I am fairly media and technology adept, but I have been flatly unable to find and view the new syndicated television show Ring Nation. It’s an updated America’s Funniest Home Videos (AFV) apparently making use of video from Ring doorbell cameras and other consumer video recording platforms. The idea is to amuse American audiences with the wacky hijinks and happenings that punctuate our national day-to-day. That’s based on second-hand reports, because, again, I haven’t seen it.

Being unable to watch Ring Nation turns out to be great news, not only because the show is almost certainly vapid. Popular Science reports that the show is targeted via local cable channels to a demographic that is “statistically older, lower income, and white.” That means I am statistically younger, wealthy, and non-white. If only I could understand why Popular Science is reporting on Ring Nation.

The reason for my utterly mild interest in the show is the conspicuous revulsion its September premier elicited among a segment of the technology advocacy community with which I often sympathize or agree. A piece on CoinDesk is an excellent example, and the first I came across. Written by the affable and thoughtful David Z. Morris, “Amazon and Wanda Sykes Think Spying on You Is Hilarious” goes through the litany of wrongs placed at the feet of the show.

Ring Nation is not the new AFV, it seems:

Technology advocacy groups Fight for the Future and Media Justice instead allege that “Ring Nation” is “normalizing and promoting Amazon’s harmful network of surveillance cameras,” and that Ring’s Neighbors app “amplifies racial profiling and further subjects communities of color to racist policing and criminalization.”

There’s a lot to unpack there. “Surveillance” is an interesting word. Neil Chilson and I dissected its connotations in a recent report. “Surveillance connotes a powerful actor overseeing lesser actors,” we wrote. What is the power imbalance when householders gather videos of passersby and visitors? We all could videotape homes as we pass; would that be a power play in reverse? Perhaps, but it would be a vanishingly small one.

I have no doubt that the Neighbors app can amplify racial profiling. It allows people in local communities to discuss crime and other local issues, attaching images and video collected by Ring devices. I’m sure it amplifies distasteful, wrongful, and harmful prejudice, which is already not in short supply. And I am equally sure that Ring is the messenger, not the source. We should be careful where we place our blame, and we should bemoan the still-urgent need for racial prejudice to wane in our country.

One particularly interesting charge against Ring is this, again from Morris:

Ring doorbell cameras upload their video to Amazon’s servers. The full extent of Amazon’s use of those videos is unclear, but it is known that Amazon can and has accessed and shared them with police departments without a warrant or user consent.

I am not a fan of “cloud” services—and certainly not unconstitutional seizure of people’s data—but the use here is not quite as nefarious as this language implies. As the representative of customers and holder of their data, Amazon responds to emergency requests founded in threats of death or serious physical injury. There is the possibility of sloppy administration, but as likely as not Amazon’s practice helps make life better in a few small instances per year. Amazon reported at this year’s midpoint that it had responded to emergency requests 11 times. If you directly controlled the video content produced by a camera on your property, and if it could help a neighbor or passerby escape death or injury, would you really refuse law enforcement access?

Open-minded about the idea of a TV show that uses this new video platform, my first-blush assessment is that it could weave together a new cultural idiom, even if it’s not a very important one, and produce a small accretion of community. I don’t share the premise that poor uses of an information technology, such as to amplify racism, make the technology suspect. That is a censorious instinct. 

The opponents of Ring Nation are conservatives in an intransigent sense. They seem to be saying, “Because we haven’t had doorbell camera footage before, it shouldn’t become part of the cultural conversation.” I am a liberal in the classical sense. I think producers should go ahead and try to piece together a TV show, with permission, from people’s doorbell footage. The people who hate Ring Nation will probably see victory much more quickly and easily thanks to a force more powerful than their advocacy: the public’s boredom.

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