Ring Nation is a new twist on the popular clip show genre and is being marketed by Amazon and MGM. Over 40 civil rights organizations are now speaking out against the program for being a dangerous piece of pro-surveillance corporate propaganda and are calling on the studios to cancel the show before it ever sees the light of day
Fight for the Future, MediaJustice, Action Center on Race and the Economy, and dozens of other civil rights groups affiliated with the Cancel Ring Nation campaign published an open letter to MGM leadership warning them about the dangerous precedent MGM is setting.
The letter states that Ring has a long history of weaponizing race to promote their products. The Neighbors app gamifies the criminalization of black and brown people. Protesters who took to the streets in the wake of George Floyd's murder were tracked and monitored by Ring cameras. These are not isolated events. Ring uses racial profiling and racist policing to make money.
It is not hard to understand what type of series Ring Nation is modeled after based on the few details MGM and Amazon have shared about it so far. Ring Nation's footage is all from security devices that Amazon sells on the promise of keeping people safe, unlike other candid clip shows where one might see "neighbors saving neighbors, marriage proposals, military reunions, and silly animals." Amazon doesn't try to make clear to consumers that Ring cameras can be used to give police departments access to users' footage without a warrant and that Ring has partnerships with over 2,000 police and fire departments. Since Ring Nation was announced, Cancel Ring Nation has emphasized how Ring cameras can be weaponized against them and how that weaponization can be worsened by programs like Ring Nation.
The letter says that Ring isn't just giving police departments access to the data, but it also gives them access to a mass surveillance network that operates outside of the Fourth Amendment. In the wake of the reversal of the law, footage from a Ring camera could be used to prosecute an abortion patient who goes out of state for healthcare.
While Ring Nation pulls from footage that Ring users themselves choose to share, what is troubling is the way that the show presents Ring cameras as a source of entertainment. Even though there will be individuals who consent to be part of Ring Nation, there is no way to guard against the harms stemming from Ring's surveilling communities at large, especially marginalized communities.
It will deepen the pockets of a corporation that profits from the criminalization of communities of color and surveilling the whereabouts and actions of millions if MGM's Ring Nation is allowed to go forward. Ring Nation is an advertisement for a bleak vision of the future, in which private megacorporations surveil our every move, sell us out to law enforcement, and profit offracism and hatred. Is MGM in favor of this future?
The premiere of Ring Nation will be on September 26.
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