Thread

1. jwally · 1790684914 · focus · HN ↗

   I was thinking about this with flock cameras the other day...what's our actual ROI? Was the world horrible before and these initiatives are going to close a monster crime gap or is this just a giant fishing expedition ... just because?

   1. pj_mukh · 1790688931 · focus · HN ↗

      Can we cut to the bone a little bit? The recent crime panics are not about a partner assaulting their live-in partner or a random home burglary. There is no real "ROI" to be had.

      It's purely about the unease of living in chaotic cities, the random stabbings, the shoplifting, the visible homelessness etc. Flock is the stopgap here.

      Partly the "feeling" of chaos is just that, a feeling, driven significantly by algorithmic feeds feeding us every random crime from around the country 24/7. Husband murders wife in a murderous rage? No one hear's about it. Mentally ill man murders a woman on the train in a Tier 2 city, immediate nationwide breaking news.

      The other part though is a real dissolution in how we take care of our mentally ill. Complex topic [1].

      I think complaining about Flock is complaining about the symptom. Today we dogpile on Flock to get it cancelled, tomorrow the public will reach for something else. We have to fix the underlying disease, which is a combination of the two factors above.

      [1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;time.com&#x2F;6265241&#x2F;america-care-of-mentally-ill-people&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;time.com&#x2F;6265241&#x2F;america-care-of-mentally-ill-people...

      1. thinkingtoilet · 1790690611 · focus · HN ↗

         Let us also acknowledged that we&#x27;re living in the safest time in history and modern American cities are extremely safe, despite the unhinged propaganda from the right.

         1. hobofan · 1790695758 · focus · HN ↗

            It&#x27;s not just politicized propaganda. A lot of unsafety feeling is almost self-inflicted.

            In my opinion apps like the Citizen[0] app are some of the worst offenders. They constantly bombard you with scary notifications, creating a constant environment of fear. With that app people are constantly aware of things that are happening in your general area without any real benefit of informing you. It turns the mildly-annoying-but-ignoreable mentally ill person on the street corner from someone that &quot;scares&quot; the 10 people around them into someone that scares 10k people in the area.

            Oh, and Citizen is also directly integrated into Axon&#x27;s Flock-like surveillance product.

            [0]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;citizen.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;citizen.com&#x2F;

            1. datsci_est_2015 · 1790705666 · focus · HN ↗

               Citizen is also nakedly a rightwing propaganda platform. Its primary value proposition is to create fear and a paranoia to boost tough-on-crime politics. Just because it’s an app doesn’t mean it’s not propaganda. The users are the product.

               1. hobofan · 1790708433 · focus · HN ↗

                  I would have said that they are mainly doing it to exploit the mechanism as it just serves their profit motif, and everything else is just a byproduct.

                  However, it appears that when I looked at the list of investors earlier, I&#x27;ve missed that Peter Thiel is among them. So yeah, there are clear political ties.

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