Posted this yesterday with same source, same headline: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20117905
Looks like there's more discussion here.
Amazon’s Ring Is Putting Suspected Petty Thieves in Its Advertisements
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Re: Amazon’s Ring Is Putting Suspected Petty Thieves in Its Advertisements
#12I don't see a problem. The police department posted the same video.
The police department stated that she was a suspect; Amazon identified her as a thief, breaking the presumption of innocence that is a bedrock of American society. If the video is fine, the post wording still isn't.
Habeas corpus called & would like to be thawed from deep freeze.
The presumption of innocence in American society died a long time ago, with Gitmo, CIA black sites & NSLs. What little was still left, is being killed every day with asylum seeker kids being abused in border ‘shelters’.
Long live habeas corpus & the American conscience.
Re: Amazon’s Ring Is Putting Suspected Petty Thieves in Its Advertisements
#13I smell a lawsuit coming. How can Amazon think it's ok to use people's faces in an advertisement when those people haven't been convicted of a crime? The case of Ring is particularly disturbing. When its inventor appeared on Shark Tank, he said he wanted to create a way to hear his doorbell from the garage. Since Amazon bought the company for $1B, it's pivoted to a surveillance tool that's being offered to police as…
Ring's mission is all about safety. Jamie has talked extensively about how they actively rejected ideas to just build connected things for the home, to focus on & foster a sense of safe homes and safe communities. The floodlight is a great example of a pre-acquisition product that piggybacks on that mission.
Re: Amazon’s Ring Is Putting Suspected Petty Thieves in Its Advertisements
#14I don't see a problem. The police department posted the same video.
The police department stated that she was a suspect; Amazon identified her as a thief, breaking the presumption of innocence that is a bedrock of American society. If the video is fine, the post wording still isn't.
Even if one claims the video is fine (and I'd disagree), it's still a very very very bad idea for Amazon, or any large company, to be enforcing the law and conducting mass shaming via advertising.
That's practically a Black Mirror episode, and I would hope that everyone can see this, but judging from this comment thread, that's clearly not the case. Disturbing.
Re: Amazon’s Ring Is Putting Suspected Petty Thieves in Its Advertisements
#15I smell a lawsuit coming. How can Amazon think it's ok to use people's faces in an advertisement when those people haven't been convicted of a crime? The case of Ring is particularly disturbing. When its inventor appeared on Shark Tank, he said he wanted to create a way to hear his doorbell from the garage. Since Amazon bought the company for $1B, it's pivoted to a surveillance tool that's being offered to police as…
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Re: Amazon’s Ring Is Putting Suspected Petty Thieves in Its Advertisements
#16On the Ring Neighbors app, you see all sorts of videos where the posters are making criminal accusations all the time. (usually it's a guy selling electricity door to door, but his skin tone is wrong, so they assume he's there to rob the house)
Re: Amazon’s Ring Is Putting Suspected Petty Thieves in Its Advertisements
#17I don't see a problem. The police department posted the same video.
The police department stated that she was a suspect; Amazon identified her as a thief, breaking the presumption of innocence that is a bedrock of American society. If the video is fine, the post wording still isn't.
> Amazon identified her as a thief, breaking the presumption of innocence that is a bedrock of American society.
I totally agree with that principle, but I think they presumption of innocence ship sailed a long time with modern social media and news cycles.
Re: Amazon’s Ring Is Putting Suspected Petty Thieves in Its Advertisements
#18I smell a lawsuit coming. How can Amazon think it's ok to use people's faces in an advertisement when those people haven't been convicted of a crime? The case of Ring is particularly disturbing. When its inventor appeared on Shark Tank, he said he wanted to create a way to hear his doorbell from the garage. Since Amazon bought the company for $1B, it's pivoted to a surveillance tool that's being offered to police as…
As an attorney (this is not legal advice), I would like to know what law might be violated by publishing these videos. They're owned by the person who recorded the video; and presumably they gave Ring a license to use them for such purposes.
The subject of the video, as far as I can tell, has no rights that might be recognized in law. There's no privacy right, as there's no reasonable expectation of privacy under such circumstances. There's no right of publicity being violated AFAICT, as there's no "brand goodwill" in the person's likeness to misappropriate.
So what, then?
Re: Amazon’s Ring Is Putting Suspected Petty Thieves in Its Advertisements
#19Posted this yesterday with same source, same headline: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20117905
Reposts are fine on HN if a story hasn't had significant attention yet. There's a lot of randomness in what gets traction, and allowing reposts is a way to mitigate that.
Re: Amazon’s Ring Is Putting Suspected Petty Thieves in Its Advertisements
#20On the Ring Neighbors app, you see all sorts of videos where the posters are making criminal accusations all the time. (usually it's a guy selling electricity door to door, but his skin tone is wrong, so they assume he's there to rob the house)
What is “selling electricity doir-to-door?” Is that offering solar on roof services? Cuz I can’t imagine actually selling electricity door to door.