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Amazon Dominates the $113 Billion Smart Home Market — Here’s How It Uses the Data It Collects
Since Amazon introduced the Echo smart speaker in 2014, it’s remained the biggest and fastest-growing player in the smart home market. Its most recent expansion includes four new Echo devices, a new Fire TV, two new Ring cameras with features like radar-triggered motion detection and the Halo Rise contactless bedside sleep tracker that can sense your breathing and movement to determine sleep stages. The new devices were all introduced Wednesday at Amazon’s annual smart home event.
Last month, Amazon made moves to enter a new segment of the smart home, with a $1.7 billion offer to buy iRobot, the maker of the smart Roomba vacuum. Now, the Federal Trade Commission is requesting more information from both iRobot and Amazon before deciding whether to approve the deal.
Earlier this month, 20 privacy and labor groups sent a letter to the FTC asking it to block the acquisition. The letter cited concerns about privacy and Amazon’s growing dominance of the smart home market.
“To track your shopping habits, to track your movements, to track even where things are placed in your home, what’s going on outside your front door. They can create this incredibly complex, detailed data profile that they can then use to expand and grow their own business,” said Sarah Miller, who founded the American Economic Liberties Project, which also signed the letter to the FTC seeking to block the iRobot deal. “And through that process, to push out competitors that simply could never surveil you with that degree of sophistication.”
Tech Billionaires Lost $315 Billion in 2022, and It Genuinely Doesn’t Matter
It’s been a gloomy year for the economy, with high inflation and recession anxieties leading to sharp downturns in the stock market. Tech companies have suffered some of the largest shocks: Netflix’s stock is down more than 60% so far this year; Meta’s has fallen about 58%. According to Google Finance, Amazon and Google stocks have both dropped around 30% year-to-date in 2022.
With tech stocks plummeting, the industry’s billionaire leaders have seen losses to their personal fortunes, too. That’s one of the takeaways of this year’s Forbes 400 list, an annual accounting of the top 400 richest Americans. Tech billionaires have lost a collective $315 billion since last year.
But while the tumult that tech companies are facing right now is very real, tech leaders are doing just fine. The vast majority are still richer than they were before the pandemic when they saw their wealth reach unprecedented heights.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos lost $50 billion in 2022, leaving him with a net worth of around $151 billion, according to Forbes. That still means he’s 32% richer than he was in 2019 when he had $115 billion. Microsoft founder Bill Gates lost $28 billion, but that leaves him about as rich as he was before the pandemic, with a net worth of $106 billion. Google founder Sergey Brin is about $35.5 billion richer compared to 2019.
Amazon.com Unveils Device That Tracks Breath While Sleeping
Amazon.com Inc. on Wednesday announced a contactless gadget that can monitor people’s sleep, along with updates to its lineup of voice-controlled devices and e-readers.
The online retailer said its $139.99 sleep gadget, known as Halo Rise, tracks room temperature, humidity and light, plus the breathing patterns of the person closest to it. The goal is to provide insight to users on why they may or may not feel well-rested when they wake up.
Like peers Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Amazon has invested in health-tracking technology for consumers, at times drawing regulatory scrutiny for sensitive information it aimed to collect, like body fat percentage via its fitness wristband called Halo.
Russell Brand Dumps YouTube for Rumble Over Censorship Beef
Russell Brand announced he’s moving his show from YouTube to Rumble after he said the platform “officially censored” his content.
In the clip shared Tuesday, the 47-year-old actor explained that after his video about the “changing narratives around COVID” was taken down he’s moving to Rumble, where he will be live streaming weekdays for one hour.
“We have been officially censored by YouTube,” Brand explained. “They took down one of our videos for misinformation, but why are big media organizations not censored for misinformation in the same way? Is it because YouTube is part of the mainstream media now?”
At one point, the “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” star explained that both videos that were removed from YouTube are now on Rumble because that platform is “not going to censor our content.”
Supreme Court Confirms Public Can Attend Hearings in October for First Time Since COVID Lockdown of March 2020
The Supreme Court starting Monday will allow members of the public to attend oral argument hearings for the first time since the COVID-19 lockdown of March 2020, the court’s press office confirmed in a statement Wednesday.
The resumption of public access will coincide with the beginning of the high court’s October term when the court’s justices are due to hear arguments in three cases. And the reopening will come a year after the court resumed in-person oral arguments after more than a year of conducting those sessions remotely.
In its announcement Wednesday, the court’s press office said, “Masking in the Courtroom for oral arguments will be optional.”
But other than oral arguments, the Supreme Court building in Washington, DC, “will otherwise be closed to the public until further notice,” the office said.
Molly Russell Inquest Must Lead to Action on Internet Dangers, Says Coroner
The senior coroner examining the death of Molly Russell has said the inquest must serve as a catalyst for protecting children from the risk that the internet has brought into family homes.
Andrew Walker outlined a series of concerns about the impact of social media on children, including the use of algorithms to push content to their accounts, a lack of age verification and a lack of content regulation.
Walker, who is presiding over the inquest at north London coroner’s court, said it represented an opportunity to protect children from harmful content.
Molly, 14, from Harrow, north-west London, killed herself in November 2017 after viewing extensive amounts of content related to suicide, self-harm, anxiety and depression on social media platforms including Instagram and Pinterest.
Judge Upholds British Columbia Employer’s Mandatory COVID Vaccination Policy
A B.C. judge has upheld an employer’s right to place an employee on an unpaid leave of absence for failing to comply with a mandatory COVID vaccination policy. The decision of B.C. Supreme Court Justice Heather MacNaughton was made in the case of a senior manager of a property management firm who had declined to get vaccinated.
In her lawsuit, Deepak Parmar alleged that she had been constructively dismissed from her employment with Tribe Management, claiming that the company had breached its contractual obligations by imposing the mandatory policy.
The company, which has more than 200 employees, required all of its workers to be vaccinated by Nov. 24, 2021 and advised them if they failed to comply, they would be put on an unpaid leave of absence.
In the extraordinary circumstances of the pandemic in the winter of 2021-22, implementing a mandatory vaccination policy was a “reasonable” policy choice for employers, including Tribe, said the judge.
Judge Approves $100 Million Google Privacy Deal. Here’s How Much Illinois Residents Will Get.
Illinois residents who filed claims for a cut of Google’s $100 million class-action settlement over alleged violations of state privacy law could receive checks of about $154 each.
Cook County Circuit Judge Anna M. Loftus granted final approval of the settlement Wednesday. She granted preliminary approval of the agreement in April.
The payout comes after Google settled a class-action lawsuit alleging its face grouping tool, which sorts faces on Google Photos by similarity, violated Illinois’ biometric privacy law. State law requires companies to obtain affirmative consent from users before collecting and saving their biometric information.
According to Loftus, about 420,000 people have filed valid claims. That would put payments at about $154 per person, less than the $200 to $400 attorneys originally estimated residents might receive.
Company Bashed for Using ‘Surveillance’ Software on Workers: ‘Dystopian’
Online commenters have bashed a company for purportedly using a “surveillance” tool to track worker productivity.
An employee with the company, u/Hour-Ad8095, posted about the tool in Reddit‘s “Mildly Infuriating” forum, writing: “Micromanagement in our company. A tool takes a screenshot of our system every 10 minutes and counts our mouse and keyboard clicks.” The post has garnered over 33,000 upvotes and nearly 2,000 comments. You can view the full post here.
Many employers want to return to the office, but their employees are “putting up a fight,” said Fortune. To prevent mass walkouts but still “maintain a sense of control,” some companies have allowed their employees to work from home but have installed “tattleware” on company-issued computers to track employees’ productivity.
Different types of “tattleware” can take pictures of workers’ screens, log emails, take video recordings and track keystrokes, TODAY reported.
Why the NFL’s Deal With Apple Is Bigger Than the Halftime Show
The Hollywood Reporter reported:
The Roger Goodell-led NFL, which long has been among the most conservative of major sports leagues, suddenly finds itself deep in business with big tech. Amazon is now a national media partner, and tech companies are among the bidders on a sliver of its media businesses, including its new subscription service, NFL+.
The latest tech team-up? Apple, in a deal that will see the Apple Music service become the official sponsor of the Super Bowl halftime show, replacing Pepsi after a decade-long run.
Now the league and Apple, with its global reach and tens of millions of Apple Music subscribers (estimates peg the service with more than 80 million subs), will get their chance to make the halftime show its own, with Rihanna at the center of it.
YouTube Will Show Personal Stories of Patients in Search Results for Health-Related Queries
YouTube announced Wednesday that it will show a new section called “Personal Stories” in search results starting this week when users enter health-related queries. The company said when people search for videos of certain health conditions on YouTube, it will show a panel featuring videos from people who are diagnosed with those disorders.
YouTube said that at launch, the Personal Stories section will show videos related to cancer and mental health conditions like anxiety and depression. Later, the company will expand this feature to cover other topics and other regions outside the U.S.
While this feature is not meant for getting medical advice, YouTube has faced a lot of criticism over health-related misinformation — especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Earlier this year, more than 80 fact-checkers across the world wrote to YouTube about taking stricter actions against videos related to COVID misinformation. No doubt YouTube will face scrutiny for what kinds of videos are featured in this new “Personal Stories” section and how well they’re able to moderate the content presented.
