Citizen’s dangerous effort to cash in on vigilantism • Hacker News Board

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

#161

Post by tdumitrescu » Thu, May 27, 2021, 10:35 PM UTC

wolverine876 wrote: post #44

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 ther…

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.

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

#162

Post by Bancakes » Thu, May 27, 2021, 10:36 PM UTC

sbagel wrote: post #133

vmception wrote: post #21

> 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 does a thing 0 engagement, nobody knows Social Media version: [First] Executive of does a thing 15,000 comments, 2 million reach, supporters and detractors argu…

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.

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.

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

#163

Post by leetcrew » Thu, May 27, 2021, 10:38 PM UTC

joe_the_user wrote: post #137

leetcrew wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 o…

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.

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

#164

Post by hermitdev » Thu, May 27, 2021, 10:38 PM UTC

annoyingnoob wrote: post #115

wolverine876 wrote: post #44

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 ther…

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.

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.

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

#165

Post by cyral » Thu, May 27, 2021, 10:38 PM UTC

Terr_ wrote: post #13

> 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.

> 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.

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

#166

Post by TeMPOraL » Thu, May 27, 2021, 10:41 PM UTC

UncleMeat wrote: post #16

arkitaip wrote: 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".

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.

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

#167

Post by kelnos » Thu, May 27, 2021, 10:43 PM UTC

sbagel wrote: post #133

vmception wrote: post #21

> 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 does a thing 0 engagement, nobody knows Social Media version: [First] Executive of does a thing 15,000 comments, 2 million reach, supporters and detractors argu…

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.

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.

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

#168

Post by TeMPOraL » Thu, May 27, 2021, 10:50 PM UTC

cosmodisk wrote: post #160

TeMPOraL wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 combina…

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…

> 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.

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

#169

Post by kelnos » Thu, May 27, 2021, 10:56 PM UTC

Nextgrid wrote: post #105

xvector wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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 promis…

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.

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

#170

Post by TeMPOraL » Thu, May 27, 2021, 11:00 PM UTC

kodah wrote: post #141

asdff wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Fea…

> 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…

> 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.