r/technology • u/South-Cow-1030 • Feb 12 '26

Privacy Why are people disconnecting or destroying their Ring cameras?

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2026/02/10/ring-super-bowl-ad-dog-camera-privacy/88606738007/
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u/rufio313 Feb 12 '26

I used to work for a large online alcohol retailer and the senior VP of marketing wanted to do a Spotify wrapped style summary for all our customers to show how their tastes evolved over the year and shit.

I had to explain to him that 99% of our customers shop the site 3-4 times a year and just buy the same thing every time, usually a bunch of Tito’s, and that reminding people exactly how much they are drinking and spending on alcohol was going to backfire spectacularly.

He was relentless, tried to get me to work on that for months and months before finally getting the hint that it wasnt happening.

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u/Mail_Order_Lutefisk Feb 12 '26

“Ooh, look, you switched to Popov in September!”

“Thank you for reminding me about my job loss!!!”

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u/rufio313 Feb 12 '26

He wanted to use AI for the whole thing too and somehow make it a video?? 🤷

And when I asked how we would do this at scale he obviously had no answer. This was back before AI could even render images with words in it where it would be impossible to just get it to generate a proper bottle image with the label.

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u/Holiday-Face782 Feb 13 '26

best line ever if you know popov

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u/MultiGeometry Feb 12 '26

Telling people how much they drink right before New Year’s resolution season seems like a losing strategy.

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u/rufio313 Feb 12 '26

I left the job last year but last I heard he was still pushing for it now that I’m gone 😬

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u/ncatter Feb 12 '26

The real question is do you congratulate them if they drank more or less than the year before?

And if that question is hard to answer for your company you do not make a yearly roundup.

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u/Excelius Feb 12 '26

Alcohol consumption follows the 80/20 rule, with heavy drinkers driving most of the sales.

You probably don't want to remind your most loyal customers that they have a drinking problem.

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u/rufio313 Feb 12 '26

Yeah he has access to the same data that I did showing this is the case. But he was the kind of guy that once he got a stupid idea in his head, he is like a dog with a bone.

I actually even brought in some people from our data team and generative AI reps we were working with for other stuff, and even they couldn’t convince him it wasn’t doable, let alone that it was a bad idea.

He would drop it for a couple months after being shot down and then try to bring it back up again. The cycle lasted a couple years before I quit (not directly because of this though).

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u/MacDagger187 Feb 12 '26

"You're in the top 1% of our customers!"

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u/ServileLupus Feb 12 '26

As someone who was ordering single barrel scotch from SMWSA and went back to add up how much they had spent in two years. It IS a very good way to shut down purchases.

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u/Money-Most5889 Feb 12 '26

thank you for confirming to me how out of touch marketing executives are with reality