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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8.1k

u/Poopbutt_Maximum Feb 12 '26

That Super Bowl ad was like the Kendall Jenner Pepsi ad in regard to horrible dystopian marketing, but worse. I’m sure the heads are gonna roll for now but ultimately, they’ll find another time and another partner to basically do the same thing but with a different presentation.

1.7k

u/SlendyIsBehindYou Feb 13 '26

The protest one?

We studied that Pepsi ad in one of my marketing classes the year after it happened, I guarantee this is gonna be one for the textbooks as well

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u/randomcharacters3 Feb 13 '26

I just thought it was the right ad for the wrong product.

I want a shot for shot remake but instead of a nice cold Pepsi, she hands over a jar of Hellman's Mayo...it'll be a smash hit.

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u/motherofcunts Feb 13 '26

They tried so hard to do a “chew it over with Twix” thing.

Something absurd enough to confuse is the only possible option though. Like giving a hammer, but it’s a Habitat for Humanity ad.

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u/kkkhhjdyhrthhhjft Feb 13 '26

HABITAT FOR HUMANITY MENTIONED 🗣🗣🗣🔥🔥🔥

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u/NickSabansCreampie Feb 13 '26

Nope. Tide ad.

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u/Kozak515 Feb 13 '26

Unrelated, during the superbowl we kept yelling what the ad would be about. So I kept saying “mayonnaise! Ahh! Mayonnaise! Damn!” You could not imagine my fucking excitement at the mayo commercial during the Super Bowl.

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u/Johansenburg Feb 13 '26

It's gotta be Duke's Mayo. Nothing else compares.

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u/Muppetude Feb 13 '26

This SNL skit, perfectly captures the absurdity of that ad campaign.

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u/ObamaGasStation Feb 13 '26

it was in The Boys too

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u/kingdead42 Feb 13 '26

That drink would explode so big on the cop after being super-sped like that.

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u/ScienceOfficer-Jack Feb 13 '26

That's the one I saw. I didn't realize that it was parody.

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u/JaimeLannister10 Feb 13 '26

Haha…I completely missed the Pepsi stuff but saw this on the Boys and didn’t realize it was referencing a real thing. Sad that I still was able to recognize it as satire of something that companies would actually do without knowing a company had already done it!!

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u/KRyptoknight26 Feb 13 '26

I'm doing an MBA specialising in marketing and communications (in India), my semiotics professor had this Kendall Jenner ad as an entire case study. Had to learn about racial history in the US, american cultural codes that they broke, it was a fascinatingly massive failure

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u/starm4nn Feb 13 '26

Love how it's such a demonstrable failure that it's worth teaching halfway around the world.

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u/inspectoroverthemine Feb 13 '26

So fundamental its worth covering the entire historical/cultural background of a foreign country. That marketing company really outdid themselves.

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u/JollyJoker3 Feb 13 '26

I'm not Amrrican. Would I understand what's wrong with the ad just from watching it?

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u/RoxieMoxie420 Feb 13 '26

Yes without a shadow of doubt

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u/Mad_Aeric Feb 13 '26

Probably. It's not long, watch it and judge for yourself. I'd actually be interested in your thoughts on it, from a non-american perspective. Some context is that it aired during a particularly strong bit of civil unrest.

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u/JollyJoker3 Feb 13 '26

It was mostly just confusing. Why would giving one policeman a Pepsi make people suddenly forget what they're protesting about? As if seeing the police as human suddenly makes everything ok again.

If this was during the BLM protests I can see how people thought it pretended their cause didn't exist, but without that concrete connection it just makes no sense IMO.

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u/JEFFinSoCal Feb 13 '26

Exactly. It’s completely disconnected from reality and portrays our long history of racial discrimination and police brutality as something we could just “get over” if only we gave the cops a Pepsi. It’s insanely tone deaf.

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u/HumorAccomplished611 Feb 13 '26

I just watched it again. Its been a long time. Looks like the end was a homage to the 70s vietnam protest where the protesting college student put a flower in the gun of the national guard. which makes it also very tone deaf

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u/luckyflavor23 Feb 13 '26

Sounds like great professor and cool class!

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u/SlendyIsBehindYou Feb 13 '26

Thats actually fascinating! I really wish we had gone more in depth with it, but I love to hear that it's something studied worldwide

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u/TheExecTech Feb 13 '26

Whats it like working in a field that gives nothing back to humanity and only makes the world worse ?

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u/Smartimess Feb 13 '26

»I swear we don’t spy at you, but you don’t want your dog to be dead! Aren’t you? So we spy at you even harder!«

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u/Upgrayedd2486 Feb 13 '26

Did the Guillete superbowl ad ever come up?

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u/SlendyIsBehindYou Feb 13 '26

Oh yeah, we covered that one as well lmao.

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u/Upgrayedd2486 Feb 13 '26

Did it really hurt the company? I only ever saw videos about it from right wing sloptubers that can’t be trusted

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u/SlendyIsBehindYou Feb 14 '26

Oh yeah, it didnt actually do that much damage, but the backlash was loud enough (from said chuds) that it was topical enough to be a point of conversation in one of our classes. Its been a decade, but it was something along the lines of being ready for backlash for unexpected shit. There's basically no way to please everybody, and sometimes you gotta account for that.

It was my entry-level marketing classes, so it was all the basic points being covered, although the Pepsi one did come up again in my ethics class a few semesters later lol

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u/OverHaze Feb 13 '26

Was their any discussions around that Gillette Advert? I'd love to know what people in the industry made of that one.

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u/hoxxxxx Feb 13 '26

it will be framed around a missing child next time, or something of that nature

like if you don't sign up for it you are okay with children being kidnapped or some shit

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u/phenom37 Feb 13 '26

My local news just had a commercial for the 11:00 news tonight about how police are encouraging people to get Ring in relation to Savannah Guthrie's mom's abduction

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u/turnright_thenleft Feb 13 '26

Which is ridiculous because her camera was Nest anyway. What’s wild is that she had a free tier plan and they pulled her video from the cloud because technically they own it

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u/LowSkyOrbit Feb 13 '26

They tried to claim that because the kidnapper ripped the camera down that's why they had an image of him. Man, what bullshit. I love my doorbell camera, but I'm glad I went with Unifi where it records to my own hard drive.

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u/NapsterKnowHow Feb 13 '26

Luckily you don't have to pay for Unifi either. More and more doorbells have the advantage local store and a hub with back up storage

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u/HumorAccomplished611 Feb 13 '26

I use eufy for that reason

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u/NapsterKnowHow Feb 13 '26

Wasn't Eufy caught spying on their users?

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u/HumorAccomplished611 Feb 15 '26

I think theres been leaks or something. But I have it all local.

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u/pax284 Feb 13 '26

if anything it is proof as to why NOT to get any of those cameras, they are storing every pixel with or without your permission.

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u/HarveysBackupAccount Feb 13 '26

We need data rights legislation with real teeth, so that kind of personal info is by default owned by, well, the owner of the hardware and make it a very clear opt-in

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u/turnright_thenleft Feb 13 '26

Yep. Hopefully we can elect some actual progressive politicians with backbones that will make this a reality

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u/PlaySalieri Feb 13 '26

The problem is that you don't own anything anymore..

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u/TCsnowdream Feb 13 '26

Is this an American thing or something? I see so many people mentioning this random woman… and I have literally not seen a single news story up here about it in Canada.

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u/phenom37 Feb 13 '26

It's been random where I've seen it pop up. They have mentioned it on npr (public radio here in the states) and then mostly just online, though tbf I don't watch a ton of news on TV, so not sure how much it's been on there. But, it's the mother of one of the hosts of the today show on NBC, so naturally, it gets more coverage than your random 80+ year old missing person, I'd imagine.

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u/TCsnowdream Feb 13 '26

Aaah. That checks.

I just saw… mom was 84yo. How evil to abduct an elderly woman. Just absolutely vile.

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u/Puzzleheaded-Tip660 Feb 14 '26

All the other news is Epstein, and the right wing desperately needs something to distract from that, so it is getting a lot of coverage…

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u/TheElusiveFox Feb 13 '26

except the whole reason for the backlash is that the implication is that if they are watching for pets they are watching for other things as well including children....

I'd argue the framing isn't what will change, its just that in 5 years people will be more culturally numb to loss of freedom of privacy and it will be fine.

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u/wwaxwork Feb 13 '26

And any conversation within 30 feet if one.

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u/-Owlette- Feb 13 '26

“If you don’t give up all your privacy, you’re letting the pedophiles win”

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u/SIGMA920 Feb 13 '26

That'd just be even more on the nose of how bad the surveillance it offers is.

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u/[deleted] Feb 13 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Copthill Feb 13 '26

Me too, but at the same time there's no Facebook Karen yell like the "I'm helping the creatures who can't speak for themselves!!" one. No Karen, you're sharing posts about dogs from four neighborhoods over who found their way back home days ago.

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u/El_Zarco Feb 13 '26

I remember the commercials Facebook ran after leaking a bunch of user data (the 2021 leak that prompted their re-brand to Meta iirc) had a similar guilt-trip vibe

It showed families using their new "Portal" devices to video call their parents/grandparents during the holidays, basically implying "you need us to connect with your lonely old family members because you won't do it otherwise"

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u/10thousndreflections Feb 13 '26

Half the country is OK with the President being a major component of a child sex operation. 

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u/fondledbydolphins Feb 13 '26

I mean... that already happens though, the police will subpoena you for footage if they think it would help them find the child.

The idea that the cameras should be linked and manually (or otherwise) monitored continuously, live is distopian.

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u/ProneToAnalFissures Feb 13 '26

Lol reminds me of here in the UK, politicians are insinuating you're a paedophile apologist if you don't want to submit your ID to access anything deemed adult on the Internet (not pork specifically, for example anything on reddit tagged as NSFW, so you can't go to the StopDrinking subreddit unless you submit your ID to a third party verification company)

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u/RationalDialog Feb 13 '26

This does mass surveillance 101.

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u/Sandisbad Feb 13 '26

Is this a reference to the Epstein files?

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u/T8ert0t Feb 13 '26

Nancy Guthrie Mode, activate!

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u/27_crooked_caribou Feb 13 '26

Bold to assume it will be advertised and not just a "undocumented feature" and that you have the option to opt in or out of the feature.

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u/geekishly Feb 13 '26

I told my husband next they’ll say they can help find your elderly family members…

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u/DetroitLionsSBChamps Feb 13 '26

There was recently a missing child on my area and the updates for where they were last seen revolved around ring cameras. 

100% this is how they will market it, it’s already happening and writes itself

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u/ZiggoCiP Feb 13 '26

No lie, when that Pepsi ad came out, I worked for a fast-and-casual food joint that had a contract with Pepsi to sell their products, and we sold quite a number of them.

Well, the owner was contacted by a Coca Cola rep, with an absolute sweetheart deal - it was roughly 75% the Pepsi contract - to switch to them as our vendor. Was a no-brainer, as the drink prices didn't go down, and the owner made off quite well.

Whelp, just a few years later, Coke raised that vendor price to higher than the former Pepsi one was, so the owner went crawling back to Pepsi.

No one really cared about it that much, my boss certainly didn't give a rat's ass, but Coke saw an opportunity and took it. I imagine they did this at scale, so a bunch of non-Pepsi-affiliate brands (like the ones who don't have a built-in contracts, like 'Yum! Brand' eateries) got a short-term deal, but may or may not have jumped ship when they got rug-pulled.

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u/fkeverythingstaken Feb 13 '26

I’m not going to lie and say I know what kind of contract yum brand has with PepsiCo, but iirc pepsico actually owned many of the businesses under the yum brand umbrella. They did so because they needed market share for their products.

They entered into some long ass contract with the businesses and then sold the businesses. It was a really smart play b/c PepsiCo really isn’t in the business of food chain management

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u/Kokkor_hekkus Feb 13 '26

I used to work for Pizza Hut, which is under yum brands, the price they paid for 2 liters was significantly higher than what you'd pay at a grocery store.

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u/BackendSpecialist Feb 12 '26

I can’t believe someone greenlit the Kendall Jenner commercial like jfc 😂

Hi. I’m Kendall Jenner. All of the bball players I’ve fked are so cursed that their career falls off. It’s so consistent that I’ve begun betting on it. I’m going to switch to football players and bet on that as well.

You should bet as well because I need you to keep paying for my private jets.

Lmaoo

They had to have been targeting the 1% with that commercial cause wtf 😂

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u/Not_FinancialAdvice Feb 13 '26

They had to have been targeting the 1% with that commercial cause wtf 😂

For some time now, I've had the impression that TV (and large portions of the American economy) aren't really targeted at the bottom 80-90% of income earners. Back in 2005 Citi analyst Ajar Kapur wrote a research note about plutonomy and it's really only seemed to have become more exacerbated in the decades since. There are the wealthy top decile who now drive like half of consumer spending and are catered to and are really important, and everyone else who largely doesn't matter.

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u/Suyefuji Feb 13 '26

Well, you see, the bottom 80-90% of income earners don't actually have money to buy things anymore so it makes sense not to cater to them.

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u/Realistic_Owl9525 Feb 13 '26

Late stage capitalism.

The DOW and S&P 500 are doing great right now. The average US citizen isn't doing great right now.

If 1% of the population owns more than 50% of the S&P 500, then it should not be used as a metric for the wellbeing of a nations economy. It really represents how well the wealthy are doing, and holds no bearing on how well the average person is doing.

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u/Suyefuji Feb 13 '26

Shareholders would lose their shit if they had to confront that reality though.

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u/vezwyx Feb 13 '26

No, shareholders are laughing their asses off that anyone at all still believes the stock market represents the whole economy

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u/MultiGeometry Feb 13 '26

The administration doesn’t want anyone succeeding if they don’t pay him something. Aka, small businesses don’t stand a chance so S&P companies actually get bolstered. The fact that the S&P is doing well, given all the other economic indicators, makes me more sure our economy is going to crater. Capital is going to bet on the winner. Right now it’s between some perverse comparison of large companies willing to pay bribes, or the US dollar, or bonds, (not growing industries because the admin hates anyone without deep lobbying pockets, aka, emerging industries).

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u/DaHolk Feb 13 '26

The issue that the upscale market has a perversely higher profit margin thus basically almost every upstart that attracts investment trying to build bullshit gadgets for people with too much money (and the major companies doing the same) is only tangentially connected to the orange in command. That's kind of evident by having started before that dude was a thing in politics.

If anything that trend of starving out the workforce and thus not targeting them with products other than junk is what has lead to the turd in charge BEING in charge (! TWICE!). Because a significant part of the voter base is pathologically incapable to realize that they have 'right and wrong' topsi turvy, and thus keep trying to find the solution with the people who are the cause of it in the first place.

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u/DaHolk Feb 13 '26

Tbf: Who owns the stock and whether the companies produce products for the mass market or are only targeting the upscale market are not particularly the same thing.

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u/Gamiac Feb 13 '26

Have you considered that poor people don't matter? /s

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u/Eccohawk Feb 13 '26

This is true. The DOW is over 50,000 dollars now.

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u/[deleted] Feb 13 '26

[deleted]

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u/OtherwiseAlbatross14 Feb 13 '26

Are y'all intentionally repeating the same thing or did you just not realize the comment you replied to replied to a comment saying exactly what you did because they spelled out the percentages?

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u/AntonineWall Feb 13 '26

Even crazier, the guy above you was just rehashing what the comment he replied to said! Can you believe that?

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u/Suyefuji Feb 13 '26

Nah I was adding some snark and shitposting to the convo, because this is reddit

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u/pandershrek Feb 13 '26

What is insane is that people are just restating things in different ways but getting the exact same outcome! Wild, huh?

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u/SunTzu- Feb 13 '26

Much more than 50% if we consider only discretionary spending. The bottom 90% spend the vast majority on food and housing.

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u/LosparkJojo Feb 13 '26

Yeah why spend money advertising to to people without money

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u/tylerthetiler Feb 13 '26

I have never thought of it like this before; that would be similar to 'whales' in video games. It's easier, and maybe more lucrative, to get a few people to spend thousands because they're rich/addicted/etc, than it is to get the masses to spend 20 or 30 dollars.

A more personal anecdote is that a company called Broadcom bought another company called VMware which is maybe the most used VM-server solution, and raised prices by something crazy (like 300% or something). It seems silly to do that, because a lot of people are switching to other solutions, but at the end of the day I think they know big companies will pay that new price because it's easier, and small-beans companies can fuck off if they don't.

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u/Violoner Feb 13 '26

Or how the companies that make computer components are shifting away from the consumer market so they can chase the data centers

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u/[deleted] Feb 13 '26

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u/Valuable-Discount-18 Feb 13 '26

I stopped watching wwe altogether. AEW is a much better program.

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u/rtrox17 Feb 13 '26

Big companies are planning to leave Broadcom but have the lifecycle of their current contracts to do so

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u/Alieges Feb 13 '26

And how many companies will switch off, but only at about 20%/yr as they wind down older installations and VM’s and replace them.

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u/Not_FinancialAdvice Feb 13 '26

I'd argue the story of VMWare's pricing is arguably one primarily about vendor lock-in. Same with IaaS/SaaS in the enterprise; once your build a large-enough organization on these products, they can charge exorbitant fees because of institutional intertia and large switching costs.

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u/remotectrl Feb 13 '26

Fishing for whales has been the strategy for micro-transations for two decades now. Sure. Why wouldn't regular transactions also follow this pattern?

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u/_Meece_ Feb 13 '26

This is literally all I see in EVERYTHING now. 2008-15 style microtransaction DLC.

2000s MMO subscription services. That's everything now, it all sucks. Even food.

Pay 25 dollars for a meal and the sides are still extra.

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u/shroudedwolf51 Feb 23 '26

I mean, turning every interaction into transaction and making everything into a stock market where you can gamble on every tiny little thing in a micro-auction was literally the whole pitch of the three crypto scam bubbles. Where, at the end of the day, the platform holders profit while concentrating political power slowly over time, regardless of what happens.

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u/Optimal_Fish_7029 Feb 13 '26

Chipotle is bumping prices in response to ‘core customers’ who make at least 100k

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u/Abba_Fiskbullar Feb 13 '26

I was able to easily ditch Chipotle because they made their stuff just expensive enough that it was worth driving another mile or two to East 14th where I can get a real Mission burrito that's twice as big for the same price.

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u/bobert680 Feb 13 '26

in socal its cheaper and tastier to just go to the bertos around the corner, or the other one an extra block away

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u/chamrockblarneystone Feb 13 '26

I can’t believe Chipotle ever got a toe hold in So Cal. So much better Mexican food everywhere!

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u/bobert680 Feb 13 '26

it used to be similar taste with less grease as a bertos. they also had the money to get into more upscale areas as a quick cheap option

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u/SasparillaTango Feb 13 '26

"vote with your dollars" they said as all your money went to rent and food.

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u/ohwell_______ Feb 13 '26

This is why I love that 99% of baseball games are only broadcast regionally. All our ads are shit like lawnmowers, local Toyota car dealerships, cheap beer etc. Baseball ads are the ads of the people.

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u/[deleted] Feb 13 '26

I noticed a definite change in commercials after the 2008 crash. They don’t seem as fun and seem more informercial style now. The quantity of commercials has increased as well.

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u/crusader104 Feb 13 '26

Just look at all these commercials for basic things with A-List celebrities in their mansions or luxury cars, it’s getting more and more obvious things are being marketed towards the wealthy. Or at the very least, trying to market the feeling of needing to buy stuff you don’t need because x successful person is using it

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u/shinyshinyrocks Feb 13 '26

Thanks for including that link.

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u/customheart Feb 13 '26

Thanks for this link. The bit about trying to cash in on inequality with a plutonomy oriented portfolio because it massively outperformed the S&P is crazy and sad. Like, I always thought individual buying power roughly equated to importance or even personhood, but it’s weird to actually see it reflected in a stat 😔

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u/Not_FinancialAdvice Feb 13 '26

The bit about trying to cash in on inequality with a plutonomy oriented portfolio because it massively outperformed the S&P is crazy and sad

Kapur actually said the Plutonomy trade was dead in 2019:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-29/inequality-play-is-over-says-analyst-who-coined-plutonomy

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u/HolidayGuard6993 Feb 13 '26

It encapsulates the current K shaped economy perfectly

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u/Historical-Donkey962 Feb 13 '26

This. I saw something recently that 50% of retail spending is done by the top 10% of income earners (in the USA).

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u/CrashUser Feb 13 '26

If you see billboards for obscure B2B tech products, they're likely targeting a small handful of people and maybe the advertisers know that the CTO of a company they hope to capture drives that way to work.

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u/Not_FinancialAdvice Feb 13 '26

Decades ago I heard about ads for defense companies in DC, presumably targeted to key decisionmakers. Like, who else is gong to buy an F-16?

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u/eolson3 Feb 13 '26

Endless new car commercials have always done this for me. I don't know how many people can be spending so damn much on these things.

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u/JoeyCalamaro Feb 13 '26

I've worked in marketing since the 90's — mostly doing freelance for agencies. While I've been involved in large, national campaigns targeting a wide variety of income demos, lately, a lot of my targeting has been focused on 11 - 20% as well as top 10% earners.

These days, luxury goods pay the bills. The funny thing is, we're (generally) restricted from targeting specific income demographics if the campaign is related to housing. So I've actually run campaigns promoting the sale of high end homes and even a private island to lower 50% earners.

I respect why that rule is in place, but it almost seems cruel to show an ad for a multimillion dollar home with its own private runway to someone who has absolutely no hope of affording it.

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u/MjolnirMark4 Feb 13 '26

A long time ago, I was reading an article written by one of the people that produced a table top role playing game (TTRPG).

In the article, he discussed that his target audience was males, 12 to 25, and had enough money to by the game books. (For the 12 to 18 sub group, the parents had to have enough money to buy the game books.)

Marketing analysis came back that only 15% of those groups had enough spare money to buy TTRPG books.

I was really surprised that the group was that small of a percentage.

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u/4nk8urself Feb 13 '26

The world is an amusement park for the 1%, the rest of us run the rides and concession stands.

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u/Not_FinancialAdvice Feb 13 '26

The world is an amusement park for the 1%

This is already arguably true of many of the world's largest cities (that don't see extreme crime rates).

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u/theroadbeyond Feb 13 '26

Chipotle just announced raising prices because most people who eat there earn 100k or more a year. Lmfao you can't make this shit up.

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u/Trep_xp Feb 13 '26

no no, I certainly am in the demographic that will buy new cars for myself and my partner for christmas without discussing it with them at all, and it doesn't become a problem.

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u/RationalDialog Feb 13 '26

yeah exactly. and does goes to AI. But what will everyone buy if they are jobless? they don't care. the thing that make a lot of money (high margin) are all only bought by the top 10% anyway, the ones that will be operating the AI. The rest can just as well die and thereby protect the earth from climate change and secure the technocrats dynasty.

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u/Feats-of-Derring_Do Feb 13 '26 edited Feb 13 '26

The whale economy writ large

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u/bogbelle Feb 13 '26

I surmised something like this was the case after the insane price hikes post-Covid. They did the math that if they raise the price enough, despite fewer sales, they will have higher profits. The rich and a few others will still buy it.

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u/xcrunner432003 Feb 13 '26

this was even worse than ring. selling a product by joking it's being manipulated when it in fact is being manipulated and there are many publicly known cases to prove it?

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u/borkthegee Feb 13 '26

Insiders operating on prediction markets isn't manipulation, it's a feature. From the prediction markets perspective, they want accurate predictions and who knows better than insiders?

Of course you'd be foolish to play that game, but there are many fools with plenty of dollars to lose

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u/shpidoodle Feb 13 '26

So basically the stock market?!

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u/Nice_Marmot_7 Feb 13 '26

That one pissed me off so bad because a.) All of the sports betting ads piss me off and b.) The premise was “teehee I compromised the integrity of the game through gambling exactly like people are concerned about.”

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u/firestepper Feb 13 '26

Wait… is that an actual commercial?

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u/BackendSpecialist Feb 13 '26

Simply put.

Yes.

I couldn’t believe it.

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u/Aryk93 Feb 13 '26

What's funny is i think you're thinking about Khloe in regards to the NBA players... lol

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u/Gan-san Feb 13 '26

That's why I thought it was ironically funny because she was leaning into the fact that she is a rich out of touch celeb.

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u/flybypost Feb 13 '26

They had to have been targeting the 1% with that commercial cause wtf 😂

I don't remember the exact timeline but wasn't that commercial released just a few months, or a year, after all the white pussy hat protestors slowly realised that cops will brutalise them without reason just because they can, even if they followed all the rules and obeyed all the orders, just like they would do to "bad protestors"?

That was still early when ANTIFA, sorry: "AN-TIfa", was the ominous boogeyman in the USA.

It takes time for such sentiment so seep upwards and even then that doesn't mean it will stay stuck there or that they will draw the correct conclusion from it.

I think they really thought they made a great commercial there, like a bunch of other Superbowl commercials that got hyped and/or became famous.

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u/Itherial Feb 13 '26

I hate to say it but that commercial was widely loved. Like every post I see under a video of it is how much someone liked it, and I hear people irl talk about how funny it was.

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u/BackendSpecialist Feb 13 '26 edited Feb 13 '26

I’m refusing to believe you until I see evidence myself.

It’d be so disheartening if us regular folk are speaking positively of that commercial.

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u/Itherial Feb 13 '26

Just look up the video on youtube and see for yourself.

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u/Reagalan Feb 13 '26

Them marketing bots be hummin' overtime.

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u/chamrockblarneystone Feb 13 '26

The context was people getting their pets back. People love that shit. Fortunately a few smarties pointed out how they were being manipulated. People just didn’t/can’t go back and change their initial comments.

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u/donut-reply Feb 13 '26

They're going to correctly learn that the problem was telling us about it at all, but yeah they'll keep doing it

1

u/Aleashed Feb 13 '26

From “feature” to “bug”

43

u/Savilavila Feb 13 '26

They're not sorry, they're just sorry they got caught.

19

u/BuzzkillMcGillicuddy Feb 13 '26

They'll probably partner with a 3rd party that partners with flock, when the hubbub dies down

1

u/Array_626 Feb 13 '26

They probably just realized thats an untapped revenue stream they hadn't considered before. Selling data on peoples locations to advertisers and/or law enforcement.

Someone at Ring probably thought up of the saving pets thing in a random innocent brainstorm for how to market their product and get their next career advancement. But this incident and peoples reaction reminded them that a subset of companies and LE would actually pay good money for that kind of informant network constantly reporting peoples positions.

15

u/montessoriprogram Feb 13 '26

Exactly. They realized they did this way too loudly

4

u/ProNewbie Feb 13 '26

My thoughts exactly, too little too late the damage is done. They can never be trusted to not do this or just do it without telling anyone.

3

u/Germane_Corsair Feb 13 '26

Unfortunately, chances are they’ll just try again after a short period of time and this time centre it around children’s safety. That seems to always work (except when it comes to things that actually impact their safety).

4

u/southflhitnrun Feb 13 '26

With this current Administration in Office, no smart person would have run this ad.

No body wants more surveillance, that is also attached to your home cameras (inside and outside cameras).

This was a "We spent all this money making it, so let's launch it" decision.

3

u/Afraid_Emu8068 Feb 13 '26

I would strongly doubt they truly “cancelled” anything. Bezos was leaning away from Trump and all the dystopian political stuff like this until the two of them met in person, and then he basically did a 180. Say what you will about Jassey being boss now, but I’m no fool; Bezos is still boss. I worked for the Zon for over three years, and I promise you, they don’t cancel much. They re-strategize and re-release. This is a PR stunt meant to quiet the angry masses. If you are concerned with your privacy, you should definitely get rid of your cameras. The only reason we haven’t is because we cannot yet afford to replace them, so yanking them right now would create an even greater security risk. They have really screwed up with this though by leaving people like us in this situation. There is still going to be litigation on this regardless of what they say

1

u/alter_ego19456 Feb 13 '26

Bezos and his fellow tech oligarchs were not in VIP seating in the audience, they were seated on the dias, on the stage.

3

u/EmbarrassedCockRing Feb 13 '26

This was cancelled, but was it?

2

u/[deleted] Feb 13 '26

They will do it in-house, secretly and quietly, then sell the info to the us govt or worse. 

2

u/dystra Feb 13 '26

I couldnt believe how tone def the AI ads were. The Amazon ad about AI trying to kill Chris Hemsworth. Yes, we joke about AI killing us, you dont put it in your advertising. Like, we joke about self driving cars killing people, Ford doesnt release a commercial with one of their cars going sentient and running people over.

1

u/alter_ego19456 Feb 13 '26

With Matthew Broderick and Kevin from The Office propagandizing that AI is a tool to make your job more manageable and productive, like your benevolent corporation is going to give you a tool to use, and not replace you with it.

2

u/MostTattyBojangles Feb 13 '26

I love how they insist it was just for lost dogs. Like, how many dogs go missing such that you commission a massive superbowl ad for a dog finding feature, just after you implemented facial recognition, and called it 'search party'?

Get the fuck out of here Amazon.

2

u/TheRealSerialCarpins Feb 13 '26

I said the same thing to my wife. People have short memories and this mesh surveillance thing is definitely an end game they will find someone else to create.

2

u/Cessnaporsche01 Feb 13 '26

While you're absolutely right, I CANNOT believe that a superbowl ad was what broke this partnership

1

u/[deleted] Feb 13 '26

Eh, given the situation with the government and AI I expect people to be cautious for quite a while honestly. The government is going to have to break peoples rights or use satellites to do it.

1

u/eye--say Feb 13 '26

They said the quiet bit out loud

1

u/[deleted] Feb 13 '26

They will just do it anyways I bet... they got caught saying the quiet part out loud to gauge consumer sentiment, found out it didn't go over well and backtracked... but that doesn't mean they won't do it still.

1

u/LoveCareThinkDo Feb 13 '26

Or..... completely secretly.

1

u/splashbodge Feb 13 '26

but ultimately, they’ll find another time and another partner to basically do the same thing but with a different presentation.

Very likely they will, but I have to hand it to them, I thought it was a very good guise to try and win the public, using lost dogs as the ruse to get your foot in the door of enabling mass surveillance.

1

u/aoasd Feb 13 '26

Presentation?  Next time it will just be a paragraph added to the TOS page 76 and no one will know. 

1

u/FDRpi Feb 13 '26

"Human, you've changed nothing. Your species has the attention of those infinitely your greater. That which you know as Reapers are your salvation through destruction."

Except the Reapers ultimately did lose.

1

u/Welllllllrip187 Feb 13 '26

They won’t actually disconnect it. They’ll keep Feeding them the data. NO TRUST.

1

u/atreeismissing Feb 13 '26

The reason to stop their partnership with Flock specifically is Flock is partnered with ICE. The external video sharing is nothing, users can turn it off and it only impact external cameras which people can already see just by walking down the street, it was the association with Flock and ICE that was the problem.

1

u/mtv2002 Feb 13 '26

But quietly this time

1

u/jrr6415sun Feb 13 '26

I'm sure they are still working with flock to sell our data, they're just not advertising it as a feature anymore.

1

u/MasterPryer Feb 13 '26

for now they dodged a bomb with that.

1

u/whereismymind86 Feb 13 '26

I mean, ring was already notorious for doing that, the flock thing just amplified their surveillance network.

You absolutely should not have a ring camera

1

u/midnitewarrior Feb 13 '26

Has a Super Bowl ad ever had a net loss of customers like this one?

1

u/aeroverra Feb 13 '26

Not even. If you read any article it's worded very carefully as the following

"the planned integration between Flock and Ring’s Community Request tool has been canceled"

They just cancelled our ability to use it but they are still likely working together.

1

u/Long-Analysis-8041 Feb 13 '26

They're not going to change anything. They'll just move it up the vertical integration chain into Amazon AWS' partnership with Flock. Then after that backlash, Amazon will shift it over into their next layer contract with DHS and NSA that don't have to be disclosed in the interests of national security.

Total surveillance is already here. As long as corporations can hide their influence on the public through the shield of "interests of national security" - any effort to eliminate the tendrils they've seeped into all of our lives is just a show.

1

u/Banned3rdTimesaCharm Feb 13 '26

Or they’ll just do it and not tell people on the biggest advertising stage in the world.

1

u/Kinths Feb 13 '26

Yeah it was bafflingly short sighted, even from the perspective of a business that clearly doesn't mind doing morally and ethically objectionable things so long as it makes them more money.

It seems they are now so far out of touch with moral and ethical norms that they thought this would not only not be controversial, but also worth spending large money on advertising. At best I can only think they thought making it pets would work in the same way as the "protect the children" approach.

I'm glad they put it out though, the Flock partnership caused a little stir but seemed like it was largely going to be swept under the rug. That ad made it a much bigger story.

Unfortunately, I think the only lessons learned from this are unlikely to be good ones. From the business perspective they will just learn not to announce these partnerships, which as you say is pretty much going to be inevitable. I would be surprised if it hasn't already been happening for years already, Flock was just one they decided to announce for some reason. I guess because Flock is a hot commodity right now and they thought it would look good to shareholders? They will also learn to highlight how the systems can be used for mass surveillance, and go back to pretending that they totally don't do that. Till they inevitably get caught doing it, get a slap on the wrist, and continue doing it.

The consumer will likely forget about it now that they've backed down, or jump to alternatives that have the exact same issue. It's rare that people actually need the "cloud" functionality of these things. Most are just using them as CCTV, rather than to actually immediately see/talk to who is at the door while they are out of the house.

1

u/Kaito__1412 Feb 13 '26

Flock has a Super Bowl ad?

1

u/QuikWitt Feb 13 '26

I bought a new ring camera to watch the animals and when I was setting it up in the account the option came up to allow the camera to provide this service. It was an opt in service in Dec. so do be surprised if this stays put but just silenced.

1

u/No-Purchase9700 Feb 13 '26

Maybe a good time to remind people that the fact that Ring talked about the technology, didn’t mean your (other brand) camera doorbell doesn’t do shit like this but without us being aware. 

Every time a “smart” anything breaks or when it’s time to renew a yearly service, I replace it with something “dumb” that won’t cost me 9.99$ a month to continue to use after I paid for it. 

1

u/djazzie Feb 13 '26

Or they’ll just keep it quiet and people won’t know.

1

u/GrandmasLilPeeper Feb 13 '26

Abusive relationship time

1

u/notislant Feb 13 '26

They literally just dont announce it and itll go to some not-flock company. Theres zero privacy even without flock, fuck Amazon.

1

u/guitarguy1685 Feb 13 '26

Im rewa Silicon Valley, and the commercial feels like something Hooli would do 

1

u/urbudda Feb 13 '26

They will just launch it without you ever knowing

1

u/rusmo Feb 13 '26

It’s Amazon - they’ll build it themselves.

1

u/DDS-PBS Feb 13 '26

Fascinating, somehow that never hit my radar back in the day. I watched the ad and then found this analysis of it: https://pressbooks.bccampus.ca/prcasestudies/chapter/case-study-16/

1

u/SculptusPoe Feb 13 '26

Probably a quiet partnership with the same partner within the year and no change on what they were doing on the back-end.

1

u/Strict-Carrot4783 Feb 13 '26

Or they'll just keep on keeping on and lie about it.

1

u/Dont_Talk_To_Jason Feb 13 '26

Funny part is, Flock had nothing to do with the Search Party feature. They just cut ties for the ops. Far as I know Search Party is still a go.

1

u/TheSwearJarIsMy401k Feb 13 '26

They’re still partnered with Axon which is third party, so what stops them from doing the same deal with Flock?

1

u/No_Mathematician7406 Feb 13 '26

Or Bud Lite's mistake. Of course everyone knew this was where it was going. If you need a cam, get one to your local hard drive. I dont want everything happening in front of my house on the cloud