Disabled people are being used to cripwash this badness. I still think consent is needed and it is still unfair not to make it possible to turn off recording when needed.
I am a deaf person.
I work with disabled people.
The university I work for has had to ban these devices from healthcare placement students cos of privacy rights.
@NatalyaD Thank you for saying this. I'm not someone for whom this kind of tech could be beneficial, so I don't feel it's my place to say; but I've been left feeling very queasy by the scrambling of Meta and others, belatedly insisting on these devices somehow being assistance tech.
From the outset, they were never intended or designed as such.
I understand how they can be useful in a poorly-accessible world but unlike previous assistive devices (or things that happen to assist) they put other people at risk in ways which are difficult to identify and are not reasonable.
I hear they're not all that reliable a lot of the time and we need to be careful not to let Meta/Google/Apple cripwash them into forcing everyone to accept them without some discussion and nuance.
@clickhere @NatalyaD@disabled.social @zackwhittaker There are specially designed devices that aren't general spyware devices. My hearing aids if turned up sufficiently can spy on conversations even a normal hearing person couldn't hear from across the room. It's not comfortable, but I can do that with an app on my phone.
Just saying a type of tech shouldn't be allowed just because some companies are abusing the tech in their iteration of it is just wrong.