Amazon does a '1984'

[Pearlple]

Amazon has announced that starting March 28th, even for users who have previously opted out, all processing of audio for Echo devices will be cloud based. There is no longer an option for on-device processing.
This applies to every single interaction with the speaker and is being rolled out in advance of the Alexa+ subscription functionality. *no way this could possibly be them wanting your data to train their models for free/have you pay for it*
Even if you don't want to use any of the new features, on device processing is no longer supported.

It sounds like the device will not be completely bricked if you disable the recording altogether, but it would be severly limited; and at that point why have a smart speaker anyway!?
Now I have to say I do not own an Alexa device and did not receive this email myself. I briefly had one during the beta when I was more naive and all for new fancy tech with very little awareness or concern for privacy.
I don't like any of these "smart" devices for a lot of reasons; in addition to privacy concerns, they also put a filter in front of your interaction that is out of your control. Of course they can be convenient, but going down this road you slowly lose your critical thinking and the abilitiy to really do anything by yourself. Also who knows what the company, who owns the software and therefore functionally owns the device, wants you to know/think or more importantly what they want you to not know or think about.

My sources here are Cory Doctorow (Pluralistic), the author, activist and journalist who coined the term "enshittification"; and Ars Technica

[Linkard]

Thanks for this info and the precise sourcing.

That is really disturbing. Another reminder that these big companies don't let you actually own anything you buy from them, and steal not only from artists, but also from you specifically.

Hopefully this will deter people who don't have an echo from buying one. The more that companies push cloud-based SaaS on us, the more I go back to simple computing systems, and 'dumber' technology