Amazon Echo (Alexa) VS PlayStation 5
Verdict DROP IT BUY IT
The Reality The FTC and Department of Justice found Amazon violated the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) by retaining children's Alexa voice recordings indefinitely -- keeping them for years -- and undermining parents' actual deletion requests: even when a parent asked Amazon to delete a child's data, the company failed to delete transcripts of what the child had said from all of its internal databases. Amazon agreed to pay a $25 million civil penalty in May 2023 and is now required to overhaul its deletion practices, delete inactive children's Alexa accounts, and implement new privacy safeguards around geolocation data. Independent, directly measured tests back up the substance of the claim, even if 'a thing of the past' oversells it slightly. Lead system architect Mark Cerny demonstrated Spider-Man's in-game fast-travel loading time dropping from 8.10 seconds on PS4 Pro to just 0.8 seconds on PS5 -- a 10x improvement. Separately, independent testing found Spider-Man: Miles Morales going from the home screen to the main menu in about 7 seconds on PS5, with saved-progress loading in under 2 seconds, versus roughly 43 seconds on PS4. Loading screens weren't eliminated in every game across the platform, but in the specific, heavily marketed comparisons Sony highlighted, the real-world numbers hold up.
SHORT ANSWER
Amazon Echo (Alexa): The FTC and DOJ found Amazon retained children's Alexa voice recordings indefinitely and failed to honor parents' deletion requests across its systems, resulting in a $25 million COPPA settlement in 2023 and a mandated overhaul of its deletion practices.
PlayStation 5: Sony's claim that the PS5's SSD would make loading screens a thing of the past is backed by real, independently measured results -- including an 8.10-second to 0.8-second fast-travel improvement in Spider-Man, demonstrated directly by lead architect Mark Cerny.