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Amazon's Home Security Company Is Turning Everyone Into Cops (vice.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Neighbors is not just a social media app: it's a service that's meant to be used with Ring security cameras, a Wi-Fi-powered home security company that was acquired by Amazon last February in a $1 billion deal. Neighbors was launched in May 2018, three months after the acquisition. If you have Ring security cameras, you can upload video content straight from your security camera to Neighbors. [...] Beyond creating a "new neighborhood watch," Amazon and Ring are normalizing the use of video surveillance and pitting neighbors against each other. Chris Gilliard, a professor of English at Macomb Community College who studies institutional tech policy, told Motherboard in a phone call that such a "crime and safety" focused platforms can actively reinforces racism.
In Amazon's version of a "new neighborhood watch," petty crimes are policed heavily, and racism is common. Video posts on Neighbors disproportionately depict people of color, and descriptions often use racist language or make racist assumptions about the people shown. In many ways, the Neighbors/Ring ecosystem is like a virtual gated community: people can opt themselves in by downloading the Neighbors app, and with a Ring camera, users can frame neighbors as a threat. Motherboard individually reviewed more than 100 user-submitted posts in the Neighbors app between December 6 and February 5, and the majority of people reported as "suspicious" were people of color. Motherboard placed the "home" address at the VICE offices in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and kept the default 5-mile neighborhood radius, meaning the neighborhood encompassed all of lower Manhattan, most of Brooklyn, and parts of Queens and Hoboken. According to the Ring Community Guidelines, the Neighbors app bans "direct threats against any individuals, bullying, harassment, and any posts that demean, defame, or discriminate," but it relies on Neighbors users to report posts that violate that rule. The guidelines also claim that only "crime and safety related content" is allowed. The guidelines do not define what qualifies as "safety," but they do encourage users to "consider the behavior that made you suspicious and whether such suspicion is reasonable."
When asked if Ring moderates content on Neighbors or reviews posts for racism, a company spokesperson said, "The Neighbors app by Ring is meant to facilitate this collaboration within communities by allowing users to easily share and communicate with their neighbors and in some cases, local law enforcement, about crime and safety in real-time."
In Amazon's version of a "new neighborhood watch," petty crimes are policed heavily, and racism is common. Video posts on Neighbors disproportionately depict people of color, and descriptions often use racist language or make racist assumptions about the people shown. In many ways, the Neighbors/Ring ecosystem is like a virtual gated community: people can opt themselves in by downloading the Neighbors app, and with a Ring camera, users can frame neighbors as a threat. Motherboard individually reviewed more than 100 user-submitted posts in the Neighbors app between December 6 and February 5, and the majority of people reported as "suspicious" were people of color. Motherboard placed the "home" address at the VICE offices in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and kept the default 5-mile neighborhood radius, meaning the neighborhood encompassed all of lower Manhattan, most of Brooklyn, and parts of Queens and Hoboken. According to the Ring Community Guidelines, the Neighbors app bans "direct threats against any individuals, bullying, harassment, and any posts that demean, defame, or discriminate," but it relies on Neighbors users to report posts that violate that rule. The guidelines also claim that only "crime and safety related content" is allowed. The guidelines do not define what qualifies as "safety," but they do encourage users to "consider the behavior that made you suspicious and whether such suspicion is reasonable."
When asked if Ring moderates content on Neighbors or reviews posts for racism, a company spokesperson said, "The Neighbors app by Ring is meant to facilitate this collaboration within communities by allowing users to easily share and communicate with their neighbors and in some cases, local law enforcement, about crime and safety in real-time."
Racism exists because black people commit basically all the crime. If they stopped then people would complain about mexicans instead.
I'm as racist as the next person, but poor people commit basically all the crime. Keeping minorities in poverty through through subjective (nowadays virtually silent) bias, merely ensures they will live up to the stereotype you have carved out for them.
This is somewhat different from profiling, which is an often individually observed behavior based on probability. LEOs looking for drug mules pull over vehicles piloted by young male hispanic & black occupants with far more frequency than vehicles piloted by blue haired older ladies.
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such a "crime and safety" focused platforms can actively reinforces racism.
That's unpossible!
It's also bullshit.
"Motherboard individually reviewed more than 100 user-submitted posts in the Neighbors app between December 6 and February 5, and the majority of people reported as "suspicious" were people of color. "
In New York City (where they found this example of "racism") non-whites are responsible for 93% of all murders and 80% of all robberies. People have very good reason to be suspicious of "people of color".
Keep up the good work, VICE, and don't let facts get in the way of trying to make everything into a problem of "racism".
The bit before the bit you quoted maybe, where they have a post making random accusations about black people using the stairs. Or the one after it, where someone finds a black person using a phone in the street "suspicious".
"Doing X while black" seems to be a problem for some significant number of Americans, and Amazon built a platform where people can post semi-anonymous accusations and mug shots.
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How FUCKING INSANELY STUPID N$ggers are! It's 2019 and you STILL can't figure out what fractions? According to my magic word "proportion" which you've never heard since most of you don't graduate high school, your inferior race commits FAR more crime per capita. We can only be blessed that you abort so many of your children or the country would already be bankrupt because of you.
Racism exists because black people commit basically all the crime. If they stopped then people would complain about mexicans instead.
Right. THAT'S the reason racism exists. It never existed before blacks committed crimes. There was no trying to prevent blacks from getting an education, no attempts to prevent them voting, no attempts at letting them live wherever they wanted. There wasn't even any slavery. All those black people volunteered to work on the plantations with little to no pay.
Here's a question: which group commits the largest amount of mass shootings, by far, than any other group? How about child molestation?
It's also a vicious cycle. Poor people do crime because ... they're poor? or because they're criminals? and then the system puts them in jail and that keeps them poor because they're poor? or because they're criminals?
America is the greatest example of how poor people can become very rich through hard work and honesty. There is massive economic mobility, regardless of your race, the largest predictor of success being 1) whether you have both parents at the home, 2) how hard you're willing to work and 3) whether or not your parents are criminals.
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Keeping black people in poverty is enormously profitable and there are plenty of examples, from the abuse of the criminal justice system (example: people fined more than they can possibly afford for minor offenses like minor traffic violations, then imprisoned for not paying the fines, guaranteeing they can't continue), to the selling of subprime/variable rate mortgages to black people and refusing to even offer regular mortgages even if they're eligible.
Let's also not forget the defunding of public education in predominantly black areas.
Making that claim shows a chronic ignorance of what's going on around you. I'm not even sure why you'd make that claim without at least doing the research and finding out why community leaders and anti-racist and anti-poverty groups say otherwise.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.