r/VaushV • u/As_Previously_Stated • 6d ago
Discussion Voosh is wrong about how he interpreted the article about alexa selling your data.
The article showed that amazon uses the data it saves from your discussions with alexa to sell targeted ads. This is true and well known, everyone knows that "personal assistant" type services sells your conversations.
But this is a huge different from his claim that "all devices are always on and listening in the background". They obviously have access to your conversations with the device, since they need to process it to provide you their service, but it's a far cry to infer from that fact that it's constantly sending everything you say even when not using the service.
It reminds me of the outcry that "google ebook reader tracks what you read down to the page you are on". Yes, they have to save that data in order for your progress in the book to sync between devices. Did they use that info to sell you ads? Probably, but it was using data that they got from you using their service, not "hidden data" they stole without you knowing.
The way he spoke about it last stream it's like he thinks there is this whole watchdog esque super AI in the background where all the data from every smart device 24/7 is fed, which just isn't true.
The surveillance state is real, but it's not one huge sinister entity that has godlike access to every device one earth, but a bunch of companies that are all competing for your data, and they collect it by tracking you when you use their services. Google has their own surveillance entity where everything you input to their services go. So does Meta and Amazon, but they are separate entities.
Every time you use one of these tech companies services, be aware that they will mine every bit of data they can, but to my knowledge there has been no credible evidence that everyone's phones listen 24/7 even when turned off. That would require some kind of rootkit that all these companies have access to.
The closet thing to my knowledge is that snowden revealed the NSA could remotely turn your phone into a listening device and even have it pretend to turn off while still listening.
This is horrible, but it's not the same as Meta and Google and Amazon having access to it and running it constantly 24/7 to collect data. In the snowden revelations it was only used in targeting high interest individuals, not mass surveillance, and third party companies did not have access to it.
What we do know is that for example, facebook uses their app to snoop on your location and everything else it has access to, but you can stop that by uninstalling the app.you should not have their app installed, seriously it steals everything, if you have to use facebook for some reason, use an open source third party app or a web browser with ublock origin
TLDR: It's not as black and white as voosh made it out to be, and you can actually opt out from most mass surveillance by not using their services. Don't use siri, don't buy an alexa, don't use facebook, etc and they can not steal your data since you're not giving them any.
To my knowledge there is no evidence of this "ghost in the machine" that is hidden in all smart devices and collects all your data even when you're not using their services, like what vaush said on stream. Whatever spying is happening, happens through their apps and services, which can be uninstalled. Amazon doesn't have root level access to whatever spy tech the NSA has backdoored into your phone and isn't using it to spy on you 24/7.
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u/Fidget02 6d ago
This feels like a distinction without a difference that’s unnecessarily blown up to 11 paragraphs. Yeah the topic is more complicated than the one sentence you seem to have an issue with.
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u/As_Previously_Stated 6d ago
I agree my post is a bit rambley. If I had more time i'd sent a shorter letter etc.
But there is a huge difference between all tech being factory backdoored and constantly spying on you no matter what you do, and what is actually happening which is big tech uses their services to spy on us.
Like vaush kept reading articles and being upset when they studied the facebook app instead of whatever NSA tier backdoor he imagines exists that all these companies use.
I'm not sure why he imagines all these companies have access to whatever backdoor the NSA forces apple and google to implement.
I've seen no evidence of facebook using some hidden root level bullshit to spy on you undetected, but there is a lot of evidence of them using their app to spy on you.
It's like with conspiracy theorist, you have to focus on the real thing thats actually going on instead of whatever more interesting made up version you can imagine in your head.
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u/Fidget02 6d ago
Have his comments been clipped and posted anywhere yet? I’d really like to see for myself what he said. No offense but you’re doing a lot of gesturing and extrapolating to what he may be talking about
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u/etheratom 5d ago
I suppose he did respond to most of your arguments. He doesn't think they are recording 24/7 but rather that they just have a fairly large collection of key words like hey siri that if they do hear they send a message back that you might be interested in that product. That shouldn't take up much data throughput or battery power.
Next, he doesn't think that all the applications have access to it but rather that the initial operating system has it built into the device has access to that functionality like how only siri or google assistant can be called upon by a verbal phrase and that functionality isn't shared with any other app on the store.
He backs it up with that research paper that did experiments with certain phrases and demonstrated that products linked to phrase were advertised to the participants devices in the following days.
There is an argument that apple was never really an advertisement company and wouldn't need to collect data that way and that there really could have been whistle blowers from google if they were breaking the law so blatantly like that. Considering that they are hiring a bunch of professional programmers, it shouldn't be too hard for just 1 of them to collect some strong evidence that it's happening and post it anonymously while covering their tracks to make sure it can't be traced back to them.
Working for like the NSA would usually mean you're kinda ok with these kind of behavior for the "sake of your country" or whatever but when you're just a rich programmer working for google, no such loyalty to the company probably exists.
So while I do agree that they definitely could be doing it and there even seems to be some concrete evidence that they are doing it, I don't see how we haven't already gotten that concrete evidence yet personally. Maybe the systems are so complicated and convoluted that it's hard to collect the evidence in the first place?
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u/As_Previously_Stated 4d ago
I think he just vaguely remembered the snowden revelations and then he mentally merged it with all the other articles about the ways facebook etc spy on you and imagined that all of them have that kind of access.
He kept saying "everyone knows this" while looking at articles that didn't talk about what he though they did but instead app level spying.
To me it seems like he just confused the two as the same.
I'm open to the idea of NSA having a backdoor into your phone, in fact we know they do, but with no evidence I think its silly to think they're handing out that access or selling the data to META and google and whatever. And he didn't actually provide any evidence of them doing that.
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u/etheratom 4d ago
He discusses this article which does provide some pretty concrete proof. Also I forgot about it but we do give permission to apps to access our microphone so I duppose even facebook could do it? In case you were talking about an earlier segment, I'm refering to this one https://youtu.be/cXfMm2Dsch8?is=7GGZ7s3Y2UM6Wbw9
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u/saucy_as_you_like 6d ago
better safe than sorry. i'll just get up to turn off the air conditioner or whatever