alt Hacker NewsRing owners are returning their cameras
Comments
Funny how a single superbowl ad from Ring themselves was able to do in one weekend what a thousand and one anti Ring bloggers were unable to do for the past 10 years straight. This commercial and the response will probably be studied in marketing classes.
Good. But people should not have pointed cameras into public spaces and live streamed everything to the cloud to begin with. Walking past a house with a camera doorbell makes me really uncomfortable, like I'm being watched.
I predict 100 returns in total and then everybody forgets about this in a week. I'm not cheering for this outcome but it's the sad reality.
Wyze has posted a parody response ad
In related news, there's a recent scandal in Bulgaria that involves leaked footage from beauty salons and gynecological office appearing on porn sites.
What could go wrong by installing cheap cameras in such places?
https://www.euronews.com/2026/02/04/bulgaria-probes-secret-f...
https://www.ocnal.com/2026/02/bulgaria-launches-criminal-pro...
Wonder if this will still be the case now that it’s been announced they are suspending the partnership with Flock.
I am currently in talks with a neighbor about removing his Ring camera (which points towards my front door / travels)... or at least angling it differently.
I didn't return mine, I just threw it in the trash and replaced it with a local-only no-cloud Eufy. It works great.
I had a few Ring doorbells from 2019-2024. I ditched them both because I saw the quality of the video degrade slowly over that time, probably in an effort to reduce cloud storage costs. The reliability of the motion detection also decreased over the same period.
The final straw was when somebody ripped one of the Ring Elite (wired) doorbells off the outside wall. (This was during a Teamsters labor action against Amazon, but I cannot prove any relationship.) There was never a motion alert, and no footage of the culprit was recorded. The final frame had something in it that may have been a person, but it was impossible to be sure.
Having one of my Rings stolen was actually a blessing. I had the police come and take a report, and submitted a claim to Ring. They sent a free replacement, which I promptly listed on eBay, along with the other used one.
So after paying $5/month times two doorbells for five years, I went looking for something better. I settled on Reolink. Everything about them is better. The video quality is far superior, the motion detection is outstanding (and very customizable). Also, the Reolink doorbells cost less than a third of what the Ring Elites cost.
They offer optional cloud storage for about the same price as Ring, but you can also opt for free local storage (using a microSD card in the doorbell). I've got both doorbells set up with 256GB microSD cards, and have them both streaming RTSP to my NAS/NVR, which is something the Ring will never be able to do.
Also, Reolink has made no announcements about partnering with law enforcement, or anyone else. I suppose they might grant access to their cloud, but I doubt they would directly access the microSD cards, and certainly would be unable to access my NVR. I prefer to have some control over my own data, and the Reolink doorbells give me that, while being better and cheaper at what they do.
The one feature the Rings had which was not easily replaceable was smart home integration with motion detection, but I was able to implement that using edgebridge, my NAS/NVR, and some webhooks. My workaround is actually superior to what Ring offered because it's all local, and will continue to function even during an Internet outage.
“You had to live – did live, from habit that became instinct – in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every moment scrutinized.”
– George Orwell, 1984
Yeah, "ring owners are returning their cameras". A few of them. Not enough to make a significant difference.
Any good alternatives? Preferably one that stores images on a local docker instance running within my network.
Home security devices sit in an incredibly sensitive place. If users feel like the scope of data use is drifting beyond what they originally agreed to, that's a big deal
Related:
Super Bowl Ad for Ring Cameras Touted AI Surveillance Network
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46950915
Ring cancels its partnership with Flock Safety after surveillance backlash
I am just happy that the average person is now aware of the usual manipulation tactics, the ad was about “aww doggos!!” and yet no one bought it and back fired.
This is the right thing to do. When you want security, you have to first decide what the threat is. It seems that consumers are discovering that Corporate Surveillance is a threat, and they are right.
I think people should return these cameras, this is good, but, is this really a trend or is MSN just reporting on a reddit sub with a few thousand people? So interesting a company owned by Microsoft would want to publicize people unsatisfied with a competitor...
American surveillance is one thing. All over Europe people install Chinese IP cameras mostly from paranoic and imaginary reasons. Camera literally facing neighbour's windows and doors and their neighbour's own camera. Nobody understands that it's economically impossible to sell IP camera with a mobile app and cloud storage of video for 150 EUR. Their business model is not simply selling cameras.
EDIT. I'm really confused how you concluded that this comment is anti European. Quit whatever drugs and social media if something like this is triggering your paranoia.
[citation needed]
>>Ring camera owners online claim
People online claim all kinds of things.
>>This Reddit user is alleging
The story, in part, revolves around one post on Reddit. Isn't this a low effort article? Isn't this just a wild guess by the Redditor posted as fact?
This news article boils down to "a few people on reddit did something", which is interesting. But we know reddit and HN are definitely not mainstream.
Is this hurting Amazon? No, it is not. As long as they're honouring return requests freely, you know that the number of returns is within their accepted levels of distressed inventory. If it's getting into uncomfortable territory, they'll start rate limiting people by saying they're past the return window, or they should try again after a week.
If Amazon's return policy changes, that'll be much more interesting to see. But chances are, people forget about this in a month and their sales are unaffected. This may go the way of #deleteUber, #deleteFacebook and similar boycott campaigns - minor blips at best.