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Citizen’s dangerous effort to cash in on vigilantism

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

#171

Post by drewbug01 »

ArkanExplorer wrote: post #154

Why is George Soros funding DAs who refuse to prosecute crimes? https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/aug/20/george-soro... "Soros-backed DAs in Philadelphia, St. Louis, San Francisco and other cities have fired scores of experienced prosecutors and, as promised, stopped prosecuting low-level quality-of-life crimes such as disorderly conduct, vagrancy and loitering." "Mr. Soros’ New York Safety and Public Justice…

> Why is George Soros funding DAs who refuse to prosecute crimes?

Smells like a conspiracy theory to me. And citing the Washington Times (a paper notable for having a Wikipedia section devoted to its documented history of publishing things sympathetic to white nationalism) is not a reasonable source to cite.

Don't bring racist conspiracy theories here; that's not appropriate for conversation.

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

#172

Post by TeMPOraL »

fallingknife wrote: post #39

> "They don’t much care about the accuracy or the usefulness of the information they put out, they just want to push as many notifications to create that feeling of vulnerability that leads people to the subscription services." But it's somehow not a problem when professional "journalists" do it?

It is. But this is a) new, and b) more apparent.

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

#173

Post by TeMPOraL »

jancsika wrote: post #89

I want to try my hand at the n-gate.com summary for this one: "Some webshits finish The Wire and answer the question we've all been wondering since the finale aired: why didn't the Baltimore Police simply write an app to crowdsource 'juking the stats'? Citizen (Uber for Reddit's Boston Bomber Fiasco) is born, but Apple doesn't have time to review it as they are busy finishing their own dystopian surveillance nightmar…

In the finest Star Trek tradition, you've earned a commendation for a job well done, and the fact that you violated the Prime Directive will be silently ignored.

Also: "Hackernews", not "HN".

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

#174

Post by TeMPOraL »

joe_the_user wrote: post #7
generalizations wrote: post #5

To clarify: the bounty was $10-30k for information leading to a specific suspect's arrest. When I first heard about it, it sounded like the bounty was a 'dead or alive' kind of thing.

That the bounty sounded like that is enough to make it harmful and despicable. There are enough wingnuts out there who don't think about niceties that you can easily have someone jumping in and starting to assault someone who appears to be the wanted person (but probably isn't).

It doesn't take explicit assault.

When "The Circle" (minor spoiler alert) demonstrated just how such "crowdsourced chase" scenario can rack up a body count, the target wasn't attacked - he died because some excited rando fucked up and caused a traffic accident with a camera drone.

It's not the wingnuts I'd be afraid of. It's the overexcited normies.

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

#175

Post by kelnos »

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".

To be fair, policing is generally a failure in the US. Citizen is not the solution, though.

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

#176

Post by bhupy »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #6

> 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.

The episode "White Bear" comes to mind.

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

#177

Post by batch12 »

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 hate both the game and those who choose to play.

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

#178

Post by closeparen »

the_snooze wrote: post #70
johncessna wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 there are constant, urgent threats around them at all times," There are a lot of businesses built on this model.…

Everything is "BREAKING NEWS" these days, complete with fancy graphics and soundtracks. But there just isn't enough news day-to-day to warrant that level of importance. Not everyday is 9/11, much to news outlets' dismay.

In The Newsroom the crew of an evening news show would call their network’s control room and “break in” to the broadcast out of turn, when something really important was happening. If the term has any coherent meaning I expect it’s that. Worth interrupting other programming for. On a 24x7 news network, probably meaningless.

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

#180

Post by ctdonath »

makeworld wrote: post #139
ctdonath wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re not powerless. Shut off the anxiety generators, and be the change you want in the world. I dumped Facebook & Twitter, and am reducing HN & other social media. Get news from proper objective sources, choose the category of media you consume (TownsendsPlus.com provides great reality checks), and otherwise choose the life you want to live - and live it.

And companies like this will continue on, making the world worse for everyone. Including you. This cannot be changed by changing yourself.

I’m old enough to gave seen many such juggernauts collapse when enough individuals decided to change themselves.
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