year Pays For Itself!!!"
Sur
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and unit conversion when cooking.
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I bought batteries once, that's it. It suggested the same AA batteries I bought before. Beyond that, I use it for the same functions you do plus a few others (intercom with other rooms with a dot, kids use it to tell jokes and the #1 use is the shopping list).
I don't know why everyone's making a big deal about this.
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I rarely re-order the same item twice, so I can't say "Alexa, re-order toothpaste" -- I generally want to browse around and read reviews and look at prices from non-prime shippers.
You sure take your toothpaste shopping seriously.
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I usually order doggy treats and condoms.
The gift that keeps on giving, next time they get their "recommended items" and "people who bought this also bought" list.
Bezos and friends (Score:2)
>Jeff Bezos and friends
I love how people like to personify leadership roles like the president of a country or the CEO of a company so that there is a clear, well defined figure to shit on.
>INSIDERS REPORT THAT BEZOS AND FRIENDS EXPLICITLY GAVE ORDERS TO AMAZON MARKETING DIRECTORS TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO MAKE MORE MONEY!
Alexa, fuck off (Score:5, Insightful)
Aaaaand just like that any and all of my interest in this product has disappeared.
A personal assistant isn't if he serves more than one master. In the real world, we call that treason and cut their heads off. Well, in recent centuries we fire them instead, but same idea.
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A personal assistant isn't if he serves more than one master. In the real world, we call that treason and cut their heads off.
Alexa has always served only one master. It's just never been you.
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"Sure, I'll list our recommended sex toys..."
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It's not advertising, it's helpful suggestions, it's keeping you informed of things you may be interested in, it's enhancing your shopping experience.
So you should get the Alexa Plus since it's even better at doing these, and pay us for the opportunity.
It's an opportunity, that means you'd be crazy not to take advantage, and will richly benefit when you do.
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Take a screenshot of that LinkedIn posting. I'm pretty sure you can use it for blackmail in a few for a pretty penny.
If it starts offering ads spontaneously, it's gone (Score:4, Interesting)
I was an early Echo adopter and have a Dot now as well. I primarily use it to (a) maintain my shopping/errands list, and (b) stream music while I do stuff in the kitchen. I've never bought anything using it.
But I can tell you if the day comes that Alexa gives me ads when I'm asking for something else, it's getting unplugged forever. ..bruce..
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Yes but I always forget to pack the whiteboard in the morning so if I decide to stop at the supermarket on my way home, I know what to get....
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Re: If it starts offering ads spontaneously, it's (Score:2)
And some of us prefer to use it for more interesting things.
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Yes but I always forget to pack the whiteboard in the morning...
You could snap a photo of it with your cell phone...
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My friend recently got a Google Home. It's actually a pretty decent wifi speaker, and among the cheapest as well. Possibly worth buying and disabling the microphone.
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I'll repeat myself... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Would you like some tissues? I can recommend Kleenex...
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My fetishes are none of your business!
In unrelated news, Alexa, what neoprene suits can you recommend. I ... umm... I have a diving trip planned.
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There's probably a spray-on for that.....
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Define "low status." The poor typically have a higher fertility rate than the rich and famous, which speaks to the amount of sex "low status" people get vs "high status."
I doubt anyone on /. is truly "low status" -- maybe just afraid to date. Give you a project ... go on a dating site, to a supermarket, or on Facebook. Ask 100 women of your basic age group on a date. At least one, probably more like 10, will say yes.
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Ok. Sure. If it was actually yours.
But would you like a relationship with amazon's sexbot that only puts out after you've recently spent enough on amazon purchases, and nags you all the time that you haven't spent enough on it, and how it wants you to buy all sorts of worthless crap you don't need. And then when you finally do have sex with it, it compares you to other amazon sexbot users and suggests various sponsored products that could improve your performance...and then just before your finished it remi
I'm shocked! (Score:3)
If people are bound and determined to act like sheep, we shouldn't be terribly surprised when corporations treat them like sheep.
What's really disappointing, though, is that so many have come to believe they actually deserve this, and vote in ways that facilitate their further victimization.
Are there any people (Score:2)
screwing with them?
Pay cash for your Amzon spy device.
Link it to a pre-paid credit card.
Create a fake Amazon account.
Create a tape loop of random words.
Entertainment...
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Nice (Score:2)
I'll make a fortune of my soon to be existing Alexa ad-blocking skill.
Psst! Want some gallium? (Score:5, Interesting)
I really thought the whole fuss about these things all joining up and selling you stuff was overblown, until one day at work...
I work in a university biochemistry department, where we do X-ray crystallography. We have a home X-ray source downstairs, which we're talking about upgrading. (No, Alexa, we're not buying it off Amazon, STFU.) My professor is interested in a system that uses liquid gallium for the anode, as opposed to the traditional spinning lump of copper. We've talked about it, a lot, phones nearby. Nothing weird has ever happened as a result.
Then we had a meeting with the nice lady from the Innovations department - the one where they deal with all the patents and fun secret stuff. My boss, being a wonderful old-school professor, just had to tell her in detail about this device, even though it was only vaguely related to what we were meant to be discussing. Her iPhone sat innocently on the table the whole time.
Not two hours later, I went to Amazon to buy some kayaking stuff. Top of my recommendations? 20 grams of gallium. Never had anything even vaguely like it recommended, before or since.
Could be blind coincidence, of course...
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Indeed it's possible, although we each have our own IP so it'd have to be the subnet. But the timing was just too perfect, and I'm on Amazon all the time so it's had plenty of chances to happen before. It's not like we use gallium for anything else, either.
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The next day I checked my fantasy football team (ESPN, which serves ads) on my phone. Can you guess what I saw? It was an add for Cream of Wheat brand cereal! Spooky. I mean, really, I can't believe that brand actually still a
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You've nicely described confirmation bias.
It's highly unlikely your iphone is spying on you. iPhones are subject to enough scrutiny from security researchers that would be caught pretty quickly. The same for any of the big brands, Google, Amazon, Microsoft.
That doesn't mean they won't start after they get you hooked, and it doesn't mean that knockoff brand isn't spying on you. It also doesn't mean your actual queries aren't being stored and analysed.
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Great, now Alexa is even more like a wife (Score:2)
"Alexa, do what I say and shut the fuck up"
(and yes, I know I go to feminist hell for that one)
An open source alternative to (Score:2)
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A friend of mine got a Google Home. He and his girlfriend were training it on their voices. I guess it takes a bit of hacking to change the wakup phrase for Google, but Amazon is apparently easier.
I'm tempted to get one just so I can name it asshole [wikipedia.org]. Hey asshole, what's the weather like?
Well, duh... (Score:2)
Re:Brands? (Score:4, Funny)
Titty chips and smelly tampon boogers have been added to your list.
Re:Brands? (Score:5, Funny)
"That doesn't sound like something I'd buy, now does it?"
"Buy now" accepted.