4 ms·

Citizen seems to be taking the uber/airbnb "do it until we are big enough to make it legal" approach to... crime. Weird combo. I bet their legal war chest is b

Citizen seems to be taking the uber/airbnb "do it until we are big enough to make it legal" approach to... crime. Weird combo. I bet their legal war chest is bulky.

MattGaiser 5y ago
Does Citizen break regulations in some way? I thought that filming crime and police was solidly legal.
- SerLava 5y ago
  I mean, sharing your car is legal but that's not really what Uber ever was.
  - MattGaiser 5y ago
    Uber was trying to scale a personal exemption from the law. What law is it that makes doing this at scale vs doing it individually a grey area?
- cronix 5y ago
  > I thought that filming crime and police was solidly legal. Filming anything from a public space (street, sidewalk, etc) is legal, even if it's of a private space that is visible from public space. For example, if I'm on a public sidewalk next to your private residence, and you have the blinds open walking around naked - you have no reasonable expectation of privacy and can be filmed even though you're on your private property. Just like if you're driving on the public street and I have a ring doorbell camera, you have no reasonable expectation of privacy driving down the street, or walking on the sidewalk, and I can record you.
  - Shmebulock 5y ago
    Is this generally how it works in most countries?
    - gruez 5y ago
      Common law countries? Yes.
    - tablespoon 5y ago
      > Is this generally how it works in most countries? There's a lot of variation: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Country_specific_consent_requirements https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Country_specific_...
- busterarm 5y ago
  They just haven't been sued yet by the family of a user who has been killed while filming a violent crime. When they do their insurance costs will become astronomical. This pay structure encourages users to put themselves in harm's way.
  - dwater 5y ago
    Yes, the thing that is most likely to bite them is not legality, it's liability as a result of them paying people to do things.
  - MattGaiser 5y ago
    How does this work for freelance journalists? Their risk is astronomical too.
    - busterarm 5y ago
      Any competent freelance journalist will tell you they pay for liability insurance and the annual premium is at least $1000/year. Said journalists are generally educated and have some training, especially around ethics. At least they're supposed to. This keeps them from shoving a camera in everyone's face while a crime is unfolding. Citizen is taking contributions from whoever the fuck...
xxpor 5y ago
It's so much worse than that. It's, quite literally, a right wing psyop. It's well established that people's fears about crime are much more correlated with news coverage than actual levels of crime. I'm having trouble finding it right now, but there was a recent survey that showed something like ~55% of Americans think crime is higher than it was in the early 90s. It's not even remotely close. We're back up to... 2012 levels. Meanwhile, Citizen is Nextdoor but even more extreme. You can see all this crime happening all the time, increasing the perception of it being extremely common. What happens when crime becomes a major political issue? Reactionaries get elected. Who's funding Citizen? Oh look, Peter Thiel. How surprising.
- BitwiseFool 5y ago
  This is one of those things that I just can't reconcile with my own experience. Studies say that crime is actually down but I'm witnessing more and more general lawlessness. A few weeks ago I saw someone take a case of beer out of a supermarket without paying. They caught him on camera and no one tried to stop him. The manager told me it was pointless to call the police. Public urination is way more common than it used to be and I think NYC decriminalized it a while ago. So if a bunch of previously criminal acts are no longer being reported, can we truly have confidence that crime has actually gone down? This reminds me of all those news articles confidently declaring inflation wasn't a threat, and that, no, we are actually experiencing some deflation. But when I go to the grocery store I end up paying more for things like milk and meat. A strip steak went from about $9.99 a pound to $14.99 a pound.
  - danShumway 5y ago
    Crime is definitely up, but even if we assume it's under-reported or the numbers are being fudged, it's still nowhere near the level of the 90s. It's up from a historic low. I think a lot of people either aren't really aware of or were sheltered growing up from how bad crime used to be. People's real-world experience is based on their recent memory, not on 90's levels of violence. There were a little less than 2,000 shootings in New York City in 2020. That's very bad, given that for a few years the city had managed to dip under 1,000 shootings. An extremely noticeable spike. But as a point of comparison, in 1991 there were over 5,000 shootings in NYC. And those numbers aren't taking into account three decades of population growth. Even when you look at crime overall and not just violent crimes, we were coming off of a ~5% national crime rate in 1991. From what I can see, GP is correct that we are mostly looking at a return to 2012-level crime stats, and in some areas maybe a return to 2000-2010 levels. I'm convinced that people just can't remember any earlier than that. The 90s were really bad, if ~55% of Americans think we're at those levels already, then ~55% of Americans are just wrong. They don't have an accurate grasp of what crime used to look like. When you look at >2015 rates, then you do see crime going up. That's a real thing, and it's worth paying attention to. But that doesn't really change anything about the overall trajectory of crime over the past decade. It especially doesn't change anything about the overall trajectory of crime over the past >1 decade. > But when I go to the grocery store I end up paying more for things like milk and meat. There's a much simpler explanation here, which is that food categories like milk and meat are completely excluded from many inflation calculations, specifically because their prices are highly volatile. An increase in the price of food won't be directly reflected in any reported inflation numbers, at least as far as I know. Like many high-level economy measures, inflation is not always a useful way to talk about how costs are changing and what regular people are experiencing. It's purposefully disconnected from many "on-the-ground" prices of goods that are important to consumers.

Citizen seems to be taking the uber/airbnb "do it until we are big enough to make it legal" approach to... crime. Weird combo. I bet their legal war chest is bulky.

MattGaiser 5y ago

Does Citizen break regulations in some way? I thought that filming crime and police was solidly legal.

SerLava 5y ago
I mean, sharing your car is legal but that's not really what Uber ever was.
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  Uber was trying to scale a personal exemption from the law. What law is it that makes doing this at scale vs doing it individually a grey area?
cronix 5y ago
> I thought that filming crime and police was solidly legal. Filming anything from a public space (street, sidewalk, etc) is legal, even if it's of a private space that is visible from public space. For example, if I'm on a public sidewalk next to your private residence, and you have the blinds open walking around naked - you have no reasonable expectation of privacy and can be filmed even though you're on your private property. Just like if you're driving on the public street and I have a ring doorbell camera, you have no reasonable expectation of privacy driving down the street, or walking on the sidewalk, and I can record you.
- Shmebulock 5y ago
  Is this generally how it works in most countries?
  - gruez 5y ago
    Common law countries? Yes.
  - tablespoon 5y ago
    > Is this generally how it works in most countries? There's a lot of variation: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Country_specific_consent_requirements https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Country_specific_...
busterarm 5y ago
They just haven't been sued yet by the family of a user who has been killed while filming a violent crime. When they do their insurance costs will become astronomical. This pay structure encourages users to put themselves in harm's way.
- dwater 5y ago
  Yes, the thing that is most likely to bite them is not legality, it's liability as a result of them paying people to do things.
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  How does this work for freelance journalists? Their risk is astronomical too.
  - busterarm 5y ago
    Any competent freelance journalist will tell you they pay for liability insurance and the annual premium is at least $1000/year. Said journalists are generally educated and have some training, especially around ethics. At least they're supposed to. This keeps them from shoving a camera in everyone's face while a crime is unfolding. Citizen is taking contributions from whoever the fuck...

xxpor 5y ago

It's so much worse than that. It's, quite literally, a right wing psyop. It's well established that people's fears about crime are much more correlated with news coverage than actual levels of crime. I'm having trouble finding it right now, but there was a recent survey that showed something like ~55% of Americans think crime is higher than it was in the early 90s. It's not even remotely close. We're back up to... 2012 levels. Meanwhile, Citizen is Nextdoor but even more extreme. You can see all this crime happening all the time, increasing the perception of it being extremely common. What happens when crime becomes a major political issue? Reactionaries get elected. Who's funding Citizen? Oh look, Peter Thiel. How surprising.

BitwiseFool 5y ago
This is one of those things that I just can't reconcile with my own experience. Studies say that crime is actually down but I'm witnessing more and more general lawlessness. A few weeks ago I saw someone take a case of beer out of a supermarket without paying. They caught him on camera and no one tried to stop him. The manager told me it was pointless to call the police. Public urination is way more common than it used to be and I think NYC decriminalized it a while ago. So if a bunch of previously criminal acts are no longer being reported, can we truly have confidence that crime has actually gone down? This reminds me of all those news articles confidently declaring inflation wasn't a threat, and that, no, we are actually experiencing some deflation. But when I go to the grocery store I end up paying more for things like milk and meat. A strip steak went from about $9.99 a pound to $14.99 a pound.
- danShumway 5y ago
  Crime is definitely up, but even if we assume it's under-reported or the numbers are being fudged, it's still nowhere near the level of the 90s. It's up from a historic low. I think a lot of people either aren't really aware of or were sheltered growing up from how bad crime used to be. People's real-world experience is based on their recent memory, not on 90's levels of violence. There were a little less than 2,000 shootings in New York City in 2020. That's very bad, given that for a few years the city had managed to dip under 1,000 shootings. An extremely noticeable spike. But as a point of comparison, in 1991 there were over 5,000 shootings in NYC. And those numbers aren't taking into account three decades of population growth. Even when you look at crime overall and not just violent crimes, we were coming off of a ~5% national crime rate in 1991. From what I can see, GP is correct that we are mostly looking at a return to 2012-level crime stats, and in some areas maybe a return to 2000-2010 levels. I'm convinced that people just can't remember any earlier than that. The 90s were really bad, if ~55% of Americans think we're at those levels already, then ~55% of Americans are just wrong. They don't have an accurate grasp of what crime used to look like. When you look at >2015 rates, then you do see crime going up. That's a real thing, and it's worth paying attention to. But that doesn't really change anything about the overall trajectory of crime over the past decade. It especially doesn't change anything about the overall trajectory of crime over the past >1 decade. > But when I go to the grocery store I end up paying more for things like milk and meat. There's a much simpler explanation here, which is that food categories like milk and meat are completely excluded from many inflation calculations, specifically because their prices are highly volatile. An increase in the price of food won't be directly reflected in any reported inflation numbers, at least as far as I know. Like many high-level economy measures, inflation is not always a useful way to talk about how costs are changing and what regular people are experiencing. It's purposefully disconnected from many "on-the-ground" prices of goods that are important to consumers.