Flock is such a scummy company. One must just read a bit of the coverage from 404 Media [1] or Benn Jordan [2] and get a whiff of how this company is handling pretty legitimate criticism about privacy and basic device security.
The creepiest 'sales demo' of all time
21–30 of 61 posts
Re: The creepiest 'sales demo' of all time
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m still not clear why US companies with no business units in Europe feel the need to make any changes at all to be in compliance with a law that has no jurisdiction over them, but agree that Geofencing is a cheaper solution than asking a lawyer.
The GDPR states that websites that serve EU citizens are subject to it, no matter where they are. Many US news organizations chose to geo-block the EU rather than going to the trouble of figuring out compliance.
Yes but it means serve them specifically. If the main audience is US and some EU visitors happen by, it's not violation. Or at least it's not enforceable violation.
Re: The creepiest 'sales demo' of all time
#23Why is this site blocked in the EU ? Was disabling cookies on your static page that hard ?
They are a hyper local business. The chance of making any revenue off EU users is close to 0, which is much higher than the cost of figuring out EU compliance. The conversation went like this: IT director: “If we serve ads or collect data from EU users we have to be GDPR compliant. That’ll cost several thousand dollars worth of employee time” Exec: “how much revenue is attributable to EU users.” IT: “Single digit dol…
GDPR compliance is good IT practice. It's easy to do, good for users, and states are rolling out similar laws.
But now, instead of their story being read by people all over the world, having gone viral, it's just going to pirated. Not only losing them out on revenue, but recognition as well.
This is part of the long death of online local news. They can't be bothered to do the simplest things for their site (make personal data collection optional). But they have tons of time to fill them with online cancer and make them unusable without ad blocking.
Re: The creepiest 'sales demo' of all time
#24Why is this site blocked in the EU ? Was disabling cookies on your static page that hard ?
This website and topic is protected by a SEP field. Who cares about U.S. problems?
Re: The creepiest 'sales demo' of all time
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m still not clear why US companies with no business units in Europe feel the need to make any changes at all to be in compliance with a law that has no jurisdiction over them, but agree that Geofencing is a cheaper solution than asking a lawyer.
Because they have identifiable owners who might wish to travel to Europe and not risk someone deciding to make an example of them.
You're making the point even stronger for US companies to just block EU traffic entirely. If you have no EU customers, the mere act of letting EU visitors on your site might cause an EU country to "make an example" of you for incorrect data handling, but the alternative of just blocking all traffic would let you travel to the EU without issues.
Re: The creepiest 'sales demo' of all time
#26Re: The creepiest 'sales demo' of all time
#27Is there more information available? This article is effectively one sentence long: > On Sept. 30, 2025, a Flock vice president logged into the Dunwoody PD’s Flock system and looked at a camera in the children’s gymnastics room of a private community center here in Dunwoody. And there is a lot being implied in this sentence.
Yes, this was a relatively big story months ago:
1. https://www.404media.co/city-learns-flock-accessed-cameras-i...
3. https://www.techdirt.com/2026/05/05/flocks-sales-pitch-inclu... -- commenting on the 404 Media article
Re: The creepiest 'sales demo' of all time
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
No one is going to go around complying with random rules from other countries, man. If you don't serve that population, just opt them out.
Except that it’s an entire continent and loads of people do comply with it. You just sound ignorant.
I've been in meetings where this was discussed.
"It's just a checkbox in cloudflare to not show up there" is so effortless that you need a compelling reason to ignore how easy it is.
And if you don't already have traffic analysis showing that 30% of your readers and thus 30% of your ad revenue is coming from the European continent... You spend the 45 seconds it takes to find the check box and you click. Then worrying about maybe possibly getting screwed by some far away legal something or other is irrelevant.
Re: The creepiest 'sales demo' of all time
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
The GDPR states that websites that serve EU citizens are subject to it, no matter where they are. Many US news organizations chose to geo-block the EU rather than going to the trouble of figuring out compliance.
Yes but it means serve them specifically. If the main audience is US and some EU visitors happen by, it's not violation. Or at least it's not enforceable violation.
And that might even be true. But it's still at least an hour of retained council's time to deal with it. It's not even 90 seconds to find the geo filter button in your CDN of choice and save you the trouble entirely.
Re: The creepiest 'sales demo' of all time
#30Why is this site blocked in the EU ? Was disabling cookies on your static page that hard ?
No one is going to go around complying with random rules from other countries, man. If you don't serve that population, just opt them out.
They complied by building a blocking system, instead of just disabling cookies with a flag, which would have taken exactly the same effort.