As exchange for their otherwise unpaid service from those devices, they're using a fraction of your potentially capped internet if you happen to be in a market with such poor competition and/or poor regulatory environment that your service is capped.

> unpaid

I paid $200 (although much cheaper now) for my echo years ago. This isn’t a free device and the services it provides cost me actual money to be able to use. Pretty funny to spin this as “you paid $200 for this device, but all the services on it are free.”

Do you think it's stealing your power too?

I don’t think that’s relevant as I spend power to make this tool operational. I still paid for the tool. It wasn’t free.

I also provide shelter, insurance, cleaning, etc.

I was commenting on how GP called the functions of the Echo “free” when they are certainly not free.

Whether it’s capped or not is irrelevant. It’s still taking advantage of a paid resource without explicit permission. Also if it leads to increased demand across an ISP it will inevitably cause higher prices.

So like 90% of the US?

The US is full of slow internet, but it's not particularly plagued by capped internet.

There are a bunch of 1TB caps around, but a cap like that would suggest that the value of 500MB is 3 to 10 cents at most.

Just using 3 watts at idle is already enough to cost the average person 25 cents a month.

Would love to see a source to back this number up if you have one. I had caps on almost every ISP I had in Europe, but even out in the boonies here in the US I've only seen caps on one (unfortunate) connection.