What do you mean by the last part? Swatted, as in having a SWAT team called to his house? What role did the Echo play in that?

Yes, the police showed up at his door a couple times saying somebody called 911. He disconnected everything from his network, no more visits from the police. He plugged devices back in one at a time, leaving a day or so between devices. Within an hour of plugging in the Echo devices, the police were back. He unplugged the Echo devices, no issues since.

I meeeaaannn come on, I feel like this person is withholding some important details about why the police show up at their door. This is just too ridiculous to be real.

The devices can make calls. There have been vulnerabilities that allow people to gain access and send commands: https://voicebot.ai/2020/08/13/amazon-patched-an-alexa-hacki...

This story sounds quite ridiculous, and I'd be reserving skepticism for his version of the events rather than for Google/Amazon

I find it odd that you say you're not a huge fan of providing audio to Amazon, yet have bought a few devices that actually do that and then have proceeded to put them into your home...?

For someone who isn't a fan of providing audio, you seem to have willfully done so.

I am genuinely confused.

The OP could not be a huge fan of sending the audio, but find the utility of the devices worth it for now. Very little in life is binary, and instead we make these sorts of trade offs every day.

They are not currently plugged in, and I don't have any plans to do so.

Sorry, I misunderstood you saying that you had them to indicate they were in use.