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Comment by baddox | Hacker News Reader

I suspect your misunderstanding comes from your mistaken belief that these devices provide very little value for their users.

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Surely this value would be easy to demonstrate.

I get that these devices do some useful things, but I can't really think of anything they do that can't also be done with a cell phone and a laptop and without letting contractors listen to you having sex.

Once you already own a cellphone, the marginal privacy loss by getting a smart speaker is very small.

Only if you think your cell phone is always listening, and in some cases it might be. My phone doesn't use any kind of smart assistant and unlike a smart speaker preventing your phone from listening 24/7 doesn't make the device useless

If you trust Google/Amazon/Apple etc, smart speakers only record when they hear the hot word. What's the difference between that and Google/Apple saying they don't record at all if you turn the assistant off? Either way they could just be lying about how the device works.

If the companies are lying and bugging us no matter what 24/7 we're screwed either way, but even if google/amazon are being 100% honest their contractors are still listening to people with smart speakers having sex. If you turn off your phone's smart assistants and they are telling the truth nothing happens.

disable smart assistants on your phone and the phone won't start recording you "accidentally". You don't have that option with a smart speaker.

https://thenextweb.com/google/2019/07/10/google-contractors-...

https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/apple-siri-listening-re...

> disable smart assistants on your phone and the phone won't start recording you "accidentally". You don't have that option with a smart speaker.

In fact, you do. Amazon Echos have a physical button that disables the microphone. Apple HomePod has a setting to disable the "Hey Siri" feature. I haven't tested this, but I presume that both continue functioning perfectly fine as Bluetooth/AirPlay speakers.

I didn't know that they had an option to disable the mic at all. I'm glad that they do, but I'd question anyone who bought one just to use as a speaker. If you aren't going to use the mic, you're better off buying a regular speaker with better quality. Disabling the smart assistant on the phone still leaves you with a highly functional device.

The Apple HomePod is a pretty great speaker whether you have the mic on or not.

I've heard it's okay, but not as good as google home max which is again impressive for a smart speaker but still can't compare to other wireless speakers. At a certain level though speaker reviews get to be a bit too much for me to take seriously. The farther they get into audiophile territory the more skeptical I tend to become. Probably because I've been pretty happy with shitty speakers at much lower price points, but I figure if you're going to drop that kind of money on a wireless speaker it'd better sound incredible.

Owning smart speakers grants extra bits to identify you, it ties in neatly with other tracking devices, strengthening each other

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