Amazon accuses customer of racism & shuts down their smart home : technology

[–] [email protected] 44 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

I work in IT and I keep a baseball bat handy in case I suspect a device has gone online.

However what a ridiculous situation on Amazon's part and it raises a bigger question. Even if this guy was 100% a racist shitbag, should he have had his Amazon account suspended unilaterally in the first place? Should someone have their bank account closed too then? How about utilities? I obviously am not agreeing with someone being racist but think that allowing corporations to impulsively take punitive actions is a slippery slope. Next thing we know, Amazon will be offering capital punishment as a service.

I'm of the opinion the "smart" home thing was just unintentional secondary, I can't imagine them being smart enough to do so on purpose.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (2 children)

This sounds like it leads to the capitalist version of social credit scores.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

House: "Bzzzzt, sorry, we cannot grant you access to your home since you have posted an offensive comment made to the bank that provided you the mortgage loan. We also have turned away a delivery package that reads: Bzzzzt..."

House: "Asthma Inhaler."

House: Beeps.

House: "Please confirm $1,000,000 penalty payment to the mortgage company to regain access to your house. Have a good day."

You: "But my wallet and everything is in this house..."

House: "911 have been dialed, you are trespassing this property. Please vacant the premise."

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

I feel like just regular credit scores are already 100% the capitalist version of the CCP social credit score in the most borlngly dystopian way possible.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

Aggree, that's not being an excuse to be a racist shitbag, but why does Amazon cares about this? This sets a dangerous precedent now, anyone who criticize something that the Amazon overlord like might get banned.

I mean if that man was doing something bad for the business side of Amazon (stealing, annoying customer support and whatnot) yeah sure but what he does outside of Amazon does not impact them?

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

We fear change

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago

Selfhosting is the way to go. All my automations are controlled by a HomeAssistant instance running locally.

Remember what "Cloud" means: Putting your data on some elses computer. No thanks.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago (3 children)

And people act like I'm crazy for not alexaing up my whole home despite being the one they come to for tech stuff, like you'd think that alone would be enough to dissuade people but guess not.

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

Basically, anything that comes with a per-requirement to connect to a specific company provided server I just out right don't buy them. (ie. some thing needs you to connect to a server in order to use "at home") So I pretty much don't have "smart" anything at home, if I need anything "smart" in the future, I believe there is tons of community project for all sorts raspberry pi controlled boards, switches, etc.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Yeah I plan on setting up my own deal just never looked into it yet, don't care enough. Maybe once my wife and I finally get a house I'll get up and do it.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

People have this idea that I'm either too paranoid or I might do things "better", but it's so arcane and confusing that they never could manage.

Of course the truth is that it might be a bit arcane to initially set up, but actually using it isn't any more complicated than the commercial ones, except that you actually control what it does.

Then again, I don't see why anyone would want lots of these things anyway - even if it was all selfhosted, do you really need a videocamera doorbell or app controlled lights? Some of these things just scream to me actually slower and more troublesome than just doing it the old fashioned way. Then again, I still like desktops with wired keyboards and mice, and I still prefer them to voice control or touch screens.

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

We had a Google speaker thing. Got rid of it because it was crap. All we could reliably use it for was asking it to play a radio station or play Spotify, but frankly it even got that wrong enough that grabbing my phone and connecting to the Bluetooth speaker was easier.

Even privacy invading problems aside they’re just a little bit rubbish.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

They're awful if you have a weird accent like I do. Suppose there's worse problems to have, at least I'll never have any use for a smart speaker.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

I got one for free years ago and it sits on a shelf unplugged lol.

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

I have found that their killer app is natural language alarm-setting. something like, "google, set a timer for 30 minutes", and having that timer appear on your phone is handy in the kitchen.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Am I the only one who can be bothered to get up off my ass to flip a fucking light switch?

[–] [email protected] 37 points 1 year ago

Not everyone has the same level of mobility that you do.

Incidentally, do you get off your arse to change the volume on your TV?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

"I have working legs, doesn't everybody?" -person online

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I got a family that likes to leave the damn light switches all on at night, I'm no longer going around and shutting them all off when everyone is in bed. Also, they are tied to my alarm, when I disarm the alarm or it goes off, they all come on.

But I'm doing all this through Home Assistant, a local open source automation server, not any of this cloud bullshit.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That sounds more like a social problem than a technical one...

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

Some fights are just not worth the hassle tho, you got to pick your battles.
And it's not like there is anyone factually "right" or "wrong", it's mostly a matter of opinions/priorities.

Another example, different expectations w.r.t. to cleaning. Either try to convince the other person to clean more, even if they don't see the need, or be always the one cleaning and build up frustration. Or: Get a roomba.

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

A motion sensor in the hallway to turn on the light is handy. It can be found in most hardware store. No need for Internet nor Amazon account nor smartphone. Your grandma, grandpa, toddler, local burgler, anyone can turn on the light.

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

Delayed off is really nice. Push a button as you're getting ready to leave the house, and a few minutes after you're gone, all the lights turn off. Also, having your "alarm clock" turn the lights on is very effective.

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

If you're using Alexa to simply flick a switch, that is indeed a bit overkill. I'm using a cheap Trådfri (or something like that) light switch from Ikea. I have a dimmable lamp with three different light temperatures and can simply set the lighting from my couch. That's really convenient. But it's also point to point, since it's just ZigBee. And it's pretty cheap, 20€ all in all.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago

"The cloud is just somone else's computer"

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago

Reason 89327458934795 I will never have any smart home shit in my house that I can't host myself.

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

This is one of the many reasons why you don't buy devices that require cloud services to function.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Pretty much like a car these days

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

a bit off-topic but relevant nonetheless:

i know i'm probably in the minority opinion here, but there are better privacy-respecting (and google spiting) platforms for viewing these videos than the official youtube website and rossman has been vocal in his support for these; particularly Odysee. below are 3 different projects, Odysee which is a whole separate and sustainable project, and piped & invidious which are privacy-respecting frontends to youtube. i think in future it'd be valuable to link these alternatives instead of the official youtube link.

https://odysee.com/@rossmanngroup:a/amazon-accuses-customer-of-racism-shuts:2 -- Odysee

https://piped.kavin.rocks/watch?v=NfiIXooD77s -- Piped

https://yewtu.be/watch?v=NfiIXooD77s -- Invidious

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Odysee is good for privacy, and fine for viewing, but most creators aren't going to use it as a primary way of distributing their stuff.

If you're publishing, you want an audience (and preferably a monetization method), and odysee doesn't have that.

On this video Rossman has 1200 views on Odysee, but over 725K views on youtube.

Almost everyone publishing on Odysee (myself included) do it as a secondary distribution channel, with youtube as the main (because, again, the viewers are there, and it has a monetization method).

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

i agree in terms of what we have right now. but without users engaging with the videos on alternative platforms, we'll never see any platform change unless there's spooky investor money thrown into it.

as "power-users" (ew) or tech-literate people, i feel like we should be the ones doing the early adoption.

for anyone who doesn't want to use odysee because there isn't many videos, I recommend the Watch on Odysee extension. when you open a youtube video it'll automatically redirect you to the Odysee upload, if there is one. it's available on Chromium and Firefox.

become the change you want to see :))

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

All I'm seeing is a place to upload video instructions to the tutorials I'm going to post here. Heh.

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

I think you're totally right, thank you for the links.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

Even if the accusation had been true, Amazon shouldn’t have this ability.

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

I work in IT, and I don’t have any ‘smart’ things at home. I don’t want to come home and troubleshoot more dumb junk.

I don’t even have a smart watch. My watch tells the time, has a timer, etc and that’s all I need.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I’m on the bandwagon of no “smart home” devices that connect to the cloud. I build a lot my own little controllers with the ESP8266/ESP32 using MQTT to communicate with OpenHAB.

OpenHAB has served me well, but I started using it so long ago that I have not tried out some of the newer options like HomeAssistant.

Here is one of the devices I developed a long tome ago. It used an old chimera of a board, the Arduino Yùn. https://www.instructables.com/Introducing-Climaduino-The-Arduino-Based-Thermosta/

The code referenced in the Instructable is much older code. I don’t think I have my current and much simpler code on Github for the ESP8266. If there is any interest, I can push it.

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

My new code just turns things on or off and monitors temperature and humidity.

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

HomeAssistant has been around almost as long as OpenHAB (2013 vs. 2010), so it's not exactly "newer". It's good that there are several open source options, but I don't see anything wrong with sticking with what works for you (OpenHAB for me as well, btw).

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

This is dystopian. Amazon should be crushed and split into hundreds smaller companies.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

No better reason to ditch the internet of things.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

I try to have the best of both worlds - my home is primarily run on a Zigbee network from a Raspberry Pi with a Conbee, which is then linked up to Homebridge which talks to HomeKit (being in the Apple ecosystem).

This means I get the creature comforts of a consumer home cloud service like Apple Home, but I get to call all the shots - controls are all local, and if I wanted to get my home off the cloud, I can without any reprocussions.

It’s surprisingly very reliable as well - I haven’t had a single minor hiccup for more than 12 months, and even then, the last one just required a reboot of the Pi.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Worked at Amazon = moved entire family off the public cloud. Everything is self hosted and still “easy”. I backup one of my backups to an s3 provider and call it good.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Are there any voice assistant solutions that run locally? Don't really care about conversational stuff. Just the basic 'lights on' type commands.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There are open source options. The main limitation is hardware. I would love to be able to reuse the half a dozen Google speakers I have for something local that works with Home Assistant!

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

https://mycroft.ai/

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

It's mind boggling that the victim writing all of this is still delusional about Amazon making a change based on this incident. From listening to what Louise read it doesn't even seem like the victim is fully set on removing echo/Amazon, just "strongly considering it". At this point they deserve every bit of headache and misfortune that comes from continuing to deal with Amazon.

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