Funny how a single superbowl ad from Ring themselves was able to do in one weekend what a thousand and one anti Ring bloggers were unable to do for the past 10 years straight. This commercial and the response will probably be studied in marketing classes.
Am I missing something? I thought it was not the ad itself, but rather the combination with the reporting on that Guthrie abduction, which claimed that although there was no subscription to the recording service, the video data was still recovered, i.e., recorded and sent to Google servers.
Regardless of how you see it, although the ad was a kind of manipulative reframing of surveillance infrastructure by using pets as means of psychological manipulation, the Super Bowl ad seems to have just been an unfortunate (or fortunately) timed ad that caused people to glimpse through the cracks in the control matrix being constructed around them.
I don’t think it will really make a difference though. It’s like wildebeest watching their compatriot snatched underwater by a crocodile, to only momentarily pause before venturing right into the same river.
Anecdotally, my physical therapist (far more connected to the cultural zeitgeist than I am) brought up the ad yesterday and talked about how creepy it was.
Humans can adapt more quickly than wildebeest. Join advocacy groups for your own morale, continue to get better at communicating these dangers to the mainstream, be that person who offers alternatives to your non-technical circle.
Yeah, it’s a timing thing. Government surveillance with commercial partnerships is more aggressive now, and the stories are chipping away at our collective ignorance until something like this connects the dots for people. I’m off in my corner of culture and don’t watch social video so I didn’t appreciate the work that streamers/explainers have done to alert normal people to these problems. But those videos were more effective at getting Flock out of my city than any canvassing I did. It’s nice to see conspiracy brains turned to an actual cabal.
That one image of all the camera's apparently remotely controlled to scan the entire neighbourhood is something it's difficult to unsee.
The implication is obvious, the feel is inhuman.
The power of a few seconds of video is why TikTok had to be brought under control ( and sadly not just because of worrying about what others might do, but to specifically censor and promote specific messages ).
The issue really isn't about whether your neighbourhood has camera's, the question is who is in control.
>The power of a few seconds of video is why TikTok had to be brought under control
Didn't USA's current regime take over TikTok in order to use it for propaganda? Twitter-X was used so successfully that they're expanding their psyops.
You can trust billionaires, they always have your best interest in heart. After all, they're so wealthy they don't have to exploit you, unlike those grubby mom and pop operations that are desperate.
no, israel demanded the tiktok thing due to the backlash they are recieving for genocide and ethnic cleansing. their faithful servants in america simply did as their master commanded.
"From the river to the sea" is a literal call for Israel to be ethnically cleansed. Both sides want to kill each other very badly, only one side has the capability at the moment.
Maybe. Though you have missed out the second part - which doesn't talk about cleansing - it only talks about end of occupation.
Only one side is an illegally occupying power who took the land by force from the people who were peacefully living there.
And don't quote me events from ~2000 years ago.
If everyone held grudges that long the whole world would be at war.
The people in the West bank currently being driven from their homes - they aren't a threat to Israel - they are just farmers working their land. Trying to pick their olives.
It's a false equivalence to say there are two sides, on the one hand and the other.
Well the Arabic version is often “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be Arab” or “Palestine will be Muslim”.
Given the number of Jews who live in areas under full Palestinian authority (or in any other Arab countries), we know that “free” means “Jew-Free”.
And given the way you refer to all of it as “Occupation”. Including the parts that were legally purchased, developed, and built by Jews, the parts where Jews and Muslims live freely together as equal citizens, the implication is that all of that needs to be dismantled as well.
What’s your intention with the Jews who live there?
Are you denying the West bank is under occupation? Are you denying, that Arab citizens of Israel are not treated equally under the law?
> What’s your intention with the Jews who live there?
Eh? I have no 'intention', nor implied master plan - nor indeed have any personal stake in the region - other than to say that the running sore of the obvious injustice creates problems well beyond it's borders. Militant Islam is of course a problem - but I'd say Israel's current actions are one of the best recruiting agents.
I will say is that Arabs, Christians, others and Jews were quite happily living side by side in the region before the Zionist colonial project, there is no reason that can't be the situation again.
The West Bank is under occupation, Israel itself is not.
There may be some racism as in every other country, but Israeli Arabs have the same rights as Jews in Israel (and if you visit, you will see them living side by side and getting on well). Asides from being able to travel to certain areas, which the Arabs are allowed but Jews are not. And that military service is optional for Arabs.
It doesn’t matter if Christians and Jews were historically tolerated in Muslim countries. There’s no other country in the world that has proportionally this many Muslims and Jews living together. To think that you can replace it with a better model based on neighbouring countries is ridiculous or disingenuous.
> but Israeli Arabs have the same rights as Jews in Israel
That is simply not true. For example the 2023 Citizenship and Residency Revocation Law specifically only applies to one type of Israeli citizen.... guess which one?
>there may be some racism as in every other country
The question is whether than racism is part of the law and policy of the country. It's quite clear, under the current leadership, that if you are 'other' then you are second class.
> The West Bank is under occupation, Israel itself is not.
So Israels actions in the West bank are thus somehow not relevant???
> with a better model based on neighbouring countries is ridiculous or disingenuous
Senior members of the current Israeli government ( and I specifically make a distinction here between the goverment and the country ), are quite openly calling what can only be described as ethnic cleansing.
And as well as the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, Israel is currently also occupying parts of Lebanon, Syria, and also appears to want a war with Iran.
The solution isn't to cleanse/kill everyone else, the solution is to find a way to live side by side.
You’ve given two examples of laws regarding the punishment of terrorists who have been convicted of killing Israelis (Arabs or Jews). There’s nothing in the wording of these laws that’s specific to the perpetrator’s race or religion (or the victims’). There’s only your implication that these terrorists are more likely to be Palestinian.
The Key "Exclusionary" Mechanism
The Funding Clause: The law authorizes the Interior Minister to revoke citizenship or residency only if the person was convicted of a terror offense and it is proven they (or someone on their behalf) received monetary benefits from the Palestinian Authority in connection with that act.
Practical Effect: Because only Palestinian prisoners/families receive these specific PA stipends, the law does not apply to Jewish citizens who commit acts of terror, even if they are convicted of the same offenses.
ie It's if you are a terrorist and receive money ( like a pension,wage, benefit ) from the PA.
It's quite clearly constructed to not include Jewish right-wing terrorist acts.
This was openly discussed, as the intent, in the Knesset when the law was passed.
None of this is surprising if you look at what the key political players have said in public - they are openly supremacist.
There is a reason for the ICC,ICJ cases.
Can't reply to post below due to depth - so reply here:
The point is that only terrorism funded by the PA counts - why add the PA funding qualification??? So for example if some settler movement funds people to terrorize Palestinians - it's not covered.
Surely terrorism is terrorism? The PA qualification aim is clear.
That's why all citizens are not equal before the law. It's very clearly specifically designed to favour one set of people over another.
It's quite open - I don't understand why you feel the need to redefine black as white.
Other Western countries have similar laws about revoking citizenship to those who fight for an enemy against their own country (like the UK did with Shamima Begum).
There’s nothing in the law about the race of the perpetrators. That the Palestinian authority only pays Arabs to kill innocent Israelis doesn’t make Israeli law unequal.
geographic "from <> to <>" slogans are very commonly used in such contexts. Basically you take a are geographically split into multiple regions, make a "from->to" slogan which treats this areas as one unit in between and imply through it that it should be all homogeneous (weather it's about country boraders or ethnicity)
---
Like e.g. the German national anthem is based on a song from 1841, i.e. it predates WW1,2 and in turn the current German border.
Due to this the first verse refers to boarder rivers which by now lie outside of Germany (and and has other issues related to sever misinterpretation of most of the verse).
This lead to it being abused by Nazis and later neo-nazis to mean Germany should go to war and size various border regions.
But Germany did need a national anthem and this song has a lot of important history meaning unrelated to WW2/Nazis. So west Germany decided to make it the anthem again, but only sing the 3rd verse for official occasions. Through due to continuous abuse of neo-nazies of the first verse this was changed with reunification and today only the 3rd verse is the official national anthem.
Anyway I got a bit off topic but "from <> to <> verses" crossing country boarders (or "ethnic" boarders if used in some "ethnic" context) are most times "pretend to be harmless" slogans of extremists, even if they have a history where they had other meaning (like with the first verse of the song the German national anthem is based on).
Well, they're more aligned with Larry Ellison's than they are the CCP, even if they're probably not all that aligned.
Separately I don't particularly care who owns TikTok. I've never used it. But if someone is going to own Tiktok and people are going to voluntarily subject themselves to these algorithms and the owner’s intentions, I'd prefer it to be Americans (or another western country).
I can't stop the influence of it on my life by not using it. Perhaps it's not as straightforward as it seems to you.
China didn't seem to be doing much with it, as far as the West goes. Not sure if they were using it against their citizens though? Much safer to have it Chinese controlled for me, it seems.
You suggesting that China was "anti American" sounds crazy to me. They were surely your biggest trading partner? Like, I hate all those guys so much that we're going to make everything they want at whatever price they want to pay ...? In the past it might have been possible to argue they were anti-American in their politics; like opposing democracy, or rounding up nationals, ... but USA does as badly (worse?) on those things.
What it looks like is China was 'winning' the trade balance and USA's billionaires decided to take a break from raping teenagers to throw all the citizens on the fire to try and leverage their position to bring in fascism as a means to enriching themselves even further. Go USA, eh.
> I can't stop the influence of it on my life by not using it. Perhaps it's not as straightforward as it seems to you.
Yea but you can stop what would be 80+% of the influence on your life by not using it. It is very straightforward.
> China didn't seem to be doing much with it, as far as the West goes.
China (and other malicious actors) have demonstrably leveraged social media platforms to inflame tensions, create anti-American and anti-Western sentiment, and more. With platforms like TikTok they were able to more directly influence content, they understand the algorithm that is used, &c.
But let me put it to you from a different angle. If you don't think China was or could have been using TikTok to influence Americans and westerners in general, then I'd suggest the US had nothing to do with, oh, idk, the Arab Spring. :)
> Not sure if they were using it against their citizens though? Much safer to have it Chinese controlled for me, it seems.
Well they have other platforms for that, social credit score, TVs on every corner, &c. Much safer for me to have it American controlled so I don't have an authoritarian Chinese communist party trying to influence me or anyone around me, or further inflaming tensions for their own gain.
> You suggesting that China was "anti American" sounds crazy to me. They were surely your biggest trading partner? Like, I hate all those guys so much that we're going to make everything they want at whatever price they want to pay ...? In the past it might have been possible to argue they were anti-American in their politics;
Well it's not just Americans and Canadiens, it's the EU too. The strategy was to leverage incredibly cheap labor (slave labor in some cases) and loose environmental restrictions to start manufacturing cheap goods and then move up the value chain. Inherently there's nothing to wrong with the approach (minus the slave labor and all of that), but as China continued to do so they did so while also undercutting competitiveness from other countries and blocs. They artificially devalue their currency, they routinely broke WTO rules so much so that other countries said to hell with it. The EU for example has historically tariffed Chinese products. Why? Because if they don't then local industries in the EU with long summer vacations and all of these nice things would be out-competed and out of business.
This isn't really controversial or anything. It's pretty well known, and from an American standpoint the point of view with respect to China is rather bipartisan.
It won't matter because they don't care. The masses don't concern themselves with theoretical threats even when they understand them on an intellectual level, they buy the emotional argument no matter how weak it is on technical merit.
To convince them otherwise, you need to offer a more compelling emotional argument, but politicians and lobbyist already tell them that they're going to get raped and killed in the street unless they support their agenda.
So what do you do? How do you come up with an emotional argument that's more compelling than that?
Here we have a problem: Hollywood tropes. Shows like The Big Bang Theory aka "Blackface for Nerds" make it nearly impossible to even talk to normals without sounding like Sheldon F. Cooper.
sadly where I live (not the US) most people using ring are the kind of older people which through non stop propaganda about how "dangerous it is" don't have any mind left to consider iff maybe that camera is as dangerous just in a different way
now that also brings us to the good news, which is a lot of people really don't like any form of internet connected cameras and the culture related to surveillance to it is very different here.
There was an ad, how the Ring cameras can organize a "search party" for your "puppies", basically turning the whole neighborhood into a surveillance operation. Even though they wrapped the whole big brother feature into "sad little girl lost their cute puppy", it was too obvious.
With that said, I'm not sure it will have any long term effect on them... sure some people return their stuff, make a post about it, but it's like (insert people with certain political affiliation) cancelling (insert big brand) by burning their stuff. It makes a splash in social, but I'm not sure it really significantly changes user behavior.
Is this really political? While the right “Backs the Blue” (and ICE), they are just as concerned about the surveillance state as the left. Their threat model is just different as far as why. The right never trusted federal law enforcement.
At least for conservatives who still value those principles when their party is in office, true. Sedona’s successful anti-Flock effort was led by Trump voters.
Well we saw the reaction from the NRA and the guns rights group when Trump said the guy in MN wouldn’t have been shot if he hadn’t been carrying a gun. That was a bridge too far for even them.
You let Trump announce that there has to be a national gun registry or mandated vaccines. You see he even stepped away from bragging about the vaccines only happened for Covid because of “Operation Warp Speed” under his administration. That should have been something that any politician would be proud of.
BTW, the only impressive thing that happened in his entire first administration is the speed at which the vaccines were developed and his not letting the economy collapse because of the stimulus and he can’t take credit for either because of his own base
It was interesting to watch liberal progressives learn in real time that federal agents are allowed to just murder people. Right wing conspiracy theorists have known this since Ruby Ridge.
Interesting that you'd attribute this to a left/right divide. There are varying levels of skepticism and trust of police/secret police on both sides. Probably the main difference is what those people think those agencies should and do accomplish.
Really? “The left” has never trusted the police. I can tell you as a person who studied the civil rights movement, whose still living parents grew up in the Jim Crow South and who personal knew some of the secondary people who made the history books during that time (I am 51), “the left” or at least a large part of never trusted any law enforcement.
From my perspective, the American progressive left is deeply distrustful of local / state police, but are more inclined to believe the feds good at least insofar as they enforce good progressive laws against backwards locals. The feds enforcing desegregation is perhaps the root origin of this sentiment. The conservative right on the other hand is very inclined to support local police, but have hated feds with notable intensity, probably sharing the same root but really intensified in the 90s.
So I had first and second level connections to people who were involved in the civil rights movement. My mom knew someone or knew who knew someone that could get me a call with almost anyone of influence in the Black community nationally. I went to school with a lot of their children - at least the 2nd or 3rd level connections.
The civil rights movement was very aware of things like this at the time
And, you know, if it was actually mobilized to find lost puppies, I'd be all for that shit. But that's not what it's for. It's for helping cops find poor people, or ICE find Mexicans, or whatever bullshit is making the headlines in 4 weeks.
FWIW, I don't like being a tech downer/skeptic, but every fucking thing is like this now. Every social media is being turned into surveillance. Every cloud-based application, no matter how useful, is bending over so the state can shove it's hand up it's ass and turn it into yet another way for the Christofascists to shove their bullshit into my life. I'm fucking tired, y'all. I'm tired of finding something cool and interesting, and then needing to audit the entire backend to see if my friends and I are endangering ourselves by engaging with it. I'm tired of seeing something fucking useful, a goddamn video doorbell, and being like "oh that's pretty fucking nice!" and then having to box it up years on because the company that built it is going to turn my porch into a node in the nationwide Good Citizen network.
And it's asymmetric because they seemingly NEVER get tired. There's just a whole like 1/3 of the population out there that seemingly never even sleeps, they're just constantly trying to figure out how to make my life just slightly fucking worse, either for profit or to advance their weird evangelical agenda.
I'm so, so, profoundly sick of these freaks.
Edit: And please just SPARE ME the both sides horseshit. Yeah both sides have problems, but one side is fucking dragging us back to 16th century social politics, and THEY'RE the ones I'm sick more of.
I don't see Ring as a politics problem, I see it as a policy problem. Just because something is legal in the federated, ad hoc instance doesn't mean it is advisable to systematize.
Preemptively, the exact sort of "BUT BIDEN BAD" horseshit occurring elsewhere in the thread. And again, yes, Biden bad. Biden is an inept old man who was far out of his depth, who failed, completely, to hold anyone accountable for the atrocity against the Republic that was January 6th. But again, he, and to be sure, the Democrats as a whole, failed that, and whilst that is true, the other side is currently ushering in the end of American global influence and they're going to make it so no American citizen will EVER be able to own ANYTHING EVER AGAIN. So I am simply not entertaining this "both sides" horseshit anymore.
Both sides DO have problems. One has distinctly WAY more fucking problems, and also, WAY more fucking power. If pointing out this obvious fucking reality makes me partisan, or biased, whatever. Partisan I am.
If I'm to be marched into a meat grinder I at least reserve the right to tell the people doing it to me they fucking suck.
It's not a partisan issue. From leftist utopias to god-fearing Texan ranch lands, the police are abusing power and harassing innocent people. Trying to bring religion and partisanship (in one word, even) doesn't help your message.
I'm sorry I'm having a hard time remembering the role leftists are playing in the US right now what with the Executive, Congressional and Judicial branches all being stacked to the tits with Republicans, right up to the top with our dementia-addled conman of a president, sleepily signing into law the policies that will see us excised as the center of world economics.
One was much further gone and the people talking about Trump now were silent about it. Biden barely appeared for months at a time, and even then stage managed heavily, and it still went wrong, and Trump is constantly on camera often ad libbing. Not saying he's great at ad libbing, but they couldn't be more different in terms of communication performance.
are the christofascists in the room with us? you don't think marxists use this technology for nefarious means? chinese social credit must be a myth.
the both sides thing is right, you dont remember the lockdowns over a cold, mandated behavioral changes, and countries sending people to "isolation camps" and pressing digital id?
yeah tho its just the "christofascists" huh?
you people only care when illegal invaders get targeted. your outrage is performative.
If it wasn't for the ICE situation there probably wouldn't even be any backlash. It is getting people to finally open their eyes a little bit and see how this post patriot act world we've built for ourselves actually operates.
The add is super cute, except for 1 second https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OheUzrXsKrY&t=15s (probably from 14.5 to 15.5, the one home part is fine for me, but the neighborhood is scary). That second is out of an evil sci-fi film.
It is too-obviously intentionally designed to be “kinda cute.” It is clear to anybody who watched it that the people making the ad knew they needed a sort of euphemistic (or whatever) way of pitching their surveillance system.
It is far, far, far, far more likely that this sort of mass surveillance capability will be used for bad purposes (even by law enforcement) than it will be used to find an escaped child murderer. (Hell, I am convinced that this sort of thing is already more frequently used for bad purposes than good.)
Also like, how many escaped child murderers are there per year in the US? Like... one? I don't think that's worth pervasive mass surveillance, though I would understand how a parent whose kid had been abducted might believe it would be.
