There’s going to be a TV show made from Ring doorbell footage
It’s like America’s Funniest Home Videos meets Big Brother, sponsored by Amazon.
Watching Amazon’s rise from an innocuous online bookseller to the leading architect of our dystopian nightmare has been hell. But just when you think the Amazon nightmare has peaked, it proves you wrong. Recently, Amazon announced it’s making a reality show featuring Ring clips. Love some good ol’ propaganda!
Titled Ring Nation, the show will be produced by MGM Television, Big Fish Entertainment, and, of course, Ring. According to Deadline, Wanda Sykes has signed on to host Ring Nation. The show is essentially Amazon’s take on America’s Funniest Home Videos, as Deadline reported it’ll feature content captured on Ring cameras like “neighbors saving neighbors, marriage proposals, military reunions, and silly animals.”
“Bringing the new community together is core to our mission at Ring, and Ring Nation gives friends and family a fun new way to enjoy time with one another,” Ring founder and Ring Nation executive producer Jamie Siminoff said in the press release. “We’re so excited to have Wanda Sykes join Ring Nation to share people’s memorable moments with viewers.”
Yeah, that all might sound cute and heart-warming. But the entire show is just another obvious step in Amazon’s propaganda campaign. Since acquiring Ring in February 2018, Amazon has wanted to dominate the personal surveillance market. For my newsletter NAZAR, I put together a map of surveillance rebate programs, which included a disturbing number of Ring subsidy programs.
As Amazon pushed Ring into people’s homes, it also entered into sketchy partnerships with hundreds of police departments that includes giving them access to footage without owners’ permission. Then there are the reports of Ring doorbells leaking owners’ WiFi information and home addresses.
If that history isn’t bad enough, you should also know that Amazon owns MGM Television and Big Fish Entertainment. The latter already pushes out copaganda through Live PD, a reality show that was briefly cancelled alongside Cops following George Floyd’s murder by police in Minneapolis. When its revival was announced in June, The Guardian described Live PD as “NFL Red Zone, but for arrests of people not given the chance to sign release forms because the show bills itself as live news.”
Ring Nation is set to premiere in September 2022. And I can’t wait to see what type of privacy mess comes from it.
