I miss the days of VHS and DVD shelfs in homes, for example. If you bought the tapes and had them in your home, no corporate entity could alter those tapes without your consent, monitor how many times you watch them, sell your data to whomever they please without your knowledge, roll out new mandatory conditions to a 'user agreement,' or remove them from your library if/when they like.
I noticed some dumb change in how Dictionary definitions are shown in the Spotlight (ie, overall search my computer function) in MacOS this week. I've turned off all auto-updates, and I didn't make that change or consent to it. But despite paying the full price all by myself for this machine, I clearly don't have 100% control over it. It seems very clearly to me that consumers having control and privacy over their Internet-connected devices is a bygone era.
After Blizzard, the video game company, replaced copies of Warcraft 3 that I and others had paid for in full and installed on our computers that we could play without connecting to the Internet with a lower-quality copy that prohibited offline play - I swore I'd never pay for a video game again*, and 3 years later I haven't backslid on that. I felt so angry, cheated, and robbed by that. (*Edit: my criticism and frustration is really more with larger developers/companies/creators - I appreciate and am happy to support smaller, more independent and libre ones.)
Many people probably won't be bothered by these things, but I am. I don't want to pay full price for something that I don't truly own. I miss the familiarity. I miss the reliability. I miss feeling like it's mine. Dependable. Trustworthy.
Picking my old guitar up again has never looked so appealing. I think I want to go back to investing more time, money, and energy into things that aren't connected to the internet
I know how you feel, OP. Regarding data collection; right before I was about to buy a, "Robot Vacuum", I decided to check the security side of things. I learned that some of these vacuums have a camera, for navigation purposes supposedly, and that camera can save everything it captures and send it up to a server. So I've put that purchase on pause for now.. I need to further investigate what product I can purchase that does not have a built in camera. I can manage the connections it makes to the internet if it needs to of course through something like pi-hole.
I understand your pause on purchasing the robot vacuum. So many of these devices seem designed to collect every bit of your data that they can get their hands on, ostensibly justified by some veneer of convenience to the customer (ie, data livestock) or their 'safety' or 'privacy' (lol). As someone with lesser tech knowledge than you do to manage such data siphoning, I think it's safe to say I'll never be interested in owning a robot vacuum
Check out Valetudo. It turns supported robo vacuums into local only devices. Works amazingly well and integrates with Home Assistant for the whole tech nerd cloudless smart home experience.
I've a Dreame L10s Ultra flashed with it, very happy with my purchase. A bit scary to install everything but if you read the instructions before doing it you should be fine :)
Speaking as someone who has gone through several of them from several brands... All the robot vacuums are scams anyway.
The batteries wear out quickly. They are consumable parts not covered by warranty.
The brushes wear out quickly. Also consumable parts not covered by warranty.
The filters eventually become clogged and render the device unusable without replacement. Also consumable and not covered by warranty.
And honestly I would be willing to put up with all of the above if they did a good job vacuuming, but they don't and won't.
Wow... thanks for your input! I appreciate it.