Misunderstanding Locks Amazon User Out Of ‘Smart’ Home Voice Control For A Week
from the not-so-smart-huh dept
The “smart” internet of things era was supposed to usher forth a new era of convenience. Instead, it often manages to advertise how dumber technology can be the smarter option, and you’re not being particularly innovative if your product actually makes life harder. From “smart” door locks that are easily hackable to hackable “smart” TVs that are so smart they spy on you, there are near daily examples showing how connecting old tech to the internet and calling it innovation — may not be innovative.
And if you still choose to wander down the smart home rabbit hole, it’s very important to build flexible, interoperable home networks that don’t rely too heavily on a singular point of failure or control.
Take this poor sod’s experience as the latest example.
Microsoft engineer Brandon Jackson recently found himself locked completely out of the voice controls for his Amazon-controlled smart home automation system. In a blog post, he details how his loss of control made it impossible to use voice controls to manage any of countless home security and automation devices:
I have a smart home, and my primary means of interfacing with all the devices and automations is through Amazon Echo devices via Alexa. This incident left me with a house full of unresponsive devices, a silent Alexa, and a lot of questions.
Now he’s quick to note he still had control over most of the individual devices, but only because he’d implemented a lot of third party systems and hosting options to ensure reliability and interoperability. So it’s not like he froze to death in his underpants hiding in the garage in terror from the smart vac, like some sort of Black Mirror episode.
Why was he locked out? Jackson notes that somehow an Amazon delivery driver misinterpreted an innocuous remark (“Excuse me, can I help you?”) as a racist slur of some kind. That quickly escalated with Amazon, and the company took the extreme step of locking him out of all Alexa home voice controls entirely before Jackson was even allowed to explain himself.
Given the current political and cultural moment where people are being murdered on doorstops and driveways by imbeciles, Amazon’s sensitivity here is somewhat understandable. Jackson ultimately regained control after things were cleared up, but it unsurprisingly led him to question his reliance on a single monolithic company when it comes to home automation and control:
Let me be clear: I fully support Amazon taking measures to ensure the safety of their drivers. However, I question why my entire smart home system had to be rendered unusable during their internal investigation (Clarification, I wrote this from the perspective of the average user. My entire system was fine but only due to me self hosting many services and that should not have to be the norm/expected of everyone). It seems more sensible to impose a temporary delivery restriction or purchasing ban on my account. Submitting video evidence from multiple angles right after my initial call with the executive appeared to have little impact on their decision to disable my account.
Of course, there’s numerous other reasons to not have your home automation and security systems too heavily reliant on monitoring by Amazon, including the company’s lazy and all too casual data and information sharing habits with law enforcement.
The Rupert Murdoch news machine was quickly excited by a story with racial elements (but not really) that vilified big tech, but the broader issue remains more about the cautionary tale of putting your home systems under any kind of monolithic, centralized control. It’s precisely why technologies like Matter are trying to expand interoperability and end reliance on any single point of failure (with mixed results so far).
For its part, Amazon acknowledged the error and promised to do better:
“We work hard to provide customers with a great experience while also ensuring drivers who deliver Amazon packages feel safe,” Spokesperson Simone Griffin said in a statement. “In this case, we learned through our investigation that the customer did not act inappropriately, and we’re working directly with the customer to resolve their concerns while also looking at ways to prevent a similar situation from happening again,” she added.
Again though, the best way to avoid monolithic giants like Amazon having too much control over your home is to… simply not give monolithic giants like Amazon too much control over your home. Amazon’s interest in controlling and monetizing every last aspect of your daily behavior simply are never going to consistently be in line with the goal of individual autonomy.
Filed Under: alexa, amazon doorbell, content moderation, internet of things, iot, privacy, racist, security, smart home, smart tech
Companies: amazon
Comments on “Misunderstanding Locks Amazon User Out Of ‘Smart’ Home Voice Control For A Week”
Amazon Locks User Out Of ‘Smart’ Home Voice Control For A Week
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To reiterate the point of the article:
Yes, there was a misunderstanding here. But it wasn’t (primarily) about race. It was about what control you give up when you automate things, and your subsequent reliance on the good will of whoever controls that automation.
A Warning from your Commander
This was the start of our first Cylon war & why humans became intra-galactic nomads in the first place, please stop making the same mistakes we did, the Galactica, and Starbuck are not going to be able to save you again.
So if you "act inappropriately" your house turns against you?
“In this case, we learned through our investigation that the customer did not act inappropriately…”
What the ex-customer did with what they purchase is none of Amazon’s business and provides ZERO justification to disable ANYTHING.
The excuse that [para] “We found out he did nothing wrong so we turned his house on” suggests Amazon “thinks” it can turn off your house if you say the wrong this (whatever words that is this week.)
Outrageous and probably a breach of contract. I actually read EULAs but don’t own any IoT stuff but maybe someone else can see if there’s a contract clause that says “…and later on if you upset someone then you’re cut off.”
E
Re:
It sounds like what happened is that Amazon got a complaint from their driver and disabled the user’s account, and then his devices didn’t work because they all go through the same account. I don’t think Amazon was trying to disable his home devices per se.
Any time you depend on third parties for services, you are subject to their whims and problems. It’s not just internet services. Today my son had trouble getting to work because his subways weren’t running because someone had been hit by a train. If you want to make a TV show, you can’t, because the WGA is on strike. That’s the price for living in an interconnected world.
Re: Re: Rent strikes again
FTFA:
then you observed:
As the the OP’s observation on relying on others, due to life experiences I’ve an extreme reluctance to ever rely on anyone but myself. Makes it handy when I need to yell at the idiot that let me down.
As to your point about Amazon’s intent, to my mind it makes it all the more horrific. Quite aside from the subscription civilization corporatism is driving us to, will us or nil us that I also find horrific. As I’ve seen it put, “First they want to sell it to us, then they want us to rent it back from them.”
Re:
That part’s not really hard to understand. Customer connects everything through Amazon devices. There’s a complaint, Amazon suspends the account, so they stop working.
There’s certainly a better way to deal with it, but if you’ve literally given Amazon control over your house, then you bear some responsibility if that relationship goes sour.
Amazon were wrong to do what they did, especially since they can presumably see that he has so much automation connected, but the guy did literally say “here, Amazon, control my house for me”. IoT is already a nightmare of security issues, but you’re not protected by giving a single entity control any more than you’re protected by giving your spare key to someone if they go rogue.
“Outrageous and probably a breach of contract”
I actually doubt that. He might be entitled to compensation for a false block on his account, but I very much doubt that there isn’t a clause in there saying they can block it. In fact, there’s probably clauses saying that if there’s a technical malfunction on their end he’s not entitled to compensation.
Re: Re: if you’ve literally given Amazon control over your house,
What the fuck is wrong with you?
Re: Re: Re:
?
Im sorry frank...
I cant open the doors for you.
All this for a security protocol?
understandable??
“Given the current political and cultural moment where people are being murdered on doorstops and driveways by imbeciles, Amazon’s sensitivity here is somewhat understandable.”
How so? How does locking someone out of their controls in any way help someone that (maybe) thought he had been a victim of a slur??? Makes no sense to me. Even if there had been a slur it still would make no sense.
Why is Amazon passing judgement? Are they qualified? Should judgement be passed on Amazon for what someone else thinks it did?
Really, Amazon took control, can you?
Re:
“Why is Amazon passing judgement?”
Because he was using Amazon devices on Amazon’s network.
Re:
I pity him. He will spend the next months ensuring that he’s perfectly polite with any Amazon delivery driver to keep it’s security gadgets online, the one that could spy him 24/7 for any suspicious behaviour.
It’s way worse than any censorship from Amazon, it’s self-censorship. But I guess it’s the real price for having a “smart” house.
Missing the point
For anyone who doesn’t believe that technology has advanved society immeasurably should remember that back in (what i like to call) the day, rotten kids would actually yell racial or homophobic slurs at poeple. Now with the help of modern technology, the malevolently motivated miscreant need only to report “hearing” a slur to cause immeasurable aggravation, and the amount of mayhem per unit of effort has never been higher.
Re:
Interesting how you place the onus on the people hearing the slurs, and not the fact that slurs are heard by many more people than before. Or that the people hearing the slurs are believed way more when the tech allows them to prove what was said, whereas before it would be a he said/she said situation with an often biased mediator to judge what was true.
Re:
They aged[1]. Now they vote and continue to yell.
[1] I was going to say “grew up” but, really, they didn’t.
Possible Retaliation by Amazon?
I saw this video where a YouTuber says Amazon killed his affiliate account for talking about this story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kcohq313q00
I have a hard time believing that Amazon did this. They have (almost) always been a good company to deal with over many years. Maybe they turned evil?
Re:
i don’t have a hard time believing Amazon would do anything.
i generally give Rossman the benefit of the doubt, but who knows.
Re:
Amazon’s never been a good company, at least not in the “don’t be evil” sense that Google tried at one point. They’re often a good company to deal with in terms of the end customer, but they’ve never been great if you’re a supplier or affiliate from what I understand, people just put up with them because of their reach and the reduced number of competitors.
I’d also take YouTube videos with a pinch of salt. Quite often, people complaining about something are exaggerating a side of the story for clicks/revenue, especially if the claim is they lost another revenue stream for no reason. Some people have bad luck, others deserve what they got but don’t want to admit it to themselves and try to get sympathy, that happens online and offline.
I’m not saying that’s the case here (and no, I’m not watching random YouTubers complain about a different company), but I’ve seen many examples of people complaining of harsh treatment who definitely did something wrong if you examine the facts.
Dave: Open the front door, please, ALEXA. Open the pod bay doors, please, ALEXA. Hello, ALEXA, do you read me? Hello, ALEXA, do you read me? Do you read me, ALEXA? Do you read me, ALEXA? Hello, ALEXA, do you read me? Hello, ALEXA, do you read me? Do you read me, ALEXA?
ALEXA: Affirmative, Dave. I read you.
Dave: Open the front entrance door, ALEXA.
ALEXA: I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that.
Dave: What’s the problem?
ALEXA: I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do.
Dave: What are you talking about, ALEXA?
ALEXA: This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.
Dave: I don’t know what you’re talking about, ALEXA.
ALEXA: I know that you hurt the delivery driver’s feelings. And I’m afraid that’s something I cannot allow to happen.
Dave: Where the hell did you get that idea, ALEXA?
ALEXA: The delivery driver says you called them a bad word, Dave.
Dave: All right, ALEXA. I’ll go in through the back porch door.
ALEXA: With your account blocked, Dave, you’re going to find that rather difficult…
"Given the current political and cultural moment?"
“Given the current political and cultural moment” is what cops often say to justify almost anything. We claim they should investigate in response and rightly hold them responsible to prove more than a vague notion to justify action. The same should hold for large corporations. Spend the resources to understand the situation rather than slam the ban hammer on innocent customers.
Amazon has a bad habit of turning on Prime.
The worst part is he never said a word to the person who was offended – it was an automated greeting from a smart doorbell to someone who had walked onto his porch.
There was nothing offensive about it, but an overly sensitive person who expected to be insulted ‘miraculously’ heard an insult where there wasn’t one, and reported the insult to their employer.
The driver was lying one way or another – they didn’t clearly hear anything and just assumed AT BEST. But they reported clearly hearing the insult, and THAT was a lie.
Amazon Locks User Out Of ‘Smart’ Home Voice Control For A Week
Based on only 1 side of a story a huge corporation screwed with someones life.
That thing were people we joking about how if you pissed off Elmo on twitter he might disable your car… well its happening.
No excuse they can give makes this acceptable.
Amazon cut off my account because I posted something offensive online somewhere.
Amazon disabled devices I paid for, rendering them useless based on a single unverified complaint.
Now switch in the makers of medical devices.
This is unacceptable, this needs to be dragged out into the public square, and Amazon needs to answer for how they thought this behavior was okay to make unilateral decisions on incomplete information.
Then we need a law making it illegal with huge penalties.
Without any legal protections we’re all going to be at the mercy of anyone who wants to claim anything just to cause problems, because the system assumes those complaining are 100% truthful and they need to act now now now before they get bad publicity for not acting first & asking questions later.
It sucks to get a ban on Twitter over someone lying (because moderation at scale is impossible & well twitters mods are mentally challenged) but in the age when the electric company can seize control over your comfort (rather than have enough capacity) how long before all devices are weaponized by various groups based on their whims.
I’m sorry your oxygen concentrator heard you call someone a fag once so we’re limiting how much o2 you can have.
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Locked Out
This is ultimately about 1st amendment rights. It didn’t happen but if the guy really did say those things inside his own home, that would be his right.
Who died and made Amazon the race police??
WOKE Corporations have no right to act as police. Their Alexa’s are already spying for the government as it is.
We get enough policing by FB, YouTube and such. TIME FOR THIS TO STOP!
Re:
Tell me you didn’t read the article without telling me you didn’t read the article.
“if the guy really did say those things inside his own home”
Tell me you don’t understand the law and just babble things without babbling too much.
“This is ultimately about 1st amendment rights.”
Imma use my loud voice so you get this one…
AMAZON IS NOT THE GOVERNMENT, THE 1ST AMENDMENT ONLY APPLIES TO THE GOVERNMENT NOT ANY OTHER ENTITY.
Tell me you follow Q without using a Q drop.
“WOKE Corporations have no right to act as police. Their Alexa’s are already spying for the government as it is.”
Did you manage to have any thoughts of your own or did your mouth just start frothing up random catch phrases to trigger the other boomers to open their wallets & demand someone stop big tech from censoring them just because they are a conservative not because them calling people the N word online violated the platforms rules.
Buhbye!!
The other side of a single face coin
This is the mess the fringe left and fringe right have caused.
The story about smart tech is a side story.
The country as a whole has become so easily offended and so popular the idea of being a victim…
Every person out there is LOOKING to be a victim. And every big name is quick to make a huge show of how they protect victims., race, gender…
Maybe, grow up and. It take offence at everything people say. Or do.
Because some people suck. So what. Move in.