this post was submitted on 14 Mar 2025
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[–] Melatonin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 3 minutes ago (1 children)

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

Yeah. Hell, chances are they were already

[–] MurrayL@lemmy.world 20 points 2 hours ago (1 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.

[–] pogmommy@lemmy.ml 15 points 44 minutes ago
  1. Unplug your amazon echo devices
  1. Hit it with a hammer
  1. Send it to an electronics recycler
[–] richardisaguy@lemmy.world 12 points 2 hours ago (2 children)

How the fuck does anyone even buy one of these

[–] Flisty@mstdn.social 1 points 10 minutes ago

@richardisaguy @Tea sometimes they just come free with stuff. We got given two Google ones when my husband bought a Pixel phone. We were going to sell them on but we never got round to it. You can physically turn off the microphone part though (at least it tells you it's turned off so fingers crossed) so we use the one with a screen as a digital photo frame (and a speaker) and the other one as just a speaker.

[–] AynRandLibertarian@lemmy.world 8 points 1 hour ago (3 children)

The same people who buy mobile phones; despite those being bugs/spy-devices.

[–] pogmommy@lemmy.ml 3 points 36 minutes ago (2 children)

Phones are at least easier to justify since everyone kinda needs one now and there aren't many great private options, especially for the lay person

[–] AynRandLibertarian@lemmy.world 2 points 12 minutes ago

If you give up your freedom for convenience, then you will lose both.

[–] MiniMoose4Free@lemm.ee 1 points 16 minutes ago

Lmao. Why complain about one and try to justify the other...

[–] slaneesh_is_right@lemmy.org 1 points 16 minutes ago (1 children)

True, but a mobile phone is basically a world brain, calculator, camera, flashlight, you can watch movies on it in hi def, hate it all you want, it's one of the most versatile tools on the planet. An echo dot, it just spy garbage and nothing else

[–] AynRandLibertarian@lemmy.world 1 points 13 minutes ago

I mean what better spot to syphon of each and every piece of information about you....

[–] jim3692@discuss.online 2 points 54 minutes ago (1 children)

At least, on mobile devices, it's typically easier to install a privacy-focused firmware (like LineageOS or GrapheneOS). Those AI assistants are completely locked down.

[–] AynRandLibertarian@lemmy.world 1 points 11 minutes ago

I am sorry but the telephony system itself is fundamentally a privacy threat.

[–] Billybob22@feddit.uk 6 points 2 hours ago

Just sold my 3 devices and shut down Amazon account. It's very liberating and I don't miss it one bit. Have Home Assistant and a couple of really good 2nd hand Sonos speakers.

[–] Blackmist@feddit.uk 0 points 28 minutes ago

Which Echo devices ever supported local only processing? They cost about £30. There's no kit that can do decent voice commands for that money. You'd be lucky to have a device that processes claps to turn the lights on for that.

[–] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 29 points 4 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

[–] DaChrissy@reddthat.com 62 points 5 hours ago (2 children)

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

[–] MiniMoose4Free@lemm.ee 1 points 15 minutes ago

They typed from their device that is also spying on them that they most likely also paid for...

[–] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 3 points 3 hours ago (2 children)
[–] SaraTonin@lemm.ee 10 points 2 hours ago

Everyone who didn’t get an echo as a gift, I’d imagine

[–] Bilaketari@reddthat.com 4 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Plenty of people I know have gotten the little echo dots or the bigger alternative with larger speakers for Christmas or birthdays. Technically they didn't spend money, but their friends and family did.

[–] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 2 points 2 hours ago

I see. The initial purchase price is the “payment”. I thought the intimation was some sort of subscription to use Alexa. My bad.

[–] jcs@lemmy.world 13 points 3 hours ago

If anyone remembers the Mycroft Mark II Voice Assistant Kickstarter and was disappointed when development challenges and patent trolls caused the company's untimely demise, know that hope is not lost for a FOSS/OSHW voice assistant insulated from Big Tech..

FAQ: OVOS, Neon, and the Future of the Mycroft Voice Assistant

Disclaimer: I do not represent any of these organizations in any way; I just believe in their mission and wish them all the success in getting there by spreading the word.

[–] Ronno@feddit.nl 42 points 5 hours ago (3 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!

[–] iarigby@lemmy.world 6 points 2 hours ago

home assistant is amazing but it is not yet an alternative to Alexa, the assistant/voice is still in development and far from being usable. it’s impossible for me to remember the specific wording assist demands and voice to text is incorrect like nine out of ten times. And this includes giving up on terrible locally hosted models trying out their cloud which obviously is a huge privacy hole, but even then it was slow and inaccurate. It’s a mystery to me how the foss community is so behind on voice, Siri and Google Assistant started working offline years ago, and they work straight on a mobile device.

[–] smiletolerantly@awful.systems 11 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

I have one big frustration with that: Your voice input has to be understood PERFECTLY by TTS.

If you have a "To Do" list, and speak "Add cooking to my To Do list", it will do it! But if the TTS system understood:

  • Todo
  • To-do
  • to do
  • ToDo
  • To-Do
  • ...

The system will say it couldn't find that list. Same for the names of your lights, asking for the time,..... and you have very little control over this.

HA Voice Assistant either needs to find a PERFECT match, or you need to be running a full-blown LLM as the backend, which honestly works even worse in many ways.

They recently added the option to use LLM as fallback only, but for most people's hardware, that means that a big chunk of requests take a suuuuuuuper long time to get a response.

I do not understand why there's no option to just use the most similar command upon an imperfect matching, through something like the Levenshtein Distance.

[–] Tja@programming.dev 5 points 3 hours ago

Because it takes time to implement. It will come.

[–] Auntievenim@lemmy.world 9 points 4 hours ago

I've seen something about this pop up occasionally on my feed, but it's usually a conversation I'm nowhere close to understanding lol

Could you recommend any resources for a complete noob?

[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 12 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

I didn't even know this was a feature. My understanding has always been that Echo devices work as follows.

  1. Store a constant small buffer of the past few seconds of audio
  2. Locally listen for the wake word (typically "Alexa") using onboard hardware. (This is why you cannot use arbitrary wake words.)
  3. Upon hearing the wake word, send the buffer from step one along with any fresh audio to the cloud to process what was said.
  4. Act on what was said. (Turn lights on or off, play Spotify, etc.)

Unless they made some that were able to do step 3 locally entirely I don't see this as a big deal. They still have to do step 4 remotely.

Also, while they may be "always recording" they don't transmit everything. It's only so if you say "Alexaturnthelightsoff" really fast it has a better chance of getting the full sentence.

I'm not trying to defend Amazon, and I don't necessarily think this is great news or anything, but it doesn't seem like too too big of a deal unless they made a lot of devices that could parse all speech locally and I didn't know.

[–] Wispy2891@lemmy.world 6 points 4 hours ago

It was a non advertised feature only available in the US and in English only

[–] Doctor_Satan@lemmy.world 9 points 4 hours ago

If you traveled back in time and told J. Edgar Hoover that in the future, the American public voluntarily wire-tapped themselves, he would cream his frilly pink panties.

[–] MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

This is legal, even in the US?

[–] Railcar8095@lemm.ee 14 points 2 hours ago (2 children)

"Even in the US" seems to imply stronger customer and privacy protections on the US.

"Leopards can eat people's faces, even in the US?"

[–] MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 hour ago

"This is legal, even there?" sounds pretty "legal bad there" to me.

[–] slaacaa@lemmy.world 26 points 6 hours ago
[–] SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org 6 points 4 hours ago

No way! The microphones you put all over your house are listening to you? What a shocker!
If you bought these this is on you. Trash them now.

[–] muh_shroom@lemmy.ca 29 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

I can’t believe people are still voluntarily wire tapping themselves in 2025

[–] theterrasque@infosec.pub 1 points 40 minutes ago (1 children)

Do the device you wrote this on have a microphone?

[–] MiniMoose4Free@lemm.ee 1 points 12 minutes ago

Yes, but they'll conveniently ignore that on devices they are addicted to.

[–] PeterisBacon@lemm.ee 73 points 8 hours ago (3 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

[–] daggermoon@lemmy.world 5 points 4 hours ago

They backed out of the Roomba deal. Now iRobot is going down the shitter.

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[–] impudentmortal@lemmy.world 9 points 6 hours ago (2 children)

How disheartening. I knew going in that there would be privacy issues but I figured for the service it was fine. I also figure my phone is always listening anyway.

As someone with limited mobility, my echo has been really nice to control my smart devices like lights and TV with just my voice.

Are there good alternatives or should I just accept things as they are?

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