Flock is rolling out a voluntary severance program

smt88

How could those innocent employees have predicted that helping to build out a surveillance state would make them unpopular ?

jsrozner

Shame is the best driver of social change (see, e.g., Rob Reich's The Common Good ). Now we just need the same shame for broader surveillance capitalism (Google, Facebook, AI companies, etc).

Analemma_

Unfortunately the selection effect here means that the remaining employees are gonna be super committed to thinking Flock is a good thing for the world, and will double-down on being defensive and angry any time Flock is challenged.

wyrdcurt

Related from a couple days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49762835

andix

My prediction: they are going to change their name and move a lot of their business to multiple subsidiary with different names. Until nobody notices anymore it's all one company formerly known as Flock.

ChrisArchitect

[dupe] Discussion on source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49762835

dkobia

Axon which is already well established is quietly stealing Flocks market share while avoiding all the scrutiny.

ck2

have a conscious when trying to do immoral things will never work out I mean look at NSA, Presidency, etc. "no conscious, no problem!" Just "other" victims and imply they are all criminals somehow someway and you can dismiss any feeling of doing wrong

ViktorRay

Flock was a startup that was funded by Y Combinator. Paul Graham and the other Y Combinator people provided expertise and advice to them throughout their whole journey. I wonder what Paul Graham says to the Flock executives now?

erelong

Shut down, rebrand, try some different approach to security services Being a magnet of attention as a despised surveillance corp has to be tiring

neilv

Facebook had a good idea for hiring and retention: pay the highest, and that will boost college students' perceptions of how cool you are. Facebook got a lot of mileage out of that, running long after public scandals confirmed the early hints of possible sketchiness, back when Google was an attractive alternative. Though I don't know that's still necessary. The job markets are different now, since there's not many tech employment options that aren't either sketchy or reviled. Anti-AI-worker sentiment seems high lately, outside of HN circles -- much more widespread and negative than I recall any kind of perception of pre-AI tech workers -- yet there aren't a lot of non-AI employment options. So, some Flock employees might want to leave, over ethics, social status, or company internal culture, but... if they end up at a AI company, they might soon still be seeing a lot of social negative feedback anyway. ("Hi, nice to meet you. ... Me? Oh, I work on, uh, software . ... Yeah, AI is really disrupting things in my field, too. It's been a bit rough, but we're hanging in there.")

bensyverson

It's really interesting to me that Flock was the straw that broke the surveillance camel's back, and not, I don't know, the home assistant devices from trillion-dollar advertising and e-commerce companies that listen to everything in your home.

epochbtc

Flock somehow stumbled into a business model that both the left and right politically-leaning groups in the US can join together in hating. That's not easy to do!

ICHx

there will be another flock

pseudony

Well, that would be avoidable if people applied the Mitchell and Webb test, asking themselves “are we the baddies?”. If you know you are and don’t care, culture fit ! :)

bentt

This is a good case for making some laws which ensure entities responsible cannot hide from the public by white labeling, changing names, etc. In other words, since surveillance of the public by definition involves the public, the public should have a say in how it is conducted and the companies that attempt to profit from it should have their revenue streams depend on a healthy relationship with the public.

cush

Is YC seriously still invested in this trash?

dlcarrier

I wonder how much of the bad sentiment is from Flock being used as an excuse for government agencies to blatantly violate the fourth amendment. If the data they collect could only be accessed for specific individuals, after a warrant is issued, I don't think the general public would care as much about the company hosting the equipment.

cush

Until there’s real civil liabilities around how companies use and share data there will never be an economic reason for any company to respect their consumers. When the data is worth more than the core business, the equilibrium is completely thrown off. It’s the same forces pushing AI companies to effectively give away inference while their chatbots convince teenagers to commit suicide. You are the product.

shevy-java

That's great that they are quitting. It is not ethical to spy on fellow people.