Live data from Hacker News

Citizen’s dangerous effort to cash in on vigilantism

vice.com

11–20 of 237 posts

Re: Citizen’s dangerous effort to cash in on vigilantism

#11

> 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.

It's a scene taken almost directly from Fahrenheit 451.

https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/451/section9/

Re: Citizen’s dangerous effort to cash in on vigilantism

#12
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.

Re: Citizen’s dangerous effort to cash in on vigilantism

#14

> 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.

Cue some muggers becoming celebrities due to executing their actions in flamboyant outfits, it'll be the next professional wrestling!

Re: Citizen’s dangerous effort to cash in on vigilantism

#15
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?

Re: Citizen’s dangerous effort to cash in on vigilantism

#16
post #2

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…

"Going into what the government is failing to do" sounds an awful lot like "encouraging lynching".

Re: Citizen’s dangerous effort to cash in on vigilantism

#17
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.

Re: Citizen’s dangerous effort to cash in on vigilantism

#20
post #9

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 be…

Dystopian sci-fi (cyberpunk in particular) did a pretty good job of looking at emergent technology and human nature and extrapolating.
Post reply on HN