Amazon's Doorbell Company Is Selling Fear (theatlantic.com) 63
Amazon Ring is building "a team of news editors who deliver breaking crime news alerts to our neighbors," reports the director Nieman Journalism Lab, in a post from The Atlantic:
That's right: A doorbell company wants to report crime news. It already is, actually. Several people on LinkedIn describe their jobs as "news editors" at Ring... I'm going to go out on a limb and say that this is a really bad idea. Crime has declined enormously over the past 25 years, but people's perception of how much crime there is has not. A majority of Americans have said that crime is increasing in each of the past 16 years -- despite crime in each major category being significantly lower today than it used to be. A 2016 Pew survey found that only 15 percent of Americans believed (correctly) that crime was lower in 2016 than it had been in 2008 -- versus 57 percent who thought it had gotten worse...
These mistaken beliefs are driven largely by the editorial decisions of local media -- especially local TV newscasts, which are just as bloody today as they were when murder rates were twice as high. There's a term for it: "mean world syndrome," the phenomenon where media consumption makes people see the world as more violent and dangerous than it really is... But news organizations have multiple and sometimes conflicting incentives that might affect how they present the local police blotter. A company that sells security-optimized doorbells has only one incentive: emphasizing that the world is a scary place, and you need to buy our products to protect you....
So think about this managing-editor job. Ring wants to be "covering local crime" everywhere, down to the house and neighborhood level. So one managing editor, plus however many other people are on this team, is supposed to be creating a thoughtful, nonexploitative editorial product that is sending journalistically sound "breaking news crime alerts," in real time, all across the country. Are they really delivering news or just regular pulses of fear in push-notification form? If that's the job, it is literally impossible to do responsibly... It's like relying on the people who make antivirus software to tell you about the latest cybersecurity issues: Even when the reporting is sound, it's still prone to exaggerating the scale of the threat and still aimed at making you so afraid that you give them money.
The article's author spent 10 years working for newspapers (most recently the Dallas Morning News), and argues that "the reality is that 'breaking crime news alerts' are not something the majority of people needs -- especially if 'two Greenpeace volunteers stood on my porch for 30 seconds' is the bar we're talking about. It's not actionable intelligence -- it's puffing a little more air into an atmosphere of fear..."
He concludes that Amazon Ring "says it's selling safety, but it's really selling fear. "
These mistaken beliefs are driven largely by the editorial decisions of local media -- especially local TV newscasts, which are just as bloody today as they were when murder rates were twice as high. There's a term for it: "mean world syndrome," the phenomenon where media consumption makes people see the world as more violent and dangerous than it really is... But news organizations have multiple and sometimes conflicting incentives that might affect how they present the local police blotter. A company that sells security-optimized doorbells has only one incentive: emphasizing that the world is a scary place, and you need to buy our products to protect you....
So think about this managing-editor job. Ring wants to be "covering local crime" everywhere, down to the house and neighborhood level. So one managing editor, plus however many other people are on this team, is supposed to be creating a thoughtful, nonexploitative editorial product that is sending journalistically sound "breaking news crime alerts," in real time, all across the country. Are they really delivering news or just regular pulses of fear in push-notification form? If that's the job, it is literally impossible to do responsibly... It's like relying on the people who make antivirus software to tell you about the latest cybersecurity issues: Even when the reporting is sound, it's still prone to exaggerating the scale of the threat and still aimed at making you so afraid that you give them money.
The article's author spent 10 years working for newspapers (most recently the Dallas Morning News), and argues that "the reality is that 'breaking crime news alerts' are not something the majority of people needs -- especially if 'two Greenpeace volunteers stood on my porch for 30 seconds' is the bar we're talking about. It's not actionable intelligence -- it's puffing a little more air into an atmosphere of fear..."
He concludes that Amazon Ring "says it's selling safety, but it's really selling fear. "
And? (Score:2)
What would you expect a security system vendor to do?
Brink's Home Security ! (Score:2)
Brink's Home Security
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I trust the cops had a warrant and SOME sort of reason for doing that. Yes? If not, I hope that you are suing the pants off them.
It’s not just to sell more Ring Doorbells (Score:5, Insightful)
They’re profiting two ways - from your subscription purchase (love the idea of paying monthly for my doorbell, BTW), and from the image database they’re accumulating from the photos taken by “your” doorbell. The database is sold to local police (see the previous Slashdot story) and I would guess also to marketing companies.
Amazon has quite a racket going. Google at least gives you free services in exchange for the privilege of selling you... but Amazon has figured out how to get YOU to pay for their profiting from you!
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Amazon has quite a racket going. Google at least gives you free services in exchange for the privilege of selling you... but Amazon has figured out how to get YOU to pay for their profiting from you!
Er, you know that Nest (a competitor of Ring) is own by Google right? This means that Google has exactly the same racket going on.
selling fear? Not really. (Score:3)
Then we have seen ppl stealing packages and knew WHO to look for in the neighborhood. They were caught and the stealing was stopped (ppl from Denver went 35 miles away to avoid being caught; ring made it possible).
Now, we have seen an adult male that is looking into windows while wearing no shoes and PJs. Very weird. Not sure what is going on, but it will be figured out.
Selling fear? Nope. About the only thing wrong is the sending of my data to China, and not working with google hub. These last things are enough to make me flip to Google's doorbell, but, not because of fear.
Exactly (Score:3)
Even if the crime rate has lowered, it does not mean it's bad to try and reduce the outlier crime remaining - especially minor stuff that may never even be reported to the police.
One thing that would be nice is if there could be an open standard for companies to be able to make use of each others security feeds for monitoring - so if something happened at your house overnight, you could search area cameras of all kinds for that timeframe to see if anything similar happened, or the same suspicious people wer
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All good to know that they are in the area.
I do not like the idea of Amazon or CHina knowing what is going on, b
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Personally, I am more concerned about Ring sending our data to China.
This is a legitimate fear, along with the selling of data to Google, advertisers, scammers, and burglars.
Crime has declined enormously over the past 25 years, but people's perception of how much crime there is has not.
While crime in certain categories may have declined over the last few decades, only a small subset of crime is relevant to outdoor home cameras. So, murders, rapes, and violent crimes wouldn't be addressed by such cameras. However, theft of boxes delivered to front doors is. My guess is that the rate of this particular crime has increased significantly over the last decade.
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Crime has declined enormously over the past 25 years
Says who?
A bunch of "social scientists"? Like I'd trust them.
Besides, have all kinds of crime declined? Obviously not, so taking a
bunch of different crime statistics and smushing them together into
a combined "crime rate" is pseudo-scientific rubbish.
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Personally, I am more concerned about Ring sending our data to China.
Why should I care if the Chinese government knows the route of Jehovah's Witnesses around my neighborhood?
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Maybe they will attempt to block your invitation to next years big celebration!
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I agree with you. We need not be concerned about the sale of fear, but i worry a lot about the implicit racism in some of the neighborhood posts. I call it out when i see it, which makes me glad to be anonymized- Ring-buying liberals (and conservatives too) do not take it well when you point out their implicit racism.
I do like my ring, though. When i first got mine, it really sucked- I couldn't get it to stay working for more than a day or two.. Sometimes it would stop working minutes after setup
Oh, I forgot: * Nationalism; * Racism. (Score:1)
There are probably even more.
Re: The fear/anxiety epidemic. (Score:2, Informative)
Islamaphobia.
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Which wouldn't exist, except you know, all the bombings and shootings and mass murders and stuff. It's probably smart to fear known mass-murderers.
Re: The fear/anxiety epidemic. (Score:2)
You're a racist moron. It happens to lots of us, don't worry.
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That very average count over a wide area over a long time is not much use AC.
An average count will take in good parts of a city.
The crime rate in bad parts a city
Then try to present crime numbers as going down for political reasons.
The crime rate exists and thats why good people in nice parts of a city want to invest in products to prevent more crime.
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want to invest in products to prevent more crime
Not really. I just want to move it to someone else's neighborhood.
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Thats why the average crime rate spreads out all over a city.
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The criminals travel to the nice parts of the city to do crime.
Not so much. Criminals usually operate close to their comfort zones. Travel too far away and they are afraid to stand out. Or get lost trying to make a run for it. Where I live, some local kids did most of the break-ins. But the cops didn't have the guts to tell parents that their offspring were worthless shit. So, the 'bad people from far away' stories. Kids grew up and moved away or OD'd. Crime problem solved itself.
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With new gov housing regulations, what is new gov attempts at rent control in nice parts of a city, that can be a new problem thats moves around.
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This. I live in Highland Park, in LA, which has less crime than the much richer Santa Monica.
If you happen to live in Los Angeles, check out the LA times mapping project. Their crime maps are fascinating on many levels. http://maps.latimes.com/neighb... [latimes.com] Pick a neighborhood, and click the crime tab above the map. Scroll through a few weeks. It's cool to watch the way that most property crime travels across neighborhoods in a wave that often spans a week or more. For crimes i have persona
Re: So US has no crime problem??? (Score:2)
Jails are filling because punishment for the dwindling level of crime has been pushed to extreme levels by for-profit prisons.
When prisoners are a valuable commodity, you bet your ass we're going to find more prisoners, regardless of any crimes that are being committed.
Re: So US has no crime problem??? (Score:2)
And you have some rose-colored blinders on, my friend.
Re: So US has no crime problem??? (Score:2)
https://news.wisc.edu/study-fi... [wisc.edu]
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Sure its good if you want to be monitored 24/7 for the rest of your life. You must be from the UK. Or China..
Fear sells! To cowards. (Score:2)
Fear is an especially effective sales tactic. Bravery is rare and most of us are cowards most of the time. I think the saying attributed to Lincoln could be modified to include "Some folks are cowards all of the time."
We are actually hardwired, body and soul, to be more afraid of bad things than to like good things. We also remember the bad things better and more vividly and for longer than the good things. In evolutionary terms, if any of your ancestors had made the mistake of not being afraid enough, then
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Yeah, sure. The social sciences as a whole are wrong and you, as a lone individual, just nailed it. Good for you.
How about you tell us next about how vaccines are bad or that the earth is flat?
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Its not fear when criminals roam around a city (Score:1)
As the FBI data sets show every year.
Now with advanced camera quality and networks people can see the same attempts at crime.
Who is trying to do what crime in their community.
Who travelled from a bad part of the city to a nice low crime part of the city to do crime.
The FBI has decades of data collected on who is doing the crime in your city.
Now people all over the USA can see the results of not
Fear is a monopoly (Score:2)
Only the government should be allowed to sell fear. And then only to suit their own agenda. Fear that I might be allowed to mitigate on my own? Not allowed. But fear of something that the application of more government can prevent: That's OK. Poor and homeless people should not be feared, but welcomed. But income inequality of the type that can only be cured by well-funded handout programs. Or inequities resulting from climate change.
Be afraid.
no different than security software (Score:2)
sounds more like some company has something against amazon and planting different articles about all the wrong they think amazon is doing. first articles all over the place about their face recognition software, then about privacy issues with alexa and now news services. wonder which amazon service is next. as far as sowing fear, is that not what the different anti-virus and anti-malware software companies are doing in their advertisements? Is this not what other alarm companies are doing when they