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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

#21

Post by isoskeles »

bdcravens wrote: post #16

On 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)

> his skin tone is wrong

I'm happy this is pretty close to the extent of "racism" in our society at this point. Really grasping at straws if you have to keep reminding people about the horrors of racism when it comes out as, "Some people are upset that a wrong-colored stranger showed up at their door."

Re: Amazon’s Ring Is Putting Suspected Petty Thieves in Its Advertisements

#22

Post by darkpuma »

mc32 wrote: post #20
bdcravens wrote: post #16

On 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.

Yeah, if somebody came to my front door to "sell me electricity" I'd be on high alert, regardless of his race.

Where I come from it's a known scheme where one guy gets you distracted at the front door with some semi-plausible sales pitch like re-sealing your driveway while his accomplice goes behind the house and robs you blind. Of course, even when the apparent salesman is a genuine salesman, that doesn't mean he's a nice person. Door to door salesmen praying on politeness to get unsuspecting victims into high pressure sales situations in their own living room is common enough that my blanket response to all salesmen knocking on my door is telling them to fuck off. In a certain sense, calling a salesman a thief might actually be giving him the benefit of the doubt.

Re: Amazon’s Ring Is Putting Suspected Petty Thieves in Its Advertisements

#23

Post by arkades »

mc32 wrote: post #20
bdcravens wrote: post #16

On 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.

Reselling agencies promising to sell you electricity cheaper than the local utility.

Of course, they’re buying the electricity from the local utility, so the contract generally looks something like a monthly price of U - x for a couple months (U being the price set by the utility, x the promised discount), followed by a number of months of U+z, z>>x.

They don’t mention the U+z; that’s left to the fine print.

Re: Amazon’s Ring Is Putting Suspected Petty Thieves in Its Advertisements

#24

Post by paulgb »

mc32 wrote: post #20
bdcravens wrote: post #16

On 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.

In some states (including NY and CA) electricity is partially deregulated so you can choose from different providers, even though it all goes through the same grid. There are actually sales people who go door to door or set up booths to encourage people to switch, usually pitching it as cleaner energy and/or cost-saving.

Re: Amazon’s Ring Is Putting Suspected Petty Thieves in Its Advertisements

#25

Post by [deleted] »

mc32 wrote: post #20
bdcravens wrote: post #16

On 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.

[deleted]

Re: Amazon’s Ring Is Putting Suspected Petty Thieves in Its Advertisements

#26

Post by mc32 »

paulgb wrote: post #24
mc32 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In some states (including NY and CA) electricity is partially deregulated so you can choose from different providers, even though it all goes through the same grid. There are actually sales people who go door to door or set up booths to encourage people to switch, usually pitching it as cleaner energy and/or cost-saving.

Thanks for the reply. I only have PG&E. No alternative that I know of, so that sounded off kilter. But glad to know what that is all about.

Re: Amazon’s Ring Is Putting Suspected Petty Thieves in Its Advertisements

#27

Post by throwawayatty »

dontbenebby wrote: post #4
lern_too_spel wrote: post #3

I don't see a problem. The police department posted the same video.

The difference is this is an ad. Commercial speech is subject to more regulation than private speech in America. For example, California has a right of publicity law. It's my understanding that even photos taken "in public" can't necessarily be used for commercial purposes: http://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/california-right-publicity-l...

(Attorney here, but this is not legal advice.)

It would be a very unusual circumstance for a person caught on camera performing a criminal act to incriminate him/herself by admitting guilt for the purpose of prevailing on a right-to-publicity action.

Moreover, every case involving right to publicity/right of likeness thus far has had a "famous" person as the plaintiff, where there's a sort of "brand goodwill" in the person's likeness and that goodwill is being misappropriated specifically to recommend or endorse a product. That's not the case here, for sure.

Re: Amazon’s Ring Is Putting Suspected Petty Thieves in Its Advertisements

#28

Post by goobynight »

throwawayatty wrote: post #18
dtagames wrote: post #6

I 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 suc…

Thank you for at least questioning this nonsense.

Video recording law is probably the worst combination of misinformation and actually coming up in someone's life.

Re: Amazon’s Ring Is Putting Suspected Petty Thieves in Its Advertisements

#29

Post by givinguflac »

isoskeles wrote: post #21
bdcravens wrote: post #16

On 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)

> his skin tone is wrong I'm happy this is pretty close to the extent of "racism" in our society at this point. Really grasping at straws if you have to keep reminding people about the horrors of racism when it comes out as, "Some people are upset that a wrong-colored stranger showed up at their door."

You’re an idiot. There is plenty of overt racism today, don’t post your incoherent political ramblings on HN, it’s not the place.

Re: Amazon’s Ring Is Putting Suspected Petty Thieves in Its Advertisements

#30

Post by therealgranton »

isoskeles wrote: post #21
bdcravens wrote: post #16

On 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)

> his skin tone is wrong I'm happy this is pretty close to the extent of "racism" in our society at this point. Really grasping at straws if you have to keep reminding people about the horrors of racism when it comes out as, "Some people are upset that a wrong-colored stranger showed up at their door."

That's nowhere near "the extent of 'racism' in our society at this point". You must be from a pretty affluent area if you believe racism is a non-issue. Racism is fucking disgusting, coming from a white dude. I've had to pick up tables as a server because certain (infrequent) people "don't want a nigger to touch their food".

I bought my co-worker lunch that day. He felt completely destroyed by not being able to make money because he wasn't born with peachy skin.

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