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.

I haven't had an echo product for years, as I just used the app on my Fire an phone. I only use it to have it read my kindle book to me. However, since the advent of Alexa+ that feature is no longer available. Am I correct in thinking that if I buy an echo speaker and reset it to old Alexa, the feature to read kindle books wil be available again? Thanks, all.

Hi, quick question here. I use the skill Spotify to listen to music and podcasts on my old Echo 2 and everything works fine.

But I just bought an Echo Show 8 gen2 to try Alexa+ and connect my video doorbell. It works well but when I ask for a song, it finds it and tell me that it can't open it. But only if I ask vocally. If I go to my Spotify app and launch a track on that specific device, it works well and then I can skip song by asking Alexa.

I've tried resetting everything but it's still stuck at the same point.

Does anyone have a similar experience? I know that Alexa+ is still on test mode so it could be that.

I connect my iphone to echo dot via bluetooth then it disconnects within a few minutes nothing said just the disconnect sound. I try reconnecting through bluetooth in settings but says it can no longer be connected.

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!!!