The domestication of privacy-invasive technology on YouTube: Unboxing the Amazon Echo with the online warm expert

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to explore how unboxing videos on YouTube contribute to the domestication of privacy-invasive technology. Further, the objective is to show how consumer influencers on YouTube adapt to the flexible persona of the online warm expert (OWE) which expands the concept of the ‘warm expert’ from the domestication literature ( Bakardjieva, 2005 , Internet Society: The Internet in Everyday Life. London: Sage Publications). I argue that the OWE and unboxing discourse advance corporate interests of surveillance capitalism in home environments by promoting the circulation of emergent consumer technologies and eschewing meaningful discussion of privacy and surveillance issues. A case study of the Amazon Echo smart speaker and Alexa, its voice-activated personal assistant, is presented. The research consists of a qualitative thematic analysis of unboxing videos ( N = 73) and viewer comments on YouTube. Unboxing discourse reflects normative consumer culture values that are detached from critical discussions of surveillance or the informational privacy framework of end-user agreements. As a practical implication, the study helps look beyond the household and traditional social relationships in the domestic sphere to understand how technological domestication is being shaped in a paradigm of consumer culture that is fused with the infrastructural and cultural logics of the Internet and social media.