Echo Dot

There's only one thing missing in that talk, he puts way too much emphasis on ads, insurance, consumer stuff in general. Whereas the real power lies in social control through individual or segmented targeting. Election campaigns using all this data from corporate trackers is just one example. What prevents governments, political parties and social network giants from using it outside of elections and for social control? Some of these actors do it already.
I think this is what people don't understand the most. They don't care if they get ads tailored to them, they expect manipulation from ads agencies anyway (duh). But a lot of them do care about manipulation in other areas. The problem is it is hard to explain it to them because manipulation, when it works so perfectly, is imperceptible and they won't even believe you it's actually there. People have this assumption that they themselves would know if they were manipulated because "I'm not that stupid", as if the whole point of it is not precisely that you do not know.

Tell him there are studies showing finger exercises lead to higher virility

Because that's the theme of his speech.
"How thousands of companies are profiling, categorizing, rating and affecting the lives of billions."

It's literally designed for retards.

You must be really dense. They're not "shilling" Alexa, the whole point of the FBI chick using Alexa to talk is to show she has no real friends and is using a piece of hardware to fill the void.

You're supposed to say "holy shit, she's pathetic, I'd hate to live in a world were these people replace human companionships with these shitty pieces of hardware designed to sell shit" not "boy, Alexa really seems like a human being. Imma buy 5!"

...

You must be really dense.
There is no such thing as bad advertisement, it's all about exposure. The people who buy the botnet don't care about the botnet. Of course the company behind Alexa paid the show for the product placement, even when it was "critical" about it. (I don't watch American tv crap so can't really judge that)

The theme of his speech is about collecting and organizing data i.e. "corporate surveillance". This data is then sold to governments, political parties, etc. too. He mentions it himself. Just look at Cambridge Analytica.

No, he deliberately made it about how corporations collect and use that data. Please seek help for your autism.

Sorry, but it's you who are autistic by refusing to see the whole use of corporate surveillance. He already talks about the political use of it in his talk, but it's only briefly, while he goes into extreme details how you're discriminated when buying a toaster.

I'm not refusing to see anything. I'm just telling you that because he deliberately made it about corporate surveillance, he talks mostly about corporate surveillance. This doesn't mean of course that this would mean he has to exclude any reference to governments spying.
Let me explain how it works when you do a speech.
You pick a topic.
you speak about that topic

Do you notice in that process there isn't any excluding involved. That would be silly. Any knowledge that would be relevant to the topic, like in this case governments spying using the same techniques as corporate spying. But there has been a lot of talk about government spying and using big data, but not so much about corporate spying, so I guess when he picked the theme of his speech he thought: I will speak mostly about corporate spying! This way I will introduce a lot of new information to people who are interested in this topic! Notice again that he didn't thought: I am not going to talk about governments spying! People already know so much about this, I will simply avoid that subject. No. That would be silly.

Let me make it clearer: political use of corporate surveillance is part of corporate surveillance. Do you think governments and political campaigns collect data on their own? No, it is done precisely through corporate surveillance. So if you want to raise awareness about the effects of corporate surveillance and you consider the above important then you could talk about it as well instead of just ad and insurance discrimination. Insurance agencies don't collect data themselves either, they are in the same part of equation as governments and political campaigns.

surveillance is okay as long as it's only used to sell you things; that's freedom. Political use crosses the line because it can allow incumbents an unfair advantage and subvert the will of the people. The government has regulate corporate surveillance to make sure nobody uses it for political purposes.

Ads are designed to manipulate the will of people. So why is that good (and you even call that freedom) and when a government does the same it is bad?
Our knowledge economy is based on that unfair advantage you mention, this is why lawyers make so much money. So why is that ok, but when a government has that kind of advantage it is suddenly bad?

All big data collection should be regulated. There is no ethical difference between corporate or government surveillance in my opinion. The purpose is the same

If this were true, companies wouldn't need to waste money keeping an image. Every single piece of ad would be a guy screaming "buy X!" and bad rumors would be embraced.

But since we know this isn't the case, that companies waste millions of dollars to create and maintain an image and that bad press has actually ruined companies in the past, you're full of shit.

I think user's point is that the "coolness" factor is more powerful than a meaningful critique. And that is true because we have been brainwashed into it by the general hyperactive advertisement culture, even most movies now look like long TV commercials. So our brains are trained to process any medium as if it is an ad.
Yes, there is such a thing as a "bad image", but it isn't caused by a scene from a TV series but by the media making a shitstorm. And the latter only happens when there's a really huge fuck-up, or if something disturbs journalists' radical centrist sensibilities. Otherwise social networks controlling our lives are fine, being spied on is fine, everything is fine. Because it's not convenient to worry, or actually doing something about it. And convenience is our God. OP's dad seems like a typical case of this.

...

To watch ads people must first consent to consuming the media that contains them, thereby exchanging some of their agency for cheaper/more entertaining television shows or what have you.

To have something implies the ability to dispose of it as you see fit, or to exchange it for something you find more valuable. In this sense, to have freedom means being able to trade some of that freedom for whatever you like - security, entertainment, religious reasons, etc.

Freedom is not a currency.

It is, that's why they call it "free market" :^)

Using a copyrighted product in the media is prohibited by copyright laws unless the copyright holder has given it's explicit agreement. So it has to be product placement and you probably interpreted the scene in such an assburger way you failed to see it for what is: advertisement.

That's false. You can't copyright a product.

Ok buddy.

Who the fuck is moaning right before alexa starts talking?

I recognize that blowjob.

No seriously. You cannot copyright a product. Copyright is for things related to created art.
For actual physical, functional machines and similar you use something called "Patenting".
For slogans, names and words associated with a product you use something called "Trademarking".

is alexa making the moaning noise? is it a preview of the porn its about to play or something?

Yes, that would be relevant ITT if it wasn't used interchangeably by everyone except lawyers. If you say patent/trademark/copyright everyone will know what you mean. So please stop derailing the thread with your shilling techniques you fucking autist.

Copyright law has a definition. Please don't dilute that definition by assigning this specific term to a different definition. People should use other words to describe other ideas.

Stop posting.

You've got it backwards. It's the lawyers who try to muddle the distinction to extend different restrictions from one concept to another.

The fact is that there is no such thing as "intellectual property". Different legal concepts shoved into this bag have completely different motivations and rights attached to them, and are nothing like physical property regardless of how much Shlomo would like to change that.

occasionally block amazon flows and make your dad feel it's too buggy to use

This is absolutely disgusting that a couple would place this surveillance box right on their nightstand.

show him what it can do

I have one simple way to show people I'm not comfortable around these devices. I whisper.
With this simple trick I can still communicate with them while dodging speech recognition software.

Haha, get a typewriter and when he asks you something in the living room, use that to answer.

Haha, make sure you don't name your daughter Alexa.
I wonder who will be the first dad who says "Alexa, suck my dick!" and gets raided for CP.

...

fixed it

...