- Amazon is launching Ring’s Neighbours service in the UK from October 21.
- The free service lets people join a local community without owning a Ring device.
- Privacy-sensitive features involving police and verified organisations will not initially be available in Britain.
For many people, the neighbourhood WhatsApp group is both useful and exhausting. One minute there is a warning about a suspicious vehicle or a missing pet, and the next there are dozens of messages about bins, parking or other everyday grievances.
Amazon appears to think there is room for something more focused.
The company’s Ring doorbell and home security camera business is bringing its Neighbours community app to the UK from October 21, allowing people to share information about safety, community matters and lost pets. The service will sit inside the existing Ring app and will be free to use, even for people who do not own a Ring product.
Users will set their address and choose a local radius of between 0.1 and five miles, creating a community feed based on where they live.
Dave Ward, Ring’s managing director for international, said the idea was partly inspired by the disappearance of the traditional village noticeboard.
“We used to have the village noticeboard, but as things have changed we no longer have that local connection,” he reportedly said.
Ward argued that WhatsApp and similar services can become too broad and overwhelming, with large groups eventually being muted because of the volume of messages.
“We’re trying to tailor this down to just the things that really matter to your immediate community and then it becomes super useful,” he reportedly said.
From group chat to community feed
The difference is that Ring is not simply creating another neighbourhood chat. Posts will be categorised and subject to rules banning illegal content, discrimination, speculation and other forms of inappropriate material. They will be moderated by both AI and human reviewers before and after publication.
Ring also wants to make its cameras part of the community experience.
One of the launch features is Search Party for Dogs, which allows someone who has lost a dog to upload an image and details. Neighbours with Ring cameras and an eligible cloud subscription can choose to participate in the search.
If a participating camera detects a dog, the owner is prompted to check whether it could be the missing animal. They can then choose whether to notify the pet owner and share the footage.
That makes the service rather different from a WhatsApp group. A message asking whether anyone has seen a missing dog can now potentially be connected to cameras watching the streets around the neighbourhood.
But that is also where the privacy questions become harder to ignore.
The features Ring is holding back
Some of the more controversial features already available in the US will not launch in Britain immediately.
One is Neighbours Verified, which allows organisations and services such as fire brigades to post advisory messages to local communities.
More sensitive is Community Requests, which allows police to ask for Ring-camera footage from a particular area following an incident. Sharing remains voluntary and on an event-by-event basis, with police not being told who chooses not to provide footage.
Ring says both features are being developed for the UK but are not expected before later this year at the earliest.
The company has also recently announced a new default encryption system for camera footage called TAKE, or “throw away the key” encryption. Under the system, Ring has time-limited access keys for recordings, with access expiring after 24 hours. Further processing or access, including by law enforcement, requires the user to issue replacement keys through the Ring app.
The move comes as Ring tries to balance the usefulness of having millions of cameras connected to a community service with concerns over who can access the footage.
Amazon bought Ring in 2018 in a deal reportedly worth more than $1 billion. What began as a smart doorbell business is now being pushed into a much broader territory: the digital neighbourhood.
The question for UK users is whether a dedicated community feed really solves the problems of neighbourhood WhatsApp groups — or simply creates another place to check.
