If you own an Alexa, you might enjoy its integration with #IFTTT, an easy scripting environment that lets you create your own little voice-controlled apps, like "start my Roomba" or "close the garage door." If so, tough shit, Amazon just nuked IFTTT for Alexa:
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/26/hit-with-a-brick/#graceful-failure
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Amazon can do this because the Alexa's operating system sits behind a cryptographic lock, and any tool that bypasses that lock is a felony under #Section1201 of the #DMCA, punishable by a 5-year prison sentence and a $500,000 fine. That means that it's literally a crime to provide a rival OS that lets users retain functionality that Amazon no longer supports.
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This is the proverbial gun on the mantelpiece, a moral hazard and invitation to mischief that tempts Amazon executives to run a bait-and-switch con where they sell you a gadget with five features and then remotely kill-switch two of them. This is prime directive of the #DarthVaderMBA: "I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further."
So many companies got their business-plan at the Darth Vader MBA.
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The ability to revoke features after the fact means that companies can fuck around, but never find out. Apple sold millions of tracks via iTunes with the promise of letting you stream them to any other device you owned. After a couple years of this, the company caught some heat from the record labels, so they just pushed an update that killed the feature:
https://memex.craphound.com/2004/10/30/apple-to-ipod-owners-eat-shit-and-die-updated/
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That gun on the mantelpiece went off all the way back in 2004 and it turns out it was a *starter-pistol*. Pretty soon, everyone was getting in on the act. If you find an alert on your printer screen demanding that you install a "security update" there's a damned good chance that the "update" is designed to block you from using third-party ink cartridges in a printer that you (sorta) own:
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Since its founding in the 1930s, Hewlett-Packard has been synonymous with innovation, and many's the engineer who had cause to praise its workhorse oscillators, minicomputers, servers, and PCs. But since the turn of this century, the company's changed its name to HP and its focus to sleazy ways to...
Selling your Tesla? Have fun being poor. The upgrades you spent thousands of dollars on go up in a puff of smoke the minute you trade the car into the dealer, annihilating the resale value of your car at the speed of light:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/23/how-to-fix-cars-by-breaking-felony-contempt-of-business-model/
Telsa has to detect the ownership transfer first. But once a product is sufficiently cloud-based, they can destroy your property from a distance without any warning or intervention on your part.
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That's what Adobe did last year, when it literally stole the *colors* from your Photoshop files, in history's SaaSiest heist:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/28/fade-to-black/#trust-the-process
But when we hear about remote killswitches in the news, it's usually part of a PR blitz for their virtues. Russia's invasion of Ukraine kicked off a new genre of these PR pieces, celebrating the fact that a #JohnDeere dealership was able to remotely brick looted tractors that had been removed to Chechnya:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/08/about-those-kill-switched-ukrainian-tractors/
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Today, Deere's PR minions are pitching search-and-replace versions of this story about Israeli tractors that Hamas is said to have looted, which were also remotely bricked.
But the main use of this remote killswitch isn't confounding war-looters: it's preventing farmers from fixing their own tractors without paying rent to John Deere.
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An even bigger omission from this narrative is the fact that John Deere is objectively Very Bad At Security, which means that the world's fleet of critical agricultural equipment is one breach away from being rendered permanently inert:
https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/23/reputation-laundry/#deere-john
There are plenty of good and honorable people working at big companies, from Adobe to Apple to Deere to Tesla to Amazon.
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But those people have to convince their colleagues that they should do the right thing. Those debates weigh the expected gains from scammy, immoral behavior against the expected costs.
Without DMCA 1201, Amazon would have to worry that their decision to revoke IFTTT functionality would motivate customers to seek out alternative software for their Alexas. This is a big deal: once a customer learns how to de-Amazon their Alexa, Amazon might never recapture that customer.
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Such a switch wouldn't have to come from a scrappy startup or a hacker's DIY solution, either. Take away DMCA 1201 and Walmart could step up, offering an alternative Alexa software stack that let you switch your purchases away from Amazon.
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Money talks, bullshit walks. In any boardroom argument about whether to shift value away from customers to the company, a credible argument about how the company will suffer a net loss as a result has a better chance of prevailing than an argument that's just about the ethics of such a course of action:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/microincentives-and-enshittification/
Inevitably, these killswitches are pitched as a paternalistic tool for protecting customers.
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An HP rep once told me they push deceptive security updates to brick third-party ink cartridges so printer owners aren't tricked into printing out cherished family photos with ink that fades over time. Apple insists its ability to push iOS updates revoking functionality is about keeping mobile users safe - not monopolizing repair:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/22/vin-locking/#thought-differently
John Deere's killswitches protect you from looters. Adobe's killswitches let it add valuable features to its products.
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Tesla? Well, Tesla at least is refreshingly honest: "We have a killswitch because fuck you, that's why."
These excuses ring hollow because they conspicuously omit the possibility that you could have the benefits *without* the harms. Like, your tractor could come with a killswitch that *you could bypass*, meaning you could brick it at a distance, and still fix it yourself. Same with your phone.
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Software updates that take away functionality you want can be mitigated with the ability to roll back those updates - and by giving users the ability to apply part of a patch, but not the whole patch.
Cloud computing and software as a service are a choice. "#LocalFirst" computing is possible, and desirable:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/03/there-is-no-cloud/#only-other-peoples-computers
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The cheapest rhetorical trick of the tech sector is the "indivisibility gambit" - the idea that these prix-fixe menus could never be served a la carte. Wanna talk to your friends online? Sorry there's just no way to help you do that without spying on you:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/08/divisibility/#technognosticism
One important argument over smart-speakers was poisoned by this false dichotomy: the debate about #accessibility and IoT gadgets.
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Every IoT privacy or revocation scandal would provoke blanket statements from technically savvy people like, "No one should ever use one of these." The replies would then swiftly follow: "That's an #ableist statement: I rely on my automation because I have a disability and I would otherwise be reliant on a caregiver or have to go without."
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But the excluded middle here is: "No one should use one of these because they are killswitched. This is especially bad when a smart speaker is an assistive technology, because those applications are too important to leave up to the whims of giant companies that might brick them or revoke their features due to their own commercial imperatives, callousness, or financial straits."
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The problem with the "bionic eyes" that #SecondSight bricked wasn't that they helped visually impaired people see - it was that they couldn't be operated without the company's ongoing support and consent:
https://spectrum.ieee.org/bionic-eye-obsolete
It's perfectly possible to imagine a bionic eye whose software can be maintained by third parties, whose parts and schematics are widely available. The challenge of making this assistive technology fail gracefully isn't technical - it's commercial.
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We're meant to believe no bionic eye company could survive unless they devise their assistive techn such that it fails catastrophically if the business goes under. But it turns out that a bionic eye company can't survive even *if* they are allowed to do this.
Even if you believe Milton Friedman's Big Lie that a company is legally obligated to "maximize shareholder value," not even *Friedman* says that *you* are legally obligated to maximize companies' shareholder value.
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The fact that a company can make more money by defrauding you by revoking or bricking the things you buy from them doesn't oblige *you* to stand up for their right to do this.
Indeed, all of this conduct is arguably illegal, under Section 5 of the #FTCAct, which prohibits "unfair and deceptive business practices":
https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/10/the-courage-to-govern/#whos-in-charge
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@pluralistic
A couple of years ago, I was amazed by Cities Skylines, a city builder game, because it didn't do all the faults, Sim City was doing. But after a couple of updates, traffic became unmanageable.
Then there was the solution: "Buy our new DLC, which solves all your traffic problems!"
No, thanks. Never spent a single cent on this company again. Never played this game again.
It was working in the beginning to catch my attention and then was intentionally broken.
When reading through the forums at that time, someone wrote: "Yeah, this company is known for behavior like this. I should have known earlier."
Now Cities Skylines 2 is coming out, but this time I know.
This is, what comes out of the greed:
"In the long run, this will really hurt not only the mood and the happiness of community members but also discourage creativity and modding, something we would be very sad to see."
https://www.techradar.com/gaming/consoles-pc/cities-skylines-2-developers-have-noticed-a-growing-tendency-of-toxicity-in-our-community
The consequences of their own actions.
And some are still dreaming 🙈 🙉:
"I still believe it, and I’m going to keep saying it – Cities Skylines 2 can make a comeback."
https://www.pcgamesn.com/cities-skylines-2/beach-properties-worst-steam
The DLCs don't even fix any of the broken features anymore. And the publisher didn't even need to break some features before, because many were never working.
Maybe they thought, people are so used to just buy DLCs, that nobody will notice.
Always liked gaming. But more than playing computer games by myself, I liked watching my friends play, help them or play together.
I played building games like Minecraft or Scrap Mechanic. Or graphical programming games like Space Chem or Factorio.
But at some point, I realized, I better do real world gaming.
I started to learn the Rust programming language and now prefer to construct things, which have an impact on the real world.
Not that I look down at gamers.
I still spent a huge amount of time, watching them.
But for myself, I switched to the hard challenges. And as games are designed nowadays, that mostly anybody can solve them and succeed, I want more interesting tasks.
And I want to have something from it, after playing it.
So thanks for the recommendation. I took a short look at it, but it doesn't attract me anymore.
Have a nice weekend.
@pluralistic To paraphrase the sage advice we have gotten consistently from @markhurst on his @WFMU radio show #Techtonic:
Immediately unplug any and all Alexa surveillance devices in your home, and take them directly to your local e-waste recycling facility. Do not throw them in the ocean, satisfying as that might be, because it would be bad for the ocean.
@pluralistic I still refuse to have anything in my home that is constantly recording/listening in on conversations. Even my phone does not accept voice data unless I have my earphones on. I removed the mic on my android and all my cameras are blocked until I choose to use them and remove the covers.
Alexa, Google any of those programs will never be welcome in my home. 🤢🤮
Cory Doctorow
M.S. Bellows, Jr.
arifell
CassandraVert
AdeptVeritatis
Jeff Moore
Dobviews
Original Sunshine
Led By Gilded Fools