The Alexa feature "do not send voice recordings" you enabled no longer available

Perceived Bait-and-Switch & Consumer Rights

• Many see removal of “do not send voice recordings” as a classic bait‑and‑switch: a product was bought under one privacy expectation, later unilaterally weakened.
• Commenters argue this should trigger refunds or even be treated as breach of contract; others note the standard “we can change anything” clauses make enforcement hard.
• Some say “just return it” is insufficient; people want rules that prevent unilateral downgrades without consumers constantly monitoring ToS changes.

ToS, Legality, and Enforcement

• Debate over how enforceable ToS actually are: courts require conspicuous notice and explicit assent; silent background changes are often not binding.
• ToS cannot legalize otherwise illegal conduct (e.g., unfair contracts, deceptive practices), but whether this specific change breaks any law is seen as unclear.
• Class actions are discussed as theoretically strong but practically expensive; US agencies like the FTC are portrayed as politically weakened.

US vs EU: Regulation and Outcomes

• EU commenters highlight GDPR and stronger unfair-contract laws, expecting regulators to ask: “it worked yesterday; why not today?” and possibly force changes or compensation.
• Others reply that GDPR enforcement is slow, fines often small relative to profits, and big firms treat them as a cost of doing business.
• A long subthread disputes whether higher US GDP per capita (e.g., Mississippi vs many European countries) actually maps to better quality of life, citing healthcare, life expectancy, inequality, and education.

Privacy, Surveillance, and Trust in Corporations

• Strong distrust that any cloud assistant will remain privacy‑respecting over time; “never give data based on current policy, because it will change.”
• Concerns: leaks, law‑enforcement warrants, warrantless access (citing Ring), training AI on voices, and psychological harms of constant surveillance at home.
• Others push back on the “always streaming” fear, arguing that continuous upload and processing would be expensive and likely detectable via traffic analysis; but buffering and delayed upload are acknowledged as possible and hard to disprove.

LLMs and the “Cloud-Only” Justification

• Some argue Alexa is being pushed cloud‑only to support LLM-based “new Alexa,” with on‑device hardware too weak for large models.
• Critics call this a business choice, not a technical inevitability: transcription already happens locally; smaller or hybrid models could be used; “too big for the device” is seen as a convenient excuse to centralize data.

Alternatives, Resistance, and Hacking

• A sizable group advocates avoiding voice assistants entirely: “winning move is not to play.”
• Others promote Home Assistant and Open Home Foundation devices with fully local speech processing and optional local LLMs, noting setup is still “enthusiast”‑level but rapidly improving.
• People discuss physically disabling microphones, isolating devices on the network, or repurposing Echo hardware via rooting or alternative firmware; current options are limited and technically involved.
• Several families state they are unplugging or selling all Alexa devices after this announcement, even if they previously tolerated them.

Are Smart Speakers Worth It?

• Many say assistants are mostly used for: timers, simple music playback, weather, unit conversion, and basic smart‑home control; these could be done via phones or local systems.
• Some still find voice control genuinely valuable, especially for cooking with messy hands, driving, or for elderly and non‑technical users who struggle with phones and apps.
• Others find voice UX inherently awkward or cognitively unusable compared to visual interfaces, especially for tasks like “what’s the weather like” where spoken summaries feel insufficient.

Responsibility, Sympathy, and Politics

• Split between those who feel little sympathy (“you were warned putting a wiretap in your home”) and those arguing consumer advocates must still defend victims of corporate overreach.
• Broader US political frustration threads through: deregulation, propaganda, wealth concentration, and perceived erosion of democratic checks are seen as the environment enabling such moves.
• Several note that the deeper structural problem is that we “rent” cloud‑dependent devices and services rather than own stable products, making post‑purchase degradation increasingly normal.