I switched to Home Assistant a couple months ago (because I didn't like the idea of my voice being sent to amazon constantly) and haven't looked back! Soo much more you can do (including immediately using an LLM, if you like, whether in the cloud or local), and so much more control.
The process is still complicated enough to be "enthusiast" (aka nerd) territory but it is getting better with every release. It will still be here in 10 years, nobody can take it away from us.
Home Assistant is a great example of the amazing things the open source community is capable of doing. Hopefully they get the color version stuff worked out. It's too bad it appears that most of Amazon's hardware devices can't be turned to the good side and made to work with Home Assistant.
Data sovereignty in general is always a good decision. I love my HA device, my local inference for LLMs on my 3090, my homelab of services, and the FTP access to my PikaPods workloads.
If you don't have full control over your data, someone else does - and will do as they please with it, eventually.
We mostly use Alexa for playing music (Radio & Spotify) and setting timers.
We also use the multi-room music feature where Alexa plays the same audio source on a certain group (great for parties).
Related, here's a comment from 2019 from at the time of writing from someone claiming to be a principal engineer at Amazon, talking about how
"I'm proud of the approach that Amazon takes to privacy. Privacy of customer data is considered the most important thing to Amazon, and this customer obsession (the #1 leadership principle) permeates the organization."
People don't really care about privacy, it's as simple as that. Yes, they worry about privacy, and complain about violations of privacy. But if they cared, they never would have purchased this product in the first place. There are bits of technology which violate privacy, but are extremely difficult to fully avoid: Social Media, (I know a lot of HN isn't on it, but how about most of your family and friends?) smart phones, the surveillance of modern stores, etc. All of those are terrifically difficult to fully avoid or mitigate. But not buying an echo is effortless and free. There's no cost associated with not buying one, and not spending the time to set it up.
But, despite the fact that it literally costs nothing, these have sold quite well, and if folks haven't got an echo they've got a Google Home, or a Siri, or something else. They just don't care about privacy, and companies know this.
This argument, "People don't really care about <x> ...", is not so much an argument as it is a rationalization for amoral or simply bad behavior on the part of the seller/supplier.
It is the rationale for the existence of regulation by government. The person who is in a position to protect the interests of the customer, whether or not the customer 'cares', has a moral obligation to take care.
When the supplier chooses not to protect the interests of their customers, regulation steps in to create a consequence for that bad behavior.
I know people who hate this reality because they feel it is up to the customer to "decide" whether the risk is worth it, but those same people are not moving to Somalia to live in a land with zero effective government and regulation either. It generally comes down to a discussion that "some regulation" is good except for the regulation that is interfering with "their" plans. A very self centered point of view but all too common in my experience.
People don't care about anything by default. They have to learn about threat-models and how to mitigate those threats. Usually this only happens after getting burned personally. (To learn from others is still learning, which people also don't care about.)
This topic comes up in politics all the time. There is this hurt and offended reaction to people embracing authoritarianism, often becoming nihilistic. But the practical truth is that people don't care about philosophy or politics. Human society's default is authoritarianism. Rather than be upset at this impulse, it would be wiser to acknowledge with amazement that we managed to try something different. Civilization will struggle with it's default settings for as long as civilization exists, and our role is fight against them, knowing the fight is never over.
Some people have enjoyed the benefits of government agencies that promote consumer protections. At some level, maybe we hear about or even directly benefitted from some consumer protection agency, and assume the government has our back. Maybe it is naive, but I still think that assumption is there: we don't have to care because it is someone else's job to care about privacy. How could it be put on sale if it is not safe? They test cars, for safety, they test food for safety, etc. They must test these things, too, right?
This is clearly not the case, though. The government works for big tech. The US government is even shutting down consumer protection agencies at the behest of big tech and leaving us to their whims!
People might not care, but it also might be that they are not aware. Telemetry and data collection are cleverly hidden by app developers. Imagine if for example a phone would show messages like "Sending your data to Company X" every time it sends a telemetry. That would make people more aware.
What I think is hard for a lot of tech people to understand is that people don't care about privacy in the abstract. "Your data is being read and stored" isn't interesting to most people unless they know what it's being used for. And, often, to the surprise of the kind of person reading this, they are totally fine with how their data is being used. They don't care that the government is listening in for anti-terror activities. They don't care that corporations are aggregating their data to sell ads. They don't think it's a big deal.
There are things they would care about, but they don't care about those things.
And they don't care about privacy in the abstract.
They really do. Do you have anything other than a blind assertion to back this up?
> they worry about privacy, and complain about violations of privacy
Yea, so, looks like they do care.
> they never would have purchased this product in the first place
They were lied to, baited in, and the terms switched. Your assertion is ridiculous and one sided.
> Social Media,
I'm sharing things with my friends not with corporations.
> All of those are terrifically difficult to fully avoid or mitigate
Two browser plugins mitigate it entirely.
> They just don't care about privacy, and companies know this.
They're not sophisticated enough to understand the landscape around them and assume the laws are actually being enforced. What a corrupt position you have taken here.
> People don't really care about privacy, it's as simple as that. Yes, they worry about privacy, and complain about violations of privacy.
Your second sentences proves that the first is a lie. People very clearly care about their privacy. These surveillance systems are designed so that users never see the line between the collection of their private data and the consequences. People are upset when they know that their privacy has been violated, but Amazon tells them that they are safe and they never see the contractor working for Amazon listening to them having sex so they don't have the sense of outrage that they should.
Amazon is exploiting well known and researched limitations of human's brain/perception and they've crafted their marketing to be as manipulative and reassuring as possible to keep people bugging their own homes with their devices. It's a little unfair to blame the public being fleeced and not the multi-billion dollar corporation who has devoted unimaginable resources into manipulating the customers they are screwing over. You and I know better than to fall for their bullshit, but it's easy to see how most will struggle.
Then why are they willing to pay a premium for Apple Products, which do as much locally as possible? (Without going into detail, I know this because a very skilled engineer I worked with was hired by them.)
Also, even if "people" don't care (I'd love to see a peer reviewed study on the # of folks who meet this criteria you claim), why should the preference of those people override those of us who DO want privacy? Why can't the few who don't care opt in to the panopticon?
We obsess over "AI" when things like "take an audio file and produce a written transcription" have been being done for quite some time. Where does the algorithm end and "AI" begin, and what is it about "AI" that necessitates throwing away years of existing work on privacy preserving queries?
"They just don't care about privacy, and companies know this."
They don't prioritize privacy over other concerns, largely convenience, because (to date) they haven't been burned by that choice or at least haven't been burned badly enough or aren't aware. I think that, in the coming months and years, this is going to change.
My family has started paying attention to this sort of thing and opting out of things that they see as risks to privacy. A few years ago they were like "yeah, you're right, but..." -- not so much anymore.
People (including me) are simply ignorant of the privacy implications of their actions, even tech savvy people like me can't really understand who is watching and collecting their data and when, and won't go to extreme lengths in preventing others from listening in.
Regular folks are even less aware and are scared by technology - when a scary popup comes up, they will press anything and agree to anything just to make it go away.
>People don't really care about privacy, it's as simple as that.
A big reason for this is that no one really explains what happens and why people should care.
Typically, it's either a hand-wave to "this should be important, you should care", or steeped in so much technical detail that the non-technical listener has a hard time wrapping their head around it. (The third way it's explained is via a bunch of conspiracy theory/NSA stuff, which probably just turns most people off entirely).
Worse, people have been in a dozen breaches in the last few years, but the majority haven't suffered a personal impact (yet). Further reinforcing "why should I care?".
It’s not that people don’t care, it’s that consumerism is a stronger force than that care. Which makes sense, consumerism is the backbone of every consumer-focused capitalist economy.
Our greatest power is literally not buying things. But people don’t do it in practice. Why is complicated. We are constantly bombarded by propaganda to push us to consumerist behavior. We just don’t call it that, it’s “advertisement”.
Many people refuse to have any of these devices in their home over privacy concerns, one person I know wants them unplugged when visiting. I like the convenience, but there is a line and Amazon is crossing it. The lack of innovation, layoffs, and reports of financial losses were the warning the enshittifcation of Alexa is coming and I expect this is only the start.
Alexa and Google Assistant created the market, now it will be interesting to see how it evolves. Home Assistant is working well in testing and has a great feature set for home automation, the LLM support is fun, and most of the smart devices I've bought over the years are compatible including Apple Homekit. At least for people that do care, there are options.
Cynically, much of the "privacy" industry is just a red herring by big tech / data broker industry to normalize how egregious their privacy violations are.
"You know that boundary that we agreed upon a while back? We're gonna violate that boundary now. This is not an opportunity to negotiate a new agreement, we're gonna do whatever we want to you because we're big and you're little."
Stuff like this is why I've cut amazon out of my life entirely. No more new devices, no more new purchases, cancelled prime, all of it gone.
Thinking about that picture from a (UK?) hospital breakroom with the sign that said "Please turn off the Echo before discussing sensitive patient information."
Now would be a good time to have a functional FTC commissioner. Doing a bait and switch like on a product that was sold with a set of features should be illegal. If I buy a car and the sales guy stops by my house the next day to take back the wheels, it would rightfully be seen as ridiculous.
I will never understand why anyone would ever want to use voice assistants (other than for accessibility reasons). It is so gimmicky and awkward to use.
Android Auto does not even understand the word "no".
This reads more like, 'they're not very good' rather than 'people don't want them'. They could be hugely useful, and even in their current capacity I find are very much so.
I find it maddening that my google home, hasn't got a single bit better in the 8 years since it's release, and it's now missing some of my favourite features it had at launch. The whole market has been stagnate ever since they convinced me to put a microphone in my house, it's almost as if that was their end game.
I still remember the time when devices worked for you rather than against you.
But people will put up with anything. You could literally send a note that any Alexa will be equipped with 2kg of Semtex, to be triggered in case of wrongthink in your own home. People would still use Alexa and rationalize the feature.
What if you bought the device just because it had this option?
I have an Echo Dot 2nd Gen which I used for around two months, until it once failed at a command of playing back a radio station but instead started to continuously stream my audio to Amazon, for hours until I noticed it (bandwidth monitoring with InfluxDB and Grafana).
Now none of my devices (phones and tablets) listen for hotwords, but at this point there's no guarantee that my Pixel phone isn't listening in all the time. That feature where your phone listens to water or an alarm is what I found too sketchy, as if they have been playing around with on-device constant sound recognition for too long and then come up with some silly reason to make you enable it.
All bullshit. Apple loves to make a big stand on privacy but quietly folds just like the rest of them. Remember that big stink they rose over the FBI needing access to an encrypted phone a decade ago? Apple still gave everything the FBI requested some time later after got their PR win
Do people really enjoy talking to their home devices? I've always felt really awkward telling my phone to do something, especially in public, like I don't feel like everyone else needs to hear about what I want things to do, so I just prefer to type something. I know there are some people for whom its an accessibility thing, where they have difficulty typing or reading, but I've never really seen the point for average joe/josephine
Always assumed Amazon was doing whatever it wanted with Alexa powered devices. I used to have one in the kitchen that I used mainly for timers. The mute button stayed on 99.999% of the time. Needing to unmute to start or stop timers did make it a bit less useful but it was fine.
I watched a breakdown of that model of Echo where it looked like the mute was indeed at the hardware level. My EE knowledge is limited but good enough I could follow along. Amazon probably could hide some hidden way to get around the hardware switch if they wanted but the risk for them seems higher than the risk to me, which never really was more than they'd hear me belch while cooking.
This event has been written on the walls of the USA since those smart speakers and cel phones first appeared. The average US citizen has been conditioned to believe the 'regulation' is 'evil government' and not protection from established abusive practices - that's how regulations get created: someone (usually a corporation) abuses a public resource or good so extremely that laws are written to prevent that. Of course, those laws prevent business from exploiting the situations, so of course business educates people that regulation is evil, and the fake to destroyed education system volunteers to educate that lie too.
The USA is a destroyed, hollowed out shell that manufacturers morons, on purpose, because they make desperate employees. The fact that almost no Americans can explain themselves without thinking that act is a lead up to a punishment is very telling, and then their explanation cannot be understood by anyone but a career peer because they only speak in non-communicating jargon, a parrot echoes of talking points from media. No self generated thinking, only echoes of media. It's seriously a giant problem. This nation is kaput intellectually.
I would like to meet the person who bought an Alexa device at any point in time thinking "now here is finally the privacy protecting AI assistant I have been waiting for."
It should, but as far as I know you have zero guarantees about that. I just hope there's privacy organizations and / or hackers that continuously verify these claims. Of course, Amazon can push an update at any time to change this, at which point it'll be too late to think "hmm, 1984 warned us about this".
[+] [-] timwis|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] draugadrotten|1 year ago|reply
https://www.home-assistant.io/voice-pe/
The process is still complicated enough to be "enthusiast" (aka nerd) territory but it is getting better with every release. It will still be here in 10 years, nobody can take it away from us.
[+] [-] Mountain_Skies|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] stego-tech|1 year ago|reply
If you don't have full control over your data, someone else does - and will do as they please with it, eventually.
[+] [-] mixermachine|1 year ago|reply
Does Home Assistant also have these features?
[+] [-] seltzered_|1 year ago|reply
"I'm proud of the approach that Amazon takes to privacy. Privacy of customer data is considered the most important thing to Amazon, and this customer obsession (the #1 leadership principle) permeates the organization."
The comment further talks about the mute button on the original Amazon Echo (i.e. Alexa voice assistant) being hardware-based : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19208670
[+] [-] everdrive|1 year ago|reply
But, despite the fact that it literally costs nothing, these have sold quite well, and if folks haven't got an echo they've got a Google Home, or a Siri, or something else. They just don't care about privacy, and companies know this.
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|1 year ago|reply
It is the rationale for the existence of regulation by government. The person who is in a position to protect the interests of the customer, whether or not the customer 'cares', has a moral obligation to take care.
When the supplier chooses not to protect the interests of their customers, regulation steps in to create a consequence for that bad behavior.
I know people who hate this reality because they feel it is up to the customer to "decide" whether the risk is worth it, but those same people are not moving to Somalia to live in a land with zero effective government and regulation either. It generally comes down to a discussion that "some regulation" is good except for the regulation that is interfering with "their" plans. A very self centered point of view but all too common in my experience.
[+] [-] simpaticoder|1 year ago|reply
People don't care about anything by default. They have to learn about threat-models and how to mitigate those threats. Usually this only happens after getting burned personally. (To learn from others is still learning, which people also don't care about.)
This topic comes up in politics all the time. There is this hurt and offended reaction to people embracing authoritarianism, often becoming nihilistic. But the practical truth is that people don't care about philosophy or politics. Human society's default is authoritarianism. Rather than be upset at this impulse, it would be wiser to acknowledge with amazement that we managed to try something different. Civilization will struggle with it's default settings for as long as civilization exists, and our role is fight against them, knowing the fight is never over.
[+] [-] dfxm12|1 year ago|reply
Some people have enjoyed the benefits of government agencies that promote consumer protections. At some level, maybe we hear about or even directly benefitted from some consumer protection agency, and assume the government has our back. Maybe it is naive, but I still think that assumption is there: we don't have to care because it is someone else's job to care about privacy. How could it be put on sale if it is not safe? They test cars, for safety, they test food for safety, etc. They must test these things, too, right?
This is clearly not the case, though. The government works for big tech. The US government is even shutting down consumer protection agencies at the behest of big tech and leaving us to their whims!
[+] [-] whiplash451|1 year ago|reply
By your logic, we should not care about climate change either.
"People don't care about privacy" doesn't mean that regulators and the tech community should not lead a charge.
[+] [-] codedokode|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] dionidium|1 year ago|reply
There are things they would care about, but they don't care about those things.
And they don't care about privacy in the abstract.
[+] [-] timewizard|1 year ago|reply
They really do. Do you have anything other than a blind assertion to back this up?
> they worry about privacy, and complain about violations of privacy
Yea, so, looks like they do care.
> they never would have purchased this product in the first place
They were lied to, baited in, and the terms switched. Your assertion is ridiculous and one sided.
> Social Media,
I'm sharing things with my friends not with corporations.
> All of those are terrifically difficult to fully avoid or mitigate
Two browser plugins mitigate it entirely.
> They just don't care about privacy, and companies know this.
They're not sophisticated enough to understand the landscape around them and assume the laws are actually being enforced. What a corrupt position you have taken here.
[+] [-] autoexec|1 year ago|reply
Your second sentences proves that the first is a lie. People very clearly care about their privacy. These surveillance systems are designed so that users never see the line between the collection of their private data and the consequences. People are upset when they know that their privacy has been violated, but Amazon tells them that they are safe and they never see the contractor working for Amazon listening to them having sex so they don't have the sense of outrage that they should.
Amazon is exploiting well known and researched limitations of human's brain/perception and they've crafted their marketing to be as manipulative and reassuring as possible to keep people bugging their own homes with their devices. It's a little unfair to blame the public being fleeced and not the multi-billion dollar corporation who has devoted unimaginable resources into manipulating the customers they are screwing over. You and I know better than to fall for their bullshit, but it's easy to see how most will struggle.
[+] [-] firefax|1 year ago|reply
Then why are they willing to pay a premium for Apple Products, which do as much locally as possible? (Without going into detail, I know this because a very skilled engineer I worked with was hired by them.)
Also, even if "people" don't care (I'd love to see a peer reviewed study on the # of folks who meet this criteria you claim), why should the preference of those people override those of us who DO want privacy? Why can't the few who don't care opt in to the panopticon?
We obsess over "AI" when things like "take an audio file and produce a written transcription" have been being done for quite some time. Where does the algorithm end and "AI" begin, and what is it about "AI" that necessitates throwing away years of existing work on privacy preserving queries?
[+] [-] jzb|1 year ago|reply
They don't prioritize privacy over other concerns, largely convenience, because (to date) they haven't been burned by that choice or at least haven't been burned badly enough or aren't aware. I think that, in the coming months and years, this is going to change.
My family has started paying attention to this sort of thing and opting out of things that they see as risks to privacy. A few years ago they were like "yeah, you're right, but..." -- not so much anymore.
[+] [-] torginus|1 year ago|reply
Regular folks are even less aware and are scared by technology - when a scary popup comes up, they will press anything and agree to anything just to make it go away.
[+] [-] natnatenathan|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] ziddoap|1 year ago|reply
A big reason for this is that no one really explains what happens and why people should care.
Typically, it's either a hand-wave to "this should be important, you should care", or steeped in so much technical detail that the non-technical listener has a hard time wrapping their head around it. (The third way it's explained is via a bunch of conspiracy theory/NSA stuff, which probably just turns most people off entirely).
Worse, people have been in a dozen breaches in the last few years, but the majority haven't suffered a personal impact (yet). Further reinforcing "why should I care?".
[+] [-] ryukoposting|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] rchaud|1 year ago|reply
How do you square that with people not caring about privacy? The feature as it existed was there specifically to address privacy concerns.
[+] [-] downrightmike|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] consteval|1 year ago|reply
Our greatest power is literally not buying things. But people don’t do it in practice. Why is complicated. We are constantly bombarded by propaganda to push us to consumerist behavior. We just don’t call it that, it’s “advertisement”.
[+] [-] dade_|1 year ago|reply
Alexa and Google Assistant created the market, now it will be interesting to see how it evolves. Home Assistant is working well in testing and has a great feature set for home automation, the LLM support is fun, and most of the smart devices I've bought over the years are compatible including Apple Homekit. At least for people that do care, there are options.
[+] [-] pphysch|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] reverendsteveii|1 year ago|reply
Stuff like this is why I've cut amazon out of my life entirely. No more new devices, no more new purchases, cancelled prime, all of it gone.
[+] [-] rvense|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] DevX101|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] phito|1 year ago|reply
Android Auto does not even understand the word "no".
[+] [-] dwayne_dibley|1 year ago|reply
I find it maddening that my google home, hasn't got a single bit better in the 8 years since it's release, and it's now missing some of my favourite features it had at launch. The whole market has been stagnate ever since they convinced me to put a microphone in my house, it's almost as if that was their end game.
[+] [-] serial_dev|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] twy1212895|1 year ago|reply
But people will put up with anything. You could literally send a note that any Alexa will be equipped with 2kg of Semtex, to be triggered in case of wrongthink in your own home. People would still use Alexa and rationalize the feature.
[+] [-] qwertox|1 year ago|reply
I have an Echo Dot 2nd Gen which I used for around two months, until it once failed at a command of playing back a radio station but instead started to continuously stream my audio to Amazon, for hours until I noticed it (bandwidth monitoring with InfluxDB and Grafana).
Now none of my devices (phones and tablets) listen for hotwords, but at this point there's no guarantee that my Pixel phone isn't listening in all the time. That feature where your phone listens to water or an alarm is what I found too sketchy, as if they have been playing around with on-device constant sound recognition for too long and then come up with some silly reason to make you enable it.
[+] [-] gnabgib|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] october8140|1 year ago|reply
https://www.apple.com/jo/newsroom/2025/01/our-longstanding-p...
[+] [-] ohgr|1 year ago|reply
Never give any data to anyone based on their current policy, because as demonstrated here, it may change. And then you're fucked.
[+] [-] timeon|1 year ago|reply
> "When a user talks or types to Siri, their request is processed on device whenever possible."
[+] [-] BiteCode_dev|1 year ago|reply
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jul/26/apple-con...
[+] [-] JasserInicide|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] paul7986|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] DeathArrow|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] voidUpdate|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] Mountain_Skies|1 year ago|reply
I watched a breakdown of that model of Echo where it looked like the mute was indeed at the hardware level. My EE knowledge is limited but good enough I could follow along. Amazon probably could hide some hidden way to get around the hardware switch if they wanted but the risk for them seems higher than the risk to me, which never really was more than they'd hear me belch while cooking.
[+] [-] fergie|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] bsenftner|1 year ago|reply
The USA is a destroyed, hollowed out shell that manufacturers morons, on purpose, because they make desperate employees. The fact that almost no Americans can explain themselves without thinking that act is a lead up to a punishment is very telling, and then their explanation cannot be understood by anyone but a career peer because they only speak in non-communicating jargon, a parrot echoes of talking points from media. No self generated thinking, only echoes of media. It's seriously a giant problem. This nation is kaput intellectually.
[+] [-] aktuel|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] ChrisArchitect|1 year ago|reply
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43365424
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43367536
[+] [-] cphoover|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] Cthulhu_|1 year ago|reply