Thread

Woman Arrested, Dragged Away After Speaking About Flock at City Council Meeting

218 points · 261 comments · latexr

Aurornis · 1790181534 · focus · HN ↗
They really buried the details in this article. The opener leads you to believe she did nothing wrong because she briefly spoke during a public comment period
> Mia Heider had never attended a public meeting before when she showed up to the city council meeting in Springfield, Missouri. After briefly speaking at a podium during a public comment period, she was arrested and dragged away in handcuffs.
The details are toward the end. The council was trying to discuss a public housing issue and she was trying to use that time slot to bring up Flock.
> Later in the evening Mia Heider tried to speak out about Flock during public comments about a housing issue.
They cut off the mic and told her it was the wrong topic, she wouldn’t leave the podium, flipped off the council (it’s the photo in the article) and the police hauled her off the podium.
There’s a real valid story in here about the city council sending the Flock thing to committee, but the article has been through the clickbait ringer so many times that they’re trying to make it sound like someone got arrested for saying “Flock cameras” during an open comments section, which isn’t true.
Given the topic I’m probably going to get downvoted for bringing up facts from the article itself, but I’m really tired of this type of journalism where you can tell they workshopped this and carefully chose which important details to bury at the bottom of the story so it gives a different impression if you only read the headline or skim the first couple paragraphs.
1. mandevil · 1790182631 · focus · HN ↗
  I dunno, Council announces that they are going to be talking about Flock (YC 17), that there will be public comment about Flock (YC 17), sees that a whole lot of people are very angry about Flock (YC 17) and have come to the meeting, and immediately shift the discussion to a committee so they don't have to hear those people angry about Flock (YC 17), I can see why she did what she did. That sure seems like the Council is trying to avoid all of the community anger over Flock (YC 17).
  If you are going to do something that makes so many people so angry that they are willing to come to a local government meeting, you kinda have to let them talk about it, you know? Otherwise it feels like you're trying to run out the clock on them.
  1. ToValueFunfetti · 1790185576 · focus · HN ↗
    Can you explain the need to be annoying about the YC 17 thing? What's the objective here? Is it supposed to convince potential founders to decide against taking YC's money as a way of putting financial pressure on YC not to fund projects that people don't like? Or is the intention that YC people are reading your comment directly and it's changing their minds?
    I can't imagine either of these being impactful, and the effect seems to just be to distract from people's concerns about Flock (YC 17). Eg, my eyes are bouncing off of the presumably anti-Flock statement you're making here because you've coated it in repeated parentheticals and tortured the writing so you can say "Flock" as often as possible.
    mandevil · 1790186448 · focus · HN ↗
    I am amused that much of the HN community goes out of its way to highlight YC connections for companies- I've even seen it for Stripe (YC 09) and Dropbox (YC07) within the past year or so- but has completely dropped that for Flock.
    ToValueFunfetti · 1790187341 · focus · HN ↗
    Fair enough, though I can't seem to get examples out of algolia
    Stripe: <a href="https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=Stripe%20YC%2009&sort=byDate&type=comment" rel="nofollow">https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
    Dropbox: <a href="https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=Dropbox%20YC%2007&sort=byDate&type=comment" rel="nofollow">https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
    Flock: <a href="https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=Flock%20YC%2017&sort=byDate&type=all" rel="nofollow">https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
    mandevil · 1790187905 · focus · HN ↗
    Huh, you seem to be right, the most recent for Dropbox was about 5 years ago. Maybe my sense of time is all screwed up? I thought I remembered it more recently than that. But I trust the data more than I trust my memory.
    I withdraw my statements about the HN community.
    paulddraper · 1790290136 · focus · HN ↗
    I've literally never seen that.
    Unless it was in a very specific investment/exit/valuation related sense.
    YC is an investor that turns money into more money, and claims to be good at that. It doesn't claim to be good at anything else.

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