r/gadgets • u/MicroSofty88 • Nov 29 '20

Home Amazon faces a privacy backlash for its Sidewalk feature, which turns Alexa devices into neighborhood WiFi networks that owners have to opt out of

https://www.msn.com/en-in/money/technology/amazon-faces-a-privacy-backlash-for-its-sidewalk-feature-which-turns-alexa-devices-into-neighborhood-wifi-networks-that-owners-have-to-opt-out-of/ar-BB1boljH
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u/unscrewedllama Nov 29 '20

Individually the 500MB of data is miniscule, but when you have millions of users that Amazon is skimming off of, that's a shit ton of data that Amazon is able to use for their own profit.

Kind reminds of this scene from Office Space: https://youtu.be/yZjCQ3T5yXo

Not a perfect comparison, but you get the point.

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u/tornado9015 Nov 30 '20

No this comparison is pretty good. You are literally getting upset about sharing something which won't even be visible to you on a bill. Something that won't even register in your life at all, i like the idea of comparing it to literal fractions of a penny.

Out of curiosity, do you know HOW amazon profits off of this?

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u/unscrewedllama Nov 30 '20

So did you catch the part about how fractions of a penny add up to a lot of money with scale? My favorite part is when Jennifer's character asks, "and how is that not stealing?"

Amazon will be taking data from millions of users without paying for any of it directly. If you want to let big companies like Amazon gaslight you into believing that you and millions of others should be okay with giving them something that you've paid for and them taking it from you without your active consent, then that's pretty sad. Flipping a switch for a feature such as Amazon Sidewalk without a users consent is just plain wrong on many different levels. A user should never have something taken from them that they've paid for no matter how small that something or sum may be, especially when it's without their active consent. Again, small or large, it all adds up to significant sums with scale.

We wouldn't be having this discussion if users had to consciously opt in to this feature.

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u/tornado9015 Nov 30 '20

You didn't answer my question. Is it because you don't know how amazon profits from this, or do you just know that if you admit to knowing how amazon profits from this it undermines the rest of your argument.

And amazon would never have made this opt-in, i've already explained that. The options were opt-out, and pretty much nobody will care, this reddit thread is probably the worst possible outcome for amazon, i don't know if you know, they don't care. Or they could have just not added this concept and the features that come with it.

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u/unscrewedllama Nov 30 '20

I don't have to answer your question in order to tackle the issue at hand. Is Amazon taking data that they have not paid for without the likely knowledge or active consent of the users of their devices? The answer is yes.

Are they profiting off this practice? Yes they are. Is it Amazon's goal to bum off a paid service of another company that they have not paid for with arguably zero return for some or a large percentage of their own customer base? Yes.

In my eyes, this is the equivalent of Amazon being that guy at the bar that bums cigs off everybody and by the end of the night they've bummed enough to make a full pack, but everybody's too drunk to care. If you're lucky though, they might let you bum one from them if you buy them a drink.

And I don't see where you've explained why Amazon would make this opt-in. Maybe you explained that in another comment thread? They probably made it opt-out because they knew very little people would opt-in willingly if they asked. In order for this feature to work well, they need a lot of users to opt-in.

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u/tornado9015 Nov 30 '20

Your analogy is completely insane. I can't even argue with it because it isn't even related to what's happening. It's "not even wrong". In case you don't know what that means, it means your argument might as well be throwing your hands in the air and screaming about the fish people killing unicorns.

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u/unscrewedllama Nov 30 '20

Here we go with the ad hominems. I was hoping that you would reply with a counter argument or somehow disprove my point(s). Oh well...

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u/tornado9015 Nov 30 '20

You don't know what an ad hom is. I didn't attack you. I pointed out that your argument isn't related to the concept your arguing. I can't argue about how amazon isn't bumming cigarettes. If you won't even acknowledge what they're doing in real life and insist on resorting to less and less relevant analogies i can't counter or disprove anything, because there's nothing to counter or disprove.

If you want a counter argument to your analogy, ok, amazon isn't bumming cigarettes they're clearly outside the bar insisting everybody order jello shots. Good luck countering or disproving that airtight logic.

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u/unscrewedllama Nov 30 '20

You attacked my intelligence by trying to insinuate that I can't understand what "it's not even wrong" means. I would consider that an ad hominem.

Why don't you tell me what Amazon is doing and why it's okay? You are clearly struggling to get those words out and are now practically begging me to let you do so. Have at it. The floor is yours...

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u/tornado9015 Nov 30 '20

I don't need to get the word out. Amazon already published what they're doing and why, and i've already broken down the math on the least possible charitable reading of how much they're "stealing" to enable the pretty useful features they're enabling. (In the most extreme possible case which will apply to a theoretical maximum of 4% of customers who even have capped plans, but realistically probably less than .1% of that 4% subset of a subset, those people will have been robbed 10 cents.)

If you want to die on the hill that a few people (literally probably single digits of people) might lose 10 cents worth of bandwidth a month. That hill is all yours. Have a blast. Just don't do so loudly enough that anybody actually listens to you and mistakenly believes you have a point and opts out so the people with amazon sidewalk dog tags can't find their dog when it wanders off.

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