I love @99piorg. I think the podcast gives us so much about how to think about the world around us...

...which is why I'm so troubled by hearing @romanmars promoting fearmongering ads for SimpliSafe security systems about "a break-in every 26 seconds." (1/9)

The ads aren't just selling a product--home camera & security tech you might also object to on privacy/surveillance grounds--but is popularizing an unfounded fear of crime that has so damaged our cities & neighborhoods. (2/9)

The ads hook on @romanmars reading the copy that there's a "break-in every 26 seconds" in this country. The solution, the ad suggests, is a home security system that can keep you safe and then summon the police.

This sounds scary! But let's look at that statistic. (3/9)

Let's generously assume all the break-ins in that statistic are *home* break-ins, since that's what the ad is selling. That would mean there are 2.308 break-ins per minute, 138 every hour, 3323 per day, and something like 1,212,923 home break-ins in the US per year! (4/9)

But what does that actually mean? It means that, with over 128.5 million households ***you, dear podcast listener, have a 0.94% chance of your home being broken in to in a given year***. In other words...on average, you're part of the over 99% (invisible) on this front. (5/9)

Of course, risks like this aren't evenly distributed... It's the people who definitely don't have money to buy a SimpliSafe system that are MOST LIKELY to be burglarized. ( @PrisonPolicy). (6/9) https://www.prisonpolicy.org/graphs/burglary_victimization_and_income.html

What's more, for the higher income folks listening to @99piorg now getting frightened about (their extremely low probability of) home break-ins, there's little evidence that things like cameras actually help (better off with locks and lights). (7/9) https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/sj.2014.30#Sec3

What's going on here? It's an advertisement pegged to America's racialized fear of crime that drove mass incarceration and sustains it to this day. More fear--despite the reality of victimization--justifies more repression & residential segregation. (8/9) https://www.nap.edu/read/18613/chapter/6?term=fear#111

So? Yes, @99piorg needs advertisements. But I don't think they should opt in to ads that repeat misleading talking points that run directly against the type of human, flourishing cities and societies the podcast otherwise covers or imagines so well. (9/9)