Thread by @DaniaRajendra

Everything in this report about the acquisition and integration of Ring by Amazon is horrible. 1/x

Reminder, Ring (on its own) doesn't just profit from our racism and mistrust, Ring makes it worse. (Again with the incentive problems.) vice.com/en/article/qvy…

So, it's no surprise that the report finds: "In an internal document, Amazon recognized that security could “feed our flywheels (Prime, Alexa) while being a large, profitable business in its own right.”" #MonopolyIsNoGame

If you're thinking, WTF is a "flywheel" 1. you are not alone; 2. this guy has explained it for you; 3. Amazon is one of his top examples ft.com/content/60a08a…

So, anyway, Ring -- apparently part of their plan for non-human delivery of packages, which we already know because of the robots and the FAA approval for the drones.

...which seems connected to why Amz is encouraging this whole cottage industry of subcontracted delivery companies - these are the ones that employ the people who deliver your packages. Without the protections of direct-hire. As we learned from the monopsony part of the report.

But we also know from research into *other parts of this exact same business* that automating the work actually just makes it worse for the humans who do it. vox.com/recode/2019/10…

So Amazon buys Ring and then there seems to be - according to the report - a lot of incentives (those again) to quickly integrate it into with Alexa-the-product-family (so sorry, people named Alexa!)

Here's a thing the not-human Alexa does: "Besides favoring Amazon services with default voice commands, Alexa also allows Amazon to favor its retail products over products offered by third-party sellers."

Moreover: "Amazon decides the availability and placement of products on its site. As a result, Amazon can use the threat of delisting a product on its marketplace to ensure that Alexa is enabled on other company’s devices..."

So, "Amazon has access to information about consumer use of third-party applications on Alexa-enabled devices and uses its dominant position in the voice assistant market to collect more data from within the Alexa ecosystem." Now, we understand from the report, that includes Ring