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Amazon Ring's lost dog ad sparks backlash amid fears of mass surveillance

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Re: Amazon Ring's lost dog ad sparks backlash amid fears of mass surveillance

#31

Post by mjr00 »

ViktorRay wrote: post #24
mjr00 wrote: post #20

The Dark Knight was released in 2008. In that movie, Batman hijacks citizens' cellphones to track down the Joker, and it's presented as a major moral and ethical dilemma as part of the movie's overall themes. The only way Batman remains a "good guy" in the eyes of the audience is by destroying the entire thing once he's done. Crazy to think that less than two decades later, an even more powerful surveillance technolo…

The Dark Knight was released in the summer of 2008. This was almost 7 years after 9/11. Many aspects of that film were deliberately done to explore post 9/11 America. This includes the methods Harvey Dent uses, the things the Joker says, and the surveillance scenes and more. These discussions surrounding surveillance have been around long before 2008.

Of course. The use of mass surveillance in the movie is not-so-subtly referencing the PATRIOT Act. But again, it's presented as a moral dilemma, and multiple protagonists acknowledge that it's far too powerful to exist, and its use is a last resort. It falls into the larger theme of Joker pushing Batman to violate his ethics for the greater good.

One could argue that because it was successfully used to catch Joker, the movie concludes that mass surveillance is sometimes necessary to stop evil, but it's at least presented as a dilemma. A massive corporation coming out and saying "mass surveillance is awesome because you can find lost pets" is a crazy escalation of the surveillance state.

Re: Amazon Ring's lost dog ad sparks backlash amid fears of mass surveillance

#33

Post by idle_zealot »

blibble wrote: post #17

that advert is just so horribly manipulative it's borderline evil how can normal people go to work and produce this output? (I suppose everyone that is prepared to work at Amazon corporate is... a certain type of person)

It's not really about the individual people. They're probably all pretty normal interpersonally. Our systems reward this behavior, so people do it. Surveillance is desired by the politically and economically powerful, and the contravening forces are weak and largely unorganized. Do we punish politicians or businesses for bad behavior? No? Then they'll engage in whatever behavior advances their interests.

You could purge the world of every single person with evil intentions, and things would maybe get better for a little while, but without fundamentally changing the underlying rules of the system the same thing would play out again with different actors.

Re: Amazon Ring's lost dog ad sparks backlash amid fears of mass surveillance

#34

Post by _DeadFred_ »

GaryBluto wrote: post #11
davidw wrote: post #5

The WeRateDogs guy broke character and put out a video attacking that ad https://bsky.app/profile/weratedogs.com/post/3mejrtyvkyc2o

[flagged]

Because we decided the Constitution doesn't apply to a huge group of people living within the United States, and that seems wrong to those of us raised to believe the Constitution was important and the actual law of the land. It kind of doesn't work at all once we add a government decided 'subjective' layer on top of it. You could argue that already happened but this is the first most obvious in our faces instance.

Re: Amazon Ring's lost dog ad sparks backlash amid fears of mass surveillance

#36

Post by egorfine »

1970-01-01 wrote: post #3

What backlash? "People voiced concerns" turns out to be 9 people if you follow the link. Where exactly is this backlash and why can't I smell it?

Exactly. There are certainly more than 9 of us who value privacy and understand where this is going, but in comparison to millions of normies we aren't even a screeching voice of minority[1].

[1] https://www.howtogeek.com/746588/apple-discusses-screeching-...

Re: Amazon Ring's lost dog ad sparks backlash amid fears of mass surveillance

#37

Post by koolba »

mjr00 wrote: post #20

The Dark Knight was released in 2008. In that movie, Batman hijacks citizens' cellphones to track down the Joker, and it's presented as a major moral and ethical dilemma as part of the movie's overall themes. The only way Batman remains a "good guy" in the eyes of the audience is by destroying the entire thing once he's done. Crazy to think that less than two decades later, an even more powerful surveillance technolo…

> The only way Batman remains a "good guy" in the eyes of the audience is by destroying the entire thing once he's done.

A key part of that is when he tells Alfred that he did not even trust himself with that level of surveillance and coded it to only grant access to Alfred. Further, Alfred agrees to aid Batman by accessing the data but simultaneously tenders his resignation.

I doubt Amazon has anyone like Alfred in charge of this thing. Because if they did, the resignation would already have been submitted.

Re: Amazon Ring's lost dog ad sparks backlash amid fears of mass surveillance

#39

Post by polar »

koolba wrote: post #37
mjr00 wrote: post #20

The Dark Knight was released in 2008. In that movie, Batman hijacks citizens' cellphones to track down the Joker, and it's presented as a major moral and ethical dilemma as part of the movie's overall themes. The only way Batman remains a "good guy" in the eyes of the audience is by destroying the entire thing once he's done. Crazy to think that less than two decades later, an even more powerful surveillance technolo…

> The only way Batman remains a "good guy" in the eyes of the audience is by destroying the entire thing once he's done. A key part of that is when he tells Alfred that he did not even trust himself with that level of surveillance and coded it to only grant access to Alfred. Further, Alfred agrees to aid Batman by accessing the data but simultaneously tenders his resignation. I doubt Amazon has anyone like Alfred in…

> Alfred

Wasn't it Lucius Fox?

Re: Amazon Ring's lost dog ad sparks backlash amid fears of mass surveillance

#40

Post by Gagarin1917 »

mjr00 wrote: post #20

The Dark Knight was released in 2008. In that movie, Batman hijacks citizens' cellphones to track down the Joker, and it's presented as a major moral and ethical dilemma as part of the movie's overall themes. The only way Batman remains a "good guy" in the eyes of the audience is by destroying the entire thing once he's done. Crazy to think that less than two decades later, an even more powerful surveillance technolo…

I mean the message in The Dark Knight is really messy. The characters believe it’s immoral, but they use it anyway, and it saves lives and stops the Joker.
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