Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 407 posts

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

#81

Post by steezeburger »

dylan604 wrote: post #66
b00ty4breakfast wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a bit orthogonal to the article, but Christopher Nolan gives me the willies. Almost all his films have this kind authoritarian apologia in them.

Is that the same willies as something like 1984 or Black Mirror? All they are doing is taking some idea present now, and just taking it too the darker places of it while society is currently only seeing the rosy side of things. It's stories like this that might be first time someone might actually consider other implications of ideas.

I think they take issue with how it was ultimately okay to do to catch the Joker as long as Batman didn't use it and gave power to Luscious who resigned, instead of just calling it out as terrible and not doing it. That's how I read their comment anyway. "apologia"

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

#82

Post by Animats »

They don't have a lost-kid feature?

In China, kids are accustomed to face recognition early.[1] The kids are checking into school via fare gates with face recognition. Here's an ad for Hikvision surveillance systems showing the whole system.[2] Hikvision has a whole series of videos presenting their concept of a kindly, gentler Big Brother. This is probably the most amusing.[3]

Amazon's concept is in some ways more powerful. They don't need full coverage. Just sparse, but widespread coverage. Anything that moves around will pass through the view of cameras at some point. Suspicious behavior can be detected in the back end cloud processing, which improves over time.

Flock has the same concept. Flock coverage is sparse in terms of area, but widespread.

"1984" was so last cen.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/SMKG8aLTJ38

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnHFJz-u85A

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otAuH6FDhgw

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

#84

Post by b00ty4breakfast »

dylan604 wrote: post #66
b00ty4breakfast wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a bit orthogonal to the article, but Christopher Nolan gives me the willies. Almost all his films have this kind authoritarian apologia in them.

Is that the same willies as something like 1984 or Black Mirror? All they are doing is taking some idea present now, and just taking it too the darker places of it while society is currently only seeing the rosy side of things. It's stories like this that might be first time someone might actually consider other implications of ideas.

No, it's more like the militarism in a Heinlein novel. It is, at best, an unexamined assumption and, at worst, a celebration, or sometimes a passive acceptance, of violence to enforce the status quo.

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

#86

Post by russellbeattie »

Amazon marketing broke a fundamental rule about consumer tech: Don't remind users about how much Big Tech knows about you.

Your various devices track everywhere you go, who you communicate with, what you search for, what you buy, what audio you listen to, what videos you watch, what games you play, who your family is, all your pictures and video you take, who comes and goes from your house, when you sleep, your health data, and much more.

And as a fundamental part of Big Tech's business they accumulate, aggregate and analyze all that information in various ways to increase profits. They don't keep this a secret, but wisely they normally don't brag about it to the general public.

Consumers have shown that are totally willing to give up privacy for convenience. Just don't remind them of it.

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

#88

Post by toephu2 »

text0404 wrote: post #19

Even more concerning is that Ring is partnering with Flock [1], which has been the subject of quite a bit of controversy recently [2][3][4], with the CEO lashing out at critics with inflammatory language [5][6]. [1] https://www.flocksafety.com/blog/flock-safety-and-ring-partn... [2] https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/flock-roundup [3] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/10/ice-school-c... [4] https…

[flagged]

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

#89

Post by toephu2 »

Animats wrote: post #82

They don't have a lost-kid feature? In China, kids are accustomed to face recognition early.[1] The kids are checking into school via fare gates with face recognition. Here's an ad for Hikvision surveillance systems showing the whole system.[2] Hikvision has a whole series of videos presenting their concept of a kindly, gentler Big Brother. This is probably the most amusing.[3] Amazon's concept is in some ways more p…

[flagged]

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

#90

Post by pbhjpbhj »

RankingMember wrote: post #47
slg wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to not become disillusioned with our industry when most of it is just the manifesting of that Torment Nexus tweet. It's like no one in the tech world actually understands any piece of fiction that they have ever consumed.

I knew plenty of people growing up who thought Fight Club was just a fun movie about guys who like to fight and make a club to do so and it gets a little crazy, then cut to credits. They then theorized making their own such club. This to say, yeah, I think sometimes the audience can be overestimated in their ability to understand deeper meaning in art.

It's said that Starship Troopers failed to do as well in USA because people thought it was pro-fascist propaganda ... it doesn't seem possible that could genuinely be the case.
Post reply on HN