this post was submitted on 14 Mar 2025
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[–] A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world 7 points 2 hours ago

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

theres literally been leaks proving it.

[–] tabular@lemmy.world 2 points 1 hour 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

[–] adhdplantdev@lemm.ee 2 points 2 hours ago

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

[–] Flocklesscrow@lemm.ee 36 points 13 hours ago

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.

[–] Teknikal@eviltoast.org 31 points 13 hours ago (2 children)

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

[–] EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world 16 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 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.

[–] Teknikal@eviltoast.org 7 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 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.

[–] EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world 10 points 12 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.

[–] bitjunkie@lemmy.world 3 points 12 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.

[–] cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 9 hours ago
[–] Jocker@sh.itjust.works 10 points 11 hours ago

Great, they made it public.

[–] Melatonin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 83 points 17 hours ago (3 children)

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

[–] cqst@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 1 hour 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.

[–] turnip@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 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/

[–] Fredthefishlord@lemmy.blahaj.zone 23 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah. Hell, chances are they were already

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[–] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 12 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 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.

[–] ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 3 points 12 hours ago (2 children)

The difference between a pi and open voice?

[–] Cyber@feddit.uk 2 points 10 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

[–] pirat@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago (1 children)
[–] uninvitedguest@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 hour ago

Wife approval factor

[–] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 2 points 11 hours ago

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

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[–] faberyayo@lemm.ee 32 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah, just avoid the oligarchy tech

[–] PeteZa@lemm.ee 10 points 15 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.

[–] gamer@lemm.ee 15 points 15 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.

[–] Soup@lemmy.world 7 points 15 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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[–] ohshit604@sh.itjust.works 2 points 9 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.

[–] kaerypheur@lemmy.world 13 points 15 hours ago (1 children)
[–] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 10 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago) (1 children)

🔴 I'm sorry Dave, I can't do that.

[–] cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 9 hours ago

alexa! install an oligarchy!

[–] DaChrissy@reddthat.com 89 points 22 hours ago (8 children)

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

[–] MurrayL@lemmy.world 34 points 19 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.

[–] pogmommy@lemmy.ml 44 points 18 hours ago
  1. Unplug your amazon echo devices
  1. Hit it with a hammer
  1. Send it to an electronics recycler
[–] MurrayL@lemmy.world 10 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 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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[–] richardisaguy@lemmy.world 32 points 19 hours ago (5 children)

How the fuck does anyone even buy one of these

[–] Blackmist@feddit.uk 26 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

You can get them on Amazon.

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[–] AynRandLibertarian@lemmy.world 14 points 19 hours ago (7 children)

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

[–] DarrinBrunner@lemmy.world 6 points 13 hours ago

More directly comparable, is the Ring cameras inside the house.

[–] slaneesh_is_right@lemmy.org 16 points 17 hours 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

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[–] pogmommy@lemmy.ml 11 points 17 hours ago (6 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

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[–] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 37 points 21 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

[–] Ronno@feddit.nl 51 points 22 hours 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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