@dang this should be merged with https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36294748 which was flagged for being vlog spam to this article. Or maybe just change the link on that one.

Hi dec0dedab0de,

@ don't work on this site.

If you need to get dang's attention, email [email protected]

When I saw your comment that's what I did.

Thanks.

Interesting here how the HN rules seem to be a limitation. I'd say the fact that Amazon is using it's power in a very unexpected way should be highlighted somehow in the title.

But because the original blog writer doesn't do that, current HN rules say you should not do that either. Instead, HN rules say you should post the original article and keep the original title. But in this case, by doing that you are effectively hiding what actually happened. This original title sounds so uninteresting that I'd say it would be warranted here to post the article with the title of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36294748

I strongly disagree. That rule exists specifically to remove any ambiguity about when it's "warranted" to change the title and when it's not. The author's title accurately reflects the author's perspective on the incident and the overall tone of the piece.

Changing the title to be more inflammatory would color the perspective of readers in a way that the author didn't intend, and would make the conversation on here considerably worse. HN is intended for curious discussion, not outrage brigading, and the headline rule is one of several defense mechanisms that attempt to keep it that way.

>Let me be clear: I fully support Amazon taking measures to ensure the safety of their drivers. However, I question why my entire smart home system had to be rendered unusable during their internal investigation.

This attitude is the reason why this keeps happening. I don't agree that it's Amazon's job to police how I use my own device.

That's exactly what the author wrote: They would have understood if Amazon had refused to deliver packages to a house where the owner threw racial slurs at the delivery people, but think that barring them from using their smart home devices was inappropriate.

The author said it's inappropriate "during their internal investigation". The way I understand it, he supports the actions of Amazon, but he wishes there was a presumption of innocence.

> I don't agree that it's Amazon's job to police how I use my own device.

That's not what the ban was about. His account was banned because they wanted to protect their drivers from future racist encounters.

Obviously, they should be very sure that something actually happened, before taking such a drastic measure. The minimum would be to at least hear both sides.

Then they should ban that delivery address and force them to use a locker or at most prevent an account from purchasing goods for delivery on Amazon.

What happens if an Amazon driver encounters someone else at your property or scans your item at the wrong address? What happens when you have no counter evidence or simply get stone walled by their CS?

The EULA/T&C likely “allow” Amazon to do this however the FCC and other regulatory bodies should start regulating the market to prevent stuff like this from happening.

Amazon seems to also be interested in getting into healthcare, insurance and banking sectors should they be able to completely blacklist someone and deny them access to prescriptions or their bank accounts even if they were racist assholes?

Perhaps the new swatting will just be people going to your house and yelling at the Amazon driver to get you banned.

But it's Amazon's job to ensure the safety of their drivers.

That literally that what he wrote.

But to block all of his Amazon Services doesn't help.

> This wasn’t just a simple inconvenience, though. I have a smart home, and my primary means of interfacing with all the devices and automations is through Amazon Echo devices via Alexa. This incident left me with a house full of unresponsive devices

@Author: If I put it to you that you made a bad decision a while back and this is the predictable consequence, what would your response be?

I know code supposedly needs to be maintained... but I have so many FOSS devices around my house that I havent touched in years. (admittedly I do hobbyist embedded, so its not like you can get much of this stuff off the shelf)

Meanwhile my $20 Wyze security camera has gotten worse over the years with all the updates, fees, reduction in features, etc...

On a similar note, it seems my Nest continues to lie about the temperature, seemingly worse than ever.

Its interesting how often buying the mainstream product gets punished, but DIY is robust.

Seems to be along the lines of, "I am seriously considering discontinuing my use of the Echo device." I do not get this mindset at all.

I would've ripped it all out after I got that email from the executive.

> This incident has led me to question my relationship with Amazon. After nearly a decade of loyalty, I’ve been given a harsh reminder that a misunderstanding can lead to such drastic measures.

“'I never thought leopards would eat MY face,' sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party.”

— <https://twitter.com/cavalorn/status/654934442549620736?lang=...>

Seriously, automating your home around a single point of failure that depends on servers you don't control is a very brittle approach.

Deeply relying on any service provider for anything puts you in a very vulnerable position regardless of how excellent that provider is. Things change, company priorities shift, companies get acquired by other companies, go out of business, etc. Current performance is not a guarantee of future performance.

Sometimes, you have to accept that vulnerability. I have exactly one option for getting electrical service, for example. But in general, people should avoid this sort of arrangement to the greatest degree possible.

Especially for something where there are tons of other options, like home automation.

To be fair, Amazon's servers have better uptime than mine.

Service reliability here is trumped by governance. The servers were up when this person's account was blocked and they lost access to all usability on their devices...

It's really not that bad.

I use Amazon Echo to turn on/off my lights. If my home automation doesn't work, I can still just use the light switch to turn them off and then they will come on.

Or if there is an Amazon issue, I can use the app of the bulb manufacturer instead. It's a convenience feature and if it doesn't work, it's a minor inconvenience.

Many of us would be much more screwed if something happened to our Google or Apple account... and that same story of erroneous bans have happened to many people.

Not to mention, he is still considering keeping all this Amazon garbage. Fucking Stockholm Syndrome or something.

> the Eufy doorbell had issued an automated response: "Excuse me, can I help you?"

(No intent to discredit or argue against TFA's primary points)

Maybe I'm misreading the.. tone? I think I'd be pretty (as in, very) mortified if my smart doorbell spoke this, let alone even have an automated response at all? (Although, I don't really use smart appliances, if that's relevant.)

(Or, when employing the automated response, I'd probably care to make sure it's fairly apparent that it's a machine, on a quick second-pass thought.)

Agreed! Doesn't justify anything that Amazon did in this case but it sounds like a pretty off-putting "feature".

I wonder if Eufy allows you to turn that off.

My doorbell is completely silent and I like it that way. The only reason I’d use such a feature is to scare away a package thief if nobody was home.

I had similar thing over something more sinister... I disputed a charge I didn't recognize on Amazon Store Card and Synchrony sent me a new card. I can explain about the charge but not super relevant.

I thought all is good...

Then I got an email weeks later asking me to pay this amount to Amazon, around $500. I told them this was squared away, I already paid using other means and thing is resolved.

This dude from chargebacks demanded that I submit card they can use to charge and resolve this "order". Since I already bought the thing, I explained once and didn't want to respond more.

Then everything stopped working like described in this post. I could log into Amazon but I couldn't access any of the pages. Kindle stopped working... that was the thing that I thought is too much.

After few days back and forth, they restored my access, I had to call bank few times as this guy would disable and unlink my new Amazon Store card from the account.

After that, all my books, endless purchases not being accessible... I decided to take a break for a little bit. Amazon Prime was due for renewal, so I didn't renew. I cancelled all subscriptions through Prime, once I was able to access it. I cancelled everything but Kindle Unlimited (sorry I just can't do this).

So this is where we are. I am not shopping nearly as much, I use alternative stores, Chinese retailers get way more direct business from me.

I am sure I will enable it, but I just don't have to do it anytime soon.

Do you use anyone else besides Alibaba?

Yes, Temu rules, there are others as well, I know my female friends love Shein but that clothes mostly.

I honestly believe we need legislation.

As society goes digital, it is inevitable that people link ever more things of real importance to account systems of Amazon, Google, the like.

These accounts cannot be Russian roulette, where heuristics may randomly lock you out. Imagine losing your AWS account, and your entire infrastructure is gone. Or losing your Gmail account, your proxy to 200 other accounts. Losing home automation. Losing your webshop.

We need to have some rights. Real world infrastructure should never be shut down without consent, false positive or not. Account suspensions should come with a documented and verifiable reason, not randomness and "we can't share details". There has to be a robust and speedy appeal process that is equally transparent. Concerns must be separated. If you violate terms on service A, the blast radius should be service A, not your entire life. And yes, companies should absolutely be sued for real damages done if they fail to have the above in place.

If your house-life is dependent on the availability of the internet, you're doing it wrong.

It's like the all-electric houses that are really great. But I had one of those and when the power was out, we had no running water either (the water-pump was electric) and were restricted to one flush. We couldn't even make a hot cup of coffee.

It should be made illegal if it isn't already due to that "you agreed to these terms" nonsense

Is “can’t make a racist noise on a device you purchased” part of TOS? And is a delivery driver imagining a wrong part of the TOS?

There need to be new laws that explicitly hands over all permissions relating to a device, to the purchaser. Make it illegal to require apps or accounts for purchased devices, and make it a requirement that they can be rooted.

There is no way to escape this other than through the law. Because accounts give these companies recurring monetization that in theory, last as long as the device itself.

Honestly, I also want similar legislation around Ebooks. We should be allowed to legally rip the books out of a service and keep them as PDFs. It makes is incredibly easy to just read-aloud with a text to speech device.

You don’t actually buy an ebook, you buy a license to that ebook.

I tend to ignore that when the ebook is the same price as the paperback edition.

Even if you believe it is Amazon's place to punish people for hateful comments, keep in mind that what's hateful is subject to rapid change. It wasn't that long ago that making the OK sign with your fingers was suddenly racist and there was no out for "I didn't know that was racist". Even after the origin of the OK sign being racist was discovered to be trolls on 4chan trying to bait society into looking stupid, it was still considered real racism because "real racists are really using the ok sign to show real racism". Then a few weeks later, the whole thing was completely forgotten. If you weren't actively keeping up with what's the latest in what's considered racist, you were at risk of being cancelled and having your life turned upside down for making a sign you'd made thousands of times before without any incident. What degree of obligation does one have to keep up with the latest fashions in racism?

Now imagine if this was Neuralink. We're quite eager to install potentially literally killswitches in our bodies, apparently. Insert witticism about Darwin Awards here.