Being the conspiracy theorist here, it's possible that Alexa wasn't supposed to be a money maker. Consider we live in a corporate feudalistic society and Alexa is, in fact a spy. Amazon's whining is to make us think it was made solely as a consumer bot of sort and it's all good because it's losing money. It's likely not the colossal failure we're being told. Also remember what's up is down in ClownWorld.
It's pretty good passive surveillance, and I'm guessing .gov is propping it up in exchange for the data. Edit to add that also gathers lots of embarrassing/blackmail data. Very convenient if they need to tamp down a problem.
It's active.
Passive, meaning there isn't a guy in a white van in front of your house going through your garbage. Or maybe there is.
Passive, meaning they don't have a guy in a white van in front of your house. Or maybe they do.
I'm sure that there was a lot of drooling over the massive amounts of data people were going to feed it, but I bet that didn't happen as much as amazon wanted either.
People tell facebook their secrets because it's an interactive platform. Alexa, not so much.
Honestly, we all know that Alexa is bullshit. Is definitely a tiny spy. But, we already carry around a device that's always listening to us. Willingly. There are very few people who don't these days. I can't name a single one, personally.
No irony there.
I think amazon is willing to spend money to simply normalize alexa. It's showing up everywhere. Built into our TV's, thermostats, phones. It's hard to avoid it. Hopefully people wake up!
Good point, it may be a failure to sell more crap, but it sure has succeeded in permeating society.
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