Even by Amazon standards, this is extraordinarily sleazy: from Mar 28, each Amazon Echo device will cease processing audio on-device and instead upload all the audio it captures to Amazon's cloud for processing, even if you have previously opted out of cloud-based processing:
arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/0β¦
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
pluralistic.net/2025/03/15/altβ¦
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Everything you say to your Echo will be sent to Amazon starting on March 28
Amazon is killing a privacy feature to bolster Alexa+, the new subscription assistant.Scharon Harding (Ars Technica)
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
It's easy to flap your hands at this thievery and say, "surveillance capitalists gonna surveillance capitalism," which confines this fuckery to the realm of ideology (that is, "Amazon is ripping you off because of bad ideas"). But that would be wrong. What's going on here is a *material* phenomenon, grounded in *specific policy choices* and by unpacking the material basis for this absolutely unforgivable move, we can understand how we got here - and where we should go next.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Start with Amazon's excuse for destroying your privacy: they want to do AI processing on the audio Alexa captures, and that is too computationally intensive for on-device processing. But that only raises another question: *why* does Amazon want to do this AI processing, even for customers who are happy with their Echo as-is, at the risk of infuriating and alienating millions of customers?
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
For Big Tech companies, AI is part of a "growth story" - a narrative about how these companies that have already saturated their markets will still continue to grow. It's hard to overstate how dominant Amazon is: they are the leading cloud provider, the most important retailer, and the majority of US households already subscribe to Prime. This may sound like a good place to be, but for Amazon, it's actually very dangerous.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Amazon has a sky-high price/earnings ratio - about triple the ratio of rivals like Target. That scorching P/E ratio reflects a belief by investors that Amazon will continue growing. Companies with very high p/e ratios have an unbeatable advantage relative to mature competitors - they can buy things with their stock, rather than paying cash for them. If Amazon wants to hire a key person, or acquire a key company, it can pad its offer with its extremely high-value, growing stock.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Being able to buy things with stock instead of money is a powerful advantage, because money is scarce and exogenous (Amazon must acquire money from someone else, like a customer), while new Amazon stock can be conjured into existence by typing zeroes into a spreadsheet:
pluralistic.net/2025/03/06/priβ¦
But the downside here is that every growth stock eventually stops growing.
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Pluralistic: Two weak spots in Big Tech economics (06 Mar 2025) β Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
pluralistic.netCory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
For Amazon to double its US Prime subscriber base, it will have to establish a breeding program to produce tens of millions of new Americans, raising them to maturity, getting them gainful employment, and then getting them to sign up for Prime.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Almost by definition, a dominant firm ceases to be a growing firm, and lives with the constant threat of a stock revaluation as investors belief in future growth crumbles and they punch the "sell" button, hoping to liquidate their now-overvalued stock ahead of everyone else.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
For Big Tech companies, a growth story isn't an ideological commitment to cancer-like continuous expansion. It's a practical, material phenomenon, driven by the need to maintain investor confidence that there are still worlds for the company to conquer.
That's where "AI" comes in. The hype around AI serves an important material need for tech companies.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
By lumping an incoherent set of poorly understood technologies together into a hot buzzword, tech companies can bamboozle investors into thinking that there's plenty of growth in their future.
OK, so that's the material need that this asshole tactic satisfies. Next, let's look at the technical dimension of this rug-pull.
How is it possible for Amazon to modify your Echo *after you bought it*? After all, you own your Echo. It is your property.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Every first year law student learns this 18th century definition of property, from Sir William Blackstone:
> That sole and despotic dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in total exclusion of the right of any other individual in the universe.
If the Echo is your property, how come Amazon gets to break it?
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Because we passed a law that lets them. Section 1201 of 1998's Digital Millennium Copyright Act makes it a felony to "bypass an access control" for a copyrighted work:
pluralistic.net/2024/05/24/recβ¦
That means that once Amazon reaches over the air to stir up the guts of your Echo, no one is allowed to give you a tool that will let *you* get inside *your* Echo and change the software back.
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Pluralistic: They brick you because they can (24 May 2024) β Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
pluralistic.netCory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Sure, it's your property, but exercising sole and despotic dominion over it requires breaking the digital lock that controls access to the firmware, and that's a felony punishable by a five-year prison sentence and a $500,000 fine for a first offense.
The Echo is an internet-connected device that treats its owner as an adversary and is designed to facilitate over-the-air updates by the manufacturer that are adverse to the interests of the owner.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Giving a manufacturer the power to downgrade a device *after* you've bought it, in a way you can't roll back or defend against is an invitation to run the playbook of the Darth Vader MBA, in which the manufacturer replies to your outraged squawks with "I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further":
pluralistic.net/2023/10/26/hitβ¦
The ability to remotely, unilaterally alter how a device or service works is called "twiddling" and it is a key factor in enshittification.
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Pluralistic: Amazon Alexa is a graduate of the Darth Vader MBA (26 Oct 2023) β Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
pluralistic.netCory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
By "twiddling" the knobs and dials that control the prices, costs, search rankings, recommendations, and core features of products and services, tech firms can play a high-speed shell-game that shifts value away from customers and suppliers and toward the firm and its executives:
pluralistic.net/2023/02/19/twiβ¦
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Twiddler β Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
pluralistic.netCory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
But how can this be legal? You bought an Echo and explicitly went into its settings to disable remote monitoring of the sounds in your home, and now Amazon - without your permission, against your express wishes - is going to start sending recordings from inside your house to its offices. Isn't that against the law?
Well, you'd think so, but US consumer privacy law is *unbelievably* backwards.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Congress hasn't passed a consumer privacy law since 1988, when the Video Privacy Protection Act banned video store clerks from disclosing which VHS cassettes you brought home. That is the last technological privacy threat that Congress has given any consideration to:
pluralistic.net/2023/12/06/priβ¦
This privacy vacuum has been filled up with surveillance on an unimaginable scale.
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Pluralistic: Privacy first (06 Dec 2023) β Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
pluralistic.netCory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Scumbag data-brokers you've never heard of openly boast about having dossiers on 91% of adult internet users, detailing who we are, what we watch, what we read, who we live with, who we follow on social media, what we buy online and offline, where we buy, when we buy, and why we buy:
gizmodo.com/data-broker-brags-β¦
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Data Broker Brags About Having Highly Detailed Personal Information on Nearly All Internet Users
Lucas Ropek (Gizmodo)Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
To a first approximation, every kind of privacy violation is legal, because the concentrated commercial surveillance industry spends millions lobbying against privacy laws, and those millions are a bargain, because they make billions off the data they harvest with impunity.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Regulatory capture is a function of monopoly. Highly concentrated sectors don't need to engage in "wasteful competition," which leaves them with gigantic profits to spend on lobbying, which is extraordinarily effective, because a sector that is dominated by a handful of firms can easily arrive at a common negotiating position and speak with one voice to the government:
pluralistic.net/2022/06/05/regβ¦
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Regulatory Capture β Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
pluralistic.netCory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Starting with the Carter administration, and accelerating through every subsequent administration except Biden's, America has adopted an explicitly pro-monopoly policy, called the "consumer welfare" antitrust theory. 40 years later, our economy is riddled with monopolies:
pluralistic.net/2024/01/17/monβ¦
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Pluralistic: The super-rich got that way through monopolies (17 Jan 2024) β Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
pluralistic.netCory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Every part of this Echo privacy massacre is downstream of that policy choice: "growth stock" narratives about AI, twiddling, DMCA 1201, the Darth Vader MBA, the end of legal privacy protections. These are material things, not ideological ones. They exist to make a very, very small number of people very, very rich.
Your Echo is your property, you paid for it. You paid for the product and you are still the product:
pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxβ¦
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Pluralistic: 14 Nov 2022 Even if youβre paying for the product, youβre still the product β Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
pluralistic.netCory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Now, Amazon says that the recordings your Echo will send to its data-centers will be deleted as soon as it's been processed by the AI servers. Amazon's made these claims before, and they were lies. Amazon eventually had to admit that its employees and a menagerie of overseas contractors were secretly given millions of recordings to listen to and make notes on:
archive.is/TD90k
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
And sometimes, Amazon just sent these recordings to random people on the internet:
washingtonpost.com/technology/β¦
Fool me once, etc. I will bet you a testicle* that Amazon will eventually have to admit that the recordings it harvests to feed its AI are *also* being retained and listened to by employees, contractors, and, possibly, randos on the internet.
*Not one of mine
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
I'm on a 20+ city book tour for my new novel *Picks and Shovels*.
Catch me in SAN DIEGO on Mar 24:
mystgalaxy.com/32425Doctorow
And in CHICAGO with PETER SAGAL on Apr 2:
exileinbookville.com/events/44β¦
More tour dates here:
martinhench.com
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Authors on Tap: Cory Doctorow and Peter Sagal
exileinbookville.comCory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Image:
Stock Catalog/quotecatalog.com (modified)
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Filβ¦
Sam Howzit (modified)
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Filβ¦
CC BY 2.0
creativecommons.org/licenses/bβ¦
eof/
File:Alexa (40770465691).jpg - Wikimedia Commons
commons.wikimedia.orgAlex@rtnVFRmedia Suffolk UK
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
reminds me of the East German telephone which was wired up to backfeed audio from the room to the Stasi (all analogue telephones of that era can be altered to do this, DDR built this wiring change into the telephone set), and even when this was a plug and socket phone which could have been unplugged many didn't do so (as they didn't want to miss the telephone calls and even having a phone was a privilege in those days)
public.beuth-hochschule.de/hamβ¦
RFT DIAL TELEPHONE ALPHA - A "STASI BUG" / EINE "STASI WANZE"
public.beuth-hochschule.deCory Doctorow reshared this.
draeath
in reply to Alex@rtnVFRmedia Suffolk UK • • •Sensitive content
samiamsam
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
ummmm
why are they keeping records?
never mind......
samiamsam
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
ummmmm
WHY were they keeping recordings in the first place
never mind.......
MisterMoo
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
"But how can this be legal? You bought an Echo..."
Well you see that's where you're wrong.
Nicole Parsons
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
As nations cancel their contracts to buy F-35 and other military equipment, one can be assured that similarly insecure post-purchase modification tech exists in those multi-billion dollar items.
Bought a military drone that uses Starlink? Can you be sure Musk won't shut it off in the middle of a fight for your survival as a nation?
Monitoring wildfires for waterbomber planes? What happens if #KochNetwork wants to evade lawsuits for climate change & shuts it off?
Jo-chin up, elbows up.
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Cykonot
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •the highest p/e industry is health, which is especially disturbing when you consider politicians investment incentives... A public option could hurt some of them a lot. Stopping the expansion of monopolies is bad because they're the high-growth parts of their portfolios
Allowing politicians to invest such that they're aligned against their constituents opens the door to abuse. And that's without considering lobbying, cushy post-politics jobs, speaking gigs, book deals and the like.
Tim Ward βπͺπΊπΆ #FBPE
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
This isn't the first IoT manufacturer to abandon the "local only" option.
What many people do is throw away the now-faulty kit, replace it with something that works locally, and never buy from that brand again.
Ponygirl
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Cory Doctorow reshared this.
Led By Fools
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •One should always follow XKCDs advice about listening devices, just in case.
XKCD Alt-text "Sure you could just ask, but this also takes care of the host-gift thing"
Dan McDonald
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Cory Doctorow reshared this.
Reay
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •zetabeta
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •richrockster
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Cory Doctorow reshared this.
SouprMatt
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Remember when people found out this was already happening years ago? Then Amazonβs execs said βoops we didnβt mean to!β
npr.org/2023/06/01/1179381126/β¦
There is a fix though. Throw it into a dumpster.
Meowshell
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Flic Meetwood
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •SpaceLifeForm
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •When I was left with 2 Echo(s) due to family deaths, I gave them away. No way I would ever even power them on and let them see WiFi.
#OpSec
RPL
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Jo-chin up, elbows up.
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Cory Doctorow reshared this.
Dan Kortschak
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Cory Doctorow
in reply to Dan Kortschak • • •Dan Kortschak
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •ηγ΄γ£γ―γ·γΌ
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •KayeMac04
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •This probably means a blind friend of mine who keeps Echo on 24/7 will have all their intimate conversations with carers kept as data. Stuff such as catheterisation, mobility, diet, relationships that will come back to him as advertising.
Edit: Iβm obviously barking up the wrong tree re: several aspects of Echo listening in. I appreciate the conversation this then started. I think the take away is: at what point after wake up does Echo/Alexa stop listening if itβs not told to stop.
Cory Doctorow reshared this.
LisaH
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Wow well that's it. Destroying all my Echo devices before then
Does this apply to other Alexa devices like Dots?
Bruce Acton π¨π¦π¨π¦π¨π¦
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •The Turtle
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Cory Doctorow reshared this.
Wombatadon
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Second best time :- today!
CubeThoughts
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Concentration of power is the disease and "consumer welfare" style anti-trust is the infection point. But now it's metastasised to include no meaningful privacy, regulatory capture, Citizens United etc.
The US needs meaningful anti-trust but how can that be achieved when politicians and agencies are bought and paid for. Even Biden didn't prioritize this meta policy except for the very meaningful appointment of Linda Khan.
Cory Doctorow reshared this.
chris
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •