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#4 is a no-go in my book. Things like Ring, Nextdoor, and Facebook already exist. Nextdoor and Facebook are riddled with inanity, from political rants to dumb

#4 is a no-go in my book. Things like Ring, Nextdoor, and Facebook already exist. Nextdoor and Facebook are riddled with inanity, from political rants to dumb jokes to hoaxes to common scams to law enforcement rants. I don't want more information from my neighbors -- 99% of it is garbage. I want highly-filtered information. Basically, a neighborhood watch but with an aggressive spam filter. Right now I glance at the various neighborhood feeds with one eye closed, sifting through the intense stupidity, trying to capture valuable intelligence. Of course, all of this may be a dumb corporate-run idea and maybe people should really focus on forming good relationships with their neighbors in meatspace and talk to them in person aka HUMINT.

Someone1234 7y ago
> Of course, all of this may be a dumb corporate-run idea and maybe people should really focus on forming good relationships with their neighbors in meatspace and talk to them in person aka HUMINT. But then how do we filter out the political rants, insanity, dumb jokes, hoaxes, and common scams?
- dwaltrip 7y ago
  Thankfully, people usually do a decent job of filtering themselves in meatspace. At least, they are better at it in person than they are online.
  - cgriswald 7y ago
    There are also social cues and the lack of an ever present mob. A lot of people who are political activists online are not actually that confident in their views and absent the audience and ready defenders, won't express their views because they know they can't back it up in a one-on-one conversation. Our city did a traffic survey of a local street that is the primary route for everyone going from surrounding neighborhoods to downtown and found the average speed was ~2 mph over the posted limit, with the 85th percentile at ~5 mph over the speed limit. These are reasonable speed for such a wide road. The city then added several 'safety' features to it, and found in a subsequent survey that the changes actually did little to slow traffic. One feature is a pair of speed bumps. Some drivers slow to about 5 mph to go over the bumps, increasing the risk of rear end accidents. Other drivers veer into the bike lanes to go partially around them without slowing down. Everyone else slows down a reasonable amount, but then subsequently accelerate back up to the speed limit on a block where jaywalking is common. Some of the features they added are, in my opinion, beneficial, like turning a side street into a one way road after frequent accidents from people turning left out of it. But you can't talk about it on Nextdoor. The second you criticize the speed bumps you'll be ignored (if you're lucky) or attacked. Nuance is not allowed. You're either for all the changes, even the dangerous ones, or you're a crazy speed demon. Meanwhile, if you post about 'the children' who you are afraid for (even though no one has any evidence of a child ever being hurt by a driver on this road), you're going to get upvoted a lot within the first ten minutes.
    - Scoundreller 7y ago
      Heh, a road to my parents’ used to be riddled with potholes and uneven sewer grates (Canadian winters + drainage issues probably). The city spent months ripping it up and paving it nice and smooth. Then a couple months later they put up speed bumps. We spent a lot of money to get back to the speeds people already drove.
      - cgriswald 7y ago
        People on the next street over (it's a grid) are on Nextdoor complaining about all the traffic coming down their street now. And I'm sure it's the worst of the traffic that's going over there to avoid the features. I'm not sure how the city will fob off spending money on that street after spending the money on this one.
      - JohnFen 7y ago
        I once lived on a street that was incredibly badly maintained. The city informed the residents that they would be repaving the street and the residents campaigned hard for the city not to do that, for precisely the reasons you're talking about here. Their campaign was successful, in no small measure because a poll of the residents showed 95% of them opposed the repaving, and that the local paper wrote a big story about the whole affair.
        asdff 7y ago
        I hate how pervasive this degenerate thinking is in local politics. "we don't want a nice thing because then people would use it."
        JohnFen 7y ago
        That's not the thinking at all, though. The thinking is that the road being in rough shape means that everyone is forced to drive at a sane speed through a residential street where children are frequently playing. In other words, the "nice thing" isn't actually so nice in terms of the things that the people on that street really care about.
jagged-chisel 7y ago
> focus on forming good relationships with their neighbors in meatspace Remember that garbage you mentioned. We don't want to deal with other people's garbage in meatspace any more than we do online.
- wffurr 7y ago
  Many people self-censor to a much greater degree in person interactions vs what they post publicly online.
  - jacobush 7y ago
    No man's an island. What some post online is nothing but free-wheeling, disconnected from feedback.
aj7 7y ago
Everyone wants good editing and content as product feature. You can pay...
jakelazaroff 7y ago
The "SaaS-ification" of security cameras should also worry us. Ring — not its customers — controls the videos taken with their cameras, creating a video surveillance network that the police can access without needing a warrant. They've partnered with 400 police forces to give them access to that data [1]. Although they claim to let customers deny police requests for footage, their terms of service allow them to hand video over to police if they deem the request "reasonable". And it's not just Ring customers that are affected, it's anyone in the general vicinity. If your house is in the field of view of a neighbor's Ring camera, you're being surveilled too. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/08/28/doorbell-camera-firm-ring-has-partnered-with-police-forces-extending-surveillance-reach/?arc404=true https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/08/28/doorbel...
- secabeen 7y ago
  > Although they claim to let customers deny police requests for footage, their terms of service allow them to hand video over to police if they deem the request "reasonable". Defining what is a "reasonable government request" is a valid question, but it's really just not that high of a bar to get a records subpoena/search warrant for video like this. Courts sign off on those routinely, so I don't think you can really expect Ring or any company that holds your records to deny police requests for very long. The system they have seems pretty balanced. The police look at the ring website to see who has cameras (they could figure that out by walking the neighborhood), they ask for the footage (instead of knocking on the door), they get turned down (or not), they get a warrant, the footage is released. Ring is reducing the overhead of asking somewhat, but they're not enabling mass surveillance or building AI systems that track suspicious people across multiple ring devices. Is there something I'm missing here? If you record video of your front yard, and the police want to see it, they have a right to, subject to the normal judicial review.
  - eropple 7y ago
    > Ring is reducing the overhead of asking somewhat, but they're not enabling mass surveillance or building AI systems that track suspicious people across multiple ring devices. Are you sure? How can we as citizens verify it?
cortesoft 7y ago
Yeah, that sounds horrible... if it is anything like Nextdoor, there will be three posts a day about "There was a black guy sitting in his car!"
- blackearl 7y ago
  He was sitting there...menacingly!
- blackbrokkoli 7y ago
  Nah, you are thinking way to short-term. The AI will flag the black person himself as often associated with complaints and posts tagged "danger". Thus barring him from job interviews and loans by other automated services (Uber, but for HR!) who bought the data set "to elevate user experience". Creeping right back to apartheid, but I would say entirely worth it if it means I can get a notification that my cappuccino creamer was stolen 5 minutes ago by an unidentifiable person! /s
munmaek 7y ago
NextDoor is great because I can learn who is and isn't racist in my South Carolina suburban neighborhood.
Zelphyr 7y ago
I cancelled my Nextdoor account in part because I got tired of all the paranoia and inevitable devolvement into political bickering, but also in part as a protest against Nextdoor that they need to police this kind of activity. It was only afterwards that I realized that Nextdoor wants this activity. Like Facebook, they see it as encouraging engagement thus traffic they can use to sell ads. It confirms to me that cancelling was the right move for me but it also saddens me that we've gotten ourselves into a state in technology where the business model is to get people riled up and then profit from that discord.

Someone1234 7y ago

> Of course, all of this may be a dumb corporate-run idea and maybe people should really focus on forming good relationships with their neighbors in meatspace and talk to them in person aka HUMINT. But then how do we filter out the political rants, insanity, dumb jokes, hoaxes, and common scams?

dwaltrip 7y ago
Thankfully, people usually do a decent job of filtering themselves in meatspace. At least, they are better at it in person than they are online.
- cgriswald 7y ago
  There are also social cues and the lack of an ever present mob. A lot of people who are political activists online are not actually that confident in their views and absent the audience and ready defenders, won't express their views because they know they can't back it up in a one-on-one conversation. Our city did a traffic survey of a local street that is the primary route for everyone going from surrounding neighborhoods to downtown and found the average speed was ~2 mph over the posted limit, with the 85th percentile at ~5 mph over the speed limit. These are reasonable speed for such a wide road. The city then added several 'safety' features to it, and found in a subsequent survey that the changes actually did little to slow traffic. One feature is a pair of speed bumps. Some drivers slow to about 5 mph to go over the bumps, increasing the risk of rear end accidents. Other drivers veer into the bike lanes to go partially around them without slowing down. Everyone else slows down a reasonable amount, but then subsequently accelerate back up to the speed limit on a block where jaywalking is common. Some of the features they added are, in my opinion, beneficial, like turning a side street into a one way road after frequent accidents from people turning left out of it. But you can't talk about it on Nextdoor. The second you criticize the speed bumps you'll be ignored (if you're lucky) or attacked. Nuance is not allowed. You're either for all the changes, even the dangerous ones, or you're a crazy speed demon. Meanwhile, if you post about 'the children' who you are afraid for (even though no one has any evidence of a child ever being hurt by a driver on this road), you're going to get upvoted a lot within the first ten minutes.
  - Scoundreller 7y ago
    Heh, a road to my parents’ used to be riddled with potholes and uneven sewer grates (Canadian winters + drainage issues probably). The city spent months ripping it up and paving it nice and smooth. Then a couple months later they put up speed bumps. We spent a lot of money to get back to the speeds people already drove.
    - cgriswald 7y ago
      People on the next street over (it's a grid) are on Nextdoor complaining about all the traffic coming down their street now. And I'm sure it's the worst of the traffic that's going over there to avoid the features. I'm not sure how the city will fob off spending money on that street after spending the money on this one.
    - JohnFen 7y ago
      I once lived on a street that was incredibly badly maintained. The city informed the residents that they would be repaving the street and the residents campaigned hard for the city not to do that, for precisely the reasons you're talking about here. Their campaign was successful, in no small measure because a poll of the residents showed 95% of them opposed the repaving, and that the local paper wrote a big story about the whole affair.
      - asdff 7y ago
        I hate how pervasive this degenerate thinking is in local politics. "we don't want a nice thing because then people would use it."
        JohnFen 7y ago
        That's not the thinking at all, though. The thinking is that the road being in rough shape means that everyone is forced to drive at a sane speed through a residential street where children are frequently playing. In other words, the "nice thing" isn't actually so nice in terms of the things that the people on that street really care about.

jagged-chisel 7y ago

> focus on forming good relationships with their neighbors in meatspace Remember that garbage you mentioned. We don't want to deal with other people's garbage in meatspace any more than we do online.

wffurr 7y ago
Many people self-censor to a much greater degree in person interactions vs what they post publicly online.
- jacobush 7y ago
  No man's an island. What some post online is nothing but free-wheeling, disconnected from feedback.

aj7 7y ago

Everyone wants good editing and content as product feature. You can pay...

jakelazaroff 7y ago

The "SaaS-ification" of security cameras should also worry us. Ring — not its customers — controls the videos taken with their cameras, creating a video surveillance network that the police can access without needing a warrant. They've partnered with 400 police forces to give them access to that data [1]. Although they claim to let customers deny police requests for footage, their terms of service allow them to hand video over to police if they deem the request "reasonable". And it's not just Ring customers that are affected, it's anyone in the general vicinity. If your house is in the field of view of a neighbor's Ring camera, you're being surveilled too. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/08/28/doorbell-camera-firm-ring-has-partnered-with-police-forces-extending-surveillance-reach/?arc404=true https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/08/28/doorbel...

secabeen 7y ago
> Although they claim to let customers deny police requests for footage, their terms of service allow them to hand video over to police if they deem the request "reasonable". Defining what is a "reasonable government request" is a valid question, but it's really just not that high of a bar to get a records subpoena/search warrant for video like this. Courts sign off on those routinely, so I don't think you can really expect Ring or any company that holds your records to deny police requests for very long. The system they have seems pretty balanced. The police look at the ring website to see who has cameras (they could figure that out by walking the neighborhood), they ask for the footage (instead of knocking on the door), they get turned down (or not), they get a warrant, the footage is released. Ring is reducing the overhead of asking somewhat, but they're not enabling mass surveillance or building AI systems that track suspicious people across multiple ring devices. Is there something I'm missing here? If you record video of your front yard, and the police want to see it, they have a right to, subject to the normal judicial review.
- eropple 7y ago
  > Ring is reducing the overhead of asking somewhat, but they're not enabling mass surveillance or building AI systems that track suspicious people across multiple ring devices. Are you sure? How can we as citizens verify it?

cortesoft 7y ago

Yeah, that sounds horrible... if it is anything like Nextdoor, there will be three posts a day about "There was a black guy sitting in his car!"

blackearl 7y ago
He was sitting there...menacingly!
blackbrokkoli 7y ago
Nah, you are thinking way to short-term. The AI will flag the black person himself as often associated with complaints and posts tagged "danger". Thus barring him from job interviews and loans by other automated services (Uber, but for HR!) who bought the data set "to elevate user experience". Creeping right back to apartheid, but I would say entirely worth it if it means I can get a notification that my cappuccino creamer was stolen 5 minutes ago by an unidentifiable person! /s

munmaek 7y ago

NextDoor is great because I can learn who is and isn't racist in my South Carolina suburban neighborhood.

Zelphyr 7y ago

I cancelled my Nextdoor account in part because I got tired of all the paranoia and inevitable devolvement into political bickering, but also in part as a protest against Nextdoor that they need to police this kind of activity. It was only afterwards that I realized that Nextdoor wants this activity. Like Facebook, they see it as encouraging engagement thus traffic they can use to sell ads. It confirms to me that cancelling was the right move for me but it also saddens me that we've gotten ourselves into a state in technology where the business model is to get people riled up and then profit from that discord.