This is why I bought Ubiquiti. Self hosting is the ONLY way I was ever buying into a camera syatem.
this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2026
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The challenge is⦠how do you convince all your neighbors to take down their Ring doorbells?
Aside from the obvious concerns, from a cost perspective why would you chose ring when you have to pay for it to be useful. There are other options that are cheaper and free to use as long as you pop an SD card in them. Obviously they aren't totally innocent of concern but feels like people do zero research into what's available.
My experience is that people are conditioned these days to do everything by subscription, even when it provides no additional value.
A mix of blackmail and extortion
Just kidding, in reality there is no ethical way to control what your neibours do. What you can do is inform them about the recent controversies regarding Ring cameras.
It'd be nice if my HOA banned Ring cameras instead of solar
Iβm imagining a series of signs I could walk in front of the camerasβ¦.
A cleverer angle'd be to find out how to get them to switch to an open-source cctv alternative instead, I feel. π€
Community action. βπΌ
A CCTV setup likely wonβt work for people who just want a video doorbell.
But replacing a Ring with something like a Reolink means they can start with the same service, and over time move to RTSP and a local server as they become more aware of privacy implications and are driven to invest in a contained system.
Likely people will never go CC though, as the entire point for most people is to see what shows up at their door when theyβre not at home.
I use reolink at my office.
There are ways to see what's at your door when you aren't home that don't rely on third parties having access to the footage at least
Frigate NVR and Netbird VPN. I don't use it like this, but it would work excellently.
Is Reolink something you can see the live video remotely? I could see a motion detection system at your doorstep that lets you know someone is there but you'd have to be able to login somehow to get a view.
Reolink doorbells allow you to configure them how you want; you can use a cloud-hosted feed, cloud-hosted notification only, self-hosted feed, self-hosted notification only, and write-to-microSD only. They can use WiFi or wired Ethernet.
I have mine set to do cloud push for notifications, RTSP to my internal home server only; so I log in via VPN if I want to see the video.
Does this apply to arlo cameras too?
It applies to any cloud-based camera system. I don't know if those are or not.
Convert your wyze cams to local with Thingino and use rtsp cameras then block their ability to access outside web.
That's not actually the whole problem. If you watch the video, he brings up how your insurance company or the police can demand your footage (like all of it) and if you don't comply you could have your claim denied, or face charges.
I'm not watching some guy slooowwwwwwwwwwly report on some issue.
Is there a version where a writer wrote words? Even if it's not a writer - or a proficient one - I'd still take words.
I hate to say it. But this is one case where I find AI useful, it can summarize the video:
Privacy Risks: These devices feed personal data to corporations, insurance companies, and law enforcement
Technical Vulnerabilities: Jordan demonstrates how these cameras can be hacked via deauth attacks to disrupt connections. RF side-channel attacks to monitor activity, and data metadata analysis.
Ineffectiveness: The video notes that research shows little evidence that these cameras actually deter crime.
Fun fact, LLMs just pull the transcript and summarize it.
Personally, if I really want to know what a video is about, I'll watch it at like quadruple speed. YouTube's player even has a native speed control now (though it only goes up to like double speed).
I just wait for someone to summarize it in Lemmy comments.