Imagine trusting Amazon with anything

People in tech/security are the ones who usually have "dumb" homes. This guy's problem was that he didn't make his home dumb enough.

Its hard to believe that we live in an age where people actually pay money to have big brother watching & listening to their lives in their own homes 24/7, and to the extent that they can even have parts of their home shut off or work against them if said big brother disapproves of what they say or think in their own living spaces...

I'm tempted to run up to smart home owners' homes in a mask, shout racial slurs until the doors automatically lock, then leave.

I don’t care IF he did anything racist. Shouldn’t matter. If he did something illegal call the police. If he is abusing a delivery service, they can cancel him. But to go and say everything that company has in his home needs to be cut off… if this is normalized we are all defacto peasants serving the major service companies.

They don't open their code for you, so why would you open your door for them.

A doorbell cancelling you out of your home is the most 2023 thing ever.

the fact that he's a microsoft engineer makes the story so much better

Yeah, let me just wire my house with an IRL Reddit mod.

"preheat your oven when you're 30 minutes from home" I love having a remote-accessible "burn down my house" button!

Considering he’s an engineer, you’d think he’d be smarter than to buy any Amazon smart home garbage

We had a 1st gen Echo in our master bathroom for listening to music in the morning kzfaq.infoUgkxABghAEkaIDGZfHRBH3D3rBrlraNmnC71 and while in the shower. I didn't realize how tinny and awful the sound output on the original Echo was until we replaced it with the Studio. It was a sonic upgrade far beyond what I was expecting. Just wow. I love it because it's like having speakers IN the shower. My friend likes it because the music is so loud that she can no longer hear me singing. So that's a win-win.

Pretty fucked up how one employee of a big megacorp can just shut down your entire home because all of its systems run off of their infrastructure. Always knew "smart" homes were just a sham

I have a racist doorbell too. It's white 😬

I can almost guarantee the driver didn't mishear anything. He heard it say "Excuse me, can I help you?" and he immediately went defensive. "I'm wearing my urniform, what the fuck you think I'm doing?"

"The customer is always right" Youre just not the customer, youre the data provider to them

I'm not ever preheating my oven remotely. In fact, just having this functionality built-in is asking for trouble.

Well this certainly isn’t the cool kind of dystopia

I work in construction, one of the homes i worked in was completely "smart" there were barely any switches or even sockets in the house, it all worked via smartphone or tablet. Imagine how the owners reacted when in the middle of winter (freezing outside) the internet was down. The list of consequences : couldnt get inside, make coffee, take a hot shower, put on heating etc . Geniuses !!!

This almost feels like some sort of soft corporate warfare between two tech companies using contemporary social justice armaments.

locking someone out because they're "racist" is nothing - the point is they can direct thugs to their home and open the door, to teach them a lesson.

Imagine spending money on spyware that can at any moment of a mega corp's whim whom sees you nothing more than a wallet, can shut you out of your own life and ruin you.

Even if something rude or racist actually was said through the doorbell... It definitely should not be up to companies to decide whether or not they allow you to use systems/products that you paid for. If you're being rude to an employee in a store and getting kicked for it, that's one thing. But being a rude or even racist person within your own home? It's terrible that people are like that, but it's really not up for anyone to try and force punishments for that. Some people just suck. Gotta learn to live with it.

It's almost even more shocking is that he probably still has Amazon products.

The best part of this story is how the guy thinks that this is a good idea, so long as only applied to actual heckin racists. Some people are beyond help. EDIT: So after a bit of research, apparently the guy was not defending amazon. I think a lot of people including myself got the impression from his quote "I fully support Amazon taking measures to ensure the safety of their drivers" that he was defending amazon's actions. He has apparently made a youtube video clarifying what he actually meant: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/ldWeo9yQzK3SqYk.html

I had a presentation done in my school from a guy who said he has a "smart home", I thought he was cringe until he told us that it's all his code and he runs it on a Linux server, he basically had everything, his personal disk, a media player, lights, windows, curtains... He was basically selling Linux server courses. On a scale 1-10, how safe is that?

bro got cancelled by his home💀

Here's the worst part. What if someone had a life alert system tied to their smart home? Amazon would effectively have the power to order someone's death through denial of life saving services. Better yet, what if a criminal used Amazon's political bias to shut down someone's security system for a week so that they could commit a crime against that home owner? Frankly, criminal charges should be laid against Amazon for their blatant disregard for the health and safety of their customers.

Love how private companies can have such a big influence while forcing a "guilty until proven innocent" attitude.

Even if the accusations of verbal abuse against delivery workers were true, this would be easily solved by refusing to deliver packages to that address. There is no justification for retroactively disabling the devices the guy already bought. Imagine you're late on your electricity bill, so they shut off the power but then they also tow away your electric car, which was recharged before you defaulted on your payment. No company should have that much power, especially if they are already a monopoly.

In the 2000's we'd just call this a bugged house.

It all comes back to the thing I hate the most: buying a product that can tell you no.

My favorite part of this was all the reportinf referring to it as an accident or unintended. Like they accidentally put in a ton of work designing this thing to deactivate all your devices when you've been reported for literally anything amazon doesnt like. Thats insane.

They are always listening. Every voice activated device has to be always listening. This is obvious, unless you think "hey Google" is magic spell.

Why ANYONE even has an Alexa is a mystery to me. Unless you are paralyzed or don’t have use of your hands or something like that- there is zero reason spending your money on an eavesdropping device.

It should be enshrined into law that they cant selectively lock you out of services for opinions

I want more things like this to happen because I think it helps make naive technophiles aware of how awful smart devices are. I dream of one day toppling over the technological system and getting real freedom

It starts with a supposed "slur offense", then they begin to control what you can eat, your carbon taxes, if you're allowed to leave home, if you can drive your car and so on.

I was actually lectured one time by Google assistant for cursing it out quite hilarious if you ask me

Yeah I'm good. After the whole " locking thermostat" thing last year, I am not ever getting that. The house I am in has been around since the 50's, and I would rather keep the trifecta of toxic materials ( lead, asbestos, and mercury) than fix it with smart appliances

we should cancel the delivery driver instead

Imagine claiming to be "privacy conscious", whilst using Alexa of all things!

in a way i'm glad amazon did this because it shows their true nature. it shows everyone what the deal is. masks off.

For a guy who works at microsoft, I don't think he knows the term "principle of least privilege", i.e. giving bare minimum control to someone so that they don't do anything more than needed. A smart oven is not needed, you're not going to die if you go hungry for 30 minutes longer. A smart fridge is not needed, it does pretty much nothing more than a regular fridge. A smart vacuum could be needed, but if you're physically capable it's not needed. A smart TV... actually is kinda cool I like those but if you have a console or PC hooked up to it, it's not needed.

When I heard about the story, I was a little bit baffled that Amazon didn't even bother to check the recording that they definitely have access to before locking him out.

"A Tale of Unwanted Disruption: My Week Without Amazon" a story written by ChatGPT

"Duuuuh, BuT ThAt is ConSpiRaCY TheOry! WhY WoUlD ThEy CaRe aBoUT SpYInG ME?! Duuuuuuuuh! WhY Do YOu BeLieVe AlL PoWeRFuL PeOPlE WaNTs tO HarM uS? YoU Are ToO MiSanThRoPic, EvRyBoDy is WorKing For Our GoOd!"

Uncle Ruckus: Alexa, play Jimmy Rebel's songs. Alexa: You are blocked.

"malfunctioning wife units" 🤣🤣🤣

We were at a friend's apartment who has Alexa and Amazon prime. He was streaming KZfaq Music videos on the TV. We were talking about planning a trip to Dubai when KZfaq started playing Emirates and Etihad airlines adverts back to back. Creepy AF

Imagine letting your children bathe and exist near Ring cameras/Amazon Alexa or their alternatives

My parents got one and it’s the dumbest shit they’ve ever done.

Imagine being forced to get up to turn on the lights or the tv… scary dystopia

Has amazon commented on why they took a unverified claim and acted as judge jury and executioner base on it? Love to hear them explain that Also if true, stop sending drivers Dont disable this guys house.

Even if he was racist it’s freedom of speech he can say what ever he wants around his own home this is messed up

In the future if you believe you're speaking with an AI and force it to say the N word to prove its not an AI, you will lose your house. You heard it here first.

Louis Rossmann moment

The problem is that most people don't even understand the DANGERS of these things... damn :(

Ah yes, I already hated smart home stuff and now I hate it even more.

If you have Alexa you deserve everything that's coming to you!

“Let me get a smart watch and a smart phone and a smart oven in my smart home because I’m a dumb-ass” 💀💀

How did racism become a thing so severe it gets punished on allegation alone, and then a person has to run around proving innocence?

Notice that the homeowner was totally fine with the idea generally, but was bothered that he was falsely accused.

Hey Mental outlaw, I've actually been following your channel for some time now and thanks for probably the most faithful coverage of this event! I will just add that I do self host/run everything critical locally. The only devices that actually went unresponsive were... my theater room lights as I have those bluetooth-ed with Alexa. Aside from that I just used Siri for everything else or my own local dashboards since I use things like home assistant. Though it's very strange that devices which are strictly local and running Bluetooth and need no Internet connection didn't work (the lights in the theater room). I also take the approach of an "escalator can never be broken, it can only become stairs", in my home. Amazon should not have right to shut down devices we've brought from them. I'd say the only exception here would be if someone figured out how to abuse the underlying language model was causing massive fires at AWS. Other than that let the police deal with it. I understand they currently do, but let's be honest, everything is going smart. I bought a charcoal grill and even it has a wifi antenna (I put it on a vlan cause why does a grill need to be on my network). Wifi isn't currently critical to its operation nor does it even need to be used. However, fast forward 15 years, how will that look? In the past week I've had a lot of people not even read the article or understand what I'm trying to get at. I was fine here because I did take precautions and plan for outages (network, power, data). Most people don't. Amazon makes it very easy to just say "Alexa, scan for devices" and that's it. If this happened to someone less technical (not an insult cause I'm the average car user, we are all average in one form or another) they would have been screwed. While for now they would have the ability to at least download apps and reset their devices, they may not even know that's possible. Instead of trying to dunk on me we should be focused on Amazon. They have responded publicly and it's a start, however their statement isn't good enough. I'm going to keep fighting this on my end. P.s. I had to use corporate speak if I want to be taken seriously for anyone wondering why I said "considering" or whatever. You can't throw a temper tantrum to look cool for your reddit buddies and expect for anyone to really take you seriously.

Ever since the very beginning of the Alexa release all I could think of was the movie Smart House. It was an obscure kids movie where the AI house eventually developed a consciousness and tormented the family by trying to do what was “right” for them. Over the past couple years every day life seems to get closer to imitating art.

Soon the fridge will be locked up if there's too much meat in it

One stop closer to the "me driving past my local 5G tower when it detects a transphobic comment in my mind" meme becoming reality

My word on this : "Justice in the hands of the citizens for the common good. Not in the hands of private interests"

WTF? He was an engineer at Microsoft and using Smart Devices!? Boy, he wasn't that smart himself now, wasn't he? If I ever learn one thing in my career as a programmer is to never trust smart devices unless you hack them and replace all its software with what I know and trust. Plus, make sure you run everything as Local as possible. Servers can fail.

"you cant trust the damn things" thats the most chad thing ive heard today

Technology is a tool, and if you own it, then it should serve you. If it runs on a company’s infrastructure, that doesn’t give them the right to shut all your devices down if your beliefs don’t line up with theirs (whether they’re good or bad) but this is the world we live in, and only a teaser to what’s to come.

Just one step closer to the dystopian nightmare looming over the horizon.

I cant belive amazon did anything on behalf of their employees.

"Alexa, unlock the front door please." -Guy "I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that." -Alexa

He hasn't learned anything. He still thinks amazon should be able to lock you out of all things you've already paid for, because mean words. His gripe was only "I'm innocent, guv!"

I can just imagine someone screaming, "You're an oven! Why do you have an opinion?!"

Mental Outlaw is truly based.

The fact that they lock you out of the service you buy for makes it dead clear never to buy their products.

I used to joke about being locked out of my fridge for the things I say in the privacy of my own home, and then my fridge notifying my bank of the things I said, subsequently losing access to my money, but with smart devices, my joke has become a reality!

My IT techer doesn't like smart homes. After watching a lot of videos during the last 3 years... I now know more reasons why.

Ironically, having a dumb house is smarter than having a smart house.

Funny, I watched a Scotty Kilmer video just the other day where a modern Honda Civic battery died and the manual key inside the key fob was actually worthless because the manual slot was wired up too. People put all this faith that products have fail safes built in but it’s all as fragile as the next. Could never imagine adding a powered lock/lock I can’t control on my house.

Everyone should just stop using this garbage stuff. How hard is it to turn the lights on and off when you enter/leave a room

That was just one company. Now with CBDC, you could lose your access to entire companies. I mean, the government can just disable your money, and without money, no company will serve you.

It’s almost like putting your trust in a power that doesn’t actually care about you as an individual other than what you contribute for them is a bad idea….

Reminds me of Google shutting down a father's phone line and started a federal investigation because an automated system thought his kid looked too pornographic in a medical photo for his doctor.

How long until the US is run by only four companies like South Korea?

As an IT engineer, let me tell you it's not smart devices that you should be worried about. It's the smart controllers (hubs). If you want a smart home, use home assistant and only purchase devices that use Z-Wave, zigbee, matter, or Bluetooth. These devices put you in control and there is no way a central entity can turn them off or spy on them.

alexa turned into the judge, the jury, the executioner.

No no you don't understand a bad guy was locked out of his house! They will never do this to me! Only evil racists

Because I’mm… a dumbass 😂😂

Sue the shit out of Amazon.

Amazon : Judge, Jury, Executioner.

Me laughing in my rêtärdēd home

man that salmon looked good

Funny as! I am an oldie and your videos have taught me so much 👍 Thank you 😍

i have my amazon alexa hooked directly into my high fructose corn syrup feeder

Even if he were to be racist, not really an excuse to lock him out of using product he fucking paid for. Once again, dystopian future's pretty much here. Shit like this is why i'll learn skills necessary to do things myself instead of buying smart %insert product name here%, and if i ever use anything like that? That'd be only if it's open-source and self-hosted, news like this should be a wake up call for the cattle, but alas.

Hey Kenny, you should read The Veldt by Ray Bradbury. It's related to smart home stuff and he wrote it... In the early 1950s. Way ahead of his time. Thanks for the videos!

This whole story is a massive wake-up-call that almost no one will answer.