Amazon employs a newsgroup filled with criminal stories designed to scare you by buying a "smart" bellswitch and snitch / Boing Boing

Ring is a "smart" doorbell purchased by Amazon for $ 1 billion in 2018 and turned into an unsecured network surveillance device (possibly connected to Amazon's facial recognition system) and connected to order forces so that the company can announce its a ring has made you a good citizen of your neighborhood, part of a network of ruthless eyes who have identified suspicious foreigners and who have broken the law , framed by an application named with perfect goosebumps: "Neighbors".

There is only one problem with using the fear of evil outsiders to sell shit bells on the Internet: crime is falling and continues to fall.

So, Amazon solves the problem! They invite criminal reporters to create a new vertical that will publish frightening, context-free crime stories, chosen by cherry, that will help to give a false media-fed impression of the dangers presented by your fellow citizens to the "American carnage" narrative. written by Steve Bannon and Steve Miller on the occasion of the inauguration of Trump and the TV show COPS, which spends decades to make Americans believe that their cities are overflowing with crazy demons crazy at the Brown skin.

Only 15% of Americans are able to correctly answer the questions on the survey on increasing or decreasing crime, with the Conservatives being the worst off.

So think about this management-editor job. Ring wants to "cover local crime" all over the world, up to the level of the house and the neighborhood. Thus, an editor-in-chief, to which is added the number of members of this team, is supposed to create a thoughtful and non-exploitive editorial product, which sends "last-minute alerts on crime", journalistic and healthy, in all the countries. Do they really communicate news or just regular impulses of fear in the form of push notification? If that is the job, it is literally impossible to do it responsibly.

I've downloaded Neighbors – you can do it without owning a Ring Bell – and I've listed my address in the boring Arlington, Massachusetts, a city of 45,000 that does not have a ring bell. recorded no murders and only seven robberies last year. It was decided that I needed to know that someone in uniform from a local lawn care service had recently knocked on someone 's door instead of ringing at the door and, when no one answered, was gone. In addition, there was a building fire two cities away, a few days ago.

In addition, two young men, a man and a woman, wearing identical T-shirts and cords bearing nametags, carrying notebooks – probably seeking signatures for one cause or another – rang at the door and walked away when no one answered. "Does any one know who they are?" Asked a Neighbors user in a message, concerned about infiltration by the Islamic State of Boston's suburbs. "Call the police," said a helpful speaker. (It is not difficult for a critical race theorist to think that this suggestion could turn into concrete action for people of color who dare to approach an entry gate.)

The bell that sells fear [Joshua Benton/The Atlantic]

(via /.)

"DSC04131"by Dave Williss is licensed under CC BY 2.0

(Image: Cryteria, CC-BY)

<! –

->