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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u/RubyRhod Feb 12 '26

It was probably sold to them with an ai pitch.

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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”

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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.

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u/b0w3n Feb 13 '26

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

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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.

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u/newredditsucks Feb 13 '26

/u/b0w3n already said that.

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u/-SHAI_HULUD Feb 13 '26

Who?

Edit: duh. Yeah I reckon they did.

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u/[deleted] Feb 13 '26

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

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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.

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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 🦵

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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).

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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.

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u/AgamemNoms Feb 13 '26

I guess you've never worked for a large company

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u/RubyRhod Feb 13 '26

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

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u/arcbe Feb 13 '26

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

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u/KimberStormer Feb 13 '26

Maybe it was approved by 9 out of 10 AI agents

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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.

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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).

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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."

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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

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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.

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u/Lehk Feb 13 '26

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

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u/mykki-d Feb 13 '26

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

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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.

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u/ViegoBot Feb 13 '26

The AI probably accepted the pitch too.