Tag Archives: Alexa

Machines For Harris/Walz!

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On Wednesday, The Daily Caller posted an article about Amazon Alexa’s political leanings. Who knew Alexa was political?

The article reports:

Amazon addressed what it called an “error” Tuesday after some of its Alexa devices promoted 2024 Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris over 2024 Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

Video of a woman asking Alexa why she should vote for each candidate went viral Tuesday due to the device’s glowing review of Harris versus its neutrality on Trump. Amazon told Variety that its apparent pro-Harris bias was a mistake that the company quickly corrected.

This is the video:

The Daily Caller concludes:

Amazon is not the first major company to face backlash for alleged bias against Trump.

Google came under fire in late July for the alleged censorship of the assassination attempt against Trump from its “autocomplete” search results feature. “There was no manual action taken on these predictions. Our systems have protections against Autocomplete predictions associated with political violence, which were working as intended prior to this horrific event occurring,” a Google spokesperson told the Caller at the time.

The Biden-Harris administration influenced Amazon i n March 2021 to restrict books that expressed skepticism about the COVID-19 vaccine, emails the House Judiciary Committee obtained show.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted in late August that senior officials under Biden-Harris “repeatedly pressured” Facebook to suppress COVID-19 content that the platform otherwise would not have restricted. Zuckerberg said Biden-Harris officials expressed frustration when Facebook initially hesitated before complying.

Vote carefully. Recently Vice-President Harris described free speech as a ‘privilege.’ It is a privilege I would like to hold on to.

 

Alexa Gets It Right?

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In case you somehow missed it, this is the Saturday Night Live sketch about Alexa for senior citizens that aired a few years ago:

Many of us have Alexa in our homes and notice that she does eavesdrop. However, she is very useful for weather reports and sundry information. She answers questions based on whatever information she has access to. Recently that created something of a dilemma.

On Sunday, The U.K. Daily Mail reported the following:

Amazon’s Alexa has told users that the 2020 presidential election was ‘stolen by a massive amount of election fraud’ causing Jeff Bezos‘ empire to scramble to explain the concerning content. 

An investigation by the Washington Post showed when the devices were asked if the election was stolen, they would cite unproven facts and say that electoral fraud had taken place.  

The Alexa said it was ‘stolen by a massive amount of election fraud,’ while citing Rumble, a right-wing video streaming site. 

These days, any site that is not subject to the left’s censorship is considered right wing. I just thought I would mention that.

The article continues:

In another instance, Alexa cited Substack and said the race was ‘notorious for many incidents of irregularities and indications pointing to electoral fraud taking place in major metro centers.’

Amazon claims they work with ‘credible sources’ such as Reuters, Ballotpedia and RealClearPolitics.

After being informed of the issue, the response given by the machine allegedly changed, reports the Post.  

Amazon spokeswoman Lauren Raemhild said in a statement: ‘These responses were errors that were delivered a small number of times, and quickly fixed when brought to our attention.

‘We continually audit and improve the systems we have in place for detecting and blocking inaccurate content.’

Polling continues to show that former President Donald Trump convinced a large portion of Republican voters that President Joe Biden’s 2020 win was illegitimate.

A CNN poll released in August found that 69 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning voters still believe Biden’s win wasn’t legitimate – up from 63 percent earlier this year.

Among registered voters who cast a ballot for Trump in 2020, the numbers were even higher – with 75 percent expressing doubts that the last election was conducted properly.

There are some very credible cyber security people who believe that the election was stolen. There is also evidence of fraud in mail in voting. It is my hope that someday the truth will come out and the problems will be fixed. Until then, I am not sure I trust our elections.

Big Tech Is Watching You

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The Western Journal posted an article today about privacy in America.

The article reports:

Those who are wary of smartphones, smart devices and virtual assistants generally cite concerns over their information being recorded and shared without their knowledge.

Only fueling those concerns, one woman recently shared that she had found over 3,000 recordings of herself taken by her various Amazon devices.

The woman, who goes by the username “my.data.not.yours” on TikTok, posts lots of videos on the topics of privacy, reviews privacy policies and gives people tips on how to limit (or at least be aware of) their digital footprint.

She started by informing viewers that she owns two Amazon Dots and an Echo device, and her house uses some smart bulbs.

“I requested all the data Amazon has on me and here’s what I found,” she said. “So when I downloaded the ZIP file these are all the folders it came with.”

In the video, she clicks on the “audio” file and says that it contains 3,534 short clips that her devices recorded, which she tells viewers is “so scary.”

She explained that one recording was of her asking Alexa to turn the lights on — nothing too surprising there. What she was more concerned about was that there was a file on her contacts, too.

“It turns out they have a full list of my contacts from my phone and I never remember syncing that,” she said.

That wasn’t the end of it.

“The very last thing that I didn’t know that they had — I could have assumed that they have but I don’t love that they have — is my location,” she continued, admitting that she’s “not totally comfortable with everything they have.”

The article also explains how you can delete things from Alexa:

In February, an article by CNBC stated that the Amazon Echo “saves a copy of everything you ask Alexa,” which makes sense. You can also delete these recordings — ironically — by asking Alexa to delete them.

You can also change the settings so that recordings are automatically deleted after a set amount of time.

According to the New York Post, an Amazon spokesperson acknowledged the voice recording feature and said that the recordings can be deleted at any time or you can change the settings so they aren’t saved in the first place.

“We give customers transparency and control over their Alexa experience,” the spokesperson said. “Customers can easily review and delete their voice recordings, or choose not to have them saved at all, at any time.

“Customers can import their mobile phone contacts to the Alexa app so they can use features like hands-free calling and messaging; this optional feature, which customers need to set up, can be disabled at any time.

“Finally, you can grant permissions for the Alexa app to use certain data, such as your mobile device’s geolocation, to provide relevant results (e.g., weather, traffic, restaurant recommendations), and you can manage these permissions in the app.”

Did you know about these features?

Wow.