This is awful, I'm glad that the victim wasn't actually saying something racist, because it would be too risky to defend them.
But companies should not be allowed to arbitrarily cut off access to purchased products like this. Especially when they are designed to be integral to day to day life. I think this practice should be illegal, even if they did say horrible things, attacked the driver, and set fire to amazons headquarters. It is simply unacceptable under any circumstance.
At a minimum, If somebody invest in such an ecosystem and is banned from it, the company should have you buy back the equipment at original retail value. This is just a start. There has to be some monetary penalty for the company to nudge them into less flipped reactions.
I also think there maybe should be blowback for false accusations on people who report them. Basically. You better damn well be sure you head what you heard. It’s becoming to easy to yell racist run away and ruin somebody’s life.
A secondary of this is the media. We keep saying there are racist everywhere. Even Biden said the biggest problem America has is white supremacy. People are going to find a racisim with out without it one actually existing.
Even before Trump, the FBI was publishing warnings about white supremicists[0] in law enforcement being a great domestic threat. I wish I could find the full report, but they've been talking about it for decades.
The run up to Trump, his presidency, and now his decline are definitely adding enormous fuel to the fire. Doesn't help Republicans now see white supremacists as a voting bloc they can manipulate.
I think it's probably worth thinking a little bit about whether it's worth incentivizing making a comment that Amazon thinks is racist in order to get free returns. Some of the time, the comments will be actually racist, and I'm certainly not on board with the "call your delivery guy the n word if you want free returns" philosophy.
That is the entire point. Amazon has to make a decision better than what they did to handle the situation. What I am driving at is you call your delivery guy the N word has nothing to do with the extended services within the house. It just so happens Amazon owns a delivery service, and thus the shutdown spread from that into far more.
If somebody is harassing their delivery guy in any way, yeah, fine, don't deliver, make them pick it up at some location and use normal laws to deal with the harassment.
You would never get your amazon account canceled if the USPS worker said you called them a name.
In short, Amazon has to break up their business, at least when it comes for abuse issues on boundaries that have clear lines.
You fuck around with the Amazon deliver guy should not lock you out of your S3 account, shut and kill your AWS instances. Just as breaking some AWS rule should not prevent you from ordering and having delivered products from Amazon's main website.
It is not normal, well adjusted people who are online writing that we need a "bloodier Waco" simply because a criminal is being indicted, it is white supremacists. Biden was right.
Whose life has been ruined by a single false accusation of racism? Racism absolutely does exist, unfortunately.
That weird digression aside, yeah. People are spending money on content that can be taken away on a whim, or basing much of their lives around email platforms that can deactivate their accounts at any moment. There should be stronger legal protections.
> I also think there maybe should be blowback for false accusations on people who report them. Basically. You better damn well be sure you head what you heard. It’s becoming to easy to yell racist run away and ruin somebody’s life.
You can't punish "false" accusations without silencing people from making any accusation out of fear lack of substantiation will be interpreted as false. We can't say that the driver did this maliciously; he may well have heard what he thought he did. The driver isn't the problem; he was aggrieved and reported it, as he was entitled to.
Tampering with someone's thermostat because you were entrusted with access to it and later decided you don't like them is sociopathic, and every bit as monstrous as deploying ransomware in a fucking hospital. I guarantee you no diligence was done to prevent collateral damage. More than the driver (blameless) or Amazon itself, this particular executive needs to be taken to task for such recklessness. Interfering with life support or communications systems is just fucked; we do that shit as acts of sabotage during war, and it's domestic violence when it occurs between spouses. Even your utility company needs to give advance notice of termination.
Yahoos acting on bad intel one too many times and punishing the innocent is literally what instigated Black Lives Matter. The irony is lost on Unnamed Amazon Executive.
Without this there is no action anybody can take...
We can't live in a world where accusations without evidence hold weight, nothing will get done and everybody can just accuse anybody of anything to get their way.
Unpopular opinion, but people need to grow up. You getting called a name should probably in any case, not be actionable.
And in retro, if you think a door bell called you a name you probably are unfit to deliver packages to any doors, and should seek mental help.
Unfortunately yah. You can’t just point to the next man you see and toss him in jail.
Bad things happen to people, it more than sucks. But without evidence who raped you there is little you can do. Sure report it, but no action can be taken on any man is no evidence of who did it.
But way to go, comparing somebody being called a name to rape. Clearly they are the same thing.
Racism IS everywhere, and most of it happens subconsciously. No one wants to look in the mirror and admit that an action they took was racist, and the prevalence of false positives are probably very much outweighed by false negatives.
It's still worse in my opinion to accuse an innocent person falsely of racism than to fail to catch a non-violent act of racism, especially when the definition of what is "racist" seems to change depending on the person you ask.
Non-violent racism is most of racism. That includes things like POC getting access to the same opportunities in the job market, in the credit market, in basically every aspect of life. From what I have seen, it is much less likely that someone will call racism out when it happens, much like women do not generally come forward after abuse. If you can't see the problem in your statement, you are part of it.
What you are talking about are instances of systemic racism due to differences in power (i.e. someone holds power over someone else and wields discretion in favor of their racial biases). This is different than the type of racism described in OP. In that case, Amazon held much more power over this person's life than that person held over his Amazon delivery driver, and even though the entire interaction was in the view of recording devices, Amazon still decided to assume the worst. I wouldn't even say it's as much a problem of racism as it is large corporations making snap judgements without a care for the consequences.
Even so, the a fundamental axiom of the American justice system is that it is worse to imprison an innocent man than let a guilty man go free.
> No one wants to look in the mirror and admit that
Then that includes the employees and executives at Amazon and is all the more reason to not allow them to punish others for behavior that is (according to you) universal.
The solution is not punishing others, it is about education. I never said anything about it being right that Amazon cut the ability of someone to use the products already bought.
I hope that customer sues Amazon. Because in that info discovery phase, there will be sooo much that is revealed about surveillance mechanisms linked to "smarthome" tech (e.g., eufy, ring, alexa, roomba, thermostats) and Amazon. The world needs to know, beyond inference.
I'm not sure how/if you're inferring that from this incident. The ban was caused by a delivery driver reporting a racist doorbell interaction.
It would have been better for Amazon if they reviewed that footage before acting, but it seems like they weren't able (especially because they asked to be sent it by the accused).
This is "according to Amazon," akin to "trust me bro." We know Amazon will make up anything. Hence, lawsuit to discover the facts beyond Amazon's random email.
Edit: not sure why this is downvoted as there is much evidence to confirm this position of Amazon willful omission of truth, and downright lying (e.g., "our employees don't pee in bottles" for warehouse and delivery employees, "this account registered too many returns" for accounts that show under 10 returns over multiple years).
I worked at Amazon for over five years, both in AWS tech support, and as a systems engineer and SRE (well, their version of SRE). I hate the company. I actively attempt to sabotage their recruiting efforts -- I respond to people on LinkedIn telling them to take any other job offer if at all possible. I've cancelled my Prime account, and I don't order from them unless I can't get a product elsewhere. About the only Amazon product I actively and intentionally use anymore is Audible.
Seriously, fuck Amazon.
But Amazon is pretty committed to customer privacy, and in many cases it is genuinely impossible for them to obtain access to data. Obviously, I can't provide technical details here, so you'll have to to just trust me -- but I promise you, there's a good chance they're being honest about not having access to this data without a request to the customer.
This is just a drive-by comment from an outsider, but in case it helps you:
When you say "We know Amazon will make up anything.", it comes across (to me, at least) as an over-broad statement. The sort of statement someone with strong priors against Amazon would make. We _don't_ know that. You cite some valid examples of Amazon being sleazy, but even if you listed 100 examples, we still don't know that. Examples just mean they have made up some things, at some times — not everything, all the time.
I imagine you were just using hyperbolic language for effect, but that's just my 2¢ POV, in case it helps you avoid being misinterpreted in the future (:
I know we shouldn’t comment on comments but I appreciate this rigorous and even-handed reasoning.
Comments that are reactionary and unnuanced (“all big tech is bad! Because they’ve done this in the past.”) do not contribute to the discussion and are merely venting.
I distrust comments made on this type narrative thinking that doesn’t address the precise issue at hand.
IMHO it absolutely does not matter what the internal investigation determined and how the doorbell interaction went, it is unacceptable to disable the purchased equipment no matter what - even if they were literally convicted of a felony. If a company wants to stop future sales to a certain customer, that's fine, but all past purchases should still work.
>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?
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.
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.
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?
> However, I question why my entire smart home system had to be rendered unusable during their internal investigation. It seems more sensible to impose a temporary delivery restriction or purchasing ban on my account.
Ah, Amazon: the paragon of social justice. Racist dollars are still green.
This is up there with the FLDS hating the federal government sooooo much, they signed everybody they could up for food stamps. To "bleed the beast," of course.
> 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.
I am happy to be completely Amazon-free (apart from using web services hosted on AWS). I can’t express in strong enough terms how much of a privacy nightmare and how utterly invasive Echo devices are.
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.
> 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.
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.
> 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.”
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
But companies should not be allowed to arbitrarily cut off access to purchased products like this. Especially when they are designed to be integral to day to day life. I think this practice should be illegal, even if they did say horrible things, attacked the driver, and set fire to amazons headquarters. It is simply unacceptable under any circumstance.