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Recently there was news that a man’s Amazon account was locked unexpectedly – which meant he couldn’t shop, couldn’t use his Alexa devices, couldn’t use his doorbell, and couldn’t access the admin controls for his AWS servers.

The reason was that while he wasn’t home, an Amazon delivery driver dropped off a package and thought that someone in the house yelled racist things at him. While investigating this, Amazon locked the man’s entire account down.

This was definitely a misunderstanding on the driver’s part, which the man suspects was a mishearing of his Amazon doorbell addressing him in some fashion. After a full week, they decided there was no problem and unlocked his account

https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/smart-home-lock-out-amazon-b2358107.html

I’m not the OP, but I’ll take a stab at it.

Amazon is being sued for abusing their market dominance.

Whether they are into the “smart toilet” business or not, let’s pretend they are and that they effectively control that market.

So then the “flaw” in the lawsuit is that all the toilets just stop working during the court proceedings and maybe beyond. That makes life more than a bit challenging for the prosecutors, regulators, judges, and society as a whole, giving Amazon undue influence, not just in the market, but in the courtroom itself.

This is relevant because Amazon is already meeting with some success in making their trial into a private trial. Some feel that this is undermining the concept of open courts and maybe the proceedings themselves. (As a Canadian, I don’t have a proper understanding of American courts, but it seems very strange that the OJ Simpson trial was televised, but Amazon and Google seem to be getting publication bans and camera removals.)

Feel free to laugh now, I guess.

Try asking your teacher! And thank you for engaging with my content!

I need to go really bad, but I can’t find the toilet! It responds to pings, but I can’t figure out where in my apartment it is!