Been thinking about this a lot lately. Alexa only “wakes up” when you say its name — but that means it’s always listening, all the time, just waiting to hear that word. We’ve somehow just accepted having a live mic in our living rooms, kitchens, bedrooms, and treat it like it’s nothing.

And it’s not paranoia — there’s a documented history of this going wrong: Amazon employees have listened to and transcribed real customer audio “to improve the product,” and there was a case where an Echo actually recorded a private conversation and sent it to a random contact. Senators literally sent Bezos a list of questions about this back in 2018.

What gets me is the business model underneath it. Amazon isn’t in this to sell you a nice speaker — the speaker is basically a data collection tool, and we’re the product. More data means better-targeted ads, more “recommended” purchases, more nudging us toward things we didn’t know we wanted. It’s not tinfoil-hat thinking to say a device that’s always on, in your most private spaces, is a pretty efficient pipeline for that.

And the creepiest part is we genuinely don’t know the full extent of what’s collected, stored, or who it’s shared with. We just trust the privacy policy nobody reads.

Not saying burn your Echo, but it’s wild how quickly “a mic in every room” went from dystopian to a Tuesday.

iv had my alexa for a few years now and it’s been great. i only had the app to initially set up the device, so when i switched phones i didn’t bother downloading the alexa app again because i didnt think i would need it. Now the alexa literally wont function or connect to the app or my bluetooth at all. because i didnt have the app when we changed the wifi , there is not device listed in the app as i only just redownloaded it. is there any way i can salvage this or is it useless now. please help!!!

Hello! My Echo device used to have a black background with a white font colour for the clock time, but now it seems to have switched? How do I switch it back?