[HN Gopher] Citizen's dangerous effort to cash in on vigilantism
___________________________________________________________________
Citizen's dangerous effort to cash in on vigilantism
Author : hemloc_io
Score : 190 points
Date : 2021-05-27 18:59 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.vice.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.vice.com)
| jfrunyon wrote:
| > In addition, we are focused on reducing the reach of
| notifications about violent incidents, and increasing the reach
| of notifications about incidents such as missing people or pets
| being reunited with their families--we could all use some more
| good news.
|
| "We would rather provide engaging info than useful info." At
| least they're honest.
| getcrunk wrote:
| It's crazy watching the world turn into a dystopia and being
| powerless to stop it. It not just about this company. If they
| fail another will replace it. Society seems to be on a convergent
| path with dystopian scifi. This, Chicago police automated
| policing program (detects crime before it happenes and actually
| hurt innocent people), racially biased facial recognition. I read
| an article today about some DNA software being used to convict
| someone to death row. His legal team couldn't view the source
| code to challenge its probabalistic accuracy.
|
| It doesn't seem like there is even a place to start. A first step
| could be making a website that documents and tracks all these
| things then forming a pac. But how long will the take before and
| if it starts effecting change
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > It's crazy watching the world turn into a dystopia and being
| powerless to stop it.
|
| We _feel_ powerless - I feel it too at times - but we 're not.
| Who would have thought the world could change this much? We can
| change it also for the better. The social world we envision is
| very deeply ingrained in humans, probably through evolution. We
| are social creatures, not sociopathic.
|
| I think a start is standing up for our human values (honesty,
| respect, fairness, justice, compassion, humanitarianism,
| reason, knowledge, etc. etc.- doing the right thing). The
| Internet has been seen as a different place, an experimental
| place, where those values don't matter or don't apply - we
| could try something different; it has been like a virutal game
| world where we can act out being someone different. The
| experiment is over. It turns out the values do matter (of
| course, there's reasons they survive human history) - and they
| matter more than in the physical world, due to the power of
| communication on the Internet.
|
| It's time to stop accepting what we wouldn't accept at a dinner
| table or in a professional social situation (or choose your
| analogy). The Internet is part of IRL, no different than a
| restaurant. HN, for example, has much improved; I hope it will
| go further and adopt that concept.
| redis_mlc wrote:
| > HN, for example, has much improved
|
| No, HN has turned into a Marxist echo chamber in the past
| couple of years.
|
| Marxism is corrosive to honesty, respect, fairness, justice,
| compassion, humanitarianism, reason, knowledge - it resulted
| in Russian gulags and CCP live organ harvesting.
| xvector wrote:
| > and being powerless to stop it.
|
| You are only powerless so long as you decide to stay within the
| comfortable confines of the law.
|
| The crowd of Hacker News alone certainly has enough ability to
| cause serious problems for Citizen, whether through activism
| within their own megacorporations or independent ability.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| You don't even have to break the law.
|
| Hacker News and the software engineering industry has a
| decent influence in the world, as we can't (yet) be automated
| away and it takes years to become proficient.
|
| If we as an industry collectively agree that X is bad and
| refuse to work on it, X will be significantly disrupted, as
| their only option might to be offering more money (to get
| someone to defect and renege on the promise) than they can
| afford or that makes sense with their economics.
|
| Creepy adtech could die tomorrow if people refuse to work on
| it. The same applies to this Citizen crap.
| kelnos wrote:
| I just don't see that as feasible. I consider the entire
| concept of Palantir to be disgusting, but there are clearly
| enough software developers who think that enabling state
| surveillance makes people safer.
|
| All it takes is a few thousand such people (a small
| fraction of a percent), and it doesn't matter what "the
| industry" agrees not to work on.
|
| I feel like you might have the misconception that "tech
| people" are some homogenous bloc that believes in the same
| things and would stand behind a single policy platform. The
| reality is nothing at all like that.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _This, Chicago police automated policing program (detects
| crime before it happenes and actually hurt innocent people)_
|
| One of the worst things I've seen was posted here on HN[1]
| almost a year ago. It's an in-depth report on a similar program
| to Chicago's, but in Florida.
|
| There was a companion article[2] with videos from the program,
| and it's just horrifying. It shows several videos taken from
| body cameras of police officers harassing, assaulting and
| abducting people, some of them children, because they showed up
| in their system as being related to, or knowing, people who are
| suspected, and not convicted, of crimes.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24363871
|
| [2]
| https://projects.tampabay.com/projects/2020/investigations/p...
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Dystopian sci-fi (cyberpunk in particular) did a pretty good
| job of looking at emergent technology and human nature and
| extrapolating.
| slakrems wrote:
| Can't wait for the live streamed rapes! /s
| throwawaaarrgh wrote:
| Dystopian novels aren't very sci-fi. Many of their authors just
| researched what was already going on in their own time and
| formed a new narrative around them. The only thing different
| today is how people allow themselves to be taken advantage of.
| They used to give up their freedom for security. Now they give
| up their privacy for entertainment. But even mega-corps being
| the new oligarchy isn't new. The railroads, oil companies, and
| newspapers were controlling government and public perception a
| century ago. The internet is the new railroad, and tech is the
| new oil and newspaper.
|
| It's never going to change. Society is doped up on Uber Eats
| and Instagram Live and The Nightly 30 Minutes of Fear and Hate.
| People don't _want_ to think about how their society is fucked,
| they want to think about who 's going to win The Bachelor, or
| why The Other (Political Party, Nation, Ethnicity) is evil and
| must be destroyed. People much smarter than me have been
| pointing this out for a century, too.
| getcrunk wrote:
| Yea your right! My ethics in tech professor taught us that
| tech doesn't bring new issues just new presentations. U can
| abstract this all down to power/greed/tendencies of human
| nature (comfort, ease)
| deckard1 wrote:
| Every time someone pops up with one of those "Google
| destroyed my business and won't respond" type problems I'm
| always reminded of the movie Brazil. Just read the automated
| messages Google sends out sometime and the callousness of how
| they can ruin lives by sheer algorithmic accident.
|
| I call this phenomenon: Getting Fucked By Scale. It's the
| idea that a scaled algorithm (take, for example, YouTube
| automated copyright filters) have _some_ percentage of false
| positives. Maybe that percent is only 0.05%. At a scale of
| millions and billions of people, that 's a lot of people
| getting fucked.
|
| And today, any one of us could end up as Sam Lowry. A fly
| gets stuck in the Google machine and your life is suddenly
| going sideways.
| idrios wrote:
| Brazil really is a great depiction of our current dystopia.
| The fly in the machine leading to Archibald Buttle's
| wrongful execution is a great analogy for the people whose
| lives are thrown sideways when the Google algorithm bans
| their account.
|
| But another scene that really sticks with me is the one
| where Sam Lowry has the desk in his room, but some person
| in the room next to him keeps stealing it from him. The
| fact that 1 desk is shared by 2 rooms is this nonsensical
| optimization that really just inconveniences him, but
| highlights how powerless everyone in this world is. For a
| real world example, there was a time when I was trying to
| block Facebook and other sites on my phone by editing my
| phone's hosts file, but couldn't find a way to do it that
| didn't involve rooting my phone. While trying to find how
| to do it, I found some people who wanted to do the same
| thing but all were met with the response "it's locked down
| to protect you, why would you want to block a website?"
| It's a very helpless feeling to not have control over
| something you own.
|
| The worst part is, most people I know see issues like this
| situation with Citizen's and think we need more
| centralization of power in order to prevent it.
| ctdonath wrote:
| You're not powerless. Shut off the anxiety generators, and be
| the change you want in the world. I dumped Facebook & Twitter,
| and am reducing HN & other social media. Get news from proper
| objective sources, choose the category of media you consume
| (TownsendsPlus.com provides great reality checks), and
| otherwise choose the life you want to live - and live it.
| makeworld wrote:
| And companies like this will continue on, making the world
| worse for everyone. Including you. This cannot be changed by
| changing yourself.
| klunger wrote:
| Reading this made me think, 'Wouldn't it be nice if there was an
| app that just called out people for doing
| generous/friendly/artistic/impressive things locally?'
| neom wrote:
| About 5 years ago I met these guys when I was building a smart
| city startup in NYC. We helped cities unify their data from
| various vendors they use, one of the data streams was a
| computerized 911 dispatch. Vigilante (at the time) was interested
| in getting access to the 911 dispatch API. I had a long
| conversation with them and they couldn't understand/answer any
| difficult questions - I was extremely uncomfortable-
| nevertheless, I took it to a few cities and floated the idea of
| allowing them to tap in, some cities seemed marginally interested
| but wanted to provide access to the data with a 10+ minute delay
| on it so as to prevent ambulance chasing/vigilantism... of course
| this was useless to them, they needed real time, so they stuck to
| transcribing 911 dispatch from the radio waves.
|
| Given they couldn't/wouldn't ask basic questions about safety,
| I'm not at all surprised this is happening.
| duncan-donuts wrote:
| What do you mean by, "they couldn't understand/answer any
| difficult questions"?
| heavyset_go wrote:
| They were pretending to be dense in order to not have to face
| the truth about their product, or at least to not have to
| admit to it.
| generalizations wrote:
| To clarify: the bounty was $10-30k for information leading to a
| specific suspect's arrest. When I first heard about it, it
| sounded like the bounty was a 'dead or alive' kind of thing.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| That the bounty _sounded_ like that is enough to make it
| harmful and despicable. There are enough wingnuts out there who
| don 't think about niceties that you can easily have someone
| jumping in and starting to assault someone who appears to be
| the wanted person (but probably isn't).
| mhh__ wrote:
| See also "We did it Reddit!" wrt Boston Bombings.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Remember the impact on the victim beyond physical safety, both
| their reputation and the emotional cost. I hope they sue the
| f** out of Frame and Citizen.
| paxys wrote:
| This entire incident sounds like a nightmare. How on earth have
| they not been sued over it yet?
| contemporary343 wrote:
| Well, the app was originally called Vigilante with the goal of
| enabling... mob justice. So, this really isn't surprising.
|
| Applying contemporary growth hacking and engagement techniques to
| making people feel afraid and seek private security is just
| abominable. LA county is 10 million people - there are going to
| be all kinds of criminal activities on any given day, but rarely
| anywhere close to you. The app though will make sure even a minor
| thing a few miles from you gets you revved up. Just a recipe for
| more social disfunction.
|
| The worst part is that LA county and city decided to use Citizen
| for contract tracing during the pandemic, which drove up
| downloads in the LA:
| https://covid19.lacounty.gov/covid19-news/la-county-city-lea... -
| they really need to push back on this vigilante stuff now.
| JohnWhigham wrote:
| This shit needs to be shut down. All it's doing is manufacturing
| a new normal for society to always be on edge and to encourage
| spying on their neighbors.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| _> Citizen, using a new livestreaming service it had just
| launched called OnAir, would catch the suspect live on air, with
| thousands of people watching._
|
| I'm sorry, is this describing real life or an episode of Black
| Mirror? It's so blatantly dystopian that I'm at a loss for words.
| jandrese wrote:
| It's a scene taken almost directly from Fahrenheit 451.
|
| https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/451/section9/
| isaacremuant wrote:
| The poignant part about Fahrenheit scene is that in the end,
| they just end up "catching and destroying" some random
| passerby when they can't find the target because people the
| show must have an end and it's all about optics. "The enemy
| has been neutralised".
| jandrese wrote:
| See also: Reddit's Internet Detective routine in response
| to the Boston Marathon Bomber.
| vmception wrote:
| It is real life. I've uninstalled the app multiple times
| because it was obvious that it was manufacturing anxiety. I was
| the first in my circles to delete Facebook and other social
| media profiles for the same reason (actually delete the profile
| not just uninstall). I felt others just didn't notice what was
| going on. With Citizen I then learned to just disable
| notifications.
| robbiep wrote:
| If you've deleted the app a number of times, does that mean
| you support/find the baseline functionality of the app
| useful? So even though they're an outrage machine, you
| support the business model?
| vmception wrote:
| They've overlaid all US jurisdictions with Covid-19 stats
| in the area for the past 12 months, all while cities were
| emptying out and actually descending into a mixture of
| unrest and literal fireworks.
|
| I have been finding that much more useful than before for a
| variety of reasons. Did my Walgreens get looted again?
| Where is the protest right now? Gunshots or fireworks? R0
| is increasing, ICU capacity is getting closer to full,
| alrighty then. What's the name of that local politician
| again, let me check the comments to see who everyone is
| blaming in this area.
|
| I don't have notifications on for it to tell me about
| mostly irrelevant things that were always happening, and
| thats the main difference. I never noticed they were also
| selling a paid paranoia product.
|
| I don't check the app unless I see something like smoke in
| the distance or hear many emergency vehicles. Things I used
| to check twitter or snapmaps about.
| deckard1 wrote:
| Minority Report came out in 2002. I remember people were
| talking about the targeted advertising going on in the movie.
| Two years later Facebook came out along with their pitch
| deck[1]. Now that movie seems quaint.
|
| Developers and entrepreneurs are actively chasing dystopia.
| We've become increasingly numb and blase about the encroachment
| of the internet and smartphones into our lives. Eventually
| we'll have The Running Man with live streaming. The end result
| of our social isolation and filter/engagement bubbles due to
| technology is moral apathy and rot. To speak the VC speak, the
| past few years have validated a market for cruelty, hate, and
| mob justice. The only question left is, _how do I buy in
| today_? Citizen seems like an early answer to this.
|
| [1] https://app.slidebean.com/p/s15UZQkE7T/Facebooks-original-
| pi...
| munk-a wrote:
| Cue some muggers becoming celebrities due to executing their
| actions in flamboyant outfits, it'll be the next professional
| wrestling!
| jjk166 wrote:
| So this is how supervillains become a thing.
| cratermoon wrote:
| See also "A Clockwork Orange"
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| RoboCop comes to mind, which is ironic since the movie was
| obviously a parody. Also, isn't this what reality shows like
| Cops were about?
|
| There is a large market for morbidity.
| neltnerb wrote:
| A... parody? Of what?
|
| I thought it was a fairly straightforward story about the
| military industrial complex abusing civil rights and losing
| in the end "because human brains are special", but I was a
| kid when it came out so I surely missed what source material
| it was a parody of.
|
| I took it for a movie intended to be serious that was making
| not-especially-original commentary on policing and both
| government and corporate malfeasance, but not that it was
| parodying anything in particular, I thought the story was as
| original as most.
| evan_ wrote:
| it's satire, not parody.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Yeah, for the first couple of paragraphs, I was _sure_ they 're
| summarizing some movie. Because I've already seen this exact
| story _at least_ twice, played out to disastrous consequences.
|
| One take was in "The Circle". Still not sure why people hate
| that movie, it's pretty much a documentary on Google and
| Facebook, and about the only fictional element in it are the
| advanced video cameras. That, and this vigilante crime
| tracking, which until now I thought nobody was insane enough to
| try and make a startup of.
| dangrossman wrote:
| This is also one of the main scenes of the Tom Hanks 2017 flop
| of a movie "The Circle".
| ArkanExplorer wrote:
| Why is George Soros funding DAs who refuse to prosecute crimes?
|
| https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/aug/20/george-soro...
|
| "Soros-backed DAs in Philadelphia, St. Louis, San Francisco and
| other cities have fired scores of experienced prosecutors and, as
| promised, stopped prosecuting low-level quality-of-life crimes
| such as disorderly conduct, vagrancy and loitering."
|
| "Mr. Soros' New York Safety and Public Justice PAC spent at least
| $800,000 in an unsuccessful bid last November to oust incumbent
| Republican Sandra Doorley in upstate Monroe County."
|
| Is it to create an opportunity for private police forces and
| security?
| darkwizard42 wrote:
| What does this have to do with the article in question?
|
| This seems absolutely tangential and baiting...
| ArkanExplorer wrote:
| Because without those DAs, put in place deliberately by a
| billionaire, crime rates would not be rising and apps like
| Citizen would be less necessary.
|
| If you have a police force who cannot prosecute crimes then
| it seems inevitable that private or individual security will
| take over.
|
| If this becomes a multi-billion industry, then spending a few
| million on DAs seems like a reasonable bet.
|
| Of course, society is a lot worse off, so it seems reasonable
| to question what is going on.
| grenoire wrote:
| American HN readers: Is everything alright? It seems a new kind
| of on-the-edge over there. Does it truly feel unsafe to the
| extent that people resort to violent and intrusive systems like
| these?
| sameers wrote:
| It's well documented [fte] that news stories about crime rose
| in the nineties and beyond, as crime rates fell. Whether the
| dog wagged the tail or the other way round is hard to say -
| certainly during this period of crime decline, popular
| perception that crime is worse remained steadfast [gallup].
| News channels may have been merely amplifying what they noticed
| their audience wanted to hear; or, they created an atmosphere
| of paranoia because (as now with the Citizen app), it boosts
| ratings.
|
| Crime is also relatively easy to report, and makes for riveting
| television. The victims are easy to identify, and interview.
| There is no complexity because what matters is only the
| aftermath, rather than what leads up to what ends up being
| criminal. Perhaps the arsonist in this case was just being
| exceedingly careless with a campfire BBQ; who cares, when it
| feels good to find someone to blame them and brand them as
| "evil"?
|
| The reason the US appears to be "on the edge," all the time, is
| that the media loves creating that narrative. If you saw
| broadcasts that said, "it's all sorta average here, folks, in
| fact some things are gradually getting better," why would you
| tune in the next day?
|
| References
|
| fte: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/many-americans-are-
| conv... gallup: https://news.gallup.com/poll/150464/americans-
| believe-crime-...
| esturk wrote:
| Citizens are conditioned to believe that police will solve all
| the crimes from shows like True Crime, CSI, etc.
|
| And when said criminals are such masterminds that even the
| police can't catch, they are then conditioned by superhero
| movies from Marvel, Superman, Batman, etc. that someone should
| rise up to catch such criminals, this is the end state.
|
| See, every kid is taught and empowered growing up that they
| should stand up for what's right. And when the justice system
| is imperfect, everyone is trying to fix it in the best way they
| know how. Some are doing it politically, socially, physically,
| etc.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| All true, and there's an additional factor: these shows, and
| news coverage about crime, make people think crime is far
| more prevalent (and rising) than it is.
|
| https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/16/voters-
| perc...
|
| Local news Facebook comments are full of "there's so much
| crime! it was never like this when I was younger!" but the
| reality is completely in the opposite direction.
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| It's better for people to worry if their daughter is going
| to get raped than for them to question the growing wealth
| disparity.
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| I showed my boomer parents the actual data and they
| straight up rejected it. The "society is collapsing into
| lawlessness" narrative has become very strong.
| midasuni wrote:
| People reject data (lies, damn lies and statistics). They
| reject rationalism. They go with their gut, their gut is
| programmed by the headlines they see
| germinalphrase wrote:
| There are a lot of people making money by causing people to be
| scared. It's principally one of the strongest business cases
| for a media outlet. Crime is down significantly on a historical
| basis, but media consumption is through the roof.
| ctdonath wrote:
| Things are so good here (really) that people are freaking out
| trying to create hobgoblins to fear.
|
| " _Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a
| perfect human world. ... But I believe that as a species, human
| beings define their reality through misery and suffering. The
| perfect world was a dream that your primitive cerebrum kept
| trying to wake up from._ " - The Matrix
| wearywanderer wrote:
| The wealthy have always hired private security.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Everything is not alright, but increased crime rates are only a
| small part of that.
|
| Perception is, generally, very divorced from reality, and
| people don't have the fundamental skills to recognize that or
| cross-check their information.
| fallingknife wrote:
| Yes everything is alright. People just don't know it. Why? Have
| you ever watched American news?
| retrac wrote:
| In reality, Americans are generally more physically safe from
| violent crime and property crime than they have been for
| decades. Right now may well be the most peaceful time in
| American history.
|
| However, it seems most people believe crime, particularly
| violent crime, has been getting worse over the same period:
| https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/FT_16...
| from this study: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-
| tank/2016/11/16/voters-perc...
| sdflhasjd wrote:
| 2015 seems like a long time ago in this context. I feel like
| things have changed in the past 5 years
| [deleted]
| asveikau wrote:
| People on the internet are really sensationalist about crime. I
| think crime rates in some places may be slightly up, but still
| well below the highs of the 1990s. A different narrative is
| grabbing people's attention.
| banannaise wrote:
| It doesn't feel unsafe. Apps like this are just people with a
| violence fetish getting off, not that having a lot of those in
| your country is particularly pleasant either.
| Animats wrote:
| Wait until "Citizen" does this in a state with more guns.
| munk-a wrote:
| I know this is beside the main point of the article - but the
| fact that the CEO's surname is Frame is one of these truth is
| stranger than fiction moments. If you wrote up a drama about
| someone writing an app like this and gave the CEO that surname
| you'd be called a hack.
| wearywanderer wrote:
| Seems like an unfortunate case of nominative determinism.
| donw wrote:
| If only he had been accepted to that art college...
| fmakunbound wrote:
| > "It plays into people's anxieties and fears and magnifies
| people's fears of the other ...
|
| Sound's like they have a winning formula if Facebook is any
| indication of successful tech.
| Terr_ wrote:
| > In Slack messages viewed by Motherboard, Frame calls ProtectOS,
| the system Citizen uses to create incidents and push them out to
| users, "the most powerful operating system ever created."
|
| Sounds like the fictional CTOS from the Watch_Dogs games.
| cyral wrote:
| > the system Citizen uses to create incidents and push them out
| to users
|
| Gives me watch dog vibes too. Sounds more like a CRUD app
| though.
| vmception wrote:
| > Citizen does moderate comments, but "two people having an
| argument about whether or not someone's comment is racist drives
| engagement,"
|
| LOL, my publicist does this on linkedin and other places for us
| because people are gullible.
|
| Source article: Executive of <Company> does a thing
|
| 0 engagement, nobody knows
|
| Social Media version: [First] <Race> Executive of <Company> does
| a thing
|
| 15,000 comments, 2 million reach, supporters and detractors argue
| with each other on the headline creating more engagement.
| Messages role in. Its perfect and yes we think you are all dumb.
| Always remember who is shaking the bottle that you're inside of.
| sbagel wrote:
| Users getting so offended by this comment are hilarious. He
| didn't create this system, if you were in a similar position
| tasked to get attention for a client or business you could take
| the high road of not using proven social media tactics and fail
| miserably. The sanctimonious take that he's a 'manipulative
| asshole' for playing the system is laughable. Don't hate the
| player hate the game.
| vmception wrote:
| It has really demystified a lot of whats going on, for me,
| especially on LinkedIn.
|
| It was probably 4 years ago when our publicist first told us
| about double spaced motivational nonsense going viral
| consistently. We were amused, bemused really, because we
| didn't care for it but were fine with the low effort
| involved.
|
| Now with the aforementioned tactic, LinkedIn does
| consistently surface "[First] <Race> [Female]
| <Accomplishment>" posts, and I like to look at the source
| article to see if it was actually published that way, because
| if it wasn't I have a good chuckle because I know exactly
| what's going on. The people in the comments only react.
| jkr42 wrote:
| If you think anyone is offended here you simply don't
| understand the Internet.
| Bancakes wrote:
| It's still a wild west where people cling to sensationalism.
| I think the consequence is people grow up in it and form a
| tolerance. I know I have, I just assume an article's worth is
| inversely proportional to its controversy.
| kelnos wrote:
| I would honestly rather my business fail than participate in
| that sort of manipulation. "Unethical" doesn't even begin to
| describe it.
|
| The game is supported by the players willing to play. If you
| play, you're culpable.
| Seattle3503 wrote:
| Who are you?
| isoskeles wrote:
| An asshole.
| jkr42 wrote:
| Must be nice, actively exploiting human nature and then calling
| the humans dumb and gullible for having said nature and falling
| for your exploitation. Absolves you of any liability for being
| no better than a troll because what, you're smarter than
| everyone else, I guess? You and your "publicist" (what are you,
| Ryan Gosling?) figured out dark marketing patterns and now
| you're on a different plane of existence from the plebes?
|
| I don't know what you think this comment accomplishes, but it
| certainly didn't accomplish that. Who's shaking your bottle,
| enlightened one?
| vmception wrote:
| I/Execs don't care
|
| My publicist definitely doesn't care
|
| You/Commenters care and that's whats funny
|
| Publicist gets results and I decide to pay their monthly
| retainer again or not
|
| I occasionally look at what they're doing and sometimes it
| demystifies what other trends I see on social media like
| LinkedIn, a perpetual crowdsources A/B test that they keep
| falling for. I don't think it is human nature, as different
| humans are inspired by people that look like them and would
| not be aware if it was not mentioned, and different humans
| have no clue why it is mentioned and a subset of those
| different humans a triggered by that and think it is their
| mission to reveal to everyone that mentioning it is the
| problem.
|
| Bread and circuses
| [deleted]
| jkr42 wrote:
| As long as you're amused by being a putrid waste of
| humanity, I guess, you do you. Gotta get them lulz for this
| week's Bitcoin newsletter so you can forget how crushingly
| empty your soul is while grifting those who believe fintech
| to be an actual thing and behind your genz wisdom lies
| their yacht.
|
| ABH, hype is value, I get you, don't worry. You'll be
| admired for it in the end, I'm sure. Those who
| substantively contribute to society are just inches away
| from understanding you.
| vmception wrote:
| Join my Masterclass for $29 using the HN promo code
| underwater wrote:
| Plenty of people are smart enough to manipulate others, but
| don't because they're not assholes.
|
| Manipulating people for personal gain doesn't make you smart.
| It just makes you a psychopath.
| vmception wrote:
| Bring it up with the publicist. They're all third party and
| they all share the same tactics with each other for
| engagement. I have been willing to concede that there are a
| lot of people inspired by people that look like them and
| otherwise wouldn't even notice if it weren't for categorized
| headlines and lists. It is icing on the cake that different
| people are triggered by that, and even greater icing on the
| cake that all platforms have convergent evolution to
| promoting this kind of engagement and anxiety.
| jkr42 wrote:
| And who pays and directs said publicist? You were in
| cahoots reflecting on the intelligence of your marks
| fifteen minutes ago, remember?
|
| Go ahead, walk back the psychopathy because you couldn't
| stick to it. We all totally buy the assignment of liability
| to a third party and respect your commitment to the troll.
| The only thing more amusing than a troll is a troll that
| collapses like a limp noodle under sustained fire from more
| experienced trolls.
| vmception wrote:
| yours and my comments are flagged, nobody is walking back
| anything, we just can't read them any more
|
| I find the outcome amusing
|
| Citizen found the same result
| vmception wrote:
| Citizen found the same result
|
| Nobody is walking back anything, and we don't direct the
| publicist
| jkr42 wrote:
| Couldn't even last an hour. Sad.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| I don't know who is shaking the bottle, all I know is those
| fire ants are going down!
| vmception wrote:
| Black ants just have to make everything about the fire ants
| huh!
| petermcneeley wrote:
| Perhaps this is a mere symptom of some other problem. In Canada I
| dont personally recall witnessing crime in my adult life. If I
| saw someone doing something criminal today I would just you
| know... call the cops.
|
| Perhaps in the USA the lived experience is somewhat different?
| Maybe more crime? Maybe the police dont show up?
| cratermoon wrote:
| Crime in the US is relatively low, except in a few urban areas,
| and even then it's restricted to just a few neighborhoods.
|
| Things like this are symptom of racism, classism, and
| xenophobia. https://www.npr.org/2016/07/28/487560886/is-trumps-
| call-for-...
| awal2 wrote:
| I also don't think I witnessed much crime until I moved to
| Seattle. In the six years I've been here though I've witnessed:
|
| 1. Somebody broke into my Aunt's place while nobody was home
| and took some jewelry and a cell phone. Police came by, handed
| her a form, said nice things for five minutes then took off.
| Never heard anything about it again.
|
| 2. My car window smashed after being parked on the street
| overnight. I called the police. They pointed me to a website
| where I could report it so that they could keep track of
| statistics, but said they don't investigate individual cases.
| Never heard anything about it again.
|
| 3. I saw someone in a car pulling the key cylinder out and
| doing a thing that looked like what people do when they hot
| wire a car in movies (I know I'm surprised this is still a
| thing, it was an older car). Walked to a safe distance, called
| the cops. I never heard anything about it again.
|
| 4. I saw a person trying to use a screwdriver to pry the lock
| off a neighbor's garage as I was walking to the bus. Walked a
| safe distance, called the police. Never heard anything about it
| again.
|
| 5. People broke into the parking garage at my apartment complex
| and broke into cars several times. Neighbors called the police.
| Each time, somebody comes by, hands over a form, says there's
| nothing they can do. Never heard anything about it again.
|
| I hate that this app exists. Seems terrible for all the
| reasons. I'm also not a hard core law-and-order person, and I
| don't think the answer is beefing up local law enforcement. But
| I can also empathize with people who live here and feel unsafe,
| and are looking for someone who will actually provide some
| level of security, although I think it's misguided to turn to
| this kind of app/service.
| wearywanderer wrote:
| > _and I don 't think the answer is beefing up local law
| enforcement._
|
| Yes, I think the number of police and the funding police
| receive is definitely not the problem here. It doesn't matter
| how many cops you have or how many expensive toys those cops
| have. If the DA refuses to charge the people the police
| arrest, then the police will stop arresting people because
| they know it's a waste of their time. The root of the problem
| is with the priorities of the electorate and the people they
| choose to elect (DA is elected in Seattle.)
| BigW1lly wrote:
| You live in Seattle, there's your main problem. The local
| government keeps the police department hogtied, cops can't do
| much outside of their narrow rules of engagement. On top of
| that, the city's residents don't seem too enthusiastic about
| the 2nd Amendment either. So who or what is going to protect
| the flock?? Nothing it seems.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Vigilantism gets innocent people killed. Cops not showing
| up, and not investigating, has nothing to do with "rules of
| engagement," (law enforcement is not working in a war
| zone), but is just plain incompetence or refusal to do ones
| job on behalf of the SPD. That being said, the picture non-
| US residents get from US law enforcement is basically
| incompetent neglect of duty anyway.
| vgel wrote:
| SPD is infamously brutal [1]. They just don't give a f**
| about actually helping people, just destroying homeless
| encampments and covering their badges at protests.
|
| Source: Lived here for 5 years and have never seen an SPD
| officer do anything helpful or solve any crime, but have
| seen them be brutal at multiple protests. My wife literally
| saw someone be _set on fire_ at a local park, but I never
| saw a cop there until they decided to sweep a homeless
| encampment a year and a half later.
|
| [1]
|
| https://www.seattlepi.com/local/crime/article/12000-complai
| n...
|
| https://www.king5.com/article/news/what-the-federal-
| consent-...
| AlexandrB wrote:
| What has "hogtied" the police is 30 years of the war on
| drugs. The framing of citizens as "the flock" is also
| needlessly condescending. Police are, first and foremost,
| public servants - not a domestic security force. Following
| up on the crimes listed in the parent doesn't require guns,
| SWAT teams, or no-knock warrants. Just phone calls and
| paperwork. Unfortunately individuals who think they're
| "sheep dogs" find that shit boring.
| johncessna wrote:
| Those may not actually be crimes in Seattle.
| jjk166 wrote:
| Crime is a non-issue in the US. The problem here is a feeling
| of general helplessness: there are many disturbing trends and
| quality of life is clearly falling for many, but it's things
| like crappy infrastructure that never gets repaired, schools
| implementing dumb policies, growth in bureaucracy in nearly
| every facet in life, stagnant wages and declining employment in
| traditional fields, etc. The symptoms are obvious but the
| causes are complex and viable cures require cooperation on a
| scale most now consider unrealistic.
|
| But staying informed feels like it helps, even though it
| generally doesn't. And in the particular case of crime, that's
| a situation where the actions of individuals could at least in
| theory make a difference. The benefits to the community of
| identifying a stolen bike are trivial, and even then you're
| very unlikely to ever actually do it, but one can fantasize
| about heroically saving the day and helping your neighbor and
| that fantasy scratches the itch we all have to be part of
| something greater. And if you can find a whole bunch of people
| who all want to do their part and help, maybe there's hope that
| the bigger issues aren't so intractable after all.
|
| Unfortunately the problem will only get worse until the nation
| finds a healthy way to deal with the despair. God only knows
| when or if that'll happen though.
| [deleted]
| kinghajj wrote:
| While driving on Oak in SF last weekend, I saw a man get out of
| a car, run to an open parked Uhaul truck, grab something, then
| take off. Right as he left, the (presumed) owner of the stolen
| articles came out of the house, put his hands up, and made a
| "Fucking _really_? " expression. My first reaction was,
| "Welcome to the Bay Area! Watch your shit!"
| wearywanderer wrote:
| _Welcome to the Bay Area, don 't dress provocatively...._
|
| It really annoys me that victim blaming isn't taboo for
| property crimes.
| wearywanderer wrote:
| It depends on the city and it depends on the crime. If you see
| somebody vandalizing property in Seattle and call the cops,
| they probably won't show up (sample size of 3 for me.)
| bentcorner wrote:
| +1. I live in a US suburb and have seen at a distance one
| violent crime in about 20 years. In Canada I've spent more
| time in the sketchier downtown areas and have personally
| experienced more crime, although it is still rare. Canadian
| suburbs are (in my experience) as equally dull as US ones.
|
| That is to say, I have not perceived a difference between the
| US and Canada wrt crime.
| [deleted]
| fallingknife wrote:
| > "They don't much care about the accuracy or the usefulness of
| the information they put out, they just want to push as many
| notifications to create that feeling of vulnerability that leads
| people to the subscription services."
|
| But it's somehow not a problem when professional "journalists" do
| it?
| andyjih_ wrote:
| Citizen seemed shady at best from the beginning, but their true
| colors are showing now. I hope employees leave and that the
| investors divest.
| 650REDHAIR wrote:
| That is...Troubling. I think I will be deleting the citizen app
| from my phone now...
| jfrunyon wrote:
| Man... those quotes...
|
| I really wanna know how much he spent on drugs that night.
| arkitaip wrote:
| While many employees at Citizen felt the Pacific Palisades
| incident was a huge mistake, Andrew Frame looked at it
| differently. While Frame showed some contrition, he sees the
| bounty experiment as a "massive net win," a step on the way for
| his app to become a private safety network that is "going into
| what the government is failing to do," which is, in the company's
| mind, failing to keep people safe, according to his Slack
| response to Prince.
|
| -----
|
| Citizen's culture seems fundamentally rotten and I think I
| understand why with this CEO.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| "Going into what the government is failing to do" sounds an
| awful lot like "encouraging lynching".
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| They should be shut down by government order, because they're
| a threat to national security.
|
| I'm serious. Their business is proving to be a direct assault
| on the right to a fair trial before punishment is dispensed.
| This is literally taking the crazy Twitter cancel mobs from
| digital space to meatspace.
| aemreunal wrote:
| Here's what I think will happen if their "on-demand protection"
| service launches: Someone will eventually get killed, they will
| either shut down that service or completely, then the
| executive(s) won't face any charges.
|
| Even Batman had the decency of asking private citizens to not
| engage in vigilantism.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| In case people are missing the broader point of the article,
| beyond the horrifying incident at the beginning:
|
| _" The whole idea behind Protect is that you could convince
| people to pay for the product once you've gotten them to the
| highest point of anxiety you can possibly get them to," one
| former employee said, referring to Citizen's subscription
| service. "Citizen can't make money unless it makes its users
| believe there are constant, urgent threats around them at all
| times,"_
|
| ...
|
| _Citizen incentivizes both its employees and the public to
| create incidents because they are the core currency of the app
| and what drives user engagement, user retention, and a sense of
| reliance on the app itself._
|
| ...
|
| _" It's basically an anxiety sweatshop," a Citizen source said.
| "On days when things are 'slow,' they relax the standards around
| incidents because a dip in incident count is really bad," they
| added. The company sends congratulatory emails announcing which
| analysts reported the highest number of incidents, another source
| added._
|
| ...
|
| _A former employee added, "They don't much care about the
| accuracy or the usefulness of the information they put out, they
| just want to push as many notifications to create that feeling of
| vulnerability that leads people to the subscription services."_
| leetcrew wrote:
| I do notice, at least in my city, that there seem to be a lot
| more reports of violent crime in my area on citizen than I
| would expect from looking at the city's official crime map
| data. that said, I don't trust the city enough to conclude that
| the inaccuracy is mostly on citizen's side.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| In most places, crimes are reported to the city by average
| people but then investigated to determine if anything
| actually occurred. As far as I know, Citizen lets people
| reports things with no filtering at all.
|
| So by all means, use an anti-government stance to trust a
| stream of completely unverified claims.
|
| My local paper does the service of publishing 911/police
| reports. Some would make it to a crime map but a lot of this
| merits a shrug. Example: "A caller from Rollins View Drive,
| near Bear Springs Road, reported a heated verbal altercation
| with a neighbor that ended when they spat in the caller's
| face." - avoid heated arguments with neighbor. The only way
| this realistically gets into a crime report is if a cop/DA
| really doesn't like the spitter, etc.
|
| Overall: Of course, police reports aren't fully accurate but
| the reports of "Citizen", being completely unfiltered, allow
| wingnuts and busybodies put out their narrative in an
| unfettered fashion.
|
| https://www.theunion.com/news/nevada-county-police-
| blotter-c...
| leetcrew wrote:
| police are also known to intentionally downgrade or even
| discourage crime reports to improve statistics. this can
| either be overt ("do you _really_ want to file a report for
| that?) or the result of no one giving a fuck the last time
| you bothered to report a crime. I 'm sure there are a lot
| of misunderstandings or flat-out fabrications that make it
| onto citizen. I'm also quite certain there are a lot of
| crimes that are observed but don't get officially
| documented. maybe this is a wild thing to say, but I'm
| actually not 100% sure who I trust less between official
| police records and random community members.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Oh god. Reminds me of this talk given a certain lawyer, Cliff
| Ennico, called "How to sell anything to anybody". I watched it
| by recommendation of a family member, and the very gist of it
| is: there are two reasons people buy stuff - desire, and fear.
| If you can artificially inflate either and promise your product
| will resolve their discomfort, people will rush to buy your
| wares.
|
| I remember being both appalled at the deep immorality of
| exploiting this, and scared of how true this is.
|
| In this instance, we have a company that went with the "induce
| fear" approach.
|
| A different, really strong example of selling on fear is the
| whole cottage industry of products and services for parents.
| People who are expecting or just had their first child are
| probably _the_ easiest group to sell to. I say that as a
| relatively fresh parent myself. All you have to do is to _hint_
| that there 's a non-zero probability of some danger to life or
| health of a newborn, and say that your product mitigates it,
| and you can sell us absolutely anything at almost any price.
| sneak wrote:
| It's super frustrating being a data security consultant
| sometimes (my trade), due to the fact that playing up danger
| and fear to close deals has never been something I've been
| willing to do.
|
| Maybe I need to get over my reluctance, or find a better line
| of work.
| squarefoot wrote:
| When people feel insecure they're soon going to _ask_ for their
| liberties to be removed. Every politician knows that, and
| fueling that feel is the best recipe to create a soft
| dictatorship with public approval.
| tdumitrescu wrote:
| Yeah, a coworker convinced me to install Citizen and after a
| week or two I had to block its notifications. It was very
| consistent in keeping a distracting baseline volume going,
| regardless of the severity of the incidents. For a little while
| it was amusing in a voyeuristic way (oh good, someone else
| reporting a crackhead brandishing a stick two miles away, ahhh
| check out the nutjobs in the comments section), but ultimately
| totally useless to me, especially from a "personal safety"
| perspective. I guess I'm not the target market here.
| johncessna wrote:
| > The whole idea behind Protect is that you could convince
| people to pay for the product once you've gotten them to the
| highest point of anxiety you can possibly get them to," one
| former employee said, referring to Citizen's subscription
| service. "Citizen can't make money unless it makes its users
| believe there are constant, urgent threats around them at all
| times,"
|
| There are a lot of businesses built on this model. The news
| outlets spring immediately to mind.
| the_snooze wrote:
| Everything is "BREAKING NEWS" these days, complete with fancy
| graphics and soundtracks. But there just isn't enough news
| day-to-day to warrant that level of importance. Not everyday
| is 9/11, much to news outlets' dismay.
| labster wrote:
| BREAKING NEWS is just a synonym for "news". The addition of
| the word "breaking" is just a stylistic choice and conveys
| no additional meaning.
| midasuni wrote:
| I remember seeing a headline "breaking news Michael
| Jackson dead"
|
| This was 48 hours after it happened.
| atatatat wrote:
| If you hadn't heard about it, it was breaking.
| silexia wrote:
| I agree, I watched the weather channel with my father in
| law yesterday... Everything was "THREAT!" and "POSSIBLE
| TORNADO", etc. This is being shown in Southern California
| lol and they are reporting on minor weather risks a
| thousand miles away.
|
| Fox news does the same thing... Find crime anywhere in the
| country, bonus points if it involves sex or a minority and
| make it a headline if it involves an immigrant.
| jfrunyon wrote:
| > This is being shown in Southern California lol and they
| are reporting on minor weather risks a thousand miles
| away.
|
| Well, yeah. The Weather Channel is nationwide. ???
| johncessna wrote:
| _they all do it_
| hef19898 wrote:
| That is, to an extent, a US problem. At least at the very
| extremes US media shows. Stuff like Citizens is even more
| extreme, using these mechanisms for even clearer, and
| more direct, monetary gain. Just how something like that
| can be legal is beyond me. Even US police saw it as
| potential risk, that alone tells everything.
| kleer001 wrote:
| These days? Well, the last 40 years... CNN started in 1980.
| evo_9 wrote:
| 'Extra Extra Read All About it!' from anon newspaper kid
| standing on the street-corner ~100+ years ago (probably
| older).
| a4isms wrote:
| That had a literal meaning at one point, but then it got
| diluted.
|
| Newspapers were published several times a day when I was
| a child, so the late edition would have things that
| happened in the afternoon.
|
| If something very big happened, they would put out an
| "extra" edition and trucks would race to get the extras
| out to the newsstands, newspaper boxes, and corner
| stores.
|
| A news agent shouting "Extra! Extra!" was originally
| informing people that something had happened and the news
| was in the freshly printed "extra" edition, so even if
| they'd already bought a paper that day, they'd be
| motivated to buy another.
|
| https://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/
| ext...
| [deleted]
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| There are politicians built on this model. Reagan became a
| canonised saint for imprisoning a record number of African
| Americans and Hispanics.
| [deleted]
| gnarbarian wrote:
| this sounds eerily similar to the main stream news media
| business model.
| cosmodisk wrote:
| As an observer from the other side of the pond, I do feel that
| there's lots of companies built on unsubstantiated fear in the
| US. Times change and so do the threats, but in a nutshell:
|
| *Nuclear bunkers to keep your family safe. *Big guns because
| they will come for you. *All sorts of tracking devices for
| kids. *Surveillance systems for homes
|
| So the latest seems to be a modern day witch-hunting for
| masses.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| It's not just US. It's the whole western world, everywhere
| where modern market economy took hold. Look beyond the
| obvious cases, and you'll see it. For instance:
|
| - I've already mentioned parents upthread. You can sell them
| any kind of crap if you even _hint_ at some obscure danger to
| health or life of a newborn. Half of the market of products
| for parents /small children is based on that. The other half
| runs on a combination of FOMO, fear of being a bad parent (or
| being seen as one), and fear of your kid falling behind
| someone else's kid.
|
| - Wedding market runs on insecurity. If you don't buy this or
| rent that, your wedding will not be perfect. It's once-in-a-
| lifetime thing, you can't settle for anything less than
| ideal. Don't mind the loan you'll have to take, paying back
| which will define the first few years of your marriage.
|
| - Fear of cancer and cardiovascular diseases is what makes
| people shut down critical thinking and buy all kinds of
| bullshit. Organic food and fitness businesses are based
| mostly on that.
|
| I could go on.
| cosmodisk wrote:
| You are right.
|
| We welcomed our daughter a few years ago and the amount of
| stuff that has been invented over the last decade is
| breathtaking. Monitors, special pillows, all sorts of
| foods, supplements, and what not. You look at it all and
| think wtf...
|
| FOMO is huge too, especially with social media nowadays. I
| can't count the number of times people look at me with
| puzzled expressions thinking how on earth I don't use
| x,y,or z service/product. Want to lose weight? Of course
| you can't just go for a walk. You need a subscription to 5
| celebrity weight loss programs, an indoor bike for a couple
| grand, super 24/7 gym membership, running club,
| neighborhood calorie watch, lifting buddy,etc.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _We welcomed our daughter a few years ago_
|
| Belated congratulations!
|
| > _You look at it all and think wtf..._
|
| Yeah, you do now. I remember us thinking differently
| around the time our daughter was born. Even though we
| both should've known better, we got the fear and anxiety
| to control us for a while. It was only at the point we
| found ourselves agonizing over choosing a breath monitor
| that we suddenly realized we're being played - we don't
| need it, our child isn't in the risk group, and we should
| stop letting our random worrying drive our purchasing
| decisions.
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| I don't use Nextdoor or the Neighbors app but I get the
| impression that they work in a similar fashion - get the
| worried people in the area all worked up about every little
| thing - keep them thinking they are under constant threat.
| hermitdev wrote:
| I have a Ring and the Neighbors app. 99% of the "incidents"
| are people sharing the coyote or fox in their yard, scared
| about the "rabid wolf" in their yard. Meanwhile we've
| actually had a murder, bank robbery and dead body found in a
| park in the last 3 months, and only a quick bleep about any
| of those incidents.
|
| The app, or rather the "community" behind it, is worthless
| for any "news" or public safety alerts. If it wasn't
| integrated with the app to view my own camera's feeds, it
| would be gone from my phone. Any time there is anything of
| note, it's filled with garbage nonsense comments that are at
| best terrible attempts at humor, or vile and repugnant at
| worst.
|
| -10/10, would not recommend.
| ineedasername wrote:
| Wow, even without the strong tone of _" hustle"_ and _move fast
| and break things_ , there is just so much potential for abuse
| and/or horrible mistakes.
|
| And that's without even accounting for the fundamentally fear-
| based business model.
| n_time wrote:
| That Vigilante ad gives me serious Jennifer Government vibes
| mehlmao wrote:
| Max Barry actually just wrote a blog post about that:
| https://maxbarry.com/2021/05/26/news.html
| n_time wrote:
| I love his web design
| n_time wrote:
| Also it's jarring reading early 00s Adbusters-style Gen-X
| prose after all these years
| kodah wrote:
| We talk a lot about mobs here. It seems someone has monetized the
| mob. Not only am I disappointed in the proponents of mobs and
| call out culture, but I am doubly disappointed in the people who
| profit from them. Social media, Citizen/Vigilante, to the
| mainstream news.
|
| We are so lost.
| asdff wrote:
| It's been like this forever. Tribalism is nothing new. We are
| predisposed to think like this, because our violent and tribal
| ancestors hundreds of thousands of years ago killed off
| lineages who might have been more predisposed to peaceful,
| collective thought. Look at the abhorrant acts that charismatic
| leaders were able to make their fanatics do to other humans
| throughout history. Ancient times were no different. Fearing
| the dangerous other may have even meant survival in a warlike
| time. Humanity went through a bottleneck and we are what
| emerged bloodied over warring for resources. To fight this
| natural tendency take serious education in critical thinking to
| recognize these biases, and root them out.
| kodah wrote:
| > It's been like this forever. Tribalism is nothing new
|
| I don't think it's useful to say this. There's something
| different about these mobs, and maybe it's something
| amorphous like "reach" or the fact that they can feel so
| close while remaining so far away by invading our devices and
| mindspace without an opportunity for escape. Other mobs hold
| and espouse some high morals while acting entirely amorally,
| which I guess is what makes them look like the mobs of old.
|
| The commonality I've read in survivor stories is that the
| victims had to "disconnect", which I think people view a bit
| lightly. That's a large cost in today's world. This problem
| is worth addressing.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _There 's something different about these mobs_
|
| I'd say the new thing is just how _transient_ they are.
| They nucleate around a Tweet or a Citizen-driven manhunt in
| a matter of minutes or hours, ruin someone 's life, and
| then disband. There's no stopping them, because the whole
| process happens so quickly that the people in the mob are
| all running on their initial burst of outrage and
| excitement. By the time they cool down enough to think
| things through, the deed is done.
| jancsika wrote:
| I want to try my hand at the n-gate.com summary for this one:
|
| "Some webshits finish The Wire and answer the question we've all
| been wondering since the finale aired: why didn't the Baltimore
| Police simply write an app to crowdsource 'juking the stats'?
| Citizen (Uber for Reddit's Boston Bomber Fiasco) is born, but
| Apple doesn't have time to review it as they are busy finishing
| their own dystopian surveillance nightmare-- Airtag (Uber for
| Stalking). Luckily, an American HN arrives to remind everyone
| that actual crime has been falling since the 90s. Given the low
| probability of anything bad ever happening in the U.S. due
| widespread misperception of the truth, HN moves on to a story
| about adtech delivery speedups on client machines."
| smbv wrote:
| It feels like the fiction novel The Circle (by Dave Eggers) was
| used as a handbook to create a company.
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18302455-the-circle
| OldGoodNewBad wrote:
| In many communities it's clear that the DAs won't prosecute
| criminals, so vigilantism is inevitable. People demand justice,
| in other words punishment, for criminals, and they will obtain it
| if the system fails.
|
| We're heading toward the Albanian model and that's actually OK.
| If we all drop our little safe happy delusions we'll see it's
| necessary to get your own justice.
| _vertigo wrote:
| This attitude is fundamentally incompatible with American
| (really, all Western) civic values. It goes against what our
| entire system of law is built on.
| krastanov wrote:
| > People demand justice, in other words punishment
|
| Not being able to distinguish justice and punishment sounds
| terrifying. To me this is as fundamental as "innocent until
| proven guilty". I am simply not interested in living in a
| society in which these two notions are confused for each
| other (and no, I am not privileged rich elite that gets to
| not be affected by crime).
| OldGoodNewBad wrote:
| Don't complain about vigilantism. Worry about a crooked
| justice system. Vigilantism is coming, there is no stopping
| it. Terrify yourself, or agitate for the proper punishment
| of criminals.
| krastanov wrote:
| This is a ridiculous defeatist attitude. What is the
| point of living in a hellscape like the one you seem to
| desire (celebrating vigilantism or desiring punishment)?
| A civilization that focuses on punishing criminals is
| just a sad place to be in. Crime falls when you work to
| prevent it and rehabilitate, not when you punish it after
| the fact. Look at all the countries that have learnt that
| lesson, that do not punish but rehabilitate and how they
| did not have a societal collapse or rise in vigilantism,
| rather they are some of the best places to live in. Sure,
| there are growing pains when you switch from a medieval
| attitude of punishment to something more civilized, but
| your scaremongering is in direct contradiction to the
| successes of civilizations that embrace rehabilitation
| and justice (which has nothing to do with punishment).
| lurquer wrote:
| Meh... not really.
|
| Our "entire system of law" exists precisely to channel and
| standardize vengeance and retribution.
|
| When the law breaks down, vigilantism (or, more commonly,
| protection rackets) will arise.
|
| I prefer law and order. But, let's not lose sight of why we
| have "law and order." Its not to handle criminals... it's to
| dissuade ordinary folks from taking matters into their own
| hands.
| OldGoodNewBad wrote:
| So does, for example, letting hundreds of Antifa arsonists
| and terrorists go without charges. And it's only going to get
| worse. Don't blame me for saying this, blame DAs who won't
| prosecute their own cousins, who know they are safe in their
| criminal activity.
|
| Western civilization has failed, by and large. It's up to the
| people in the wreckage to figure out something better. The
| judicial system has failed, and it's not going to improve
| from here on out.
| vmception wrote:
| > The staffer who brought up the terms of service violation was
| ignored in that specific Slack room, and the broadcast continued
|
| This sums up my experience with diverse opinions and observations
| in tech companies
| coldcode wrote:
| Also interesting that use Slack and apparently can't control
| someone inside from leaking said Slacks.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Why is that interesting?
|
| It's trivial to screenshot a Slack channel. Or pretty much
| any other form of communication a business might use.
| vmception wrote:
| On that note I often use my ipad to take a picture of my
| iphone just in case the particular app has screen shot
| notifications
|
| It's usually benign stuff, it's just that you can't risk
| having to explain why you ever screenshotted to your
| friends
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