Slashdot Mirror
Yes, Your Amazon Echo Is an Ad Machine (gizmodo.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: CNBC reports that Amazon is in discussions with huge companies that want to promote their goods on Echo devices. Proctor & Gamble as well as Clorox are reportedly in talks for major advertising deals that would allow Alexa to suggest products for you to buy. CNBC uses the example of asking Alexa how to remove a stain, with Alexa in turn recommending a Clorox product. So far it's unclear how Amazon would identify promoted responses from Alexa, if at all. Here's the really wacky thing: Amazon has already been doing this sort of thing to some degree. Currently, paid promotions are built into Alexa responses, but maybe you just haven't noticed it. CNBC uses this example: "There are already some sponsorships on Alexa that aren't tied to a user's history. If a shopper asks Alexa to buy toothpaste, one response is, 'Okay, I can look for a brand, like Colgate. What would you like?'" So it seems like Amazon wants to get you coming and going. Not only does the company want to let you buy stuff with your voice. Jeff Bezos and friends also want to make money by suggesting what to buy and even by pushing those products higher up in the search results so that you're more likely to do it.
I was an early Echo adopter and have a Dot now as well. I primarily use it to (a) maintain my shopping/errands list, and (b) stream music while I do stuff in the kitchen. I've never bought anything using it.
But I can tell you if the day comes that Alexa gives me ads when I'm asking for something else, it's getting unplugged forever. ..bruce..
Bruce F. Webster (brucefwebster.com)
Let me explain this: if I want fresh blueberries, I don't need them some time in the next 48 hours. I need them now, so I can have them for breakfast tomorrow. Since there will be at least one such purchase per week, might as well go to the store and buy the rest.
Also, I can pay good, old-fashioned, cold, hard cash in the store. Not have my shopping habits sliced, diced, tracked, and otherwise microscopically examined by marketeering pieces of trash.
I really thought the whole fuss about these things all joining up and selling you stuff was overblown, until one day at work...
I work in a university biochemistry department, where we do X-ray crystallography. We have a home X-ray source downstairs, which we're talking about upgrading. (No, Alexa, we're not buying it off Amazon, STFU.) My professor is interested in a system that uses liquid gallium for the anode, as opposed to the traditional spinning lump of copper. We've talked about it, a lot, phones nearby. Nothing weird has ever happened as a result.
Then we had a meeting with the nice lady from the Innovations department - the one where they deal with all the patents and fun secret stuff. My boss, being a wonderful old-school professor, just had to tell her in detail about this device, even though it was only vaguely related to what we were meant to be discussing. Her iPhone sat innocently on the table the whole time.
Not two hours later, I went to Amazon to buy some kayaking stuff. Top of my recommendations? 20 grams of gallium. Never had anything even vaguely like it recommended, before or since.
Could be blind coincidence, of course...
If they still may, yes, they will.
At what point will acceptance be high enough that you'd already raise suspicion by not inviting the trojan horse into your home? And at what point will you pretty much become a social pariah if you don't?
We already see something like this happen with Facebook. Quite a few companies already don't really have their own homepages anymore. You want to deal with them, you have questions, you have complaints? Better have a Facebook account or you won't. Any promotion will also only happen with Facebook, and by now you also already have webpages that require you to have an account there to log in to them because they want to avoid the hassle of having to deal with their own user database.
And of course if most people you know use Facebook to organize events, guess what you'll have to have to be invited, because it's so comfortable and hassle free to create a group and just invite all the people on the list?
It reminds me more and more of the former East Bloc. A lot of things were not outright outlawed or mandated, but failing to do what The Party wanted usually resulted in you miraculously being sidelined.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.