Things have been developing at Ring, the home security camera company since Amazon purchased it in February 2018 in a $1 billion deal. Three months after the acquisition, Amazon launched Neighbors, a social media app and service used with Ring.

If you have Ring security cameras, you can upload video content straight from your security camera to the Neighbors app. And if you download Neighbors and invite a friend to join the app, both you and your friend get $10 off Ring security products—which include doorbell video cameras, floodlight video cameras, and in-home security cameras,” Motherboard reported.

In essence, average citizens are policing their own neighborhoods — becoming untrained cops.

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Neighbors describes itself as a “new neighborhood watch.” Similar products on the market include NextDoor, a social platform for local communities. There have been problems with NextDoor as well.

“NextDoor has faced long-standing issues of racism on its platform, and Ring faces the same issue,” Motherboard reported. “Each Neighbors post has one of the following labels: Crime, Safety, Suspicious, Stranger, or Lost Pet. Ring captures footage that can help lead to arrests when that footage is shared with police.”

Crime- and safety- focused platforms can actively reinforce racism, said
Chris Gilliard, a professor of English at Macomb Community College who studies institutional tech policy, according to a Motherboard interview.

“We know from a bunch of high-profile incidents in the past, and even when people live in a particular neighborhood, often their white neighbors don’t identify them as neighbors or belonging in those spaces,” Gilliard said. “So there’s a way that blackness can be seen as foreign, even when you ‘belong.’ And those systems codify that in a way that makes me really uncomfortable.”

The proof is in the videos posted on Neighbors, which disproportionately depict people of color. And they often feature racist language or make racist assumptions.

Ring was founded to be a crime-fighting tool. In a March 2016 company-wide email titled “Going to war,” Ring CEO Jamie Siminoff declared: “We are going to war with anyone that wants to harm a neighborhood.” He added this, “To the dirtbag criminals that steal our packages and rob our houses … your time is numbered because Ring is now officially declaring war on you!”

Siminoff was basically saying Ring users are going to take on criminals, which is a job for law enforcement.  

“But what does it mean when a wholly owned Amazon subsidiary teams up with local law enforcement? What kind of new creature is this, and what does it mean to live in its shadow?” the Intercept asked.

When the Washington Post’s Geoffrey Fowler looked in the privacy risks of the Ring’s Neighborhood, here’s the response he got from the company about its data-sharing relationship with police: “Our customers are in control of who views their footage. Period. We do not have any plans to change this.”

Would Ring draw an ethical line at sharing footage directly with police, even if there was consent? “It wouldn’t say,” Fowler reported.

The consequences may turn out to be dangerous.