On November 29th 2017 U2 fans were informed through their mailing list that they could enjoy a podcast of live previews of new songs from U2's pending album, coupled with live archives combined with interviews detailing live songs through the history of their tours, -plus introspective documentary style interviews combined with musical history of the band, -hailed as "a 'first-of-its-kind broadcast designed with the voice experience in mind.' " -It appears to be a case of pun intended. "'The U2 Experience' goes live on Wednesday and will be available at amazon.com/theu2experience and on the Amazon Music mobile app and Web Player. The broadcast will also be available to Prime Music and Amazon Music Unlimited customers through Alexa on Amazon Echo devices, by simply by asking, "Alexa, play The U2 Experience." It was an option available only to residents of the USA, the UK, Germany and Austria who were in possession of an Amazon account, and only prior to the U2's new album launch of Songs of Experience on December 1st. An acquaintance related the experience of being forced to download Alexa on his iPhone and provide the verbal voice command in order to activate the broadcast. Conversation on U2's chat forum asserts that a possessor of an Amazon account could avoid the obligatory $0.99/mo three month trial subscription to Amazon Music by saying "No Thanks". My iPhone possessor asserts a different situation. He said with his "No" rejection he was specifically forced to proceed into providing a command prompt to "Alexa" to access the podcast. He said that while you may have been able to access "The U2 Experience" in this manner on a desktop (and he doubted this would be the case if you had a microphone), the only way you were getting it on a device was if you downloaded Amazon Music on your device (it didn't not recognize his prior Amazon Music account created from his laptop). In order to listen to the audio podcast, he had to click "yes" to download a microphone app (by clicking the microphone he was by default downloading the Alexa microphone, the prompt wouldn't work with Siri even though he had it). He had to download the microphone app in order to ask Alexa to play the U2 experience (the play prompt icon on screen would not respond), -thus being forced to give the verbal command prompt to "Alexa", -Amazon's "voice-controlled intelligent personal assistant service". This is what it took to get "The U2 Experience" podcast to run. This was despite being a possessor of both an Amazon Music and an Amazon shopping account via his laptop. He went through U2's Facebook homepage to initiate this procedure.
Alexa was launched on Amazon Echo "smart speakers". It is now available on Sonos speakers and the HTC U11 smartphone, -and as an AI fashion consultant in a smart camera. It can give you the celebrity voice over of your choice as an alarm clock (five to choose from) and has guested Opra as a voice sample: "Alexa, let's shop Oprah's favorit things" (yielding 102 products) for a holiday promotion this Christmas. It is responsible for the largest ever installation by an advertiser in Times Square (79 feet). However you slice it, U2's preview launch for the new album amounted to a mass adoption drive of either Alexa or an Amazon account in a hurry, if you were a fan waiting on tenterhooks about the new album on Friday, and not in possesssion of either. It would be interesting indeed if my acquaintance was correct about downloading the Alexa app being the only means on a device, given internet usage by device surpassed desktop access worldwide in 2016. In other words, was it true across the board that prior Amazon account holders only had the option of downloading Alexa as an app in order to activate "The U2 Experience" verbally if they were doing so from a device? There is plenty of basis for consumer apprehension in downloading this app were the situation with voice recognition software launched by a company like Amazon (considering the company's history and its founder/owner's) assessed even at all, -all consideration of which was just conveniently swept away by band trust en masse. Consider the technology alone:
"[W]hat really got this reader worked up was Amazon’s Echo, the device that allows users to give voice instructions to a device that will tell your TV to stream video or audio. order from Amazon or other participating vendors, provide answers to simple search queries, like “Tell me the weather,” perform simple calculations, and allow you to order around smart devices in your home that are on the networks. [L]ike tell your coffee maker to make some coffee. He said, “I’d never take one of them out of the box.”
He was at a party recently with about 15-20 people when the host decided to show off her Echo. She called across the room, “Alexa, tell me the capital of Wisconsin,” and Alexa dutifully responded.
Based on his knowledge of other technologies, here is what he argues was happening:
The Echo was able to pick a voice out of a crowd engaged in conversation. That means it is capable of singling out individual voice. That means it has been identifying individual voices, tagging the as “Unidentified voice 1″, Unidentified voice 2” and so on. It has already associated the voices of its owners, and if they have set up profiles for other family members, for them as well, so it knows who goes with those voices.
Those voices may be unidentified now, but as more and more voice data is being collected or provided voluntarily, people will be able to be connected to their voice. And more and more recording is being done in public places.
So now think of that party I was at. At some time in the not too distant future, analysts will be able to make queries like, “Tell me who was within 15 feet of Person X at least eight times in the last six months.” That will produce a reliable list of their family, friends, lovers, and other close associates.
CNET claims that Amazon uploads and retains voice data from the Echo only when it has been activated by calling to it and stops recording when the request ends. But given the Snowden revelations that every camera and microphone in computers and mobile devices can be and are used as viewing and listening devices even when the owner thinks they are off, I would not be so trusting. Even if Amazon isn’t listening and recording at other times, the NSA probably can. CNET adds:
Amazon Echo is always listening. From the moment you wake up Echo to the end of your command, your voice is recorded and transcribed. And then it’s stored on Amazon’s servers….
It’s unclear how long the data is stored, but we do know that it is not anonymized. And, for now, there’s no way to prevent recordings from being saved.
Reread the first paragraph. The Echo has to be listening at all times in order to respond to the “Alexa” command. So the only question is whether Amazon or some friendly member of the surveillance state is recording then too." - Yves Smith - naked capitalism.
FYI, "naked capitalism" just happens to be on the top of the list in WaPo's first proven false ProporNot hatchet job reportage that marked the moment our new era of online censorship on the pretext of Russophobia began. Consider this, "naked capitalism" was branded by WaPo as Russian influenced and fed propaganda, a false allegation on which WaPo singlehandedly inaugerated the entire campaign against internet fake news, -with a blatant piece of fake news. I leave it to you, with the absorption of what follows to assess for yourself who is more guilty of that accusation, as you consider what's been done with it, and what sort of an inconvenience it is for Amazon that this sort of viewpoint has anywhere to exist.
Not only are we dealing with technology that ups the ante on Snowden's warnings about the danger and capacity of the NSA holding user metadata about a thousandfold (by being able to attach it to voice recognition), -we are dealing with it in corporate hands with perhaps the most politicized agenda to attack freedom of speech on the radar right now in the United States (if you find this hard to swallow, kindly read on), -being levelled at the public by the world's richest man, -one individual. It is not only a matter of capacity, but in this instance, a capacity it can be argued conclusively exists in the wrong hands, -and U2 just handed the voice imprints on Washington Post's and Bezos' target user group (precisely the demographic that Washington Post is targeting for manipulation with its current propaganda) -to Bezos' Amazon on a silver platter, potentially providing Amazon with the voice data recognition of millions of consumers, gifted to an entity already on contract with the CIA in the form of Amazon Web Services.
Additionally, SiriusXM has been offering this same individually tooled documentary service on various leading music artists for years now to their respective fanbases; U2 could have shopped around if they found any of these facts the least bit discomforting, indicating that they did not. U2 chose to launch this exercise with the largest and most unwieldy Titanic of global consumerism and wealth, Amazon and Jeff Bezos, giving him a landmark foray into the music streaming market, after he already singlehandedly demolished book publishing, -as well as purchased the Washington Post, -and Amazon (in the form of AWS) entered a $600 million, ten year cloud computing contract with the CIA (both 2013). -"When the main shareholder in one of the very largest corporations in the world benefits from a massive contract with the CIA on the one hand, and that same billionaire owns the Washington Post on the other hand, there are serious problems." -Robert McChesney. It is already demonstrable what Bezos has chosen to do with this flaming conflict of interest power, as will follow in this report. The following year Bezos entered partnerships with lead arms manufacturers Boeing and Lockheed Martin to build rocket engines, in the form of a subsidiary named Blue Origin.
Amazon is currently engaged in a bidding process for its second headquarters which could be best described as execrable in its details. Chicago, for example "has apparently offered to give $1.32 billion in income taxes collected from Amazon workers back to Amazon" (a legal norm for the State of Ill-inois), but there are 238 bids for Amazon's HQ2 on the table, and many are just as craven, leading the (afore hyperlinked) journalist who went through the thirty of these available to declare in his subheading that in some instances they were bargaining away democracy itself. Another report inaugerating November describes it thus: "Touted as the urban investment opportunity of a generation, Amazon’s 'Request For Proposals' is really a shakedown in broad daylight. And while it is always painful to watch someone grovel, the pain here is merely a side effect of a bigger economic malaise." - "The Amazon Sweepstakes" - Jacobin
"Not to be outdone [by Chicago's offer, which they quantify at $2 billion], the state of New Jersey and the city of Newark are putting up a combined $7 billion in incentives — more than the value of the initial investment and well over $100,000 for each one of the 50,000 jobs Amazon says it will create."
This makes U2's normalization of the Amazon brand in their consumer fanbase's minds more than just a little timely right at the moment, -when the name should be an anathema, -especially to the tech savvy youth market being targeted by this exercise in more than just brand synergy; -we are dealing with the potential prospect of user data synergy to best hone perception through the effective curation of the internet as a propaganda tool (again, if you doubt this, read on, -or you can start here: "The Rise of the Weaponized AI Machine" - on Cambridge Analytica). This is the actual value of user data, how it can be employed in tooling the message in a reflective feedback to best manipulate the users en masse through the refinement of individual information on all users. It might interest you to know that Cambridge Analytica's launch was based on obtaining the Facebook profiles of a bunch of Amazon employees as an adjunct to a survey (with a purchase price of $1 each), -which involved the non-consensual obtainment of the profiles of all their firends in the bargain, and violated Amazon's Terms of Service in the first place:
"According to a Guardian investigation, in early 2014, just a few months after Kosinski declined their offer, SCL partnered with Kogan instead. As a part of their relationship, Kogan paid Amazon Mechanical Turk workers $1 each to take the OCEAN quiz. There was just one catch: To take the quiz, users were required to provide access to all of their Facebook data. They were told the data would be used for research. The job was reported to Amazon for violating the platform’s Terms of Service. What many of the Turks likely didn’t realize: According to documents reviewed by The Guardian, 'Kogan also captured the same data for each person’s unwitting friends.'” - "The Rise of the Weaponized AI Machine"
Trump's unexpected election victory 2016 with Campbridge Analytica at the helm is proof positive that whoever has this data at their disposal containing the greatest quantity of users at greatest quatity of detail and puts it to use best, is the winner. It does not matter how ridiculous the candidate. Cambridge Analytica has nothing in terms of power in its employ of this data in comparison to Facebook's being in possession of all the data Cambridge Analytica attempted to grab facets of in order to put to this use, and Facebook has it on more than a billion users for years running. A perusal of the above article shows Cambridge itself, (from whom Cambridge Analytica took off with the tools) could psychologically assess you more intimately than your own partner on the basis of a mere 300 plus 'likes". The man at the helm, Kosinski, upon releasing his study, received two phone calls the same day, one being a lawsuit, the second a job offer, -both from Facebook. He took the job, and Cambridge Analytica emulated his study now that it was public record, -including an unknown number of invidiuals without consent. It is arguable Amazon is in possession of very similar power with respects to its millions of user clients. We now know a neighborhood's political make up can be determined as a demographic through just the make and model of the vehicles it collectively owns (bear in mind that one of the main pieces of consumer information available to Trump's campiagn with the push of a button thanks to Cambridge Analytica, on which they predicated their approach to individual undecided swing voters was the make and model of their vehicles; it has already been data used to alter an election outcome by changing the minds of voters through targeted advertising). Amazon already possesses years of purchasing data on many, many millions of people. The average Amazon Prime user spends $1500 through Amazon annually. (Other fun facts with this article: There were 10 million Alexa enabled devices in the hands of consumers in early 2017, - possession of an Amzon Echo increases Amazon account holders' average expenditure through Amazon $150 per year, -and it would be to Amazon's financial advantage to provide a free Amazon Echo to every account holder.) Picture this: with the incomprehensible wealth of purchasing data Amazon possesses on every account holder, -which election 2016 provided proof positive can be weaponized against the consumer when it comes to politics, - Amazon now has the added bonus of attaching even voice recognition to their profiles. And that's the bare minumum. It also puts all of this information at the disposal of non-consensual surveillance, which Snowden showed can happen with the CIA/NSA through both microphones and cameras, -even when they are thought to be "off". You can add voice sampling and conversation recording to their disposal.
-In light of these sorts of knowns, -U2 just provided Amazon with what could amount to user profiles harnessed to voice recognition on a very significant chunk of their US/UK fanbase, -apparently gratis, though it should be considered given the landmark deal U2 minted with Apple for their album prior ($100 million) -what Amazon would be willing to pay for hosting such an exclusive with these sorts of benefits? For my last article I offered this conclusion:
"Everything comes at a price. As payment for Bono's obtained cooperation on Africa (such as it was) the price is the loyalty of his audience. That payment is now due. Just as Bono commodified his celebrity to engage in these campaigns, the loyalty of the fanbase is likewise a commodity. That was the actual purchase of the exchange. Bono's celebrity is worth very little, but you are not.
The bargain was not complete; -you were part of the bargain."
That band loyalty was just obtained by Amazon in order to furnish Amazon with a batch of blithely unconscious and unconcerned Alexa users that are their target demographic for what presently amounts to Bezos' personal propaganda arm, for what potential use? -That really beggars contemplation. U2 exchanged the social capital of their audience loyalty merely for the sake of the added publicity in an album promotion. What beggars belief about this move is that U2 are now responsbile for personal public relations efforts for three out of five of the world's wealthiest individuals who own as much as half the planet's population (the top three at that, with Bezos now in 1st place, Bill Gates in second, and Warren Buffett, third), -with Bono being a major, invitation only investor in the 5th. (Better yet, Bono and Bezos lately became co-investors in a Beltway based education start-up called Ever-Fi.) Yet U2 are still regarded as progressive democrats with a similar fanbase at their feet. A fan base Amazon was just able to freely purchase as users, not just as a matter of positive brand use reinforcement. The utility is the reverse.
The context of U2's active philanthrowashing for Bill Gates and Warren Buffett came about by virtue of accepting their largesse for Bono's lobbying campaign and AIDs charity, respectively ONE and RED. It has hardly been benign, rather it helped to successfully disassociate them as investors from perhaps the most violently suppressed and largest indigenous protest mass movement to ever occur the United States, #NoDAPL and the Dakota Access Pipeline, -when U2's philanthropic sponsors were direct investors in the DAPL to the tune of literally billions of dollars. It is almost impossible to criticize the actions of a charity for AIDs and their dispensation. Ergo, the charity is an active perpetual philanthrowash that keeps all scrutiny off of the philanthropist sponsors' investments and profits, even and especially when those profits are share profits on corporations engaged in criminal, or amount to criminally negligent actions -and several at that (consider point 2) which is delineated in detail here, or consider Questions 9, 10).
Consider the latest case of Warren Buffet's $28 billion investment in Wells Fargo, a major DAPL investor with a considerable array of crimes, which now indirectly serves as a nest egg for Bono's ONE and RED, since both are up to 50% bankrolled by the Gates Foundation, and Gates Foundation's investment portfolio is over 50% Buffett, -namely Berkshire Hathway shares, -Warren Buffett's personal holding company who has majority control of Wells Fargo. As mentioned:
"U2's philanthrowashing provides cover and avoidance of the (continued) fraud and other nefarious outcomes of their billionaire sponsors' investments. (The miscreant, Wells Fargo's shares are a nest egg for RED/ONE due to Gates Foundation's being 55% bankrolled by Berkshire Hathaway shares.) Who needs to penalize or replace executives when the philanthrowash media fix is already in by direct funding? Nor is the financial dependency of ONE/RED to be taken lightly considering the buckets of cash (literally over $100 billion [the same, perchance as Jeff Bezos to date]) Warren Buffett has at his disposal to lobby say, for this Republican piece of legislation, considered “the equivalent of Republicans handing out a get-out-of-jail-free card to Wells Fargo and to Equifax”. Wells Fargo was culpable enough in the mortgage fraud that precipitated the 2008 financial crisis to have been hit with a consequent fine of $1 billion." - "How U2's Joshua Tree Tour 2017 Acclimated American Theocratic Fascism"
Coupled with the exercise of active ommission that RED and ONE so beneficently furnish to their financiers with respects to the press, Gates Foundation actively curates this pattern of ommission for both Gates and Buffett by financing the presstitudes directly, -concentrating on purportedly liberal, respected institutions, while simultaneously through direct funding, Buffet's foundations curate what gets addressed by environmental movements, and did the same with the #NoDAPL protest itself. It is in this context of philanthrowashing the planet's leading billionaires that U2 just added active endorsement of Bezos' Amazon to their list, precisely when Bezos got into the business of actively propagandizing the populace. They did this without even the exchange of the millions of dollars in sponsorhip it would grant to Bono's charity interests, so apparently ingratiating billionaires who are in the business of curating public perception is one of their reigning interests. -Especially considering that both Gates and Bezos just got to up the ante on curation of public perception by getting the latitude to curate what appears on your collective Facebook homefeeds on a daily basis, by being given curatorial powers to determine what is or what isn't "fake news" for a billion people. Washington Post was given this latitude personally by Zuckerberg after being busted within 48 hours on three massive fake news stories as per Russian hacking and influence three times in a row. Oh and, after WaPo personally put Flynn on ice. Basically Bezos isn't satisfied with his paper's utilitarian effectiveness unless his presstutides are directly intervening in the formation of the nation's cabinet, -all accomplished with anonymous CIA sourcing. Call it a win-win.
Washington Post's effectiveness in subverting Millennials is based in it aggregation of propagandistic subversion with effective environmental reportage on the worst enviironmental threats of our times, namely climate change.
"You don't want to live in a retrograde world. You don't want to live on an Earth where we have to freeze population growth, reduce energy utilization. We all enjoy an extraordinary civilization, and it is powered by energy, and it's powered by population. [...] We want the population to keep growing on this planet. We want to keep using more energy per capita." - Jeff Bezos, quoted in this article by The Verge on his rocket company collaboration with Boeing and Lockheed Martin, named Blue Origin
"Amazon does about a third of its business in the last three months of the year, aka Q4. It needs many more warehouse workers during that time, which is where the CamperForce comes in." - "Meet the Camperforce, Amazon's Nomadic Retiree Army" - Wired -a company model that was best serviced by the 2008 recession.