Amazon did this with their cloud security cameras as well.
Spotify did it with their “Car thing”
It’s common and I agree, should be illegal.
To be mildly fair to Spotify Car Thing lasted for at least 3yrs. The worst part was, imo, it was really good. Like sure, my phone does voice commands but they work like 1/5 times. Car Thing worked nearly 100%, responded to anyone in the cars voice (pro/con depending on situation lol), and was a nice display for my preAndroidAuto headunit. Honestly I think the biggest mistake was that it was tied to a car, I used it on my desk for a while as a dedicated music control surface and it worked well. If more time went into making it just a universal Spotify controller it would have been much better as a thing. Have it mounted next to your receiver, or slap a battery in it and put it on a coffee table during a party and that would have been cool AF and requires zero phone interactions.
Should be required to open source it and unlock everything before sunsetting products.
