shades fills you in

Ring Nation is a TV show with videos from Ring camera doorbells, kind of like the clips in America’s Funniest Home Videos. Amazon owns both Ring and the show. Engadget says the whole thing feels Black Mirror-y

The first episode came out in September. CNN says the show says it’ll get permission from the people who own the camera and who are in the videos. But CNN is worried this normalizes surveillance

ICYMI, back in July Politico reported that Amazon turned over Ring cam footage to the cops 11 times this year, without the owners’ consent

Fast Company is worried. Ring Nation tries to rebrand Ring cameras as cute ways to go viral instead of what they really are: Weapons of mass surveillance

The MIT Tech Review agrees, and says Amazon and Ring have used this strategy for years. During the pandemic, Ring started a TikTok challenge to showcase viral Ring videos

Another example: Ring has its own YouTube channel, to which they’ve been posting Ring videos since 2015. Watch one of their videos here

Vice says that Ring Nation is terrifying because Amazon has complete and full control. It owns Ring, and the two production companies behind the show. And police everywhere support Ring

Forty-plus activist groups called on MGM to cancel the show. The petition to cancel the show has 69,000+ signatures. Check out Fight for the Future’s tweet here

They argue that the Ring surveillance network promotes the criminalization of people of color. And in a post-Roe world, Ring footage could be used to incriminate an abortion patient

But this podcaster thinks the petitioners’ concerns are way overblown: Why are Ring critics so concerned with protecting criminals? Besides, it’s not that deep

On the other hand, Reason Magazine thinks the danger is real. Widespread ring usage could turn America into a surveillance state -- even if individuals choose to put them up

Wired thinks broadly about the issue: Today, people are consuming more content of other people being unknowingly watched by robots. Deciding who enjoys privacy and who doesn’t is more important than ever