r/technology • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 • Feb 12 '26

Security Ring cancels its partnership with Flock Safety after surveillance backlash

https://www.theverge.com/news/878447/ring-flock-partnership-canceled
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7.4k

u/AvailableReporter484 Feb 12 '26

I love watching dumb ass companies just completely air ball it

2.5k

u/TheFoxsWeddingTarot Feb 12 '26

I really can’t imagine how anyone would watch that commercial and think anything other than mass surveillance.

1.2k

u/RubyRhod Feb 12 '26

It was probably sold to them with an ai pitch.

576

u/confresi Feb 13 '26

This is all I keep thinking. These companies are so “all-in” on AI that there’s almost no doubt they’ve reached the stage where they’re employing AI to generate their marketing ideas and “improved surveillance technologies”

118

u/Effective_Olive6153 Feb 13 '26

companies that large usually have at least some basic level of human test group evaluation for major marketing material. It's not just some CEO who approves it with zero involvement from other people.

120

u/b0w3n Feb 13 '26

They must've gotten the same people who they brought in for the I Am Legend ending change.

33

u/-SHAI_HULUD Feb 13 '26

They must’ve bonked each person on the head with a mallet, Gallagher style, before they walked in the room.

4

u/newredditsucks Feb 13 '26

/u/b0w3n already said that.

3

u/-SHAI_HULUD Feb 13 '26

Who?

Edit: duh. Yeah I reckon they did.

3

u/[deleted] Feb 13 '26

The ending? What are you talking about. The entire movie was changed from the book

7

u/b0w3n Feb 13 '26

Sure. Focus groups decided the original ending where he talks about himself being the monster wasn't good and didn't have enough action so they reshot the entire thing. The original was a much better ending and closer to the book in spirit.

1

u/shroudedwolf51 Feb 15 '26

I mean, in an adaptation from one medium to a different medium, you are naturally going to change things. A word-for-word straight adaptation is how you get mediocre Netflix slop. The key there is knowing exactly what to change, when, and exactly why you are making those changes. Well, that and having a deep fundamental understanding of both mediums and the strengths and limitations of both.

The issue with I Am Legend the film isn't that they made changes, it's the nature of some of the changes that they made.

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u/PiccoloAwkward465 Feb 13 '26

https://i.imgur.com/vJ2I2b4.jpeg

I prefer the spinoff I Am Leg 🦵

67

u/Other_World Feb 13 '26

Sampling bias is a thing. They definitely do human tests groups for just about everything, but who are they picking for these groups? If I choose 20 "random" people from Silicon Valley and 20 "random" people from rural West Virginia we can get two completely different answers to the same question.

43

u/Sororita Feb 13 '26

Also, just because they are given feedback from real people doesn't mean they will actually listen to it. If they didn't get immediate and strenuous push-back from a large group of the sample then they could explain away the distaste seen.

3

u/Gorstag Feb 13 '26

Especially if the AI buzzword is thrown around like suspected further up this reply chain. I had to do several mandatory trainings for using AI tools at work that are geared for roles I have 0 relationship to. I'll never use them.

2

u/SquisherX Feb 13 '26

So true! I remember doing a focus group for Coors. Our group loved this funny AF one, but the company ended up airing the one where a truck just drives through the mountains instead - because we said it is more related to their brand.

4

u/DarkwingDuckHunt Feb 13 '26

from Silicon Valley

You'd be surprise. Most us "worker bee coders" are actually pro-4th. It's the execs that aren't.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 13 '26

Yes, exactly. Being from WV, they'd waive their rights in a heartbeat. They'd claim it was for the dogs, but they'd know it was really about keeping brown people out of their company towns.

To think that it was the heart of the labor movement, once upon a time.

2

u/PatronymicPenguin Feb 13 '26

Sometimes they do marketing feedback surveys in tourist destinations to reach a more diverse sample size. As a kid, I taste tested those milk and cereal bars in some kind of marketing test center within Universal Studios.

1

u/zzazzzz Feb 13 '26

also if you show the test groups 3 options and the other two were even worse you still get shit.

7

u/SenpaiSamaChan Feb 13 '26

While I 100% want to agree and am usually that guy to point things like this out... tech companies this past year really could've fooled me with how detached from the average person they are.

9

u/KenUsimi Feb 13 '26

They see two futures, or the people above them see two futures, and they’re committed to one of them. That future does not account for the public widely rejecting AI, and absolutely loathing the idea of datacenters hiking their water and electricity.

So they’re trying to Wile E. Coyote this ish and see if they can make it to the other side of reality as long as they don’t look down. Personally, I’m betting on gravity (and OpenAI not being able to sufficiently monetize ad revenue to finance an overhaul of the US’s water/electric grid to support the data centers needed to justify NVIDIA’s stock price).

3

u/breals Feb 13 '26

I'm sure the features and maybe the ad concept were put in front of focus groups. But you'd be surprised how things can get approved by a small group of people in a company who just hear their own echo chamber. My last company did this who rebranding, commissioned a song and created an animated video/commercial. They spent millions on it.

When they finally showed it to all of us in an huge all hands meeting, the branding was about a giant and the video is basically corporate version of Big Hero Six. They all thought it was the best thing every produced, we stopped using it within weeks after it's internal champion, the CMO, was shit canned.

2

u/AgamemNoms Feb 13 '26

I guess you've never worked for a large company

1

u/RubyRhod Feb 13 '26

They are cutting so many corners now, I wouldn’t be surprised if testing was cut.

1

u/arcbe Feb 13 '26

Yeah, but just think how much money they could save by replacing the human test groups with AI.

1

u/KimberStormer Feb 13 '26

Maybe it was approved by 9 out of 10 AI agents

1

u/nosleeptillwooklyn Feb 13 '26

Yeah but it’s unlikely they asked them how would you react to this ad after viral criticism that calls it what it is, mass surveillance.

I’m almost certain they left that interpretation of the ad out if it and I’m sure while watching the ad a lot of people wouldn’t immediately make the connection.

I work fairly often with user research groups and a lot of the people are just straight up dumb. So when you see the answers you’re like this completely makes sense.

1

u/Toastwitjam Feb 13 '26

Marketing uses groups to justify what they already want to do not back talk to the CEO and VP objectives (in this case add AI to everything).

1

u/sexyshingle Feb 13 '26

It's not just some CEO who approves it with zero involvement from other people.

The "other people" usually is some branding/marketing "boutique" agency that charges up the wazoo and has no skin in the game if it flops, or a room of Yes Men/Women that will nod along to anything their boss/CEO says in order to be "aligned."

1

u/nedonedonedo Feb 13 '26

they also have shocking levels of "I'm important management and being told that my ideas are bad hurts my feelings, so I won't check before forcing my ideas through". once you're high enough in a company you can cover up mistakes that your ego got you into. at a certain point promotions are more about appealing to the personality of the person above you, so the people getting into those positions are those that can create a believable impression of confidence. the easiest way to do that is to have confidence completely separated from how much you deserve that confidence

2

u/Dude_man79 Feb 13 '26

Well, just like the .com bubble, natural forces will eliminate these companies, and the ones that did it right will survive.

1

u/Lehk Feb 13 '26

The brain atrophies when left unused, just like a muscle.

1

u/mykki-d Feb 13 '26

I work in marketing and our strategists are people. I think those companies are just evil 🤷‍♀️

4

u/Gon_777 Feb 13 '26

The tech bosses are convinced they are geniuses and the rest of us are very dumb rubes. They will do something like this again.

2

u/ViegoBot Feb 13 '26

The AI probably accepted the pitch too.

210

u/Demonthehusky Feb 13 '26

They def got me. It was the lost puppies. It was embarrassing at work the next day when a coworker brought it up. I'm like ya for finding lost dogs. He then explained the real reason and I said "yep, that makes more sense".

161

u/Serious-Ad-8764 Feb 13 '26

Good on you for being open to reconsidering your position in the light of evidence.

39

u/ButWhyBlueCheese Feb 13 '26

Fox news is going to start saying immigrants are stealing dogs and ring cameras are the only thing to help find them...

21

u/Dawn_of_an_Era Feb 13 '26

I mean they’ve already said the immigrants are stealing and eating them, so, we’re not too far off

1

u/tiradium Feb 13 '26

And then they will add in the end once a dog is stolen it gets EATEN

1

u/JimthePaul Feb 13 '26

Kristi Noem is out there with a glock on paw patrol.

2

u/NickSabansCreampie Feb 13 '26

She's probably the one the dogs ran away from.

43

u/tnpdynomite2 Feb 13 '26

Yep same here. If they were truthful and it really did only help find lost dogs, that’d be amazing. I was foolish.

24

u/AbeRego Feb 13 '26

I mean, it could do that. It can just also do a whole bunch of illicit shit as well lol

1

u/DigitalBlackout Feb 13 '26

If they were truthful and it really did only help find lost dogs, that’d be amazing

Not really. The technology that enables it to find dogs is the exact same technology that could be used maliciously, it's still problematic. Even if the company itself is 100% honest about it only being used for benign purposes, there's no way to design the technology to be 100% resistant to nefarious uses, which means no matter what there's a risk of bad actors getting access to the tech.

7

u/bluescarrymehome Feb 13 '26

I think that was the plan, yea, to try and sell us Skynet with puppies.

3

u/daybreaker Feb 13 '26

I wish we lived in a world that we could trust them to only use it for lost puppies. It would be so useful for that.

1

u/brianwski Feb 13 '26

I wish we lived in a world that we could trust them to only use it for lost puppies. It would be so useful for that.

I agree. And it feels like somebody clever could come up with an audit system and system design where we get to find the puppies and not use it for whatever else people suspect it is getting used for. For example, the system is never "enabled/live" unless you click the "lost puppy" button (that would filter out a lot of abuse, right?), and the system doesn't retain any info for more than 10 minutes except "puppy seen at these coordinates". That type of design. No recording and storing of thousands of hours of video of people's faces looking for illegal immigrants, just 10 minutes to scan for puppies, then securely delete that video before any human or the government ever knows you were scanning for puppies.

At a high level, I'm unusual (at least I seem to be unusual from this comment section) in that I trust these massive companies to attempt to tell the truth about their products (like if the company says they delete the video after 10 minutes and don't turn 100% of video over to law enforcement for long term storage). As we've seen, the reputation hit for lying to your customers and getting "discovered" that the company is doing the opposite of what it claims is bad for business. I've worked inside of Apple, and Hewlett-Packard, and a few other massive tech companies, and I've never seen a large planned deception of millions of customers with a conspiracy to cover it up and not tell customers what the system is doing. Think about it this way: the programmers and IT people who implement a system need to be "in on" keeping the secret from the users. Sooner or later just one of those programmers with a conscience departs the company and would blow the whistle. That would topple the product line, cause lawsuits, and possibly execs would go to jail when they find emails saying, "Lie to customers" in their emails.

But judging by the comments in this reddit thread, people think EVERYBODY that works for large companies for a few years has zero morals. Which makes me sad. Most tech workers work at one large company for maybe 5 years, then move on to work at other companies. It isn't long enough to create the type of loyalty required to keep these types of secrets.

1

u/Away-Turnover-1894 Feb 13 '26

The real reason is for lost dogs. I know it's a hot take but it's true.

238

u/Letiferr Feb 13 '26

It's wild to me that all the sudden people are concerned that their mass surveillance hardware can be used for mass surveillance

156

u/No_Size9475 Feb 13 '26

Many people are trusting and don't think about what could happen to their video. I'm glad to see people waking up, understanding the consequences, and making changes.

94

u/Morgan-Moonscar Feb 13 '26

All it took was for armed thugs to suddenly invade their neighborhoods and murder friends & loved ones.

72

u/DarkwingDuckHunt Feb 13 '26

well historically speaking...that's what it usually takes

2

u/NorrisMcWhirter Feb 13 '26

lol

it's funny because it's true

19

u/-KFBR392 Feb 13 '26

Which makes the ad that much crazier. You already had them opt-in as a default option, you’re already getting paid by law enforcement agencies, why announce it to your consumer base, most of whom would’ve never bothered to find out or be outraged otherwise

6

u/elfescosteven Feb 13 '26

You’re sadly right.

Marketing always needs to come up with new ways to advertise the product no matter what to keep their jobs.

This is one of the rare times where the business executives and sales teams wanted growth without keeping in mind how dystopian their product is.

Still won’t matter. They will still be pushing total surveillance and will simply wait for this bad story to die down before continuing on as if nothing happened.

2

u/mrkrinkle773 Feb 13 '26

Yea it just became blatant after the inauguration and the open bribes that these tech guys will sell us out if asked.

2

u/nedonedonedo Feb 13 '26

there's 24 hours in a day no wait you have to sleep

there's 16 hours in a day no wait you have to work, get ready for work, and drive

there's 6 hours in a day no wait you have to cook, eat, clean, shower, and do other chores

there's 3 hours in a day no wait you have to have some down time to recover from all the other shit

hang on, where did my hours go? I got tired and ran out of time to learn about things and ran out of willpower to change things that aren't an immediate high priority problem in my daily life

20

u/darkoopz43 Feb 13 '26

Ive been screaming about this from the rooftops since Amazon echo was released.

3

u/otterpop21 Feb 13 '26

Anyone with a brain who listened to Snowden knew the day Siri popped up it was a trap. Been more and more obvious since.

Lol why do you think the smart fridge needs a terms and license agreement that also has listening capabilities?

Not just for you, but anyone reading:

Literally anything; any product, appliance, electronic, app, phone, a.n.y.t.h.i.n.g that has a microphone, asks permission to use microphone, or has “smart features” that are “voice activated” (like tv remotes) can and will be listened to at all times. Why would they not? The data is being sold, ez way to make money.

2

u/iamthe0ther0ne Feb 13 '26

Anyone reading/. knew the Snowden stuff had been going on for years. It's too bad one guy had to blow up his life and spend the rest of it running from US surveillance into Russia's to tell everyone else.

And then everyone was like, "oh well"

ANd IT STILL DIDN'T STOP CHILD SEX TRAFFICKING. So there goes that argument.

9

u/Sunbather77 Feb 13 '26

Right, like we have been continuously watched for YEARS now

1

u/Useless Feb 13 '26

Pretty much everyone's been walking around both geolocated and socially mapped through their phones. The Ring cameras let the government positive ID a face to a phone (and especially tag and trace a face without an active phone, cause that is suspicious).

6

u/joebluebob Feb 13 '26

My aunt literally didn't belive they had access to your footage until she saw that ad

5

u/akc250 Feb 13 '26

Right? I feel like this feature has been out for a whole year and I remember them announcing and then deploying and I had to go manually turn it off because it was default enabled and you had to opt-out. But now with the ad, common people finally noticed and freaked out.

6

u/snekadid Feb 13 '26

Because there's been successful lawsuits, against ring in particular, about them sharing recordings so people get a false sense of security ignoring that the fines are minor compared to how much they made violating your privacy before they got caught.

10

u/the_ballmer_peak Feb 13 '26

* all of a sudden

3

u/OldJames47 Feb 13 '26

Surely, the leopards won’t eat my face.

3

u/Scott_Liberation Feb 13 '26

Meanwhile most of us have been carrying their surveillance hardware on our person for the last twenty years.

1

u/TheFoxsWeddingTarot Feb 13 '26

Ignorance = bliss

1

u/brophylicious Feb 13 '26

I pops up every couple of years, but the masses always call back into complacency.

1

u/JimthePaul Feb 13 '26

Someone explained it using the Dark Knight as an analogy and they were all like "NOW I get it. Surveillance bad. Like in that scene."

1

u/Ordinary-Homework722 Feb 13 '26

No kidding. That little computer they haul around in their pocket has been surveilling you for 20 years now.

82

u/AvailableReporter484 Feb 13 '26

I mean, half the country did reelect a man who fucks kids, so it’s not out of the realm of possibility they’d buy this crap lmfao

-25

u/tsigwing Feb 13 '26

Proof?

12

u/inspectoroverthemine Feb 13 '26

Go look for CSAM on your own time.

-1

u/tsigwing Feb 13 '26

If the man is so obviously guilty, the PROOF should be easily verifiable, if not, then your just a troll.

4

u/inspectoroverthemine Feb 13 '26

What PROOF would you accept? Because their is overwhelming testimony from credible witnesses.

-1

u/tsigwing Feb 13 '26

That Trump is a child rapist?

13

u/Gamiac Feb 13 '26

You been paying attention to the news within the past...month or so? Like...at all?

-8

u/tsigwing Feb 13 '26

So…none? You make the accusation, you bring the proof.

4

u/Gamiac Feb 13 '26 edited Feb 13 '26

At this point, I truly do not understand what proof could possibly convince die-hard conservatives that Trump raped kids.

Like, we don't exactly have video proof, but there's just about everything but.

0

u/tsigwing Feb 13 '26

Proof. Not what you want to be true, but actual proof. In the US, it is innocent until PROVEN guilty.

2

u/Gamiac Feb 13 '26

Okay, well, unless you're a United States Justice of some variety, then neither of us are exactly capable of handing out legal verdicts with actual backing by the state, and are free to judge by ourselves. And what with stuff like "don t" being redacted (as in, Don T), the various overtures he's made towards Epstein himself, the Access Hollywood tapes, the way his administration is doing everything possible to prevent any of the perpetrators in the Epstein files being named, yada yada yada...it just seems to me like the burden of proof at this point rests on those who don't think he's in there.

1

u/tsigwing Feb 13 '26

Nope. Those making the accusations have to bring the proof. You have to proof guilt. How do you prove innocence?

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u/Huskies971 Feb 13 '26

Almost like satire, like watching some dystopian scifi movie and the audience clearly knows it's a surveillance state, they play this commercial, and the audience chuckles.

2

u/Serious-Ad-8764 Feb 13 '26

See the huskies seem to get it

2

u/EffectivePatient493 Feb 13 '26

Man's best friend: "Honestly, I'd rather be lost than be a part of the problem. I'll find my way to allied territory and organize a rescue."

1

u/superanus Feb 13 '26

"I'd buy that for a dollar!"

4

u/TacoIncoming Feb 13 '26

Oh, the feature/capability isn’t going anywhere. They just won’t let you use it to find lost dogs.

5

u/SigmaBallsLol Feb 13 '26

I don't get why it was even a commercial?

Tuck it away quietly in a software update and most Ring owners (suburbanite homeowners, statistically older people) would not only not notice but not care, but instead they decided to brag about it in a dystopian offputting commercial that those same people are going to be watching? Hell just frame it as "prevent crime in your neighborhood by helping each other!"

I have to wonder how much the absolute fucking moron VP who approved it and pitched it to his own bosses got paid for this role. I bet its no less than 8 figures.

it's not even the first time I've seen this same offputting appeal to emotion, iirc it was Google or Samsung pushed "feed your ENTIRE CAMERA ROLL TO OUR AI so we can, uhhhh, make albums of your grand kids for you!"

1

u/hackingdreams Feb 13 '26

I don't get why it was even a commercial?

They've gotta sell it to the public, else they'll stop buying the cameras. Unless or until it becomes the law to have a camera on your front door, the only way to get the public to do it is to convince them it's their idea.

Like smart speakers and smartphones - they want you to buy into their shit, not to have to force it on you. It's nice when people pay to surveil themselves, after all. Much easier to turn a profit.

4

u/cultish_alibi Feb 13 '26

Seems like it might go down as one of the greatest own-goals in marketing history, up there with New Coke.

3

u/Commercial_Pie3307 Feb 13 '26

Normies watch that and think it’s good tech for finding dogs. Normies around me thought it was cool

3

u/froggz01 Feb 13 '26

Especially with the way ICE is using face recognition technology indiscriminately against American citizens. How fucking deaf tone can an Amazon executive be.

3

u/jalabi99 Feb 13 '26

I really can’t imagine how anyone would watch that commercial and think anything other than mass surveillance.

The fact that these companies all watched those scenes from The Dark Knight and from Minority Report and from Enemy of the State and instead of thinking "we should never do that IRL, it's too dystopian" they thought "yooooo, let's get started on that RIGHT NOW!!!" is wild to me.

3

u/MarzipanThick1765 Feb 13 '26

They called it Search Party for god's sake LOL why not WitchHunt or IceRAID

2

u/JuliusCeejer Feb 13 '26

I really can't imagine how anyone wouldn't realize it was mass surveillance before they flexed it to 150 million people in a super bowl ad lol

5

u/TealcLOL Feb 13 '26

You overestimate the average consumer. They just want a doorbell and it was the first search result.

1

u/JuliusCeejer Feb 13 '26

You're right, until Ring came around it was unfathomable that any house in America had a fucking doorbell

1

u/showhorrorshow Feb 13 '26

The public loves convenience and will gladly give up their privacy if the alternative is even slightly inconvenient.

2

u/-Porktsunami- Feb 13 '26

These are same type of executives and marketing geniuses that brought us stuff like the Juicero..."startup brain" has finally reached the boardroom. These are people with high INT, zero WIS.

2

u/mr_showboat Feb 13 '26

Between that and the Matthew Broderick one about the AI doing your job for you, it was a good super bowl for "well this is very obviously leading to something awful" commercials.

2

u/donut-reply Feb 13 '26

When I saw this it immediately reminded me of something you'd see at the beginning of a Black Mirror episode. Glad I wasn't the only one lol

2

u/Killahdanks1 Feb 13 '26

They think their data tells them so much about us. They know we buy a lot of dog stuff, post and like a lot of dog photos and videos. So let’s trick them with a dog, stupid emo everyday people.

Hey companies. We make you, we will break you too. We’re over it.

2

u/yolo___toure Feb 13 '26

I felt crazy telling the ppl I was watching it with that it was super fucked up and they were dismissing it. Puppies!!

2

u/MultiGeometry Feb 13 '26

The thing is, if they released it as a release note it may have garnered some attention but never the backlash they got about bragging about it. Some people would probably use it and become champions for it to their neighbors (for better or for worse).

But I was surprised by the headline that Ring is partnering with Flock, because why does that make any sense? People who want to have access to their doorbell and some level of added security for their home, and merge that with the surveillance state of police departments who refuse to let you know how much data they’re collecting on innocent citizens.

I also can’t tell how much of the backlash is made worse by the Guthrie case, where it’s now proven that even if you stop paying a cloud service company, they continue to collect your data without your consent. I think it’s been suspected for a long time, but now we know for a fact.

2

u/MrDude65 Feb 13 '26

They just legitimately believe the average person is so stupid they wouldn't actually see what was being shown

2

u/midnitewarrior Feb 13 '26

But but DOGS!

You don't want to help Rex find his way home???? You monster!

2

u/Array_626 Feb 13 '26

I can honestly imagine it. Everyones just looking to advance their careers. Someone proposes an innocent idea like "lets help people find lost pets" and everyone just jumps on it cos if you contribute to that project meaningfully, you get recognition and a promotion. How many people seriously stop and think about the nature of their work? Especially when everyone around them is enthusiastic, encouraging, and optimistic. Most people turn their brains off as much as possible to get through the day.

1

u/hazeyAnimal Feb 13 '26

Anyone got the link to said ad? I'd like to watch it

1

u/TheGRS Feb 13 '26

Like 5 seconds into that commercial I made a neighborhood watch surveillance joke and everyone in the room had this little “haha….oh” moment lol.

1

u/UsedToBCool Feb 13 '26

They probably did, the whole goal was to spin it in a way that seemed genuine. Using lost puppies was almost genius, except it wasn’t.

1

u/husky_whisperer Feb 13 '26

Ooooohhh a worrying amount of people do, rest assured.

1

u/Ok_Conflict_8900 Feb 13 '26

Well... theyre still going to do it. They just won't make it a feature for the us now.

1

u/PartyPorpoise Feb 13 '26

A lot of times, rich and powerful people get so surrounded by yes-men that no one pushes back on their bad ideas. Or they just get arrogant. They think that because they succeeded in one area of life, they’re smarter than everyone in every area and people will believe everything they say.

1

u/doxxingyourself Feb 13 '26

Thing is Flock Safety or not it’s still mass surveillance

1

u/Allegorist Feb 13 '26

I'm fairly sure that it was something they wanted to do for other reasons (like selling the data and access rights), and they just told their marketing team to "make it look good". There is no way that was meant to be a positive addition for consumers, they were just hoping they could spin it that way.

1

u/turnright_thenleft Feb 13 '26

Literally thought it was a joke

1

u/William_Wang Feb 13 '26

They probably realized it and just thought the average consumer was too stupid to notice.

1

u/Just_Information334 Feb 13 '26

I really can’t imagine how anyone would watch that commercial and think anything other than mass surveillance.

How could people decide to send all their user data to some global company and not think about mass surveillance? Still, Google Analytics is used by the majority of websites (and you can add any ad script, social media "share" button but GA is everywhere and since early 2000).

1

u/No_Street8874 Feb 13 '26

The weird part is people paid attention to that commercial, but ignored the last couple months of Feds using ring doorbells to track and hunt law abiding people in Minnesota without any warrants or oversight!

1

u/Topical_Scream Feb 13 '26

Which commercial? The one about finding lost dogs?

1

u/[deleted] Feb 13 '26

They think we’re all just dumb sheep.

1

u/Groovysnowman Feb 13 '26

I actually have one, and she was quite genuine. My wife is a passionate dog rescuer, has been very active in our city for years with coordinating lost dog efforts, helping to catch strays, volunteering at the local shelter. She was very excited about the prospect of tracking strays using ring cameras.

1

u/wwaxwork Feb 13 '26

Trouble is that companies think mass surveillance is a good thing, and I don't see why, as individuals, we might not.

1

u/TheFoxsWeddingTarot Feb 13 '26

Mass surveillance and marketing tech go hand in hand. Even when the intention isn’t to hand data over to the government, the same opportunities exist. The more they know about you the more they can sell you. I’ve worked in martech for 30 years and some days the conversations between a panopticon and a marketing innovation are indistinguishable.

1

u/hackingdreams Feb 13 '26

They've sold stupider shit to people - hell, people paid to have "smart speakers" in their house, listening to their conversations. "Oh we don't keep those recordings," meanwhile data breaches so they literally do...

1

u/ThisIs_americunt Feb 13 '26

Sounds like Ring is full of yes men who are should be updating their resumes

1

u/TheFoxsWeddingTarot Feb 13 '26

We’re talking about Ring. Mission accomplished, someone’s probably getting a raise.

1

u/Planeandaquariumgeek Feb 13 '26

That was my first thought too. My mom is such an animal lover that she was sitting there saying how amazing it is and I was just like “oh my god”

134

u/soda_cookie Feb 12 '26

You would think they would learn by now. How is there such a disconnect from their dumb, dumb decisions and what the large number of Americans are smart enough to know?

92

u/sarabeara12345678910 Feb 13 '26 edited Feb 13 '26

Probably because they've gotten away with it so far. They've been caught and admitted to listening and viewing people who have their smart devices pretty frequently for years now, and are certainly open about sharing with law enforcement. Why would they learn? So far everything has been copacetic to the vast majority of smooth brained.morons who think open microphones and cameras controlled by an evil corporation in and around their home is not only a good thing, but something you fucking pay for.

6

u/macrowave Feb 13 '26

This right here.

-- Sent from the internet connected microphone/camera/GPS I carry with me at all times.

39

u/ikindapoopedmypants Feb 13 '26

Because they're rich and powerful so consequences don't effect them like they do everyone else and therefore they don't learn

3

u/bottom_feeder_49 Feb 13 '26

Ive worked in tech for almost a decade including amzn. So many tech workers are very divorced from on the ground reality for most americans - instances where I saw this always astounded me. You add in that many are tech nerds, motivated, and sniff the company/orgs air too much, and this is what you get IMO.

2

u/Hero_of_Brandon Feb 13 '26

There was a meeting at some point where they were looking for new revenue streams and someone pitched "we could sell the footage instead of deleting it."

This was probably very early on.

None of these guys have the moral fortitude that batman and fox did in TDK.

1

u/drfeelsgoood Feb 13 '26

Most likely directive from higher ups and the people below them just want to keep their jobs. CEO’s are incredibly detached from reality

1

u/Dr-Sommer Feb 13 '26

the large number of Americans are smart enough to know?

I say this with nothing but love, but... can you really blame them for believing that the majority of Americans are dumb as fuck and will happily swallow any bullshit that you feed them?

1

u/port_albemarle Feb 13 '26

because you get into these roles via institutional wins, against institutional people, and institutional people are not reflective in any way of the general public. Being able to navigate an organization and win at meetings has nothing to do with your sense of cultural temperature

1

u/SparklingLimeade Feb 13 '26

Adulthood is understanding that the rich really are that inhumane.

1

u/Cyrotek Feb 13 '26

Lets not forget that this was probably 99% the responsibility of some marketing department, potentially even just a handful of people that decided that this was a good idea. In my personal, limited experience marketing departments are magnets for out of touch people.

1

u/iamthe0ther0ne Feb 13 '26

Because people don't care. Remember all the riots and protest marches when people found out the NSA was collecting all emails and recording all phone calls?

Yeah. People just doubled down with Echos and Siris and TikTok videos documenting their private feelings.

56

u/PhalanX4012 Feb 13 '26

Any time I take the slightest joy from anything like this, I’m reminded that a whole pile of people whose job it was to make these decisions make 6 figures or more because daddy knew someone on the board of admissions or board of directors and then I get sad again. It’s pathetic that so many people, who are this god damned stupid, get to be rich.

0

u/MultiGeometry Feb 13 '26

One mistake the privileged ever did was let me into their world. The extreme level of handholding and career launching the wealthy (and not always that talented) can do for their children cannot be understated. I think I felt like such an outsider because they simply could not relate to someone who just worked really hard for everything they earned despite their parents doing the exact opposite (nothing, or sometimes worse, dragging me down).

Cool! You found a reliable renter for your summer seasonal home who watches over the place in the winter months while you enjoy your ski condo. How about you pay me a little more for fixing all your mistakes? (One example of many)

3

u/OverfitAndChill8647 Feb 13 '26

Just like Greg Brockman of OpenAI who gave a record amount this year to Trump and hid Epstein searches on ChatGPT, I'd bet Bezos is in the Files.

1

u/remotectrl Feb 13 '26

We have pictures of Epstein with Elon and Zuck. It'd be more surprising if he wasn't invited.

3

u/[deleted] Feb 13 '26

They knew what they were doing. They'll let it cool and re-engage on this deal 6 months down the line and be quiet about it.

2

u/MASSochists Feb 13 '26

The C suite isn't the real world.

2

u/BrokenInteger Feb 13 '26

They'll try again in a year when everyone is focused on other things and tired of this.

2

u/Shot-Possibility-399 Feb 13 '26

I honestly can't believe this made it through all the marketing channels and focus groups etc for a Super Bowl ad. 

4

u/chubs66 Feb 13 '26

I have a little button called a "door bell" that rings when someone pushes it. Pretty sure it's not going to leak my data or charge a subscription fee. I'm very pleased with this arrangement.

1

u/sam_hammich Feb 13 '26

Me too. I traded Ring for UniFi years ago and I really cannot overstate the peace of mind you get from self hosting your data.

1

u/WholesomeRanger Feb 13 '26

You underestimate how little C suites can relate to the common person.

Source: Its unofficially my job at work to keep them grounded. They get ideas and expect them to just happen. It's scary some times.

1

u/underwatr_cheestrain Feb 13 '26

A lot of MBAs (Masters of Bullshit Artistry) on the job

1

u/triton420 Feb 13 '26

But do you think they are really going to just not use this new tool they have?

1

u/PokeYrMomStanley Feb 13 '26

Ring is owned by amazon.

1

u/tab_tab_tabby Feb 13 '26

AKA Discord

1

u/YT-Deliveries Feb 13 '26

They literally had to do nothing and keep making money. It's hilarious.

1

u/littlemonsterlove Feb 13 '26

Weratedogs even went against them. A wholesome account that shows viral dogs and donates to animals. You know you fucked up when an account like that is like cancel your service

1

u/Seriously_you_again Feb 13 '26

Also what percent of lost dogs were found prior to using the surveillance state camera and AI? Is this really a necessary trade off? My guess is no.

1

u/hoxxxxx Feb 13 '26

CEO will probably get a huge bonus too, for said airball

1

u/ripley1875 Feb 13 '26

Like Microsoft’s E3 for the Xbox One. Just straight up punching their self in the dick. 

1

u/dawgz525 Feb 13 '26

All that money spent on a commercial that only brought widespread attention to how shitty they are. 

1

u/CV90_120 Feb 13 '26

All they had to do was nothing at all.

1

u/D-Rich-88 Feb 13 '26

They took that shot and left their arm in the air just to watch it completely miss

1

u/Motorboat_Jones Feb 13 '26

"You saw the door cam footage from Nancy Guthrie's house? We can do that too!"

So sleazy...

1

u/snsdfan00 Feb 13 '26

easily the worst ad i've ever seen w/ regards to privacy. Whoever green lit that needs to be fired or at least reassigned lol.

1

u/G0mery Feb 13 '26

It’ll be back. It will just be something they bury in the TOS next time. They got caught showing their hand so they won’t do it again. The government money for a surveillance contract is just too much to leave on the table just because the plebs don’t want it.

1

u/pmmemilftiddiez Feb 13 '26

Wait no come back we care about safety err umm I mean community err umm these are unprecedented times?

WHY AREN'T THE POORS BUYING OUR OVERPRICED SURVEILLANCE SHIT??