Nilay Patel

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Our editorial director is Kevin McShane.

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Today, let's talk about the camera company Ring, lost dogs, and the surveillance state.

Hello, and welcome to Decoder.

I'm Nilay Patel, editor-in-chief of The Verge, and Decoder is my show about big ideas and other problems.

You probably saw this ad during the Super Bowl a couple weekends ago.

Since it aired for a massive audience at the Super Bowl, Ring's search party commercial has become a lightning rod for controversy.

It's easy to see how the same technology that can be used to find lost dogs can also be used to find people, and then used to invade our privacy in all kinds of uncomfortable ways, by cops and regular people alike.

And Ring, in particular, has always been proud of its cooperation with law enforcement, which has raised big questions about civil rights.

Especially because Ring had proudly announced a partnership with a company called Flock Safety, whose systems have been accessed by ICE.

There's some complication to that.

We'll come back to it.

Anyway, the backlash to that ring ad was swift, intense, and effective.

The data company Peak Metrics says conversation about the ad on social media platforms like X actually hit a high two days after the Super Bowl.

And the vibes, as they measured them, were strikingly negative.

I mean, you know it's bad when Matt Nelson, who runs We Rate Dogs, is posting things like this.

Senator Ed Markey called the ad dystopian and said it was proof that Amazon, which owns Ring, needed to cease all facial recognition technology on Ring doorbells.

He said, quote, "'This definitely isn't about dogs.