[HN Gopher] Flock and Cyble Inc. weaponize "cybercrime" takedown...
___________________________________________________________________
Flock and Cyble Inc. weaponize "cybercrime" takedowns to silence
critics
Author : _a9
Score : 562 points
Date : 2025-12-21 01:12 UTC (21 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (haveibeenflocked.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (haveibeenflocked.com)
| _a9 wrote:
| Part 2: Flock and Cyble Inc. Continue to File False Notices
|
| https://haveibeenflocked.com/news/cyble-part2
| therobots927 wrote:
| Absolutely unacceptable behavior. Wild that Americans are so
| distracted by pointless social issues that they haven't even
| realized the ruling elite are treating them like cattle.
| Absolutely pathetic.
| westmeal wrote:
| The pointless social issues are manufactured specifically in
| order to distract Americans from the fact they are being
| treated like cattle.
| ares623 wrote:
| And they/we absolutely love the distraction
| therobots927 wrote:
| Because our educational system has been dismantled
| throwaway0xT wrote:
| Cloudflare outage on Dec. 5 on remote servers were /user/
| parsing errors in HTTP.
|
| Flock does this well in terms of bios spinlock releases,
| whereas a secure measure is stress-testing network
| traffic.
| anjel wrote:
| Cattle is as Cattle does
| Psillisp wrote:
| Moooo
| chii wrote:
| > are manufactured specifically
|
| the fact that these majority do accept the distraction points
| to lack of intelligence and discipline in critical thinking
| and future planning. The populous has half the blame - not
| just those who do these manufacturing of distractions.
| themafia wrote:
| That's an easy trap to fall in. This industry costs
| trillions every year to operate for a reason. The people
| never really stood a chance. It's not as if school educated
| them to live in the world we actually inhabit.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Wild that Americans are so distracted_
|
| There is a tonne of civic action against Flock, specifically,
| in the works, in many cases with successful results.
| voidfunc wrote:
| America is huge and there's a lot of exceptionally stupid
| people especially in the South and Midwest.
|
| Not much I can do about that over here in the coastal
| Northeast.
| hermannj314 wrote:
| I was offended and then I defined "exceptionally stupid" a
| few ways and all the statistics support this claim.
|
| I'm still offended though.
|
| Fucking a lot of smart people in Mass., Vermont, Conn., New
| York, Maryland, DC.
| matthewfcarlson wrote:
| I'm pretty sure anywhere there's a lot of people (the
| northeast of the US for example) you're going to find a lot
| of smart people.
| hermannj314 wrote:
| People with advanced degrees accumulate in those specific
| states, despite not significantly different rates of HS
| graduation from other states.
|
| Smart people, as measured by educational attainment, live
| in the NE coastal states and exceptionally stupid people
| (by the same metric) live in the South and Midwest. As a
| guy from Iowa, I was offended, but humbled by the reality
| of the numbers.
| faidit wrote:
| All things considered, I don't think advanced degrees
| necessarily correlate with intelligence. It's often just
| a marker of socioeconomic privilege.
|
| A Carnegie Mellon study found that people with PhDs were
| more likely than any other educational attainment level
| to be against the Covid-19 vaccine: https://www.medrxiv.o
| rg/content/10.1101/2021.07.20.21260795v... (page 17)
|
| Gallup polls during the Vietnam War found that higher-
| educated Americans were more likely to be pro-war while
| the most anti-war group were those with only a grade
| school education: https://afterthewarproject.org/files/or
| iginal/3e5e5a47a15203... (page 19 of the PDF, page 38 of
| the document)
| b00ty4breakfast wrote:
| "us smarties would never fall for such obvious bread and
| circus. not like those silly dumdums what live in {region}!"
|
| said without an ounce irony as the proverbial rug is yanked
| right out from under your feet
| golem14 wrote:
| Come on, there are exceptionally stupid people almost
| everywhere. No need for ad hominem.
| mapontosevenths wrote:
| I think you will find that fifty percent of people are of
| below average intelligence regardless of where you live.
|
| The average does tend to vary from state to state. It
| actually is a bit lower in the southern and midwestern
| states, but only by a few points.
|
| https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/average-
| iq-...
| tptacek wrote:
| This is just an extrapolation of NAEP testing. It's more or
| less a chart of SES and how many students in each state
| need English language supports.
|
| People tend to believe without questioning it that there
| are geographical/regional surveys of "IQ". But have you
| ever been compelled to take an IQ test as part of a survey
| like that? I've never heard of that happening. In fact:
| those kinds of surveys do not exist.
| mapontosevenths wrote:
| Yeah. The linked source is upfront about that, but its
| the closest thing we have to a real study sadly. As I
| said, the averages are close anyhow.
|
| Scholars have from time to time thrown their careers away
| by trying to get better numbers, inevitably some group
| doesn't like the outcome and they become embroiled in
| endless debate while their career implodes. For example,
| the major sources cited in The Bell Curve have had their
| titles stripped and been hounded to the ends of the
| earth.
|
| All these years later people are still specifically
| authoring papers to debunk their work.
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01
| 602...
|
| We will never see real numbers. This, or other things
| like it, are literally the best it will ever get unless
| someone sacrifices their career, and maybe their own
| safety, to gather better data.
| tptacek wrote:
| There's a persistent myth that it's impossible to do
| science in this field and that people who try are
| cancelled. That's obviously false. You can just look this
| up. It's a fertile field and people are coming at it from
| multiple angles --- just watch arguments between
| behavioral and molecular geneticists on Twitter some
| time.
|
| The people who actually are (/were) hounded are people
| like Richard Lynn, the godfather of "average IQ by
| country" data sets. That's because their data sets are
| fraudulent; not in a subtle way, but very directly: for
| instance, data for Sub-Saharan African countries are
| taken in many cases exclusively from mental health
| facilities, the only places IQ tests are done in any
| significant numbers in those places.
| mapontosevenths wrote:
| > the only places IQ tests are done in any significant
| numbers in those places.
|
| > It's a fertile field and people are coming at it from
| multiple angles
|
| One of these things must not be 100% accurate. Do you
| know of any real dataset thats based on actual testing? I
| can't find one for the life of me. I've looked.
|
| If someone just... tested people we would have numbers.
| They aren't. Its been 30 years since the bell curve and
| our data is no better now than it was then as far as I
| can find.
|
| There must be some reason for that discrepency.
|
| *EDIT* To clarify, I don't think Lynn was right, and even
| if he was he was an asshole. I'm just annoyed that nobody
| followed up and did it properly.
| tptacek wrote:
| No, those statements aren't in tension at all! The idea
| that there _would_ be reliable data for country-by-
| country or even state-by-state IQ comparisons is an
| extraordinary claim. Think about the amount of work that
| would go into generating representative samples.
| Globally? Forget about it.
|
| It does not follow from the intractability of that
| problem that nobody's doing intelligence or behavioral
| genetics research. Plenty are, which is why there are
| front page stories on HN about the "missing heritability"
| issue.
|
| Again, I think it's interesting that the notion of these
| data sets don't flunk more people's sanity checks,
| because most of us have no recollection of ever being
| asked to take an IQ test. I sure haven't. A mass testing
| regime none of us have ever heard of, apparently run in
| secret, is generating global IQ rankings? _That_ doesn 't
| sound weird to you?
| mapontosevenths wrote:
| I dont think the problem is intractable at all. We have
| the internet now and can just test people. We don't.
|
| Yes, that would be less accurate than a test administered
| in office by a professional, but it would also be more
| accurate than basing it on educational attainment or
| standardized tests intended for other purposes.
|
| With a little effort the tests true purposes could easily
| be disguised. These very clever researchers know this,
| they just won't.
| tptacek wrote:
| I don't know what to tell you about reducing this problem
| to an online survey and hoping for the best. There are
| people doing actual science --- including with modern IQ
| tests --- working on these problems. I think the bigger
| thing here is that, outside of message boards and
| Twitter, there just aren't that many people interested in
| a global country-by-country inventory of "average IQ".
| mapontosevenths wrote:
| > there just aren't that many people interested in a
| global country-by-country inventory of "average IQ".
|
| Thats also a fair theory to explain the lack of real
| data. Given the frequency with which I've had similar
| conversations it feels off to me, but that may just be my
| bias.
|
| It certainly seems to be a very interesting problem to
| researchers. Thirty years later it is still cited
| frequently enough that Elsevier is having to hunt and
| destroy papers that cite it.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/dec/10/elsevier-
| rev...
| tptacek wrote:
| Again: there is active science being done at some of the
| largest research universities in the world on the
| questions you're talking about. What there isn't is a
| global country-by-country survey of representative
| samples of people to generate "average IQ", not because
| such a thing would be forbidden knowledge (we're awash in
| data that would be equivalently "forbidden"), but because
| the cost of such a project likely swamps any utility it
| might have. It's an idee fixee of message boards.
|
| The data discussed in the Guardian article you cited
| there is _fraudulent_. They 're hunting it down because
| it's _bad data_. It 's exactly the same impulse as the
| Data Colada and Retraction Watch people, which is
| celebrated on HN. But now the wrong ox is getting gored,
| and people are uncomfortable with it.
| mapontosevenths wrote:
| > But now the wrong ox is getting gored, and people are
| uncomfortable with it.
|
| I'm not mad the ox was gored, just that nobody replaced
| it after they were done sacrificing it. Bad science
| deserves to die, but in my mind it should always be
| replaced with better science. Not just left as an empty
| gap.
|
| > Again: there is active science being done at some of
| the largest research universities in the world on the
| questions you're talking about.
|
| I wish I could find it. Neither Google, Kagi, ChatGPT, or
| Gemini could point me towards anything relevant. They
| just keep spitting out the old discredited hogwash. Maybe
| that's more a failing of the search engines than of the
| science though.
|
| Either way, I appreciate the conversation. It's a topic
| that fascinates me, even if it isn't particularly
| relevant to my own life. I hope you have, or are actively
| having, a great holiday!
| tptacek wrote:
| Sasha Gusev and Alex Strudwick Young are two good follows
| on opposing ends of the spectrum of research beliefs
| here, both link constantly to new studies. From a more
| psychometric and behavioral perspective, Eric Turkheimer
| is a good starting point. On the other end of the
| spectrum from Turkheimer is Richard Haier.
|
| These are, like, high-profile names, but of course there
| are many dozens more people actually doing work in these
| fields.
| mapontosevenths wrote:
| Thank you!
| jmeister wrote:
| Flock helped catch the Boston/Brown shooter.
| Natfan wrote:
| the guy who took himself out? what did flock do to assist
| there?
| kotaKat wrote:
| apparently they enabled "extra" "AI" features that track
| plate swap detections.
|
| they fingerprint every vehicle they see, then they can do
| things like track the fingerprint over time, and see when
| the license plate got swapped, which they enabled on the
| Providence account to assist in the investigation to
| track down "which" car it was the killer drove
| yard2010 wrote:
| It's not about stupid people, there are stupid people
| everywhere, it's about the .1% elite controlling all the
| wealth and power, using flaws in the ways humans work (stupid
| or not every human has to have shelter and food to survive).
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| Like what?
| kotaKat wrote:
| Flock's CEO basically went to the public and said "you all have
| phones" like the Blizzard people.
|
| "If (people are) worried about privacy, a license plate reader
| is the dumbest way to do surveillance. You have a cell phone. A
| cell phone knows your exact location at all times," he said.
| "If you don't trust law enforcement to do their job, that's
| actually what you're concerned about, and I'm not going to help
| people get over that."
|
| Just means I have to have a Faraday bag alongside my polesaw
| and high-powered laser. I can compete with your shitty outdated
| Android SoM and a shitty Raspberry Pi webcam in an enclosure.
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| I'm an American blue collar that does _NOT_ carry a cell
| phone.
|
| Datapoint: one.
| jjulius wrote:
| And yet... many communities are in the process of ending their
| contracts and lawsuits are being filed against them?
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| This is a Y Combinator company?
| https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/flock-safety
|
| dang/tomhow, does Y Combinator have a code of ethics that comes
| into play when one of your funding recipients does something
| unethical and/or illegal like this?
| edm0nd wrote:
| yeah their code of ethics is to laugh all the way to the bank
| and be untouchable. nothing will happen to them from YC.
| avaer wrote:
| One long-standing code is that they moderate YC companies less
| on HN, allowing criticisms like yours to stand:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34320816
|
| To HN's credit I haven't seen this rule violated.
|
| For example I wouldn't have known it was a YC company if not
| for your comment.
| TimorousBestie wrote:
| > One long-standing code is that they moderate YC companies
| less on HN, allowing criticisms like yours to stand:
|
| Well, that's what dang says he does. There's no transparency
| and no publicly available data that would demonstrate
| adherence to the rule.
|
| > To HN's credit I haven't seen this rule violated.
|
| I don't think you'd observe anything different if it were
| violated.
| squigz wrote:
| > I don't think you'd observe anything different if it were
| violated.
|
| If the mods were in the practice of moderating like this,
| yes, it would almost certainly be noticed by someone whose
| post/comment got deleted.
|
| HN, like every other community on the Internet, relies on
| trust between the users and mods. If you don't trust them,
| you can always leave.
| throwaway27285 wrote:
| > it would almost certainly be noticed by someone whose
| post/comment got deleted
|
| Would it?
|
| HN has all sorts of sneaky punishments to keep people
| from noticing what's going on. Shadow bans, limiting how
| many comments you can post per day, sometimes outright
| refusing to serve you pages with a "Sorry." error, and
| even flagging isn't visible to the person whose comment
| got flagged. HN doesn't notify you in any way for any of
| this. How often do you check your comments while logged
| out? That includes old comments, of course, which need to
| be rechecked on a periodic basis. Archives provide some
| limitation to how much manipulation can happen, but
| flagging is a thing, can be abused by anyone with enough
| karma, and provides a lot of plausible deniability for
| dang should he opt for a stealthier approach to
| moderation.
|
| Even this account is shadowbanned - and this comment
| automatically flagged - because I had the _audacity_ to
| create an account with a VPN, in a world where VPNs are a
| requirement for unrestricted Internet access for a
| growing number of people living in "democratic"
| countries. The only way I know this is through testing,
| of course, because HN gives no indication that your
| account will be shadowbanned on creation.
| squigz wrote:
| > HN has all sorts of sneaky punishments to keep people
| from noticing what's going on
|
| Another way of putting this is that HN has very standard
| mechanisms in place to combat spam and other sources of
| low-signal comments.
|
| > Shadow bans, limiting how many comments you can post
| per day
|
| Like these.
|
| > Sometimes outright refusing to serve you pages with a
| "Sorry." error,
|
| This just sounds like downtime/server problems. Every
| site has them, and even the most law-abiding posters on
| HN will see that sometimes.
|
| > even flagging isn't visible to the person whose comment
| got flagged.
|
| Yes it is?
|
| > HN doesn't notify you in any way for any of this.
|
| This is by design; HN doesn't offer notifications of
| anything on its own. Besides, most platforms don't
| usually notify people of these things by default either?
|
| > Even this account is shadowbanned - and this comment
| automatically flagged - because I had the audacity to
| create an account with a VPN, in a world where VPNs are a
| requirement for unrestricted Internet access for a
| growing number of people living in "democratic"
| countries. The only way I know this is through testing,
| of course, because HN gives no indication that your
| account will be shadowbanned on creation.
|
| I don't think you need to be so indignant. VPNs are also
| abused. All of these mechanisms are tradeoffs for making
| HN one of the best sites I've ever been on for
| productive, intelligent discussion; and the mods are well
| aware of this and manage to balance it well. For example,
| you were still able to register, and you and I are still
| able to exchange comments. If you contribute to
| discussions (on an account you don't just throwaway) for
| a little while, the limitations go away.
| jjulius wrote:
| >HN doesn't notify you in any way of this.
|
| I'm not sure this is the supportive argument that you
| think it is, as HN doesn't notify users of _anything_
| akin to what you 're discussing, be it positive or
| negative, ever. They don't have notifications whatsoever.
|
| >Even this account is shadowbanned - and this comment
| automatically flagged...
|
| No it's not. Edit: mea culpa, see response
|
| >The only way I know this is through testing, of
| course...
|
| How did you test this? Your single comment on a brand new
| account appears to be showing up just fine, as any new
| account would. Did you unflag your throwaway comment from
| a different account?
|
| I get the feeling you pushed the boundaries of what was
| acceptable here at one point, and didn't like the result.
| squigz wrote:
| > No it's not.
|
| It was, actually. New accounts' comments being flagged by
| default is, I'm fairly certain, very much a thing.
| jjulius wrote:
| Ah, you must've vouched for it. :)
|
| Odd, I don't remember that being a thing when I joined.
| Mine showed up a-okay.
| TimorousBestie wrote:
| > > I don't think you'd observe anything different if it
| were violated.
|
| > If the mods were in the practice of moderating like
| this, yes, it would almost certainly be noticed by
| someone whose post/comment got deleted.
|
| "You" in the original was referring to avaer
| specifically, not the generic "you." They were the ones
| making the observation on little to no data.
|
| > HN, like every other community on the Internet, relies
| on trust between the users and mods.
|
| This is exactly my point. One must trust (or more
| precisely have faith in) them, because claims like the
| one up-thread are impossible to verify.
| duckmysick wrote:
| > no publicly available data that would demonstrate
| adherence to the rule.
|
| What kind of data would satisfy you? I imagine any data
| coming directly from YC would be untrustworthy and third-
| party data would be incomplete (say, it wouldn't catch
| content removed before it's published).
|
| Is there a similar data set for other private platforms?
| sergiotapia wrote:
| So these are the scumbags putting cameras in front of schools
| and sending tickets to people on Sundays. Thank you for making
| peoples lives materially WORSE.
| sneak wrote:
| Speeding tickets are not related in any way to why Flock (YC
| S17)* is bad.
|
| * how I will now always refer to them
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| Cameras at schools, I can see how that could be concerning.
| But what's wrong with ticketing drivers on Sundays?
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Nothing, I guess, but don't try to tell us it's about
| "safety" when school-zone speed limits are enforced on
| Sundays when school is out.
|
| That said, I don't think Flock has anything to do with
| speed cameras in school zones or anywhere else.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Hah, about a decade I had a cop try to pull that one on
| me, pulled over for speeding in a school zone on a
| Saturday morning.
|
| "Even if you can't see kids at a school you should assume
| they're around".
|
| Judge had about as much patience for that argument as I
| did. Dismissed.
| mmooss wrote:
| Are dang and tomhow involved at all in YC member ethics? I
| expect they know about ethical behavior on HN.
| venturecruelty wrote:
| First time?
| nrhrjrjrjtntbt wrote:
| VC system with multiple investors means YC can't tell their
| company what to do. No mote than you can tell Google what to do
| because you have $100M in shares.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| There are economies of scale. But if one of your investors
| owns even a single digit percentage of your company and calls
| you to comment on direction or strategy, if you're wise, you
| pick up the phone.
| nerdsniper wrote:
| To some extent, YCombinator partners are on the record[0]
| supporting the idea of their startups doing illegal things.
| Generally they'll frame this as challenging outdated
| regulations, but they acknowledge that the founders whose
| strategies they fully support sometimes come into office hours
| and discuss how they're worried that the strategy puts them at
| risk of going to jail.
|
| 0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hm-ZIiwiN1o&t=8m46s
| defrost wrote:
| Related: _Flock Said It Does Not Use Dark Web Data. Code Analysis
| Tells a Different Story_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46341674
| latentpot wrote:
| Cyble, with a large team of dark Web researchers based out of
| India cover that while giving flock plausible deniability
| tamimio wrote:
| Remember when Zuck called his fellow students at harvard who used
| facebook "Dumb fucks"? The US is accelerating into techno-
| authoritarianism, and all of these tech companies adopted
| "companies over countries" motto since the start, it's not a
| surprise now.
| sneak wrote:
| it's important to contextualize that quote: he called them
| dumbfucks specifically because they trusted him with their
| data.
| Aeglaecia wrote:
| it is fairly evident that contextualisation is paramount in
| objectively assessing a situation ... in the context of
| having god like power over billions , it seems entirely moot
| to debate the merits of why such a god like individual would
| label his subjects as idiots ...
| tamimio wrote:
| The context is given, it's all about users' data. facebook,
| google, plantir, flock, you name it, the end goal is to
| harvest data as much as possible to sell it, profile the
| individuals, manipulate the public opinion (facebook did a
| mood-manipulation "experiment" back in 2012, you can only
| imagine now in the era of social media dependency and AI),
| invade people's privacy, among many other things. Now add to
| that mix a mandatory digital ID, and let's hear what these
| CEOs will call the public behind closed doors, I'm sure it's
| worse than "dumb fucks". Fun fact: Zuck early days business
| card printed with "I'M THE CEO, BITCH."
| anal_reactor wrote:
| If you operate in a world where your goal is to scam others
| then anyone displaying any amount of trust is obviously a
| dumb fuck.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| In the sense that the US has been anti-intellectualist for
| decades, I'm kind of ok with it. All the kids who fucked around
| in school and picked on the nerds for just existing are kind of
| getting their comeuppance. It's definitely cut off your nose to
| spite your face type shit, but does give me a little bit of
| joy. "You stuffed me in a locker and destroyed my social life
| because I read a book at lunch. I'm going to automate your job
| away and help billionaires make sure you'll never rise out of
| poverty."
| Terr_ wrote:
| I don't think "the nerds" are really dishing out much
| comeuppance here.
|
| Professionally, they're marginalized by finance-bros, who
| actually decide what gets built and which morals get
| followed. Privately, everything you might want to repair or
| tweak or invent is still getting locked down or patented or
| criminalized.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| _All the kids who fucked around in school and picked on the
| nerds for just existing are_ running the government. Not sure
| this is the win you 're painting it as?
| venturecruelty wrote:
| How much does food and electricity cost you (if the
| electricity is even on for you at all)? Also, uh, this isn't
| high school anymore, and the "nerds vs. jocks" framing says a
| lot more about your own internal state than it does about the
| state of the world, which is being run into the ground by
| wealthy oligarchs. If you have bad high school memories to
| process, that can be done elsewhere.
| pepperball wrote:
| > I'm kind of ok with it. All the kids who fucked around in
| school and picked on the nerds for just existing are kind of
| getting their comeuppance
|
| I have yet to see it. All the stereotypical "asshole jocks" I
| can recall from school tended to be from upper middle class
| families. They're doing much better than many of the nerds
| many of who are unemployed NEETs.
|
| Though I admit these sort of social cliques are much more
| complex in real life than in a corny 80s coming of age movie.
| goku12 wrote:
| Do you realize that many of those nerds who were bullied in
| high school are fighting on the other side, trying to take on
| even bigger bullies - the oligarchs, to save democracy?
| Meanwhile, many of those bullies have grown up too, realized
| how cruel and shameful their conduct was, and are now
| fighting on the same side!
|
| I understand that childhood bullying can leave some scars. I
| have faced my fair share too. But life teaches you ever
| bigger lessons and shifts your priorities. There are much
| bigger problems now! But if you had the luxury of harboring
| your grudges against some kiddie bullies, then you have some
| serious insecurity problems and too much time in your hands.
| In fact, that's exactly the problem that convert some shy
| rich kids into destructive oligarchs who lack any empathy.
| They end up with the delusions that they're somehow special,
| extra-intelligent and the rightful heirs to the future of
| humanity. They see their former bullies as sub-human
| creatures who stand in the way of their and humanity's glory.
|
| I'm not making this up. Go ahead and read the literature that
| guide these techno-authoritarians. You'll see this philosophy
| repeated time and again. If you don't want to put in that
| much effort, there are numerous articles and media that
| psychoanalyze them based on these literature. You can see
| that fingerprint in all of their destructive behavior,
| including their disdain for democracy. And then check your
| own comment. See how much it resembles them!
| greyface- wrote:
| If Flock truly believed that the domain name infringes on their
| trademark, they would file an ICANN UDRP complaint instead of
| Cloudflare and Hetzner abuse reports.
|
| But they don't, because the former would require them to perjure
| themselves, and the latter just requires them to lie to a hosting
| company.
| CalChris wrote:
| I wonder if Flock + Cyble can be sued for fraud. There are 5
| elements in a fraud: Misrepresentation of Fact
| Knowledge of Falsity Intent to Induce Reliance
| Justifiable Reliance Resulting Damages
| themafia wrote:
| Cloudflare would have to bring that suit since they were the
| ones defrauded. The site owners probably can't sue Cloudflare
| because of their contract. So the site owners probably have
| to go basic "tortious interference" and be ready to show
| actual damages.
| CalChris wrote:
| No, if the site owners have been harmed by Flock + Cyble
| knowingly filing a false takedown notice then they can sue
| Flock + Cyble. If Cloudflare's reputation has also been
| harmed then they could sue Flock + Cyble as well.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| > Cloudflare would have to bring that suit
|
| At first that seems pretty unlikely, but I could see them
| wanting to nip this in the bud so it doesn't become more
| common.
| 15155 wrote:
| Tortious interference with contract, cut and dry.
| miohtama wrote:
| You would need damages
| pfdietz wrote:
| False accusation of criminal behavior is defamation and in
| many US states such accusations are assumed to be damaging.
| No evidence of damage is needed.
| thayne wrote:
| The "resulting damages" is pretty small though, they just had
| to move off of cloudflare. I'm not sure it would be worth it,
| especially if the other side doesn't end up paying their
| legal costs.
| mycall wrote:
| Cloudfare and Hetzner should see this vulnerability of their
| own making and DO SOMETHING about it.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Knowingly filing false DMCA claims will also perjure them.
|
| However, ICANN has a whole procedure they follow where
| complaints are fact-checked, whereas DMCA takedowns put an
| unreasonable burden on hosting providers that requires
| immediate action, and many hosting providers will take such
| action automatically to protect themselves.
|
| I doubt they care about perjury. They care about results, and
| the DMCA gets them exactly that.
|
| The phishing reports are interesting, providers aren't
| necessarily required to act as fast on those. Although, I
| suspect companies like Cloudflare who get used by countless
| phishers will probably also set up some kind of automated anti
| phishing system.
| charcircuit wrote:
| >Knowingly filing false DMCA claims will also perjure them.
|
| You are confusing false claims with filing DMCA requests on
| behalf of someone you don't have permission from.
|
| >and under penalty of perjury, that the complaining party is
| authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive
| right that is allegedly infringed
|
| A false DMCA request is misrepresentation.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Not one single person in the history of the DMCA has been
| prosecuted for perjury related to filing a DMCA claim.
| moktonar wrote:
| Cloudflare is becoming the great firewall of America more and
| more every day
| charcircuit wrote:
| >they would file an ICANN UDRP complaint
|
| Those take on the order of months to go through. Even if they
| did so, you wouldn't notice until much later. Meanwhile
| cloudflare and hetzner are faster. If you want to reduce harm
| by taking down a site you can't just let it stay up for weeks
| while the ICANN process plays out.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > But they don't, because the former would require them to
| perjure themselves, and the latter just requires them to lie to
| a hosting company.
|
| Doesn't stop anyone with DMCA... DMCA is coming up on almost
| three decades of being a law, and requires statements made
| under penalty of perjury.
|
| However many millions (likely billions) of DMCA takedowns
| issued, who knows how many false/bad faith... I wonder how many
| have led to prosecutions for perjury, even when filing tens of
| thousands, en masse...
|
| No need to wonder, the answer is simple. Starts with a "Z" and
| ends in "ero".
| citizenkeen wrote:
| Is this not libel?
| dawnerd wrote:
| Problem is they have way more money to fight and that's
| basically their whole playbook. I was caught up in a fraudulent
| libel claim that had to settle* back in the Twitter days. When
| those companies want to come after you, it's really hard to
| fight back.
|
| * no money was exchanged just some guarantees to not disclose
| their client and remove tweets.
| hibf wrote:
| They don't actually allege anything. They add in the keywords
| without going so far as to say "this website is doing X." It's
| enough to trip the keyword filters at Cloudflare and other
| hosting providers and reverse the burden of proof.
| cosmicgadget wrote:
| > With the new Divinity game in the works, I decided to do a run
| as Gale in BG3.
|
| I don't support this decision but I respect it.
|
| Curious what the Cloudflare HNers have to say about this debacle.
| hibf wrote:
| Can't be less than what support has had to say up until now.
| seanhunter wrote:
| Everyone knows that it all hinges on _why_ they're being Gale.
| If they're doing it so they can romance Shadowheart then it's
| permissable.
| badgersnake wrote:
| You can romance Shadowheart as Laezel if you want and they
| hate each other at the start of the game. Don't need Gale for
| that. You can "win" in act 1 with Gale though.
| softwaredoug wrote:
| My city just ended our pilot Flock program. I hope others do the
| same.
|
| But I think the real issue with Flock will be private security.
| Random Home Depot parking lots, etc.
|
| https://www.29news.com/2025/12/17/charlottesville-ends-flock...
| rrix2 wrote:
| The local credit union in Eugene had installed Flock cams at
| the entrances to all their branches. They took em down after
| only a few of our community members began protests out front a
| few branches and emailing with the CU's leadership before our
| city terminated our contract and removed the cams
| overfeed wrote:
| > My city just ended our pilot Flock program. I hope others do
| the same.
|
| If someone would like to engage in grassroots activism on this,
| may I suggest the perfect domain: getTheFlockOutOfMyCity.com
| LostMyLogin wrote:
| My town in Colorado just did the same. Pretty happy with the
| result.
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| If these folks get in trouble, they might try hosting with
| Freedom.nl . It's +/- the old xs4all crew, and they might be in
| for some more fun in the 21st century.
| VladVladikoff wrote:
| > The site's only input fields accept license plate numbers
| (which are hashed client-side before transmission and cannot be
| harvested)
|
| License plates are trivially short, hashing them accomplishes no
| additional level of privacy if the hashes could be bruted in
| seconds on an antique GPU.
| hibf wrote:
| Technically true. Flock could present an unfounded argument
| that I might be brute-forcing my own security and privacy
| measures.
|
| I think it'd sound pretty dumb.
| whatshisface wrote:
| If the security depends on the person it's supposed to be
| secure against not trying to break it...
| TheDong wrote:
| Being able to say "Our server never sees user-input license
| plate numbers", even though from a technical perspective the
| hash is just as identifiable, does have value. Even though it
| offers no additional privacy, it does let non-technically-
| minded users and so on feel safer, and that's valuable.
| 63stack wrote:
| The value is being able to mislead your users
| EdwardDiego wrote:
| Sure, Jan.
| rockskon wrote:
| That "value" here lets them mislead policymakers.
| croes wrote:
| They have indexed publicly available data. The privacy was long
| gone before you even entered a license plate number. Or do you
| think other actors didn't have the same data but without a
| frontend to show it to you?
| VladVladikoff wrote:
| Entering your licence plate into this site gives the operator
| your geodata/ip address tied back to your licence plate.
| croes wrote:
| Unless you use a VPN to access the site. Flock has your
| real location on camera.
| mceachen wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_(cryptography)
|
| (Or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepper_(cryptography) off you
| want to be fancy)
| VladVladikoff wrote:
| Well aware of these, however that would not benefit in this
| case. Their main protection is against pre computed lookup
| tables. But since the operator needs to be able to lookup the
| license plate within their own database, then they would not
| be using either of these. If the operator really wanted to do
| this in a safe way for the user then the whole database
| should exist client side.
| manbart wrote:
| Flock is trying their best to usher in dystopia
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