Live data from Hacker News

Ring cancels its partnership with Flock Safety after surveillance backlash

theverge.com

91–100 of 331 posts

Re: Ring cancels its partnership with Flock Safety after surveillance backlash

#91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Cloud connected doorbells must die as well as dragnet surveillance. I'd disagree and restate that cloud services willing to make these kinds of deals must die, painfully, in a fire after being stung by a million killer bees, after receiving a million paper cuts and having lemon juice poured all over them. It is possible for a company to charge a monthly fee to provide a service and only that service without attempt…

No it is not. Your mandate is to grow your company’s revenue and profits, not act according to your conscience as an executive, especially if something is not illegal. This is why regulations are extremely important. There need to be a strong enough counterincentive or companies will eventually always follow the path of least resistance to growth. Ethics when present may create some form of friction along some specif…

You can easily put it into the corporate charter that you will not "do evil". At that point, you have a mandate to grow revenue while abiding by the charter..

Just because majority of people choose to be assholes does not mean everyone has to be. Be the change you wish to see in the world, or something

Re: Ring cancels its partnership with Flock Safety after surveillance backlash

#92
post #85

> Following a comprehensive review, we determined the planned Flock Safety integration would require significantly more time and resources than anticipated. That doesn’t sound like “we’re cancelling this because our customers let us know loud and clear that they were ethically against this”. If the only thing keeping them from doing this is time and money, what guarantee do we have that they won’t do it again if time…

They're saying that because saying what they actually mean would paint flock in a negative light, which they likely want to avoid for various reasons.

Re: Ring cancels its partnership with Flock Safety after surveillance backlash

#93
post #70

A lot of you won’t want to hear it but HomeKit + iCloud secure video is the only way to go. For one thing it’s end to end encrypted. You can also do ML stuff like face recognition which happens locally on your Apple TV. And you can set it to trigger HomeKit scenes if eg the person in the video isn’t recognized, or if it recognizes a particular person. Yeah Apple bad, blah blah. But they don’t have an incentive to sel…

There’s actually another alternative: Just don’t install surveillance in your home. Approximately nobody had it 20 years ago. Before asking which unreliable, overpriced, invasive gadget to buy, think about whether you really need any of them.

A 1080p cam with night vision a mic and speakers is 20 bucks. Baby monitors where more expensive in the past (audio only).

Re: Ring cancels its partnership with Flock Safety after surveillance backlash

#94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yep. Anyone got alternatives? The self-hosted and home-automation and home-assistant subreddits are _full_ of discussion threads on this. The good news is that you have a TON of options to pick from. The bad news is that they're all deficient in one way or another so you really do have to spend a bit of time to figure out who executes best on the things you care most about. If you don't mind the lock-in, Unifi is n…

Are there any such systems for general users that don't want to manage or maintain such systems? Alternatives really need to be for the masses that have little Knowles in server hosting. This is one reason I invest in Linux Smartphone company's that are work towards a clean solution for the masses. Daily drivers that are satisfactory for us build the stepping stones to walk to the alternative.

UniFi is simple to keep running and updated. It’s mostly plug and play as long as you have Ethernet lines. You sometimes have to hit update in the iPhone app.

Re: Ring cancels its partnership with Flock Safety after surveillance backlash

#96
post #95

Doesn't matter, I've come to the conclusion I'll never buy into one these networks. There's a reason "security" cameras were always on "closed circuit", there's no need give these companies money.

Same. The first thing I did when I bought my house was remove the Ring doorbell.

Re: Ring cancels its partnership with Flock Safety after surveillance backlash

#97

Meaning they’ll wait until about June and then quietly roll it out

No one being surprised at this statement is an indication of how much enshittification and betrayal we have agreed to accept. I’d like to acknowledge the damage I carry as a human being as a result of the pressure to pretend that this is normal. Just because there doesn’t seem to be real alternatives in so many areas of this “free market” /s economy.

We live in a world where the powerful deceive us. We know they lie. They know we know they lie. They don't care. We say we care but do nothing

Re: Ring cancels its partnership with Flock Safety after surveillance backlash

#98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Cloud connected doorbells must die as well as dragnet surveillance. I'd disagree and restate that cloud services willing to make these kinds of deals must die, painfully, in a fire after being stung by a million killer bees, after receiving a million paper cuts and having lemon juice poured all over them. It is possible for a company to charge a monthly fee to provide a service and only that service without attempt…

No it is not. Your mandate is to grow your company’s revenue and profits, not act according to your conscience as an executive, especially if something is not illegal. This is why regulations are extremely important. There need to be a strong enough counterincentive or companies will eventually always follow the path of least resistance to growth. Ethics when present may create some form of friction along some specif…

"Companies primarily consider profit" is not the gotcha you think it is. It's possible to consider profit via goodwill towards customers. A number of companies do this. This doesn't mean that you're inherently wrong, but this argument certainly isn't the right one.

Re: Ring cancels its partnership with Flock Safety after surveillance backlash

#99

Meaning they’ll wait until about June and then quietly roll it out

Yep. Anyone got alternatives? I love the convenience of a video doorbell but I really really would like to not help the police or ICE or anyone else for that matter unless I decide it's a good idea.

The difficult lesson is that getting off the treadmill of always chasing greater convenience is the only way to stop the bleeding of increasing dependence on technology.

Re: Ring cancels its partnership with Flock Safety after surveillance backlash

#100

Meaning they’ll wait until about June and then quietly roll it out

No one being surprised at this statement is an indication of how much enshittification and betrayal we have agreed to accept. I’d like to acknowledge the damage I carry as a human being as a result of the pressure to pretend that this is normal. Just because there doesn’t seem to be real alternatives in so many areas of this “free market” /s economy.

It has been a long decent. I blame advertising, because I doubt we would have put up with as much enshittification if the majority of our digital lives wasn't free, paid for by advertising, like it currently is.
Post reply on HN