The New New
Amazon’s Smart Doorbell Is Creepy as Hell
The dark future of neighborhood watch has arrived
Ring, an Amazon-owned smart doorbell company, wants to help you and your neighbors gossip about “suspicious activity” on your street with a standalone app called Neighbors. The app, which was introduced in May, encourages people to bring the surveillance state home by uploading video clips and publishing reports about neighborhood activities, which are then broadcast to other users and participating police departments.
Ring markets Neighbors as a modern version of an old-school neighborhood watch program, encouraging communities to band together to protect one another and combat crime. In a commercial for Neighbors, a pair of greasy would-be package thieves are deterred from their crime after realizing video of them is being broadcast throughout the neighborhood. No cops are called, but a man walking his beagle, who has been alerted to their presence through the Neighbors app, watches the thwarted thieves drive their clunker out of the neighborhood, crime averted.
Two things make Neighbors different than similar services like Nextdoor. First is the exclusive focus on crime. Neighbors prohibits posts that aren’t about crime and safety, which means that if you have nothing suspicious to post about…
