Amazon’s doorbell camera maker Ring is to launch its Neighbours community app in the UK in an attempt to supplant neighbourhood WhatsApp or Facebook groups. The service is intended as a modern equivalent of a community message board, where neighbours can post about safety, community matters or lost pets. It is being made available free of charge inside the existing Ring app for UK users from 21 October and can be used by anyone, regardless of whether they own one of the brand’s products.
It’s a big group that ends up getting muted. Some of the more controversial features of the Neighbours service from the US will not be immediately available in the UK. That includes the Neighbours Verified service, which allows entities and services such as the local fire brigade to post advisory messages to local communities.
The Community Requests feature, which allows the police to issue calls for footage from Ring cameras in a local area in response to incidents, has drawn the most ire from privacy campaigners. It allows those with footage of incidents to share it with the police on an opt-in and per-event basis. The police are not informed of those that choose not to share footage.
Both features are being developed for release in the UK but not until later this year at the earliest. Neighbours will launch with basic anonymised posting narrowed into categories, which must conform to a strict set of guidelines barring illegal content, discrimination, speculation or multiple other conditions. The posts are moderated by AI and humans before and after being published.
Content can be shared from Ring doorbells and other cameras. That’s very different to other places [such as WhatsApp groups],” Ward said. Amazon bought the video doorbell and home security camera maker in 2018 in a deal reportedly worth more than $1bn.
The new service will also have a feature called “Search Party for Dogs”, which allows users of lost pets to post an image and report of a lost dog. Those in the neighbourhood who have Ring cameras and a suitable cloud subscription can opt in to join the search. They will then be notified if their cameras see a dog, prompted to check whether it is the correct dog, and then can optionally notify and share the video with the pet owner.
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