In 2024, a user noticed this odd traffic on their local network, took a screenshot of the graph, and posted it to Twitter
After discussing the issue with other Twitter users, the original poster realized that this graph was actually a mistake with their router or something. This reporting software was reporting some other device’s network traffic as being the washing machine’s traffic. The washing machine was actually only using a reasonable amount of data.
Despite this past revelation, in 2026, someone put together a “meme” of sorts comparing past predictions of the future to that 2024 graph
For whatever reason, that “meme” was put through AI post-processing of some sort. Was the attempt to “upscale” this image after it had been passed around and been automatically compressed down by various platforms? Was it someone using some newfangled AI-assisted compression technique in an attempt to create a smaller file size than any of the more traditional compression techniques? No idea. For whatever reason, it seems someone put it through some sort of AI post-processing that left the image with some nonsense text on the graph portion.
I saw this “meme” and decided to share it here without scrutinizing the text on the graph. As mentioned in my first point, this graph was originally posted years ago, so I was already familiar with it and did not feel the need to read into it in the image I was sharing. I felt safe assuming it was just the same graph that I remember seeing years back.
After users here called out the nonsense text, I just recreated the “meme” from scratch. I grabbed the original screenshot of the graph from Twitter and a stock photo of clouds, and just placed some text on the image so that this is more-or-less the same exact “meme”, but without the AI gibberish
Privacy concerns, unecessary technical faultpoints, ownership and control concerns, security vulnerabilities (that then offer a jump point to compromise the rest of the network), bullshit repair hampering…
I volunteer my private information. Here it is for you too: I run the dishwasher at 55C in eco mode which takes 4h and 5 minutes. There, now the whole internet knows about it. It doesn’t have a camera pointed at my bed, it’s a dishwasher.
The wifi is not needed for it to work, it’s an addictional interface. If anything it provides redundancy, in case some of the buttons (which are exposed to water and chemicals) fail.
All my IoT devices are in a separate vlan and ssid, so security doesn’t worry me much
And regarding repair, I chose this brand because they offer replacement parts even for 20 year old appliances, with manuals how to repair it yourself. And again, if the wifi fails I will still have the buttons.
Spying on you (yours doesn’t seem to do that yet, but see pt.2)
Getting hacked because the domain it communicates with wasn’t renewed and got hijacked by scriptkiddies
Overall I’m quite excited about smart home stuff, but it must live on its own isolated network with some device I have full control over as a bridge to the internet (home-assistant+tailscale or a similar setup). No “IoT” device should have direct internet access, ever.
Point 1 doesn’t concern me much because the oven doesn’t come with a camera or microphone. At most they might know how hot I bake my pizza at. I can tell you all here: it’s 180C.
Point 2 doesn’t either, all IoT devices run their own WLAN isolated from my network and each other.
Similar setup here, home assistant bridge which is then available via reverse proxy from the internet.
Yeah nah they’re not big enough carrots for the concerns introduced
What exactly are the concerns?
Privacy concerns, unecessary technical faultpoints, ownership and control concerns, security vulnerabilities (that then offer a jump point to compromise the rest of the network), bullshit repair hampering…
I volunteer my private information. Here it is for you too: I run the dishwasher at 55C in eco mode which takes 4h and 5 minutes. There, now the whole internet knows about it. It doesn’t have a camera pointed at my bed, it’s a dishwasher.
The wifi is not needed for it to work, it’s an addictional interface. If anything it provides redundancy, in case some of the buttons (which are exposed to water and chemicals) fail.
All my IoT devices are in a separate vlan and ssid, so security doesn’t worry me much
And regarding repair, I chose this brand because they offer replacement parts even for 20 year old appliances, with manuals how to repair it yourself. And again, if the wifi fails I will still have the buttons.
Bud.
I told you i don’t want to connect my dishwasher to the internet. In fact i was fairly emphatic about how much that was Not Going To Happen
Me giving you reasosn was a courteous reaponse to an inquiry, not an invitation to proselytise.
You’re getting weirdly insistent at this point. You do you, i’m not doing it. Respect that.
I never said that you should, THAT is a super weird take. I’m explaining MY reasoning to do it, the carrots are more than enough for me.
Do you always think that people talk about you in particular when discussing technology online?
Overall I’m quite excited about smart home stuff, but it must live on its own isolated network with some device I have full control over as a bridge to the internet (home-assistant+tailscale or a similar setup). No “IoT” device should have direct internet access, ever.
Point 1 doesn’t concern me much because the oven doesn’t come with a camera or microphone. At most they might know how hot I bake my pizza at. I can tell you all here: it’s 180C.
Point 2 doesn’t either, all IoT devices run their own WLAN isolated from my network and each other.
Similar setup here, home assistant bridge which is then available via reverse proxy from the internet.