I’ve definitely turned into the paranoid nutcase within my friend group in recent years, I hate that everything is “smart” nowadays requiring an app/internet connection & account, just to do basic things that didn’t require any of that before.
What’s some things currently making you ramble like an old man?
You would be entirely correct, these technologies are heavily subsidized by the surveillance state, and a convergence of capitalist interests that libs like to call surveillance capitalism.
This definitely has that paranoid nutcase flavour.
I mean most smart devices are insecure but I haven't seen any evidence of malevolent intent.
The entire history of the CIA is reason enough for me to keep my smart TV off the grid
I mean, malevolent to the degree that their interests are diametrically opposed to our interests. To the NSA, more avenues of data collection are good, so they will do what they can to expand. To Amazon, more profit is good, so they will sell as many devices as possible and sell as much private information as possible for as much money as possible. To police and federal agencies, more arrests and more political control is good, so they will use information gathered by these devices to the extent allowed by law (and further).
If you're someone who values privacy and freedom then those entities' actions could be called malevolent, even if they're just acting in their best interest. If you don't care about those things then it's probably no big deal I guess.