Rights Groups To FTC's Lina Khan: Please Kill Amazon's iRobot Acquisition (gizmodo.com) 31
More than two dozen civil organizations and advocacy groups are calling on the Federal Trade Commission to block Amazon's $1.7 billion acquisition of Roomba maker iRobot. If allowed to go through, the advocates warn the deal could "endanger fair competition" and jeopardize consumer privacy. Gizmodo reports: Fight for the Future, Public Citizen, and Athena were among the 26 organizations that sent an open letter to the FTC's five commissioners on Friday. The groups view Amazon's acquisition of iRobot, which they described as a "competing smart home device business" as an anti-competitive action that could harm the overall consumer technology market. "Amazon seeks to unduly expand its market power by eliminating a competitor through acquisition, rather than through organic growth," the groups wrote. "The company also aims to minimize fair competition by exploiting consumer data not accessible to other market participants."
That "consumer data" refers to detailed video footage of customers' homes and floor plans constantly sucked up by iRobot's Roomba and other home devices. That type of data is potentially well worth the $1.7 billion Amazon intends to spend on the company if for nothing else than to determine more useful shit to sell you through its main business. Privacy advocates, however, fear Amazon -- which already has smart devices hooked up in around a third of U.S. households -- could potentially misuse that potentially sensitive data. Critics, including some U.S. senators, warn we've already witnessed a version of this through Amazon-owned Ring sharing user data with police without its owners' consent or a police warrant.
"There is no more private space than the home," the letter reads. "Yet with this acquisition, Amazon stands to gain access to extremely intimate facts about our most private spaces that are not available through other means, or to other competitors." While Amazon's recent acquisition attempt is significant, the groups warn Amazon's iRobot deal amounts to a symptom of a larger problem. "Amazon's business model largely relies on acquiring rivals, sometimes in adjacent markets, and then rapidly expanding through anti-competitive predatory pricing while leveraging vast troves of consumer data to grow its overall grip on the economy,â the letter reads. To bolster that point, the groups pointed to Amazon's 2018 acquisition of smart doorbell maker Ring. Within three years, Ring transformed from a successful but growing product to the undisputed king of smart doorbells. That sudden market annihilation, the groups argue, was only made possible through Amazon pushing the product through its "ubiquitous" e-commerce platform at below market price points.
That "consumer data" refers to detailed video footage of customers' homes and floor plans constantly sucked up by iRobot's Roomba and other home devices. That type of data is potentially well worth the $1.7 billion Amazon intends to spend on the company if for nothing else than to determine more useful shit to sell you through its main business. Privacy advocates, however, fear Amazon -- which already has smart devices hooked up in around a third of U.S. households -- could potentially misuse that potentially sensitive data. Critics, including some U.S. senators, warn we've already witnessed a version of this through Amazon-owned Ring sharing user data with police without its owners' consent or a police warrant.
"There is no more private space than the home," the letter reads. "Yet with this acquisition, Amazon stands to gain access to extremely intimate facts about our most private spaces that are not available through other means, or to other competitors." While Amazon's recent acquisition attempt is significant, the groups warn Amazon's iRobot deal amounts to a symptom of a larger problem. "Amazon's business model largely relies on acquiring rivals, sometimes in adjacent markets, and then rapidly expanding through anti-competitive predatory pricing while leveraging vast troves of consumer data to grow its overall grip on the economy,â the letter reads. To bolster that point, the groups pointed to Amazon's 2018 acquisition of smart doorbell maker Ring. Within three years, Ring transformed from a successful but growing product to the undisputed king of smart doorbells. That sudden market annihilation, the groups argue, was only made possible through Amazon pushing the product through its "ubiquitous" e-commerce platform at below market price points.
What? (Score:2)
Is anyone forced to buy a Roomba? If you don't want Bezos to watch you banging, then don't buy a Roomba. We don't need the FTC to spoil the party for the rest of us. I happen to like putting on a show for Bezos. Rather than educating people, the FTC wants to keep you stupid.
Re: (Score:1)
But Amazon will give prime advertising for cheap via their store site, which makes the playing field uneven. Amazon is already big enough, they don't need to become Everything, Inc.
Oligopolies and monopolies almost always end up sucking. It's why we have to live with convoluted buggy leaky shit like Windows and Teams at work, or Comcast ripping you off and sending your calls into their phone-tree forest to be eaten by e-cannibals. When you can suck without consequences you will, human nature.
Re: (Score:2)
But Amazon will give prime advertising for cheap via their store site, which makes the playing field uneven. Amazon is already big enough, they don't need to become Everything, Inc.
So Amazon wants to bring E Corp. to life? Got it.
Re: What? (Score:3)
Re: (Score:1)
Controlling the brands is often more important than controlling the factories. Most big brands outsource factories already.
Re: (Score:3)
Actually.... yes
It was in 2015 or so I got a knock on the door .... when I opened it, I was greeted by an iRobot military bomb disposal robot and 4 armed goons. Before I could utter a word out of my shocked and scared mouth, one started loudly and sternly "Sir, we have reports of you handling toxic biological material wrapped up in small tight packages, if you do NOT buy our product for handling this sensitive material we WILL be reporting you to the authorities!"
Scared out of my whit's I shakenly signed th
In related news ... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
It lacks sensors in order to protect your privacy, so it bumps into and sucks up everything, including cats and ducks.
Yeah, no .... (Score:4, Interesting)
And again, I say, I detest Amazon as a company.
But you really need to go after things for the right reasons. Crying "unfair competition" is ludicrous when there are more vacuum cleaning robots on the market now than ever before.
I just bought a Roborock, for example. It's great, but it uses Lidar to map out the rooms of the house and since the robot pairs to wifi, it's pretty clear the map data can be uploaded to a cloud server someplace, run by the Chinese manufacturer.
Its app makes a pretty big deal out of the mapping capabilities in fact; including letting you make backups of the map in case it gets mixed up or damaged, and generating a 3D version of it, plus letting you put furniture icons in the correct spots on it. Optionally, it even lets you go around your house taking photos to get digested into it to build an even more detailed map. And yes, in addition to the Lidar, it has a camera on it too -- and during the initial mapping process, I saw it at least once flash something on my phone about "taking a picture" to build map data with.
Am I really paranoid that someone has this map of my house's layout? Not particularly... I mean, it's nothing exactly top secret. And even a common thief would just break in and start grabbing things without hacking their cloud server first to examine its saved map. But it shows Amazon isn't uniquely positioned to collect customer data in this way.
Re: (Score:1)
Sure, until the robot "accidentally" snaps a picture of your recipe from the abortion clinic from 10 years ago when you had an ectopic pregnancy and now you're in jail because different rules apply.
Or maybe you're studying Arabic for a class and some AI flags your video because it saw a book. Now you're a terrorist. Bye-bye! Don't think this can't happen. Ask those parents that got their account closed and almost got charged as criminals because they sent a picture to their doctor and some computer flagged
Re: Yeah, no .... (Score:2)
The Hell? (Score:2)
Sure, until the robot "accidentally" snaps a picture of your recipe from the abortion clinic from 10 years ago when you had an ectopic pregnancy and now you're in jail because different rules apply.
recipe from the abortion clinic
Freudian slip?
Re: The Hell? (Score:5, Informative)
Recipe is a European English word for the American English word prescription.
Re: (Score:2)
I mean, it's nothing exactly top secret.
it's more like constant surveillance. there are a lot of ways that could get you in trouble but, yeah, probabilities are low. probably not worth being paranoid about it, but a completely unnecessary risk imo.
But it shows Amazon isn't uniquely positioned to collect customer data in this way.
they are in a unique position to kick the competition out of the way in no time. but that doesn't really matter that much, imo.
the real issue is concentration of information. amazon already knows almost all and every detail about people's buying habits, much of their online entertainment habits, some of
Re: (Score:2)
The size of someone's home is actually a very useful metric for more targeted advertisement, which is almost certainly why Amazon's so interested in this.
re: size of homes (Score:2)
Except the size of a person's home is pretty much public available information. You can search a property address on a number of real estate sites and find out its square footage.
except.. (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
exactly, I was looking at my house's floorplan before it was even up for sale
Re: (Score:2)
Can those plans automatically be retrieved for each and every house everywhere? Because if not, then those aren't terribly useful to Amazon as a replacement for the guaranteed floor plans they get from the Roombas.
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Ring Ring, It's PRIVACY calling.... (Score:2)
Sharing the data with police? What about Amazon making a fucking TV series out of your footage without any consent from you?!?
Season 2 on Prime Video: Now enhanced with the view from the floor!
They're doing it.
And, well, why not?
There's no (U.S.) law against it.
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe they can make a deal with SHOWTIME for the "Ring Roomba: Upskirts and Naked Edition" TV series in the "adults" time slot.
There are laws against that, sorta, but if you look at your Roomba contract, I think you will find that you gave explicit consent. So it's all good.
Re: Ring Ring, It's PRIVACY calling.... (Score:1)
"There is no more private space than the home," the letter reads. "Yet with this acquisition, Amazon stands to gain access to extremely intimate facts about our most private spaces that are not available through other means, or to other competitors."
Seriously, this only becomes a privacy issue once Amazon becomes the boogie man in play? I have zero love for BezosCorp. They have the ability to do evil at unprecedented scale.
But to me itâ(TM)s all the same risk if iRobot has video of the inside of my ho
Can we keep it short? (Score:1)
"Kill Amazon", period.
Re: (Score:2)
Do we really need robot vacuum cleaners? (Score:1)
Don't use real names (Score:2)
Amazon delivers parcels to your cat without any problem, she can also watch mouse-videos with Prime, the robot can watch her all day long.
Pay with PayPal and they don't have your CC, just an invented email-address created for the occasion.
But if you do 27 selfies per day and think somebody else would be interested in seeing them, you don't care either way.
Nothing to hide - until suddenly you do (Score:1)