As if pushing ever more news of "crime" (much of which may be inconsequential, entirely non-criminal trivia, judging by the kind of material mentioned in the article) at the public will somehow make our society better/happier/safer.
Didn't Bowling for Columbine suggest that a key element in America's fear-driven and violent society, when compared to its northern neighbour, might be the extent to which US media already focuses on such reporting (if I remember right -- it's been a long time)? This sort of toxic, alarmist "news" is already poisoning our social fabric; so let's double down on it and focus even more on feeding people's fears. Great.
It could be that the desire is so great to have your fear justified that the quiet that a lack of reporting from your local Ring community is seen as a lack of quality.
"My neighbour's kids are constantly being held hostage by sex slavery rings. My Ring feed just isn't reporting it!"
I think in this case we don’t yet know the consequences:
- It hasn’t ramped up
- They’re still haven’t fully integrated with LEOs (people must report the traditional way, but this could change)
So here are some obvious observations:
it increases surveillance (people can be followed across these networks via facial recognition).
If more people who commit crime are reported and LEOs become more effective (better evidence/leads/suspects) then it’s possible this could put down pressure on burglaries and other street crime.
Maybe it will depend on neighborhood, composition, attitudes, engagement, etc.
Begrudgingly I find it useful knowing to look out for bands of roving thieves, meter maids, anti social behavior, etc.
Do I like where it’s going? It has good and it has bad. No verdict yet.
A neighbor recently got a Ring out of some security concerns (partner got deployed for a year and they have two young kids). However, I've think it's made things worse in some ways:
- Every potential interaction is viewed with suspicion
- Everybody who walks up to the door prompts an interruption wherever you are (on your smartphone)
The local neighborhood sharing aspects of Ring strongly remind me of NextDoor, whose suspicion raising and general uselessness can pretty much be summed up in this tweet:
I've never seriously considered installing cameras outside my house, and the #1 reason is that I don't want a reason to fear something when there's nothing to fear.
I've never had my home broken into. But I guarantee you there have been all kinds of suspicious-looking things happening outside of my house. Someone's probably looked in the windows of our cars. Hell, I'm sure folks have wandered into (and out of) our gated back yard. Nothing's ever been stolen or disturbed, and while it would still be trespassing, it's not hurting me. My life would be worse, rather than better.
Maybe I'll sing a different tune when my house gets broken into some day, but for now I'll be blissfully unaware. And what would the video do for me, anyway? It seems the news is full of video clips asking people to call the police if they recognize the person. And what? Usually, nothing.
I live in the bay area, and have never once worried about package theft. I think homogeneity is probably the biggest predictor of it. Live in a multi-generational neighborhood? No problem.
Live in a cookie cutter subdivision with one way in and out, and every single resident is gone all day? Package theft heaven.
I have a few coworkers who recently got Ring devices. Now I see them constantly checking their phones and watching the security footage. The level of paranoia this device creates is pretty remarkable. These are rich tech workers living in low crime neighborhoods too.
Having a security camera isn't a bad idea at all, but one that gets you to check it constantly like it's instagram can't be healthy.
It’s primary season in New York, and Nextdoor in my area is a cesspit of people worried about the the pair of people with clipboards ringing their doorbell.
Replies range from “they could be casing your house” to “I think they stole packages from my porch” to helpful hints like calling 911, calling the gas company, or drive around looking for them. Usually somebody brings up something off topic like 5G towers as well.
It’s such a awful snapshot of paranoia and crazy. Ring happens to be a major sponsor on Nextdoor.
My local nextdoor recently had a 30 post flame-fest because someone was concerned that 3 11 year old girls walked up to their door and asked if they could have a glass of water. It's amazing how shitty neighbors will treat each other online but would never say similar things in person to each other.
I downloaded Neighbors—you can do so without owning a Ring doorbell—and plugged in my address in boring Arlington, Massachusetts, a city of 45,000 that recorded zero murders and only seven robberies last year. It decided I needed to know that someone in the uniform of a local lawn-care service had recently knocked on someone’s door instead of using the doorbell and, when no one answered, left. Also, there was a building fire two towns away, a couple of days ago.
Also, two young people, one male, one female, wearing identical T-shirts and lanyards with name badges, carrying clipboards—likely trying to get signatures for some cause or another—rang a doorbell and then walked away when no one answered. “Anyone know who they are?” the post from a Neighbors user asked, perhaps concerned about Islamic State infiltration of the Boston suburbs. “Call the police,” one helpful commenter replied.
I hate these things and all the things that go with them (NextDoor, etc). They promote a world where we're all locked in our boxes peeking through the blinds at each other and checking Twitter to see what's wrong.
When we don't trust each other, especially the people in our local community, we move towards a slightly worse world.
This is part of the same phenomenon frequently discussed on Hacker News where children are not allowed to play outside freely anymore. We're all convinced the world is full of Bad People who need stopping.
Nextdoor depends on where you live and who you live near. I've learned a lot about my city and local politics from my neighbors. It's a great place to get recommendations for local contractors. I live with a lot of nice people around and I appreciate getting the exposure to that.
There are definitely stories about needle sightings, break-ins, and package thefts, but I've found needles at the park and I've even had police come to my door asking about a dead body found nearby in a tarp. It's not like staying off of Nextdoor really stops my exposure to bad things, but I do get to learn more about my neighbors and keep in touch with what's going on in the 'hood.
I live in a very affluent and safe area in Central Indiana. Yet my Next Door and FB neighborhood group has lot of posts from people living in fear of “rising crime” due to the constant stream of crime reporting from various sources.
I’m fine with being “aware” of what’s happening but there needs to be sensible curation of the info.
Los Angeles recently got the Citizen App. I was excited at first to be better informed. Then I realized... perhaps it's better I don't get a notification every time something happens within a 10 block radius. The world around me started to seem more dangerous, and that isn't helping anyone.
I turned off Ring notifications because they were, in fact, making me fear my neighborhood. I try to be safe in my neighborhood. These notifications don't change that. They just make me scared.
I have a Ring doorbell camera and a camera in our garage, mostly to see if the garage door is closed. The "crime alerts" are annoying, so I've basically turned off all the notifications. Looks like amazon has figured out that crime sells security equipment.
We had a problem with teenagers were ringing our doorbell and screaming late at night around 1 a.m. It became a nightly ordeal, and sometimes several times a night. Sometimes they would kick the door and run away. Surprisingly, some of them were teenage girls. Since my wife is pregnant, I knew this had to stop. There is no way I wanted to deal with this with a newborn infant.
The comments on NextDoor are funny to me because it is filled with wingnuts and busy bodies. When I asked for advice on how to handle this situation, I was shouted down by social justice warriors who told me not to call the police because it was racist. I said fine, I'll just tell the registered sex offender who was recently released from prison (for abducting and raping a young woman) that there are young women harassing us, oh and by the way, all are neighbors are conditioned to ignore their screams and we won't call the police... because it is racist. Oddly enough, none of the social justice warriors replied to say I shouldn't.
I called the police and posted the videos on YouTube and sent them the link. They found them and calmly talked to them. Problem solved.
This is an entirely inflammatory and baseless article.
Yes, you should care a bit about local crime. If someone in your neighborhood is stealing hubcabs, maybe it's a good idea to park in the garage. Likewise, if there's a spat of minor vehicle burglaries, it's probably wise to make sure your vehicle is locked.
Yeah, is some idiot going to theorize that the salesman who ignored their no soliciting sign a secret islamist infiltrator who is casing their house? Probably. That doesn't undo the value of the other things because silly people exist.
On the other hand, when there are bad things happening in your neighborhood like serious break-ins or joggers keep getting kidnapped, then you know, harass your local police department to step up patrols and act accordingly.
Crime as a whole lowering doesn't mean crime in your neighborhood isn't happening. Yes the world is getting more peaceful as a whole, but yes, you can still be mugged and killed.
I don't think the article's thesis is that people shouldn't care about local crime news. Its main concern seems to be that a company who directly benefits from people being fearful (justifiably or not) of neighborhood crime, is also getting into the business of disseminating crime news, something which is known to increase people's fear of crime. The author points out that news organizations have traditionally been saturated with crime news, because of its popularity with readers, and that this might contribute to the public's skewed perception of actual crime incidence and trends.
Obviously, Amazon is not just a traditional news publisher, and may end up bringing innovation and doing things much better than journalists ever did. But there has been reason to believe big tech can end up being blindsided and/or fail when trying to disrupt traditional domains and problems.
My house was broken into last year. I wish I had Ring then. We never found any leads and police were unable to do anything.
Since then I have gotten Ring and definitely feel more secure. We even found footage of a man stealing our mail and were able to confirm with Ring app footage from a neighbor that the man stealing the mail was the same stealing their mail.
Crime reporting is big business. Besides 'Ring', look at the opportunistic hyping of fake hate crimes, ala Jussie Smollett. The desired outcome is the same: Injecting fear into people, causing them to buy something or vote a specific way.
It's despicable. It pits people against each other.
Back in the earlier days of the Internet, one of my first web apps I created as a reporter was a local crime map (inspired by, but much less sophisticated than Adrian Holovaty's chicagocrime.org [0]). This involved contacting each police department individually and asking them to email me the data. A couple of departments were happy, because they didn't want to pay to develop their own online map. Others (small jurisdictions) didn't have the IT process in place. But there were also large departments that definitely had a data process, but declined to participate (and I didn't really have the capacity to start a legal fight for it, since this was a side project, and I was the sole developer).
What I had been told unofficially, even by departments that did agree to send data, was that publicizing the data was perceived to have possible negative consequences -- such as scaring off potential home buyers (this was during the housing bubble). My point is that crime has always been a big draw for local news organizations, and this includes data applications like crime maps. But even ignoring how it might distort public perception of crime, there was always a pretty implicit downside to a local publisher in making their own community look like a shithole. Not just the negative feelings, but the price of real estate (and those real estate advertisers).
From what I can tell, Ring's proposed news service is just for Ring customers? That is, a non-Ring user (or someone not in the local geofenced area) might not get to see the crime news for a given area, in the same way that any Web user could visit a public crime mapper like chicagocrime.org. So the Ring news service gets all the upside of the attention that crime news draws without the same downsides that would usually be part of a publisher's news equation. This, added to Ring's already inherent appeal to customers paranoid about local crime, might lead to problematic incentives in their crime coverage.
If you want just the personally important hyperlocal crime news, your local police department might have an alerts email list that they use judiciously. Cambridge, Massaschusetts, USA, does this well. The advisories seem to be prompted by exceptional events/situations that people should know about (e.g., rash of B&E following a pattern in a particular neighborhood, or a rare shooting). If your local PD doesn't do this, consider asking them. Email list is vastly better than pushing you to follow them on Twitter or Facebook.
A city-wide genuine news outlet that cherry-picks important things from the police crime log, and follows up with additional reporting, is also good. And some awareness of the gist of it is important as a voting citizen and community member (e.g., you should be aware that, in some neighborhoods of your city, people might have justifiable fears of being hit by stray bullets, or how close to home the opiod epidemic, and read some of the journalism that personalizes ordinary people who are killed).
However, following every little hyperlocal thing exhaustively, or reading/watching for sensationalism/entertainment doesn't sound like a good idea, or at least is a huge time sink. Also, the reader/community comments can be spirit-crushing.
Separately, journalism is best done without any potential conflicts of interest. Most outlets I can think of have ownership that appears questionable (e.g., a big company/person with an interest in influencing public perception, or with other business before the politicians on which it's supposed to be a Fourth Estate check), but that kind of ownership shouldn't be the norm, and we should try to move away from that.
It’s propaganda 101, destabilize regimes and states by instilling fear in the population and mistrust of institutions. The fact it’s also profitable is a happy coincidence.
At the very least, the perception of rampant crime is a problem for local politicians; they’re seen as incompetent and not doing their jobs. The worst? See fascists regimes of ww2.
I own and pay a monthly monitoring fee for a home security system, not because I value the things in my house, but out fear some nut job would try to harm my family. This is not rational, the odds are near zero, and it wouldn’t stop a determined attacker anyway, but it is a deterrent. And I don’t want to kill anyone, even if it is often “justified” (castle doctrine). There’s definitly money in fear.
They probably found that many people lose interest in their Ring if they don't see a purpose for it, so they're manufacturing a point. The more your Ring tells you about crime, the more afraid you'll be, and want your Ring around to keep you informed about crime.
[+] [-] jfk13|6 years ago|reply
Didn't Bowling for Columbine suggest that a key element in America's fear-driven and violent society, when compared to its northern neighbour, might be the extent to which US media already focuses on such reporting (if I remember right -- it's been a long time)? This sort of toxic, alarmist "news" is already poisoning our social fabric; so let's double down on it and focus even more on feeding people's fears. Great.
[+] [-] gumby|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tomaskafka|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jboy55|6 years ago|reply
"My neighbour's kids are constantly being held hostage by sex slavery rings. My Ring feed just isn't reporting it!"
[+] [-] mc32|6 years ago|reply
- It hasn’t ramped up
- They’re still haven’t fully integrated with LEOs (people must report the traditional way, but this could change)
So here are some obvious observations:
it increases surveillance (people can be followed across these networks via facial recognition).
If more people who commit crime are reported and LEOs become more effective (better evidence/leads/suspects) then it’s possible this could put down pressure on burglaries and other street crime.
Maybe it will depend on neighborhood, composition, attitudes, engagement, etc.
Begrudgingly I find it useful knowing to look out for bands of roving thieves, meter maids, anti social behavior, etc.
Do I like where it’s going? It has good and it has bad. No verdict yet.
[+] [-] mtgx|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ranie93|6 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnhJWusyj4I
[+] [-] booleandilemma|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lokidokiro|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] mises|6 years ago|reply
However, America has a free press. This is a great attribute of hers. If that is changed, we take a tremendous risk. Not something easy to stop.
[+] [-] michaelbuckbee|6 years ago|reply
- Every potential interaction is viewed with suspicion
- Everybody who walks up to the door prompts an interruption wherever you are (on your smartphone)
The local neighborhood sharing aspects of Ring strongly remind me of NextDoor, whose suspicion raising and general uselessness can pretty much be summed up in this tweet:
https://twitter.com/bestofnextdoor/status/112232088963729817...
[+] [-] rconti|6 years ago|reply
I've never had my home broken into. But I guarantee you there have been all kinds of suspicious-looking things happening outside of my house. Someone's probably looked in the windows of our cars. Hell, I'm sure folks have wandered into (and out of) our gated back yard. Nothing's ever been stolen or disturbed, and while it would still be trespassing, it's not hurting me. My life would be worse, rather than better.
Maybe I'll sing a different tune when my house gets broken into some day, but for now I'll be blissfully unaware. And what would the video do for me, anyway? It seems the news is full of video clips asking people to call the police if they recognize the person. And what? Usually, nothing.
I live in the bay area, and have never once worried about package theft. I think homogeneity is probably the biggest predictor of it. Live in a multi-generational neighborhood? No problem.
Live in a cookie cutter subdivision with one way in and out, and every single resident is gone all day? Package theft heaven.
[+] [-] burger_moon|6 years ago|reply
Having a security camera isn't a bad idea at all, but one that gets you to check it constantly like it's instagram can't be healthy.
[+] [-] Spooky23|6 years ago|reply
Replies range from “they could be casing your house” to “I think they stole packages from my porch” to helpful hints like calling 911, calling the gas company, or drive around looking for them. Usually somebody brings up something off topic like 5G towers as well.
It’s such a awful snapshot of paranoia and crazy. Ring happens to be a major sponsor on Nextdoor.
[+] [-] oh_sigh|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stronglikedan|6 years ago|reply
Only if they actually ring the bell. Or if you're some sort of masochist who turns on motion alerts for your doorbell.
[+] [-] swamp40|6 years ago|reply
I downloaded Neighbors—you can do so without owning a Ring doorbell—and plugged in my address in boring Arlington, Massachusetts, a city of 45,000 that recorded zero murders and only seven robberies last year. It decided I needed to know that someone in the uniform of a local lawn-care service had recently knocked on someone’s door instead of using the doorbell and, when no one answered, left. Also, there was a building fire two towns away, a couple of days ago.
Also, two young people, one male, one female, wearing identical T-shirts and lanyards with name badges, carrying clipboards—likely trying to get signatures for some cause or another—rang a doorbell and then walked away when no one answered. “Anyone know who they are?” the post from a Neighbors user asked, perhaps concerned about Islamic State infiltration of the Boston suburbs. “Call the police,” one helpful commenter replied.
[+] [-] habosa|6 years ago|reply
When we don't trust each other, especially the people in our local community, we move towards a slightly worse world.
This is part of the same phenomenon frequently discussed on Hacker News where children are not allowed to play outside freely anymore. We're all convinced the world is full of Bad People who need stopping.
[+] [-] thebigspacefuck|6 years ago|reply
There are definitely stories about needle sightings, break-ins, and package thefts, but I've found needles at the park and I've even had police come to my door asking about a dead body found nearby in a tarp. It's not like staying off of Nextdoor really stops my exposure to bad things, but I do get to learn more about my neighbors and keep in touch with what's going on in the 'hood.
[+] [-] vermontdevil|6 years ago|reply
I’m fine with being “aware” of what’s happening but there needs to be sensible curation of the info.
[+] [-] badwolf|6 years ago|reply
Helicopter flying overhead? be sure to follow the multiple "Police choppers looking for a perp in our neighborhood!" posts.
People revel in fearmongering :(
[+] [-] theNJR|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] opportune|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danvoell|6 years ago|reply
I turned off Ring notifications because they were, in fact, making me fear my neighborhood. I try to be safe in my neighborhood. These notifications don't change that. They just make me scared.
[+] [-] jfk13|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anon4lol|6 years ago|reply
We had a problem with teenagers were ringing our doorbell and screaming late at night around 1 a.m. It became a nightly ordeal, and sometimes several times a night. Sometimes they would kick the door and run away. Surprisingly, some of them were teenage girls. Since my wife is pregnant, I knew this had to stop. There is no way I wanted to deal with this with a newborn infant.
The comments on NextDoor are funny to me because it is filled with wingnuts and busy bodies. When I asked for advice on how to handle this situation, I was shouted down by social justice warriors who told me not to call the police because it was racist. I said fine, I'll just tell the registered sex offender who was recently released from prison (for abducting and raping a young woman) that there are young women harassing us, oh and by the way, all are neighbors are conditioned to ignore their screams and we won't call the police... because it is racist. Oddly enough, none of the social justice warriors replied to say I shouldn't.
I called the police and posted the videos on YouTube and sent them the link. They found them and calmly talked to them. Problem solved.
[+] [-] sandwich9|6 years ago|reply
It goes in to how the show make viewers think there is a lot more crime going on than there actually is. The show producers profit off this
https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/missing-richard-simmons/run...
[+] [-] vorpalhex|6 years ago|reply
Yes, you should care a bit about local crime. If someone in your neighborhood is stealing hubcabs, maybe it's a good idea to park in the garage. Likewise, if there's a spat of minor vehicle burglaries, it's probably wise to make sure your vehicle is locked.
Yeah, is some idiot going to theorize that the salesman who ignored their no soliciting sign a secret islamist infiltrator who is casing their house? Probably. That doesn't undo the value of the other things because silly people exist.
On the other hand, when there are bad things happening in your neighborhood like serious break-ins or joggers keep getting kidnapped, then you know, harass your local police department to step up patrols and act accordingly.
Crime as a whole lowering doesn't mean crime in your neighborhood isn't happening. Yes the world is getting more peaceful as a whole, but yes, you can still be mugged and killed.
[+] [-] danso|6 years ago|reply
Obviously, Amazon is not just a traditional news publisher, and may end up bringing innovation and doing things much better than journalists ever did. But there has been reason to believe big tech can end up being blindsided and/or fail when trying to disrupt traditional domains and problems.
[+] [-] bb2018|6 years ago|reply
Since then I have gotten Ring and definitely feel more secure. We even found footage of a man stealing our mail and were able to confirm with Ring app footage from a neighbor that the man stealing the mail was the same stealing their mail.
[+] [-] RickJWagner|6 years ago|reply
It's despicable. It pits people against each other.
[+] [-] danso|6 years ago|reply
What I had been told unofficially, even by departments that did agree to send data, was that publicizing the data was perceived to have possible negative consequences -- such as scaring off potential home buyers (this was during the housing bubble). My point is that crime has always been a big draw for local news organizations, and this includes data applications like crime maps. But even ignoring how it might distort public perception of crime, there was always a pretty implicit downside to a local publisher in making their own community look like a shithole. Not just the negative feelings, but the price of real estate (and those real estate advertisers).
From what I can tell, Ring's proposed news service is just for Ring customers? That is, a non-Ring user (or someone not in the local geofenced area) might not get to see the crime news for a given area, in the same way that any Web user could visit a public crime mapper like chicagocrime.org. So the Ring news service gets all the upside of the attention that crime news draws without the same downsides that would usually be part of a publisher's news equation. This, added to Ring's already inherent appeal to customers paranoid about local crime, might lead to problematic incentives in their crime coverage.
[0] http://www.holovaty.com/writing/chicagocrime.org-tribute/
[+] [-] oh_sigh|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] neilv|6 years ago|reply
A city-wide genuine news outlet that cherry-picks important things from the police crime log, and follows up with additional reporting, is also good. And some awareness of the gist of it is important as a voting citizen and community member (e.g., you should be aware that, in some neighborhoods of your city, people might have justifiable fears of being hit by stray bullets, or how close to home the opiod epidemic, and read some of the journalism that personalizes ordinary people who are killed).
However, following every little hyperlocal thing exhaustively, or reading/watching for sensationalism/entertainment doesn't sound like a good idea, or at least is a huge time sink. Also, the reader/community comments can be spirit-crushing.
Separately, journalism is best done without any potential conflicts of interest. Most outlets I can think of have ownership that appears questionable (e.g., a big company/person with an interest in influencing public perception, or with other business before the politicians on which it's supposed to be a Fourth Estate check), but that kind of ownership shouldn't be the norm, and we should try to move away from that.
[+] [-] mv4|6 years ago|reply
Now this.
[+] [-] marktangotango|6 years ago|reply
At the very least, the perception of rampant crime is a problem for local politicians; they’re seen as incompetent and not doing their jobs. The worst? See fascists regimes of ww2.
I own and pay a monthly monitoring fee for a home security system, not because I value the things in my house, but out fear some nut job would try to harm my family. This is not rational, the odds are near zero, and it wouldn’t stop a determined attacker anyway, but it is a deterrent. And I don’t want to kill anyone, even if it is often “justified” (castle doctrine). There’s definitly money in fear.
[+] [-] peterwwillis|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kwillets|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] commonsense1234|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]