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What popular product do you think is modern day snakeoil? (lemm.ee)

submitted 5 months ago by Irelephant@lemm.ee to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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[–] mukt@lemmy.ml 8 points 5 months ago (2 children)

IoT, AI, much of consensus based academia and press.

[–] Irelephant@lemm.ee 11 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

I feel like there is legitimate uses for IoT and Ai but it gets shoved into everything where it isn't necessary.

[–] JoMiran@lemmy.ml 8 points 5 months ago (2 children)

How is IoT snakeoil? A great chunk of the world's infrastructure runs on IoT devices. Your electric, gas, and water meters are almost assuredly IoT if you are serviced within the US.

[–] DirigibleProtein@aussie.zone 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Poor design and implementation. The S in IOT stands for security. So many devices connected to the internet that don’t need to be. I get that it’s cool to control devices from your phone, but why is it necessary to send data from the device to a company’s server so I can retrieve it with an app? I should be able to connect to the device directly from the app, across my local network, without having to send private data to the cloud.

[–] JoMiran@lemmy.ml 9 points 5 months ago

I don't disagree, but that's not "snakeoil".

Snake oil is a term used to describe deceptive marketing, health care fraud, or a scam. Similarly, snake oil salesman is a common label used to describe someone who sells, promotes, or is a general proponent of some valueless or fraudulent cure, remedy, or solution.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_oil

[–] mukt@lemmy.ml 2 points 5 months ago

Thankfully. I do not need to tolerate the bullshit that Americans apparently have to.

As someone with deep experience in analysis of power sector, I can assure you that anything "smart" or "intelligent" will pointlessly increase cost to the final consumer, and margin for the owners of supply-delivery-chain. No exceptions.