Charles Martin
Audio hardware maker Sonos has removed a promise from its US user agreement that it wouldn't sell users' personal information, which went unnoticed until eagle-eyed users spotted the change.
The pledge, which had been in all previous versions of the user agreement, was excised in a revision dated June 2024. The change was first noticed on a Reddit forum devoted to Sonos gear soon afterwards, and garnered immediate negative reactions.
The original wording, "Sonos does not and will not sell personal information about our customers," is still present in user agreements for other countries. At least for now.
Sonos, in making this change, seems to be inviting further user discontent following a negative reaction to the recent redesign of its controller app for iOS. The new version drew user ire after dropping numerous features that had been in the previous version, such as the ability to shuffle the song list or edit it on the fly.
There is no way to opt-out of the new Sonos user agreement without returning the products purchased. The uproar is similar to the a recent and similar PR debacle that befell Adobe when it changed its terms of service for Creative Cloud apps and hosting.
In that change, Adobe appeared to give itself perpetual worldwide rights to use content created by users and stored in Creative Cloud for any purpose, including potentially training its AI engine. Adobe has since had to issue two further clarifications in an effort to correct the unclear wording of the original update.
Adobe also reassured users that it would not leverage user-created content to train its Firefly AI engine or take ownership of any images or sounds created by its software. It has not yet, however, made clear if the terms give it the right to license user content to other entities.
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10 Comments
It’s called a race to the bottom
Upscale consumers like those most likely to purchase Sonos’ audio hardware should do what I’m doing — writing to the company telling them they are off the consideration list until the old policy is reinstated.
i did the same thing when a certain car company announced it would drop CarPlay support.
Same as always: It will make some waves in some forums. No one will return their Sonos products (as they will probably not recover their money on the now useless equipment) and in a few weeks it will continue business as usual. Usually almost no one reads these agreements anyway.
I don’t trust Sonos, from day one.