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January 25, 2020 11:34 pm

What Happens When 'Ring Neighbors' Are Always Watching?

The New York Times reports on "Ring Neighbors," a local social networking service launched by Amazon in 2018 where users "share videos of delivery people carelessly throwing packages, or failing to wait for an answer at the door; others share footage of mail people navigating treacherous ice, or merely waving at the camera."On a U.S. Postal Service forum, a mail carrier asked: "Anyone else feel kind of creeped out that people are recording and watching you, up close, deliver mail to their house or is it just me...?" The company also selects videos from its users to be shared on Ring TV, a video portal run by the company, under categories such as "Crime Prevention," "Suspicious Activity" and "Family & Friends." The videos are, essentially, free ads: The terrifying ones might convince viewers to buy cameras of their own; funny or sweet ones, at a minimum, condition viewers to understand front-door surveillance as normal, or even fun... Ring videos also provide a constant stream of news and news-like material for media outlets. The headlines that accompany those videos portray an America both macabre and surreal: "Screams for Help Caught on Ring Camera," in Sacramento; "Man pleads for help on doorbell camera after being carjacked, shot in Arizona," in Phoenix; "WOMAN CAUGHT ON MEDFORD DOORBELL CAMERA WITH STOLEN GUN," in Oregon; "Alien abduction' caught on doorbell cam," in Porter, Tex. (it was a glitch); "Doorbell camera captures Wichita boy's plea for help after getting lost." And then there are videos like one shared by Rob Fox, in McDonough, Ga., in which his dog, locked out of the house, learns to use his doorbell. Mr. Fox posted the video to Facebook and then Reddit, from which the story drew news coverage. Ring contacted him, too, he said, to ask whether the company could use the footage in marketing materials. Elsewhere, the footage is billed as entertainment. In early December, "America's Funniest Home Videos," which has been aggregating viewer videos since the 1980s, released a best-of compilation: "Funny Doorbell Camera Fails." It is composed almost entirely of people falling down... Home surveillance means you're never quite home, but you're never completely away from home, either. Footage from one Florida camera showed a bearded man who "licks the doorbell repeatedly. Then he stands back and stares," according to the Times. And they also report that Ring cameras are now also being stolen, "leaving their owners with a final few seconds of footage — a hand, a face, a mask — before losing their connections."

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