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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

#201
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pulled from IMDB, Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox voices the consternation perfectly: > Batman: [seeing the wall of monitors for the first time at the Applied Sciences division in Wayne Enterprises] Beautiful, isn't it? > Lucius Fox: Beautiful... unethical... dangerous. You've turned every cellphone in Gotham into a microphone. > Batman: And a high-frequency generator-receiver. > Lucius Fox: You took my sonar concept an…

That system is nothing compared to the geolocation databases curated by Apple and Google, with GPS sensors combined with Wi-Fi wardriving, IMEI tracking, cell tower handoffs, and the rest of the insane amount of telemetry they collect collect in real time. And that’s before even considering BLE and the Find My network. Imagine the “God mode” dashboards they could have in Cupertino (or more likely, in Mountain View).

Imagine a Google Maps / Google Earth where you can see everyone’s location and identity in real time, with tagging/targeting/following capabilities and quick links to thorough personal profiles.

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

#202
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)

Because if you don't do what you are told at work, you may be forced to uproot your family, spouse, kids, and leave the country. You may be forced to abandon your pets and never see them again, forced to send your kids to suddenly school in a different, foreign-to-them language. You may be forced to pay tens of thousands in moving expenses. You may be forced to pay mortgages for a house you are not allowed to live in. All it takes is one unhappy manager at Amazon, or falling it the wrong bucket at stack ranking time.

Or you can do what your manager asks you to do, over-deliver on it year after year, and you won't have to deal with the above. You may be unhappy with what you do at work, but your kids and spouse will live happy lives, and you can keep your pets and house.

Sorry, just a dose of reality.

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

#204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I remember _movie critics_ clutching their pearls in disgust at the fascism. I was an autistic teen just out of a village and even I could see the satire. To this day I have no idea if they were reviewing in good faith, it still feels so far-fetched.

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

#205
post #197
post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There's no frame story to support this. There definitely is. No one on screen looks into camera and says this directly, but the whole recurring "Would you like to know more?" bit is supposed to tip the viewer off that what they're watching is a product of the government's propaganda efforts. I truly don't know how you can watch this [1] and conclude we're meant to fully trust them as the 100% honest truth. [1] - htt…

The "would you like to know more" segments are inner nested stories. Those actually are presented as in-universe video, and qualify as epistolary narrative. But to claim that the movie as a whole is anti-fascist satire relies on the assertion that the whole movie is epistolary, which goes against the narrative conventions of film-making. Judging only by what we see on screen, we have to take it at face value. To do a…

Why do you think those segments were included in the movie if it wasn't to get us to question the reliability of the narrative they're presenting?

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

#206
post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Starship Troopers (the movie) is a terrible example of satire because it fails to show anything substantially bad. When you present a society that's more ethical than real life, nobody's going to care if some people wear uniforms that look a bit like Nazi uniforms. There is a genuine existential risk, and it's addressed in the best way possible. Military slavery ("conscription") is more evil than disenfranchisement,…

The only hung I see about the asteroid was that Carmen’s collision (caused by her showing off) knocked the rock which caused it to hit Earth, where originally it may well have missed. Seems reasonable (although clearly not the intent of the story and not a deliberate “false flag”)

I don't think the amount of ship that it touched imparted much of a momentum vector for a thing of that mass.

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

#207
post #205
post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "would you like to know more" segments are inner nested stories. Those actually are presented as in-universe video, and qualify as epistolary narrative. But to claim that the movie as a whole is anti-fascist satire relies on the assertion that the whole movie is epistolary, which goes against the narrative conventions of film-making. Judging only by what we see on screen, we have to take it at face value. To do a…

Why do you think those segments were included in the movie if it wasn't to get us to question the reliability of the narrative they're presenting?

To differentiate between the potentially unreliable in-universe material and the conventional narrative of the rest. There's no on-screen evidence to justify a second level of nesting.

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

#208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you live somewhere with high crime? The reason deliveries work this way in the US is that porch pirates are uncommon. There is a flurry of them during the holidays, but even then, the vast majority of deliveries are just fine. > What are you going to do with that information? Nothing, because by the time I look at my doorbell camera I would already have told the shipper the package was swiped and they will have sh…

Porch pirates are so uncommon that it became a yearly hunt/thing for a major american youtuber and is the only reason people outside the US even know it exists!

Ah yes, porch pirates do not exist anywhere but in the US.

You know that the reason someone can make it newsworthy is because it is uncommon, yeah?

A security firm, which may have a particular interest in the numbers being skewed in a certain direction, pegs the number at 250K packages stolen from porches every day. Sounds like a huge problem! There are 60M packages delivered every day. Even if they are providing accurate numbers, which I doubt, it is uncommon.

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

#209

Bullshit. The only people worried are the ones that were already concerned and never bought a Ring. I guarantee the vast majority of people LOVE this new feature.

Part of the problem here is that people who love it are affecting people who do not. If you want to put cameras to record inside your home, fine, but this is people recording their neighbors without consent. The sales pitch is finding Fido, but I doubt that is the end game here.

A Ring camera pointed at a sidewalk or street is the clearest example of legally allowed filming in public I could imagine.

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

#210

Recording public spaces should be illegal. Public street? Public sidewalk? Not your turf, no cameras, no recording.

I think that goes too far, but limiting public space recordings to a camera you're operating in person would be a good starting point.

Good idea: keep the confrontational 1st amendment auditors, lose the benefits of security cameras. /s
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