Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Citizen’s dangerous effort to cash in on vigilantism

vice.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 237 posts

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

#191

Post by sodality2 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #146
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.

Yeah, for the first couple of paragraphs, I was sure they're summarizing some movie. Because I've already seen this exact story at least twice, played out to disastrous consequences. One take was in "The Circle". Still not sure why people hate that movie, it's pretty much a documentary on Google and Facebook, and about the only fictional element in it are the advanced video cameras. That, and this vigilante crime tra…

That movie was so good. I never thought someone would watch it and think, "Holy shit I have to make it" though.

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

#192

Post by awal2 »

wearywanderer wrote: post #98
awal2 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also don't think I witnessed much crime until I moved to Seattle. In the six years I've been here though I've witnessed: 1. Somebody broke into my Aunt's place while nobody was home and took some jewelry and a cell phone. Police came by, handed her a form, said nice things for five minutes then took off. Never heard anything about it again. 2. My car window smashed after being parked on the street overnight. I call…

> and I don't think the answer is beefing up local law enforcement. Yes, I think the number of police and the funding police receive is definitely not the problem here. It doesn't matter how many cops you have or how many expensive toys those cops have. If the DA refuses to charge the people the police arrest, then the police will stop arresting people because they know it's a waste of their time. The root of the pro…

This is a popular take, but (with respect) I don't think a more aggressive DA is the answer for the following reasons:

A. The problem is too big to just arrest and charge everybody. There aren't enough police to track all the petty crime even if you had a DA with an appetite to charge them.

B. Even if you start heavily prosecuting the few people you do have the resources to bring in, this isn't enough of a deterrent to stop other people who are committing small time property crime. People aren't doing it simply because they can get away with it, they're doing it out of desperation.

In my opinion (feel free to disagree) the problem won't go away until there is real upward mobility for the lowest end of the economic spectrum so that people have something better to do than break into people's houses, cars and garages. There's a perverse dynamic where if you have zero money it's probably easier to be in the city of Seattle than pretty much anywhere else nearby (more shelters, more services and more other people already living in tents and vans). At the same time, the city is incredibly expensive, and there aren't a lot of entry-level jobs for people trying to get out of poverty, so making the jump from zero to stable seems like it must be really really hard here. So there's a huge wealth/income gap without any real bridge to get across it which leads to a lot of desperation, and (I think) that has more to do with anything than whatever soft policies in the DA's office.

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

#193

Post by JeremyNT »

neltnerb wrote: post #125
manuelabeledo wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RoboCop comes to mind, which is ironic since the movie was obviously a parody. Also, isn't this what reality shows like Cops were about? There is a large market for morbidity.

A... parody? Of what? I thought it was a fairly straightforward story about the military industrial complex abusing civil rights and losing in the end "because human brains are special", but I was a kid when it came out so I surely missed what source material it was a parody of. I took it for a movie intended to be serious that was making not-especially-original commentary on policing and both government and corporat…

Unfortunately, many contemporary American critics completely missed the point of Verhoeven's not-so-subtle dystopian critiques, presumably because they were so accustomed to reviewing films featuring the unironic glorification of state sponsored violence.

See also: Starship Troopers.

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

#194

Post by jasonwatkinspdx »

jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #121
ceejayoz wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All true, and there's an additional factor: these shows, and news coverage about crime, make people think crime is far more prevalent (and rising) than it is. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/16/voters-perc... Local news Facebook comments are full of "there's so much crime! it was never like this when I was younger!" but the reality is completely in the opposite direction.

I showed my boomer parents the actual data and they straight up rejected it. The "society is collapsing into lawlessness" narrative has become very strong.

Lol at the downvotes. My parents are literally part of the baby boom. It's an accurate way to describe them, not a flippant insult.

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

#195

Post by asimpletune »

jeffbee wrote: post #187
annoyingnoob wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is 100% the NextDoor model. They hype up crime reports and sell adverts for ADT on the other hand.

Actually I think this is the biggest thing stopping them from mass adoption. Nextdoor knows they have a problem I think they’re doing their best to fix it. It’s really just the early adopters are of a particular persuasion and it gives exactly the idea that you’re describing. So this is obviously problematic for them because they are actually hope to basically be a better craigslist one day.

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

#196

Post by krapp »

labster wrote: post #128
the_snooze wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

BREAKING NEWS is just a synonym for “news”. The addition of the word “breaking” is just a stylistic choice and conveys no additional meaning.

>The addition of the word “breaking” is just a stylistic choice and conveys no additional meaning.

"breaking news" is supposed to refer to news that's currently ongoing or developing. Whether or not it means much now, when practically all news is live, is debatable.

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

#197

Post by 8note »

jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #121
ceejayoz wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All true, and there's an additional factor: these shows, and news coverage about crime, make people think crime is far more prevalent (and rising) than it is. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/16/voters-perc... Local news Facebook comments are full of "there's so much crime! it was never like this when I was younger!" but the reality is completely in the opposite direction.

I showed my boomer parents the actual data and they straight up rejected it. The "society is collapsing into lawlessness" narrative has become very strong.

Chances are, they're using "crime" and "lawlessness" for some group of people they think should be illegal.

That the crime rate has gone down is meaningless when you think more things should be illegal.

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

#198

Post by ClumsyPilot »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #151
cosmodisk wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an observer from the other side of the pond, I do feel that there's lots of companies built on unsubstantiated fear in the US. Times change and so do the threats, but in a nutshell: •Nuclear bunkers to keep your family safe. •Big guns because they will come for you. •All sorts of tracking devices for kids. •Surveillance systems for homes So the latest seems to be a modern day witch-hunting for masses.

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…

"Fear of cancer and cardiovascular diseases"

That one is well justifued, most of us die from something like that

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

#199

Post by jeffbee »

asimpletune wrote: post #195
jeffbee wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is 100% the NextDoor model. They hype up crime reports and sell adverts for ADT on the other hand.

Actually I think this is the biggest thing stopping them from mass adoption. Nextdoor knows they have a problem I think they’re doing their best to fix it. It’s really just the early adopters are of a particular persuasion and it gives exactly the idea that you’re describing. So this is obviously problematic for them because they are actually hope to basically be a better craigslist one day.

I think they do it on purpose. The only way to push alerts to users’ apps is with a “safety alert”. The only way you can post to your whole city is in the crime and safety category. The amplification of fear is built-in.

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

#200

Post by ClumsyPilot »

leetcrew wrote: post #163
joe_the_user wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

Police is meant to use reasonable discresion, or our crime statistics will drown in jaywalking and antisocial behaviour
Post reply on HN