Safety Or Surveillance. Ring Doorbells For Dogs
The short version: SkoolDoggery calls out Ring's dog-themed doorbell ads for selling reactive surveillance footage as a substitute for actual pet training — a marketing trick that mirrors how ALPR companies sell mass camera networks as "safety."
Our Take
Credit to SkoolDoggery for pointing out something that applies well beyond dog ownership: a camera doesn't stop anything from happening, it just records that it happened. Amazon's Super Bowl-grade emotional pitch — buy a Ring so you can find your lost dog — sounds sweet until you realize the product doesn't prevent the dog from bolting in the first place. It just hands you a sad little clip to watch after the fact, while Amazon quietly banks another data-feeding device on your porch.
That's the same playbook Flock Safety and its ALPR partners run on entire towns. "This camera will help solve crime" sounds reassuring, but it's an after-the-fact promise dressed up as prevention. Meanwhile the actual product being sold is a permanent, searchable record of everyone who drives or walks by — dog owners, delivery drivers, protesters, exes, neighbors — feeding into corporate and law enforcement databases with little oversight. The dog is just the cute hook; the real business model is the footage pipeline.
If a doorbell cam raises questions about training your pet versus recording your porch, a city-wide network of plate readers should raise a lot more questions about who's watching your whole neighborhood and why. Check our map to see what's already been installed near you, and hit take action if you'd rather push back than just watch the replay.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of SkoolDoggery, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.