In the U.K., Ring plans to launch its Neighbours community app as a dedicated local forum, hoping residents will use it instead of WhatsApp and Facebook.
Here's what to know
The neighborhood conversation rollout could make it easier for people to share safety alerts and lost-pet notices. At the same time, it revives familiar concerns about privacy, surveillance, and how much influence one Amazon-owned company should have over neighborhood communication.
To join, people will set an address and choose a local radius of 0.1 to five miles, creating a message board for posts about safety, neighborhood issues, and missing pets. The Guardian reported the feature will be available free inside the Ring app for U.K. users starting Oct. 21, as well as for those who do not own a Ring device.
Ring's managing director of international, Dave Ward, said, "We used to have the village noticeboard, but as things have changed we no longer have that local connection."
Ward described the app as a more orderly option than the local chat groups many people already rely on: "What you see in WhatsApp or other services is quite a broad-stroked flood of information, the bins being left out, that sort of thing. It's a big group that ends up getting muted."
More background
The U.K. launch will leave out some of Neighbours' more contentious U.S. tools like Neighbours Verified, which allows organizations such as a local fire brigade to post advisory messages, and Community Requests, which lets police seek footage from nearby Ring cameras after incidents.
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Privacy campaigners have been especially critical of Community Requests, but Ring says sharing footage happens only when a user opts in for a specific incident, and that police are not told when someone chooses not to provide video.
Amazon acquired Ring in 2018 in a transaction reportedly worth more than $1 billion, and Neighbours gives the company another way to keep users coming.
What's being done?
Posts on Neighbours will be anonymous and organized by category, with rules banning illegal content, discrimination, speculation, and other problematic material. Ring says both AI systems and human moderators will review posts before they appear and again after publication.
Ward explained, "We are going to coach people to make sure they're creating the right sort of post, asking them if that's really something they want to write or whether it really needs that descriptive term, to help stop the type of content no one wants to see and make it more community focused."
The company is also introducing a "Search Party for Dogs" feature. Pet owners can post a lost dog report, while nearby users with Ring cameras and an eligible cloud subscription can opt in for alerts if their cameras spot a dog and can choose to share footage.
Ring announced a default encryption system called Throw Away the Key Encryption (TAKE). Under that approach, Ring's systems get time-limited keys to recordings, cutting off access for the company and others after 24 hours. Further processing or access, including by law enforcement, requires user consent to issue replacement 24-hour keys from the user's Ring app.
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