Amazon-owned smart doorbell company Ring announced it has cut ties with surveillance firm Flock Safety after a disastrous Super Bowl ad that pitched its product as a tool to help people find their lost dogs.
The 30-second spot was clearly intended to play on the love of “man’s best friend” to emotionally manipulate potential customers into buying the product. But instead of finding the ad to be heartwarming, many among the game’s massive viewing audience were given a glimpse of the vast power of the constantly growing surveillance state, and it scared the hell out of them.
Ring’s ad touts the ability of the owner of a missing dog to simply upload a picture of their pet into the app’s Search Party feature, which would then activate outdoor cameras to scan for a match with the video of the blue-hued search patterns emanating from neighborhood homes, likely being the first inkling by many that they are now living in a digital panopticon.
(Video: YouTube/Commercial Archivist)
“Be a hero in your neighborhood with Search Party,” says Ring founder Jamie Siminoff, who is seen walking a dog. “Available to everyone, for free. Right now.”
“Be the hero, bring pets home. Search Party extends the existing community spirit that’s already alive in your neighborhood, building on what we believe is a simple human truth — neighbors want to help their neighbors. If your dog goes missing, you can use the Ring app to make a lost dog post and initiate a Search Party in your neighborhood – it’s free. Anyone can start a Search Party to bring their lost dog home faster,” the company states on its website, pitching the use of its product.
But many of what was likely the year’s largest television audience were able to quickly deduce that the artificial intelligence used by Ring to locate lost dogs could also be used to track and find people, an Orwellian nightmare that was decried by privacy rights advocates and sparked in immediate backlash so intense that the company was canceling its plans to integrate with Flock Safety, a company that provides AI-driven video surveillance for law enforcement agencies.
“Following a comprehensive review, we determined the planned Flock Safety integration would require significantly more time and resources than anticipated. As a result, we have made the joint decision to cancel the planned integration,” Ring said in a Feb. 12 statement announcing that it was ending the controversial partnership. “The integration never launched, so no Ring customer videos were ever sent to Flock Safety.”
The announcement comes after USA Today reported that backlash to the Super Bowl ad was so intense that “Viral videos online show people removing or destroying their cameras over privacy concerns.”
The ad is already destined to go down in the annals of advertising infamy and is right up there with the self-inflicted damage by Bud Light, which allowed a “woke” Harvard-educated female marketing executive to recruit creepy transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney to overhaul its brand that she thought was “fratty” and “kind of out-of-touch.”
But instead of luring new customers, Alissa Heinerscheid instead infuriated existing consumers of what was at the time America’s top-selling beer, cratering sales as beer drinkers sought alternatives that weren’t pitching degeneracy.
Today marks 1 year since Bud Light made Dylan Mulvaney their brand ambassador
They lost 1,400,000,000 since this ad: pic.twitter.com/Jfs80GVTTd
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) April 1, 2024
The Bud Light fiasco is a cautionary tale that will be taught in marketing schools for decades, and Ring’s Super Bowl spot is likely to also be included as course material.
“Whether it’s reuniting a lost dog with their family or spotting a wildfire with your Ring camera and sharing real-time updates—that’s the power of Search Party and Fire Watch. Together, they empower neighbors to step up and become a community of heroes, using Ring’s technology to act for the greater good,” Ring’s website states.
In addition to the reaction to the Ring Super Bowl ad, Americans also got a chilling glimpse at the digital surveillance capabilities of big tech with video of a suspect in the kidnapping of Nancy Guthrie, TODAY Show host Savannah Guthrie’s mom, that was obtained from Google’s Nest cameras.
A Super Bowl ad for Ring cameras that showcased a “search party” feature where homeowners can share camera footage with police is sparking fears over mass surveillance. Following the backlash, Amazon announced it has terminated its partnership with police tech company Flock… pic.twitter.com/OomTgYjoRH
— CBS Evening News with Tony Dokoupil (@CBSEveningNews) February 14, 2026
“We can confirm that Flock’s intended integration with Community Requests has been cancelled,” an Amazon spokesperson said in an email to NBC News. “This integration was never live, and no videos were ever shared between these services. Following a comprehensive review, we determined the planned Flock Safety integration would require significantly more time and resources than anticipated. We therefore made the joint decision to cancel the integration.”
In a recent Substack column, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald wrote: “It is rather remarkable that Americans are being led, more or less willingly, into a state-corporate, Panopticon-like domestic surveillance state with relatively little resistance, though the widespread reaction to Amazon’s Ring ad is encouraging. Much of that muted reaction may be due to a lack of realization about the severity of the evolving privacy threat.”
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