Amazon apparently thought the world would respond with a collective “awww” when it announced an expansion of its Ring Search Party feature to help find lost dogs, promoted via a 30-second Super Bowl ad (below). Instead, it’s being widely panned as a dystopian move in the current climate.
Since the company has recently rolled out a facial recognition capability for the Ring video doorbell, people drew the obvious and exceedingly short line between surveilling for dogs to surveilling for people …
Ring Search Party feature
The Search Party for Dogs feature works by allowing owners of lost dogs to send a photo and description to other nearby Ring doorbell users. When the camera thinks it has spotted a dog matching the description, it alerts the homeowner. If they confirm that it looks like the right dog, it puts them in touch with the owner of the pet.
The company has now rolled out the feature to non-ring camera owners via the Ring app, going all in on promoting it – including the Super Bowl ad seen below.
Labelled tone-deaf and dystopian
With nationwide protests against ICE operations, it’s no surprise that the company did not get the positive response it expected. 404 Media didn’t pull any punches.
The Neighbours app quickly got a reputation for racists sharing reports of supposedly suspicious-looking people whose skin colour was the only thing they had in common.
The Verge reports many others responding in the same way, including Senator Ed Markey.
A quick search on X shows this to be the prevailing view.
You can watch a higher quality version of the 30-second ad below.
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Image: Amazon
Top comment by earthlingdave
Liked by 16 people
Opting out is not enough, folks. We have to leave these platforms. It’s the only language they understand: the dollar. Their record is atrocious when it comes to privacy, surveillance, and handing our info over to anyone they can make money from, including the new federalized militias we see all over the country.
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