Watching the babysitter if you think she's abusing your kids.

Monitoring your office if you're a politician afraid of poisoning.

Making an OnlyFans of Grandma pooping.

Lots of legitimate uses if you're creative enough.

In what reality is there any need for a door-hook camera

maybe for when the police illegally raid, eat your lemon pound cake, steal your money and fuck up your visible cameras?

just because YOU can't think of any use other than creepy doesn't mean the rest of us are so afflicted.

He could’ve used literally any other example, but of course he chose the creepy one. Could’ve stood on the stance that businesses would need them for shoplifting ffs.

I feel like this quote was intended to be sarcastic, but idk, Poe’s law after all.

This would probably have been a better defense then "omg! This thing being advertised as a towel hook that no one will notice, was being used as a towel hook to spy on someone?"

Ah, going with the Fox News defense i see.

“Should we expect every online retailer to be responsible for everything sold on their platform?”

The fact that the answer to this question is up in the air shows just how bent over to business this country is. Of course they should be held responsible for the things they sell.

Imagine for a moment if someone listed heroin on Amazon. Do you think Amazon should be held responsible for selling that?

Why would US policy be structured to allow industry to create online marketplaces that openly sell and advertise items for illegal purposes? Should we allow it because it's easier for one store to sell every type of instant garbage under the sun without oversight? Why is that something we should encourage or accommodate?

Products aren't speech. Just because it's slightly inconvenient for Amazon to have a person look through new product listings before they're approved because maybe there's millions of them doesn't mean we owe them that savings.

I feel like there's a difference between user posts and physical products. Surely Walmart couldn't sell "2in1 Baby Formula Rat Poison" and say "well we didn't know the supplier was going to put rat poison in it!" These are items that they are selling and directly making a profit from, don't they have some responsibility to do their own QC?

"Should we expect every online retailer to be responsible for everything sold on their platform?"

Let's change a couple of words and see whether your opinion changes

"Should we expect every retailer to be responsible for everything sold in their store.

If it's reasonable to expect physical retailers to take some responsibility for the legality and safety of items in their stores, then what's different about it being a virtual store?

Physical goods aren't protected speech. You're comparing laws regarding apples with laws regarding oranges. If you insist on doing that, I have to point out that speech that can cause direct harm is also not protected speech, but that's if we assume the invalid comparison to be valid.

I think that if you're taking 8-45% of the selling price of the things people move through your platform, you should be held more accountable than somewhere that people can post hate speech for free.

Amazon is full of fakes and blatant fraud, and they absolutely should be policing that under the threat of enormous fines that they would actually notice and far exceed the cost of doing their job.

But is what they sold here illegal to buy in that territory? And should it be? In Japan for example, most camera phones make a noise when you take a photo. Is it time for lawmakers to actually pay attention to what is being sold?

“Should we expect every online retailer to be responsible for everything sold on their platform?”

I don't really see the drawback of them being required to reasonably vet everything they are selling. I don't know where to draw the line, exactly, but I'm not suggesting they need to product test everything to make sure it's okay, but in this case where it's clearly being created and advertised in such a manner they should assume some responsibility. Many times they are actually the seller in these, if not at least a broker. They are very much involved directly in the transaction. I don't see much of drawback from this, but I could be missing something.

As for moderation, as far as I can tell, the whole idea of an "online message system" completely falls apart if platforms are responsible for everything said on the platform. It would require every post to be moderated, and that is (or was, at least) just infeasible. Well, maybe no with AI. . .but is that any better?

Completely missing the point. It was very clearly being advertised to be used in this way, and it was approved by amazon. It would only be comparable if gun manufacturers were advertising "a drug dealer will never notice you're carrying it" or something similar.

If you advertise your product specifically for doing something that is inherently wrong, yes.