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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."
Just as indiscriminately?
such a "crime and safety" focused platforms can actively reinforces racism.
That's unpossible!
Motherboard said it was racist, that settles it, and I believe them without question.
Racism exists because black people commit basically all the crime. If they stopped then people would complain about mexicans instead.
I read the entire (badly written) article and I don't understand what the complaint is. They didn't even give examples of people using racist comments? Example: "One post on Neighbors' “Watchlist,” which is hand-selected by Ring employees and appears at the top of the app, shows a black man stealing a package from a door step. Neighbor41 wrote, “Hope they put his ass in rikers, share a room with 50 other criminals. Oh, and one toilet.” A reply from Neighbor64 implied that he hopes the person gets raped."
Um, ok? Is it racist because of his skin color? Millennials are confusing.
>"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."
That is not evidence of "racism" as claimed by the article. It is mostly prejudice based on actual observed experience. Most would not deny that racism exists in society, but now so much of what is reported as "racism" is not. So much so that the word is starting to lose all meaning. "People of color" *do* commit vastly more crime per capita. That is absolute fact. Being more wary or suspicious might not seem fair, but it is not illogical, irrational, immoral, or racist.
Men commit far, far, far more crime than women. Being more wary of strange men checking out your house is not sexist. Again, it is justified prejudice.
I would absolutely expect such reporting by "Vice".
If the last couple of years have taught us anything, racism does not go away if we just pretend it isn't there.
Racism is an intellectually bankrupt set of beliefs that only survives through isolated and sheltered ignorance. Better to expose it to the light than let it fester in the dark.
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
Here where i live, 80%+ of all crime is committed by people of color. it ain't racist if they're legitimately the ones doing it..
Why do people associate crime with skin color? Isn't that racist? I associate crime with CRIME. That is what matters, that the criminal is caught and punished. I don't care what color the criminal is. In my area that is almost always white as if you cared.
Corporatism != Free Market
"EVIL AMAZON trying to protect the public from criminals by creating a new kind of neighborhood watch!!! All kinds of neighborhood watch is RACIST!!! Neighbors should not care if/when any criminals attacking their neighbors!!! Tech companies should not try to stop crime or help EVIL POLICE!!! "Amazon and Ring are normalizing the use of video surveillance"!!! Nobody should use security cameras anywhere!!! They are harmful for criminals!!!"
Keep the rapist, plundering nibbers, wettbakkks & spikks outa the 'hood. Makes peaceful, productive, law-abiding white folks feel safer. Also bitch-slaps race-traitor Trotsky-slut Demo-progs and that's always worth-while.
If white people committed no crimes you'd really have a strong point to say there was no possibility of bias in you only focusing on black crime. Racism would be a lot less plausible in your focus. Like, 100% more.
Whether or not in a small sample people are or aren't being discriminated against based on their race rather than actions is a lot harder to casually blurt out, than your racist obviousness, isn't that so?
Crime is a way of life for black people - you'd be an idiot not to be wary of them.
Let's call it a racism issue and then no one will notice that the surveillance itself is the danger. This is what happens in a totalitarian country. People are encouraged to inform on each other for political purposes, which quickly becomes a way to get back at your personal enemies and works to make people afraid and therefore hypercompliant. Amazon may not be the government, but these big companies have deep state ties. The noose is tightening.
I live in a semi-rural development where a few households have deployed cameras. The primary effect of these have been to preclude stupid squabbles. "My dog didn't do that on your property; it never wanders off!" Yes it did, and here's video posted on Facebook; control your damn animals. "My precious little johnny wasn't sitting in the middle of street begging to get run over by next delivery driver!" Yes he was, and here's the video on Facebook; supervise your damn kids properly. "My boy wasn't doing 60 mph in a 20 mph zone because he drives carefully!" Yes he did, and here's the video of your kid literally flying over speed bumps in daddies $60k truck.
Really does put the kibosh on a lot of bullshit.
I didn't ask you, I asked WaCMi - He declined, because yes, he knows he's a racist punk ass faggot who hides from that being common knowledge that he can admit and be judged for. Like all racist faggot punk ass bitches.
D-d-did I stutter? The everlasting lake of fire awaits, nazi cowards.
Inbred conehead, your pillowcase is starched up, your tiki torch is ready. Get that bovine semen injection and lets goosestep your way off to hang with the traitor Drumpf. Nobody in this genepool or the next will miss you nazi trash children.
Be proud of your ignorance. Jesus is watching your soul with a deep thirst for your cowardly essence to be corrected by eternity in the fire lake. You have earned your place next to the cowards and traitors you worship, forever. Amen.
Whether or not in a small sample people are or aren't being discriminated against based on their race rather than actions is a lot harder to casually blurt out, than your racist obviousness, isn't that so?
Your post is not totally clear to me. If I understand what you are saying, the AC grandparent is wrong to imply that the original article is making false accusations of racism because it's difficult to tell whether photograph selection is racist based on a sample of one. You are also saying that the original article is correct to make an accusation of racismYour post is not totally clear to me. If I understand what you are saying, the AC grandparent is wrong to imply that the original article is making false accusations of racism because it's difficult to tell whether photograph selection is racist based on a sample of one. You are also implying that the original article is correct to make an accusation of racism based on a sample of one. Have I missed something?
The referenced article has made a horrible accusation. One would expect at least one example where direct evidence of racism was presented. But the article only presents characterizations of people the article supports. We just have to take the word of the libellers rather than have some actual evidence presented.
There are a few photos like one of a person going up stairs and the assertion by the accused that they were a gang member. The article says the post was taken down but the article did not actually identify the person going up the stairs and what that person was doing. The tone of the article is such that if the person going up the stairs was a resident or visitor of a resident then the article would have called attention. But basically nothing said about the legitimacy of the person going up the stairs.
And basically that is it. That's all it takes to accuse a whole community of a repugnant and unacceptable set of behaviors. Oh there were other things like complaints about rough handling of deliveries by the delivery guys. Somehow that is racism from the libellers standpoint. Heck the people accusing the delivery people HAVE VIDEO. WTF. Having video to clarify your complaint is racist now? Or maybe it's because the particular posting section was supposed to be crime and safety yet people were including videos of package handling complaints in a forum where the primary crime shown on video was package theft. That's all it takes to brand a whole community racist?
You really shouldn't undermine your own credibility on such important matters. This is about video postings. One would expect at least one video presented next to comments that were racist. It would of course require a number of these things to accuse a whole community, but not one is presented. Eroding credibility results in a boy who cries wolf situation...NOT JUST FOR YOU. People who have to deal with REAL ABUSE are diminished by this ridiculous nonsense. You weaken the ability of people who actually deal with real problems.
The article is libel on the face. It makes a terrible accusation then only references its own characterizations as evidence. This is libel plain and simple and is completely unacceptable. The community should sue.
Yeah, because we all know that there are a ton of white people robbing convenience stores, breaking into houses, and killing each other in bad drug deals who the cops just let slide. "Someone robbed you at gunpoint? What color were they? ...Oh, they were white? Well, we can't help you on that one then. We racist cops only arrest black people."
That says it all to me.
a company spokesperson completely pretended a different question had been asked instead.
A certain race who will remain nameless makes up 3% of the population but commits half of its violent crimes. This is not from racist policing or racist reports. But the mainstream left wing news suppresses it. Instead, they only push a narrative against another nameless "racist" race for being racist about it. Which is the bigger problem? Nasty words, and evidence based suspicion, or rape, robbery, murder and trying to protect your family from it?
The loonie left has gone crazy with a passion. I blame cheap meth. You know the diapercrats have passed over into schizophrenia when Nancy "Queen of Berkeley" Pelosi shits all over the twisted triumvirate's New Green Dream. It's clear that you would eat a yard of Occasionally Coherent's shit just for a chance to kiss her ass and I know seeing your Emperor Trump standing before the Presidential Seal eats at your very soul, but you better sit back and get used to it. You crazy fucks are working hard to guarantee a re-election.
The word racist is currently right up there with "cloud" and "anti-Semitism" in it's epic and sloppy misuse.
Thinking someone is going to rob you because they look creepy is prejudice.
Assuming black people are probably criminals is prejudice.
Refusing to rent to blacks on assumption they will destroy your property is prejudice.
Racism is the belief in supremacy of one tribe over another. It's distinct from prejudice. You can be prejudiced without being racist.
Not only is everyone wired to be prejudicial it is often as a practical means prudent in cases where gaps in knowledge exist or are unavoidable.
Young people and very old people cause more accidents therefore insurance company prejudicially charges these groups more. You could be the safest best driver in the world at 16 but you're still going to pay thru the nose because the insurance company is prejudiced against young people. It doesn't mean they think young people are inferior to older people... it's just that in the aggregate people in this age group can't drive worth shit.
Maybe I shouldn't be walking around in bad area of town at night. I don't know for sure that someone will mug me but you know it's better I not take that chance because creepy people tend to hang out around here.
Paradoxically a lot of the people crying "racist" always seem to be the ones blatantly equating blacks with being poor and or criminals. It's amusing listening to these asshats spewing prejudicial rhetoric. It's so mind numbingly self-contradictory.
Black countries are almost all universally shit holes with insane levels of crime, high disorganization and violence. Black people commit far more crimes per person in US. Half of human DNA encodes the brain. It's not credible to believe a tribe of people can have similar characteristics that makes them visibly stand out and yet not have any mental characteristics that makes them mentally stand out as well. Pointing out actual identifiable differences isn't racism. Racism is a belief of superiority which simply isn't warranted on racial/tribal grounds because genetic variations between any two individuals dwarfs differences between members of any two known living tribes. The smartest person could be from the dumbest tribe. The tallest from the shortest. The strongest from the weakest.
You can do statistics and put numbers on the probabilities and make rational evidence based assumptions about individuals and draw benefit from the outcomes. Or you can work to minimize prejudice where it occurs to give everyone benefit of favorable initial assumption.
Personally I see value in the ideology of minimizing prejudice for the benefit of society even if in some ways doing so is somewhat locally irrational and results in less than optimal outcomes.
Yet at the same time there is never an excuse for dismissing objective reality because it interferes with your ideology nor for being a miserable loud mouthed SJW asshole about everything.
I am far more likely to be killed by a random angry white male on a rampage than a muslim terrorist.
But the FBI is not allowed to notice facts that do not support consensus racism and consensus Islamophobia.
Yep, and you're about 25x more likely to be killed by a young black male than either of those.
While in a predominantly white neighborhood, being any color other than white is going to instantly make you a person of interest.
( Like it or not )
The same is true for a white tourist in Mexico, a group of teens roaming around a neighborhood at 3am or a white guy walking through South Central LA.
Hell, if I spot a vehicle on my street I don't recognize, they get my full attention until I know what they're doing here.
It isn't racism.
It's simply realizing something is out of place. ( Which, by default, SHOULD warrant some extra attention on your part. )
I had a neighbor that I hated mostly for being loud and throwing garbage in my yard with the excuse that he didn't think anyone lived here. Obviously I'm not very loud. It was mostly the neighbor's son who was the problem and he hated me too, probably for complaining to his father.
One night about 2 AM I hear my doorbell ring repeatedly. I check the video cameras. There he is, shirtless and obviously very drunk. There's no way I'm gonna answer the door. He leaves, then comes back and vandalizes my fence and gate causing minor damage.
This is pretty much the definition of "petty crime", but it is still a crime. I sent a copy of the video to the cops via e-mail. They said they couldn't view it which is crazy because it was a standard AVI. I wasn't interested in pressing charges, I just wanted a police report for the record.
A week or so later a cop shows up at my door and I showed her the video. (LOL, I broke that rule that all the paranoid people say and I invited her into my house to watch it).
She asked if I wanted to press charges, just have her go over and talk to them or just write a report. All I really wanted was to have it on record and if nothing else happened that could be the end of it.
And the son moved away shortly after that.
The point of this (probably uninteresting to you) story is that crimes are crimes no matter how petty and reporting petty crimes is not "framing" someone. I have not even said anything to his father, let alone threatened anything, but of course I am including the video in my regular backups....just in case the situation ever reignites.
You'd have to be blind drunk not to see my security cameras too. Oh wait, I'm pretty sure he was blind drunk.
Okay, sometimes I sort of feel like a modern day version of James Stewart in Rear Window. I'm not in a wheelchair, but I spend a lot of time in front of my computer and the cameras are just an Alt-Tab away. Since getting cameras I now have a creepy awareness of some of my neighbor's habits.
I've always taken into account the possibility that I could be on camera. I remember 20 years ago I really wanted to key someone's car. I didn't know for sure, but I assumed there were cameras all over that lot. Is keying someone's car a "petty crime"? Even if it IS petty, it's still a crime and it's going to cost someone probably hundreds of dollars to repair. (It wasn't some exotic car so it wouldn't have been thousands). The mere potential for me being caught on camera was enough of a deterrent for me.
And I apologize for thinking about vandalizing someone's car 20 years ago. It would have been wrong. And like Dana Carvey used to say it wouldn't be prudent either.
I watch my neighborhood at night through a night vision scope. So everyone looks green.
Have gnu, will travel.
That the USPS truck claimed they tried to deliver a package, but the previous nights snow is still untouched in the driveway? No options to report such a thing. They really hate Amazon I guess.
Alas, this is why we can't have nice things.
I'm sure there is some real racism left.
But by and large, there's not real any racism left, just a lot of people claiming this or that is racism - even when not referring to race.
One of the most aggravating aspects of this faked racism, is that when you cannot refer to someones race for purposes of pure description - which would seem to be the case with the Ring videos. Why is it so wrong to say someone s black if they are? Why has that become evil, in an age where people of all color should celebrate who they are?
I wasn't interested in the Ring camera at all, but I may have to consider it if for no other reason than to stick it to the PC bastards, and speak truth to power...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Inbred conehead, your pillowcase is starched up, your tiki torch is ready. Get that bovine semen injection and lets goosestep your way off to hang with the traitor Drumpf. Nobody in this genepool or the next will miss you nazi trash child.
Be proud of your ignorance. Jesus is watching your soul with a deep thirst for your cowardly essence to be corrected by eternity in the fire lake. You have earned your place next to the cowards and traitors you worship, forever. Amen.
Neighborhood Quality Assurance Bureau
and the tide goes out...
Forged in the fires of Mount Bezos by the hand of Sauron himself! One ring to find them and in darkness bind them; one ring to rule them all!
A (anti)social media system like this will be attractive to people who by nature are suspicious, hair-trigger, types already. This just gives them an outlet for their fears and paranoia. One that will support and magnify their already jittery emotional state. It will make them feel normalised and validated: look! there are loads of people reporting the same crimes that I see every day.
So yes, this encourages extreme behaviour. Unless normal people go onto the site too, and tell them all to calm down, stop seeing evil where ever they look and to keep taking the tablets.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
So, probably 90% of the thieving hoodlums caught on Ring cameras in my area are white. That's probably because the demographics in my area are probably 70% white, and the next 25% (Filipinos, Japanese, Koreans, and Vietnamese) seem to have strong family structures and raise their kids to be fairly law abiding.
It's not an argument. Period.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
I googled these search terms and got nothing connected with Amazon products. This habit of using common words for brand names really is very silly.
Half of human DNA encodes the brain. It's not credible to believe a tribe of people can have similar characteristics that makes them visibly stand out and yet not have any mental characteristics that makes them mentally stand out as well.
You're wrong in about 18 different ways here but I'll focus on just two:
Skin colour is a tiny fragment of DNA, with people of all skin colours sharing far more in common than having differences. By your logic you should also be arguing for differences in behaviour by hair colour, eye colour, finger length and the shape of ears.
Further, people with brown skin are not all from the same tribe. There are tens of thousands of tribes in the world, with natural skin colours varying immensely, and interbreeding pretty much negating the fucking lot of them.
poor people do not commit the bulk of the crime Companies do.
We lose orders of magnitude more to white collar crime then we do some punk taking the stereo out of your car, and violent crime is at historic lows. Meanwhile that "Tough on crime" bullshit your parroting gave us the Drug War and Civil Asset forfeitures. Oh, and while you were busy worrying a punk with an untreated drug problem stealing a few bucks from the till somewhere Wall Street deregulation crashed the economy multiple times, lowering your wages by tens of thousands of dollars a year.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
If you had ten attemptend break-ins in your home - and all ten out of ten were perpetrated by a group that has only a few percent of the population in your area, you kind of get biased after a while.
If noticing a strong pattern in the real world is racism, then the only way to reduce racism is to a) refuse to recognize any patterns anywhere or b) discard or reinterpret all patterns that do fit the preconceived definition of racism.
Since pattern recognition is the core element of human intelligence, so not recognizing patterns is only possible if playing dumb or literally be the opposite of intelligent. So option a) is unavailable to intelligent humans and b), reinterpreting all recognized patterns in a non-racist manner, would remain the only option to avoid racist patterns fitting the available data. This would mean that the outcome or conclusion of the observation of the real world would be fixed and could never be changed by real-world observations. So it would be prejudice in the literal sense, upholding a pre-conceived conclusion despite any and all evidence to the contrary. That is hardly scientific and hardly intelligent.
If thousands of observations are considered racist, which more or less means the observable reality is racist and should not be noted, we should probably rethink our priorities and commitment to truth, however painful it may be.