After the amount of doom and gloom videos I was watching today all about flock and police surveillance…this is nice. It’s a least a step in the left direction
most people are generally not ok with being tracked and surveilled. It’s only the fact that they aren’t aware of how wide spread a given system is that lets these things grow.
With computers, phones and the internet, the surveillance is not super visible, or the implications of it are not so visceral. People always have this idea that they can just choose not interact with it. So it’s much less prominent of a worry for most people.
But with a networked camera in a public space recording everything, able to easily map every trip someone makes by car (which is basically all trips in much of America). That sets off alarm bells. That’s an immediate “what the fuck? Who said you could do that?” From most people.
Flock was betting no one would notice, or that no one would care. They’re so chronically online, tech business brained, that they failed to understand that most people see a meaningful distinction between the internet and the real world. This was inevitable, and now it’s a huge boondoggle and their company is probably cooked long term.
The tracking is also entirely unnecessary. People walk around with GPS enabled phones in their pockets the entire time you don’t need a separate CCTV camera network. At least with GPS enabled phones the only people who can track you with the government, but the cameras have been monitored by a corporation these days people tend to trust the government more than the corps, although it is a close run thing.
After the amount of doom and gloom videos I was watching today all about flock and police surveillance…this is nice. It’s a least a step in the left direction
most people are generally not ok with being tracked and surveilled. It’s only the fact that they aren’t aware of how wide spread a given system is that lets these things grow.
With computers, phones and the internet, the surveillance is not super visible, or the implications of it are not so visceral. People always have this idea that they can just choose not interact with it. So it’s much less prominent of a worry for most people.
But with a networked camera in a public space recording everything, able to easily map every trip someone makes by car (which is basically all trips in much of America). That sets off alarm bells. That’s an immediate “what the fuck? Who said you could do that?” From most people.
Flock was betting no one would notice, or that no one would care. They’re so chronically online, tech business brained, that they failed to understand that most people see a meaningful distinction between the internet and the real world. This was inevitable, and now it’s a huge boondoggle and their company is probably cooked long term.
The tracking is also entirely unnecessary. People walk around with GPS enabled phones in their pockets the entire time you don’t need a separate CCTV camera network. At least with GPS enabled phones the only people who can track you with the government, but the cameras have been monitored by a corporation these days people tend to trust the government more than the corps, although it is a close run thing.