MGM (owned by Amazon) is making a viral video show based on footage from Ring surveillance cameras (also owned by Amazon). The syndicated television show Ring Nation is poised to be a modern, supervised twist on “America’s Funniest Home Videos,” starring Wanda Sykes.
According to a report in Deadline, the show will feature ring footage of “neighbors rescuing neighbors, marriage proposals, military meetings and silly animals.” Ring is also notorious for activities such as accidentally leaking home addresses and handing over footage to the government without users’ permission.
Between January and July of this year, Amazon shared ringtone recordings with US authorities 11 times without the consent of the device owner. Ring has been criticized for working unusually closely with at least 2,200 police departments across the United States and allowing police to request doorbell camera video footage of homeowners through the Ring’s Neighbors app. Like Citizen and Nextdoor, the Neighbors app tracks local crime and allows users to comment anonymously — plus Ring’s police partners can publicly request video footage on the app.
An Amazon-owned police surveillance network is bad enough, but Neighbors users also face repeated security issues.
An executive at MGM, Barry Poznick, praised the new show: “From the outrageous to the hilarious and uplifting viral must-see moments from across the country, every day, Ring Nation has something for everyone living at home watching.”
But maybe viewers at home really want privacy.
Ring only began disclosing its ties to law enforcement after it received requests for transparency from the US government. In a 2019 letter, Senator Ed Markey (DMA) said the company’s relationship with police forces raised civil liberties concerns.
“Ring’s camera network integration with law enforcement agencies could easily create a surveillance network that imposes dangerous burdens on people of color and fuels racial fears in local communities,” Sen. Markey wrote. “Given the evidence that existing facial recognition technology disproportionately misidentifies African Americans and Latinos, a product like this has the potential to accelerate racial profiling and harm people of color.”
Amazon bought the smart video doorbell company for $1 billion in 2018 and bought MGM for $8.5 billion earlier in the year. Now these two investments — which seem unrelated — are merging into a late-capitalist dystopian spectacle that we could not have imagined in our worst nightmares. Amazon also just spent $1.7 billion on iRobot, maker of the Roomba vacuum cleaner, but we dare not imagine how this acquisition might one day inspire a terrible TV show.