As a part of Prime Day, Amazon is offering a 30 percent discount on select Ring products, and a 39 percent discount on an eight-part set of Ring products.

Ring, which was acquired by Amazon in 2018, produces WiFi-powered home doorbell cameras, outdoor security cameras, and flood light cameras. Footage captured on these cameras can be posted on Neighbors, a free “neighborhood watch” app that lets people post about crime, safety, “suspicious” people, “strangers,” and lost pets.

However, Ring and Neighbors market themselves as a crime-fighting tools only by actively encouraging people to fear their neighbors. And by extension, Amazon positions itself as a company that can uniquely address these safety concerns stoked by Ring and Neighbors. Amazon uses Prime Day as a means of getting people to buy heavily discounted Amazon products that lock customers into their broader ecosystem. In this case, that includes Ring. But there are many reasons not to buy a ring. Here's a summary of Motherboard’s reporting on Ring and Neighbors:

Sarah Emerson, reporting about Ring and Neighbors in 2018, pointed out that the apps gives users the option of sharing footage from their Ring cameras directly with law enforcement.

As reported by Caroline Haskins, Neighbors has a major problem with racial profiling. When Motherboard set the range to five miles surrounding Vice’s Williamsburg office and documenting every post for three months, Motherboard noted that most posts tagging “suspicious” people or “strangers” depict people of color.

A Facebook ad for Ring shared footage of a woman suspected of a crime, as reported by Sammantha Cole. The ad also encouraged people to call police if they had information about this woman. In these ads, Ring positions itself as a vigilante force for local policing.

Amazon posted a job listing for a “News Editor” for the Neighbors app. As reported by Caroline Haskins, this job involves curating local “crime” posts that inform people about shootings, robberies, and fires in their area.

Amazon and Neighbors collaborated to set up a package theft sting operation in Hayward, CA, as reported by Caroline Haskins. Emails obtained by Motherboard show that Amazon sent fake packages, Amazon-branded tape, and lithium-ion stickers, while Ring sent free doorbell cameras to the Hayward, CA police. The Hayward Police Department also offered citizens a discount on Ring products.

As reported by Caroline Haskins, Aurora, CO set up a similar package theft sting operation that involved Amazon, Ring, and a GPS-device manufacturer called 7P Solutions. Emails obtained by Motherboard show that all parties closely coordinated the public relations aspect of the operation. Citizens were offered free Ring products. An explicit goal of the operation was to capture an attempted-theft on a Ring camera, and arrest the person.

Amazon and Ring collaborated on another package theft sting operation in Albuquerque, NM, as reported by Caroline Haskins. In this operation, Amazon created package loss heat maps for Albuquerque zip codes and provided them to police prior to carrying out the operation.

A Ring spokesperson said in an email to Motherboard that Ring’s mission is to “make neighborhoods safer.”