this post was submitted on 08 Oct 2026
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I honestly think that some smart devices could be really useful. But, there are 2 major changes needed before they're worth buying:
Meaningful privacy laws. By default any device should be locked down otherwise the companies are in deep trouble for privacy violations. Any agreements you make to allow them to do something should be ones you can easily revoke at any time.
Right to repair / modify anything you own without any issues. If you buy a Samsung washer with "smarts", the same store that sells you the washer should be able to offer you alternative firmware from a number of different vendors. If the washer breaks, you should be able to fix it yourself, or hire someone to fix it, whether it's a mechanical fix or a software fix. If you want to go in there and modify it yourself, or go online to some standard site to download a new feature, you should be able to do that. It your hardware, you should have full control over it. Same with printers, which would end the expensive ink fiasco. Same with Apple's app store monopoly.
Here's my big issue. There's no need for a smart device to contact someone else's server. It could just connect directly to whatever device you're controlling it with.
Yeah. We're too used to that being the normal thing to do. It vaguely makes sense in some scenarios, like to see if there has been a firmware update. If there's a security issue you either want the device to update automatically or you want to be able to notify the user. But, even then, there are other ways of doing it that don't involve the device sending traffic to the Internet. IoT should really be made from devices that are unable to exchange traffic with anything outside the local network.
Even if you come up with a plausible scenario where maybe you'd want a device to be accessible outside your home (i.e. you want to start your coffee maker before you get home) that could be done without the device having access to the outside world. It would be easy to set up a device which can accept outside messages ("make coffee") and forward them on to devices inside the network. There are ways of making that much more secure. And, if that's the case, needing the latest security update for an IoT device is less urgent.