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Larry Ellison: "Citizens will be on their best behavior because we’re recording"
- hootz 5mo agoAnd of course, the best behavior will be the behavior that poses zero threat to the people in power. What a great future we have ahead of us, my colleagues.
- ekianjo 5mo agoThat is kinda what is going on in China.
- lenerdenator 5mo agoAnd that's what the Larry Ellisons of the world want. One of the bigger lies ever told is that free-market economies help democratize nations. They don't. If they did, we would have made massive investments in Eastern Europe after the fall of the Marxist-Leninist governments there. Instead we decided to invest in China and, later, Vietnam, among others. These are two very non-democratic nations. Why did we do that, especially after the Tiananmen Square Massacre? Because it better fit the needs of capital. The last thing they wanted was to set up shop in a bunch of countries where the people had organized against authoritarian regimes for change. If they can get rid of the likes of Ceaușescu and Honecker despite their brutality, they could certainly do things like strike for better working conditions and a greater share of their employers' earnings. Ellison's just another in a long line of guys with far too much money and far too little empathy. If you get out-of-line in a way that financially or politically inconveniences him, he wants you dealt with as severely as possible. China does that, and now he wants that in the US and other Western countries.
- vjvjvjvjghv 5mo ago“ far too much money and far too little empathy” There is the old video about the mistake of anthropomorphizing Ellison. You don’t get angry at a lawn mower either when you stick your hand into it.
- lenerdenator 5mo ago> mistake of anthropomorphizing Ellison That's the problem: we take that story and use it as an excuse to act like he's not a human. "Oh, ol' Larry, he's just a lawnmower". No, he's a person, one who doesn't get enough in the way of negative consequences for the harm he brings to society. My former employer was bought out by Oracle. I didn't stick my hand in the lawn mower, the lawn mower drove over my hand.
- dismalaf 5mo ago> They don't. If they did, we would have made massive investments in Eastern Europe after the fall of the Marxist-Leninist governments there. Ummm, what? Have you been to Eastern Europe lately (minus Ukraine, Belarus and Russia)? They're basically the west, except cleaner and less crime-ridden.
- lenerdenator 5mo agoThat's the wrong takeaway from the post, and I think you know it. Imagine what those countries would be like if they'd received the investment that the Chinese did 35 years ago.
- dismalaf 5mo agoThose countries are all significantly richer per capita than China. Especially somewhere like Czechia, which has already passed several Western European countries in wealth. How much richer do you think Czechia and Poland would be if they received more FDI in the 90's versus the 00's? They received way higher investment per person than China did as well. Also, China has some natural advantages, like being able to employ a ton of ultra cheap labour to engage in nation building projects. While the appearance of China is that of a rich country, they remain significantly poorer per capita than Europe.
- lenerdenator 5mo ago> How much richer do you think Czechia and Poland would be if they received more FDI in the 90's versus the 00's? If capital wasn't authoritarian, we would have found out.
- hollerith 5mo agoAccording to GPT, Poland (my pick because its GDP per cap is about the average for the former Warsaw Pact) received about $10,000 per person in foreign direct investment in recent years whereas during the same period, China received only about $1,900 per person.
- lenerdenator 5mo ago> in recent years How about 25-35 years ago when the wave of globalization truly hit?
- hollerith 5mo agoYou could look it up yourself. The figures I gave are the total current value of equities (stocks) held by foreign investors (divided by population). Since the value was zero in Poland in 1989 and very very low in China in 1989, GPT thought this would be a good way to estimate cumulative investment from then to now, but GPT also said there are figures available for investment inflows per year going back to 1989 that it could add up if I asked, but it guessed that such a calculation would only show investment into Poland in an even more comparatively favorable light. https://chatgpt.com/share/6a1f4622-aea4-83e8-838a-0c3ac69b26db https://chatgpt.com/share/6a1f4622-aea4-83e8-838a-0c3ac69b26...
- jrflowers 5mo ago>GPT thought No it didn’t
- colordrops 5mo agoExcept China has a well defined culture and millenia of experience with this and has learned how to have an autocratic society that still somewhat serves its people (until it doesn't). The US has been captured by a foreign power that has no interest in the welfare of the people so the expectation is that an autocratic society would be much worse in the US.
- vjvjvjvjghv 5mo agoThey don’t have millennia of experience with a surveillance state. But so far people are accepting it because their economic situation is generally improving. And crime is low. It may change once they have reached the same level of prosperity as the West and growth slows.
- 6stringmerc 5mo agoUh, are you sure about that claim regarding surveillance over human history? Just because the technology has advanced does not entail the methods or concepts are novel. Quite the contrary in my view: the modern versions are natural evolutions of long traditions and customs. Having “rats” and “moles” reporting on behavior is, I mean, it predates written records of I’m not mistaken.
- vjvjvjvjghv 5mo agoToday is a totally different scale. The German stasi needed a huge amount of people to handle all the incoming data and a lot of it fell through anyways l. Today you just throw a lot of compute at it and nothing can escape. Yes you always had people snitching on each other but it was inefficient and hard to centralize. Today is different.
- jr3592 5mo ago> The US has been captured by a foreign power that has no interest in the welfare of the people Huh?
- toasty228 5mo agoHow is it relevant? "oh yeah we're developing something super fucked up but you know what the problem is? cHiNA", every single fucking time And I bet all of you clowns wouldn't even be able to name three living Chinese people. The greatest threat to the west right now, and especially the US, is the American government, not China
- jimt1234 5mo agoIt's subjective. When I was a kid, "best behavior" didn't include assaulting law enforcement and smearing feces on the walls of Congress, but these days that behavior is acceptable, even officially celebrated.
- fatherzine 5mo agoOf course recordings are to be used against those that threaten the people in power, while those in power enjoy a cone of silence. Same as it ever was. Power is silencing other people. Follows from the problem of coordinated action. Foundation of asymmetric law enforcement, a cornerstone of tyranny. Even in a society ostensibly governed by the "rule of law". What's new is how concentrated the reins of power have become. Paradoxically, could lead to a period of major instability. The year of four emperors.
- sph 5mo agoCongrats to those among us building this dystopia. It's not Larry Ellison coding these systems.
- justacrow 5mo agoLook, I have exactly two options: 1) Me and my entire family starves to death 2) I make 600k per year building surveillance systems for whoever wants them (as long as they're aligned with Peter Thiels and/or government interests)
- nightshift1 5mo agoor find another job
- O1111OOO 5mo ago> 2) I make 600k per year building surveillance systems for whoever wants them (as long as they're aligned with Peter Thiels and/or government interests) "I was just doing my job. ... I was just following orders". Got it.
- potsandpans 5mo ago> Me and my entire family starves to death Patrick Star, in response to SpongeBob asking him to refrain from eating a candy bar, following a closeup pan of Patrick's extremely overweight body, "what do you want me to do, starve???" Something children can understand the humor in. Being used to excuse marching us into totalitarian dystopia.
- hckrme 5mo ago3) The surveillance masters then take you or your family members, because eventually you (or they) go against their interests.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- pibaker 5mo agoThis post has an 80% chance of being satire, and 20% chance of being from someone who honestly thinks not being able to afford a new iPhone every six weeks is literally like starving to death. Honestly, I can't tell.
- kamaal 5mo agoFear works only if delivered occasionally in byte sized quantities, too much of it and people not only stop fearing, they will also likely be indifferent to it, worse case even out right rebel. If you had a weapon which is powerful, you better use it sparingly. Fear of the weapon is more important than the weapon itself.
- xtiansimon 5mo agoI’m reminded of the several stories these past months about social media comments and police and incarceration. Attack on the First Amendment. Public surveillance is an attack on the Fourth Amendment.
- wiradikusuma 5mo agoI'm 100% sure a man like him, with lots of money, will have "interesting" life. The fact that he's willing to be recorded, is he an exhibitionist? Oh wait, he's exempted?
- unglaublich 5mo agoLol like EU chat control: politicians vote in favor, and politicians are excluded.
- lucasmullens 5mo ago> Ellison's warning came during an hour-long Q&A at an Oracle financial analyst meeting in September 2024. AI has been moving too fast to care about what some billionaire's opinion on it was 2 years ago.
- daveguy 5mo agoIt wasn't a warning, it was a boast.
- pstuart 5mo agoLook how well it worked for cops! I'm not suggesting we get rid of their bodycams, but it's easily gamed. It's one thing to be rich and enjoy the luxuries afforded by that, but to buy dominance over the very lives of others is when the angry mob retaliation is entirely justifiable.
- strangattractor 5mo agoIn what way did it work well for cops? From what I've seen it goes both ways with bodycam footage. The cops often have to put up with seriously dangerous stupid people and cops on power trips are video'd abusing people. Not that I am defending Ellison. Sadly the rich will always be able to buy their way out of most any bad situation except screwing over richer people.
- pstuart 5mo agoBy "worked well" I mean for citizens -- there's been multiple cases where cops lied and their bodycam exposed the lie.
- gobdovan 5mo agoExactly, cops can impose force on you and their jobs requires them to do it. If they wouldn't have body cams, it would be hard to see if coercion was justified or not. Surveilling powerless folks works in the other direction. It only serves to make them easier to discipline and teaches them that deviations from approved behaviour will be deterministically punished. And I also don't believe anyone is currently paid to act on their best behaviour as a simple citizen. Although this kind of monitoring works quite well for children under 6, you don't want paternalistic institutions, since you will never outgrow them.
- downrightmike 5mo agoThey turn them off all the time or the footage gets deleted
- pstuart 5mo ago
- twoodfin 5mo agoIf anyone managed to stick around through the later, lesser seasons of HBO’s Westworld, they were rewarded with a shockingly plausible view of the world Ellison is describing. And at a time when most of the computing technology required still seemed like sci-fi. I remember kind of chuckling at the idea that the machine intelligence had made and saved a recording of a random conversation Aaron Paul’s character had with his mother in a diner a decade prior. I have never been a privacy zealot, but it seems inevitable barring major political action that the panopticon will emerge comprehensive, actionable, and cheap.
- prerok 5mo agoYou mean, you have not created a meet with the relative who could only join remotely and did not transcribe it for the relatives who could not attend? I am shocked /j
- twoodfin 5mo agoIt’s not so much that the recording was made. CCTV has been pervasive in the UK for decades. It’s that the scalable design & implementation of LLMs & agentic systems has made it plausible to automatically annotate, index, and ultimately extract “value” from keeping that recording around indefinitely. That’s the necessary cornerstone to make it worth collecting in the first place.
- threwrfaway 5mo ago[dead]
- shawnhermans 5mo agoWhat really gets to me is how big tech isn't even pretending anymore to serve society. They clearly feel superior to the rest of us and entitled to rule.
- swarnie 5mo agoYou can understand why - https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgpqeq82rvo https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgpqeq82rvo They bought a country for pocket change. Jeff will be president within 20 years imo.
- bpodgursky 5mo agoIf you frame it this way in your mind you will be surprised when people pick surveillance over public disorder. If you don't like that world (I don't either) you can't bury your head in the sand about the problems it is solving, you need a "No, but... " framing where you give answers that actually work. There is a ground-level appeal of the China-style panopticon because it delivers public order and clean streets. Larry didn't just buy his way to digital dictator by bribing the right people, it answers a question in a way other people are avoiding, because answering it requires a lot of work and uncomfortable tradeoffs.
- bell-cot 5mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four#Thought_monitoring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four#Thought_m... ADD: A local press story about Oracle's CEO and Altman "celebrating" a new DC in my part of the country, with sounds-less-creepy language: https://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/2026/06/openai-oracle-leaders-praise-data-center-south-of-ann-arbor-pledge-10m-to-local-center.html https://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/2026/06/openai-oracle-l...
- Yokohiii 5mo agoLarry should be a good example and publicize all his communication. Pretty sure he is on his best behavior all the time.
- jasonvorhe 5mo agoEven if he did, the Epstein class already provided that they will get away with everything so what would be the point.
- gosub100 5mo agoThey both own private islands. I'd like to see surveillance of Lanai, you know, for security.
- api 5mo agoThat’s kind of an incredible point. We know what a bunch of these people did, or at least tolerated being done and looked the other way. It’s public information. Nothing happens. We even re-elect them. People don’t care.
- bananamogul 5mo agoTo be fair, when he was stopped by the police, he was very polite and compliant. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj-8UqcSJDY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj-8UqcSJDY
- Ey7NFZ3P0nzAe 5mo agoI mean. He was polite but he was still speeding.
- jqpabc123 5mo agoIn other words, "We're evil so you can't be".
- ikonoklast 5mo agoIs Larry confessing that he's not in his best behavior whenever he's not being recorded?
- unglaublich 5mo agoMost people are not, indeed. So this is the crux of religion: the "god" watches you, and will punish or reward you. Now social media and governments takes over that role.
- jasonvorhe 5mo ago[flagged]
- projektfu 5mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C4%81na%CA%BBi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C4%81na%CA%BBi That's what private islands are for.
- jimt1234 5mo agoReminds me of an old Boogie Down Productions song, "Illegal Business": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHeBotnrwEI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHeBotnrwEI Everything's legal, if the government can see you.
- ChrisArchitect 5mo agoQuote from 2024 OP. Some discussion then and since: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41562750 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41562750 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42825097 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42825097 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45413090 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45413090
- jrochkind1 5mo agoI think when we look back in 10-20 years, mass nearly universal surveillance will be seen as one of the largest social impacts of AI, or perhaps the largest. We have barely scratched the surface, and I don't think most people have thought it through. I guess I appreciate Ellison is educating people about what's going on...
- ffsm8 5mo agoYeah, LLMs will enable big tech to expand the full surveillance from the online world to the real world, consequently monitoring all aspects of theirs lives. It's likely gonna take a decade or so for things to become obvious to everyone, just like it took a decade for people to understand the cost of eg. Facebook
- Patrax 5mo ago"best behaviour" doing a lot of work here. Best as defined by the oppressor of course.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- speak_plainly 5mo agoTo be charitable to Ellison, it worked well in China.
- platinumrad 5mo agoSomehow, we're going to end up with all of the downsides and none of the upsides.
- scrollaway 5mo agoBeing charitable to Larry Ellison is one of those things one cannot physically do, like being entertaining to a dead whale.
- lenerdenator 5mo agoIt worked well in China because the Larry Ellisons of 35 years ago made sure the CCP was rewarded for keeping the rank-and-file in line and working instead of doing things like organizing for better working conditions or agitating for political change.
- polotics 5mo agoNo connection at all between this and the lie-flat and extremely low birth rate?
- amai 5mo agoAnd in Russia
- happytoexplain 5mo agoReject Larry Ellison from civilization.
- sirbutters 5mo agoand musk, and orange turd, and zuck.
- selimthegrim 5mo agoReject Larry Ellison, embrace ...?
- happytoexplain 5mo agoHumanity.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- doitLP 5mo agoSounds pretty bad, but what’s the context? We should be skeptical of a quote out of context with some dogpile parallels without any other context. When did he say it? Where did he say it?
- snake42 5mo agoDid you not read the article? Ellison's warning came during an hour-long Q&A at an Oracle financial analyst meeting in September 2024.
- platevoltage 5mo agoDoes this at all sound out of character for him?
- AyanamiKaine 5mo ago[flagged]
- sumoboy 5mo agoHe forgot to mention we'll need 1000 more data centers and 3000 new prisons to manage the chaos. So confused by this billionaire behavior with wanting to control society.
- sometimelurker 5mo agouh... in a very literal sense upvoting this helps Ellison. I think
- standardUser 5mo agoSometimes I wonder, if we were actually allowed to engage in the consensual drugs and sex that constitutes 95% of the activity people want to "get away with", would our societal response to infringements on our privacy be even weaker than it currently is?
- ibejoeb 5mo agoI think the real risk here is the impact of perfect enforcement of all the tiny things. Enforcement against every minor unsanctioned activity can be self executing with AI. You're going downhill at 10 MPH over the speed limit before you brake, and the camera, if not the vehicle itself, cites you. You cross the street outside of the crosswalk and now you've got 2 strikes. There's nothing to contest, because you acted unlawfully.
- likemaybealso 5mo agoNot all arms are equal
- likemaybealso 5mo agoNot all arms are created equal
- mainecoder 5mo agoIt is often commented how people who know they are recorded behave a certain way what is not commented on is how people who know they are recording other people behave. When you see your screen and you know you are recording them it creates this "power trip" it's feeling some of us know and love, but when we truly know it we don't love it anymore it's almost like a drug the high feels good the consequences are for others but that little guilt that lingers we don't like that. Now scale it at the size of an organization, the power trip with other people feel even more better, and the consequences ... well
- t1234s 5mo agoThey have been recording.
- inshard 5mo agoYou can’t have mass immigration from mainly economic migrants from the third world, under funded police forces, and a legal system built for high trust, highly educated, fairly homogeneous populace at the same time; and expect things to be all happy days.
- delichon 5mo agoIf they were just recording and it required human labor to interpret it would merely be a traditional regime of totalitarian repression. But this tech allows real time interpretation. Imagine that a stalwart ideologue gets to decide what behavior constitutes hate, and to dispatch enforcement before you can finish rolling your eyes. This is what makes me fear Ilya Sutskever's warning of an infinitely stable dictatorship. It's not clear that gravity well can be escaped.
- poszlem 5mo ago"Intellectuals are naturally attracted by the idea of a planned society, in the belief that they will be in charge of it." — Roger Scruton
- bilbo0s 5mo agoIn this case though, the nerds are in charge of it. They created and own it. I mean even the lawyers are subordinate to them at this point.
- overfeed 5mo ago> I mean even the lawyers are subordinate to them at this point They could all be in jail by this time tomorrow if Todd Blanche - a lawyer - wills it. Riding the authoritarianism tiger is risky business.
- mrguyorama 5mo agoNone of these people are intellectuals. They decry colleges for not being good enough compliant worker factories. They attack higher learning institutions. They make no attempts at pushing knowledge. They are salesmen.
- hkon 5mo agoFactually wrong. People actually take pride in recording their wrongdoings.
- platinumrad 5mo agoChina, but we don't get the high speed rail.
- EastLondonCoder 5mo agoI think the really dangerous part here is not just “surveillance bad”. It is that AI removes the labour cost that used to limit surveillance. CCTV was already a problem, but someone still had to watch it, search it, interpret it, escalate it. AI changes that. It makes surveillance searchable, scalable and administratively useful. The shift is from “you may be observed” to “your behaviour can be continuously machine-interpreted”. That changes the moral shape of the state. A democracy can have police, courts, borders, audits, fraud detection, and public order. I don’t think the serious argument is that no one should ever be watched. The question is asymmetry. A free society cannot survive if ordinary citizens become more transparent to the state and its contractors than the state is to them. The principle should be: privacy for persons, transparency for power. Police bodycams should make police accountable. Procurement should be inspectable. Algorithmic decisions should have audit trails. Whistleblowers and journalists should be protected. Public systems should be legible to the public. What worries me is not only some cartoon version of Orwell. It is the boring version: safety dashboards, risk scores, fraud detection, productivity analytics, immigration enforcement, “trust and safety”, compliance automation, procurement contracts. The boot does not always arrive as a boot. Sometimes it arrives as infrastructure. And the hard question is not whether surveillance can create order. It obviously can. So can a prison. The question is whether it creates accountable power afterwards. A panopticon may produce “best behaviour”, but only by turning citizens into managed subjects. I have been trying to understand this fetish for controlling people through coercion that seems so prevalent in certain new modern business contexts, like amazon warehouse workers and delivery employees. The only thing it creates is resentment. Is that how you want to build a company or society on. Resentment?
- aiaiaiaiai57 5mo agoUuuugh. The AI smell is strong on this comment. Please use AI for loads of things, but also pretty-please keep it out of inter-human discussions.
- anamexis 5mo agoThis does not read as AI to me at all
- yogthos 5mo agoFunny how stuff like privacy and freedom of speech have always been touted as key differentiators of a liberal democracy. And now the mask is falling off because the interests of the ruling class are increasingly diverging from those of the working majority.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- spider-mario 5mo agoOne thing I would like clarified is whether he is endorsing that future or just making a neutral prediction on what the state of surveillance will likely be.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- claysmithr 5mo agoCan we put webcams in larrys home then?
- bflesch 5mo agoJan 2010: Jeffrey, Epstein - Chief Financial Officer - ORACLE USA, Inc https://search.sunbiz.org/Inquiry/CorporationSearch/ConvertTiffToPDF?storagePath=COR%5C2010%5C0105%5C64445631.tif&documentNumber=F96000003847 https://search.sunbiz.org/Inquiry/CorporationSearch/ConvertT... Brought to you by Corporation Service Company, the trusted service partner of deep state.
- pinewurst 5mo agohttps://www.bvp.com/team/jeff-epstein https://www.bvp.com/team/jeff-epstein Not the same person, dumbass.
- bflesch 5mo agoLove your confidence. Must be just a coincidence then, huh? Do you believe someone working for US intelligence who arranges a vanity social security number for Ghislaine and whose grandparent was head of social security administration has no means to create multiple identities? Prior to joining Oracle, Jeff served as Chief Financial Officer of several public and private companies, including DoubleClick (sold to Google), King World Productions (sold to CBS) and Nielsen’s Media Measurement and Information Group. Earlier in his career, he was an investment banker at The First Boston Corporation. Your "Jeff Epstein" should fix his CV, because King family was previous owners of Zorro ranch. And Nielsen family was previous owners of the Epstein island. Is your Jeff maybe the real Jeff who made a killing in finance and the publicly known "bad" Jeff was just using his name, just as he did with Marius Fortelni? And once the "bad" Jeff goes to Florida jail in 2009 the "clean" Jeff leaves Florida with Oracle?
- 01100011 5mo agoNvidia has been marketing "smart cities" for years. I've mentioned it several times but it never gets traction. If you think the AI build out is about consumer benefits you're an idiot. It's about control. AI is going to cement the power structures of the world and give authorities powers they've dreamed of since antiquity. It's about surveillance, manipulation and deception. I work making AI shovels. I benefit a tiny bit from all this but know it's just a small crumb in exchange for the buffet of freedom.
- f-serif 5mo agoBangladesh is one of the best example of it. People usually don't want to follow traffic laws on road. Now that we have AI camera recording and AI fine system, people try their best to follow traffic laws. We are becoming Japan following traffic laws in certain areas. Police usually were scared to fine million dollars cars (because the car owner might be part of something higher power and they could lose their job). Now they gossip on roadside and let AI do it's job. To HN people surveillance is scarry. But to us, surveillance is blessings.
- kys11 5mo ago[flagged]
- greenhearth 5mo agoWhere does it end? What if it hallucinates you robbing an old lady but you just walked past her? Have fun getting swarmed and dragged away. Etc. when will it be used to frame political dissidents?
- enoint 5mo agoBangladesh is interesting because of serious support for automated anti-blasphemy.
- mhotchen 5mo agoOh wow I went and looked that up after reading your comment. Launched less than a month ago! Incredible that you're seeing such impact already
- downrightmike 5mo agoYay lazy cops who never did their jobs anyway??
- stronglikedan 5mo agoYet it is inevitable that people that are "part of something higher power" will abuse this system for various reasons that have nothing to do with traffic. No thanks. Slippery slopes abound.
- maxglute 5mo agoIt's not the recording that matters, it's the enforcement. In PRC, you get your jaywalking mugshot on the intersection jumbotron, that social humiliation is enough to get people in line and establish public order. I wager shameless (individualistic) Americans would troll such methods, i.e. it would be counter productive in US cultural contexts... which is bleak because it means would need even harsher big brother enforcement methods to deter. Considering Chinese aunties fisty cuff with cops on the street, in US they'd get ventilated - the kind of shenanigans US LE would have to pull to enforce best behavior compliance is going to be much more violent.
- willis936 5mo agoI don't think jaywalking deterrence is what society is currently in need of.
- cindyllm 5mo ago[dead]
- IAmBroom 5mo agoThe recording enables the enforcement. It's of the nature of "If you see something, say something" - blah blah "if you're innocent you have nothing to fear" blah blah. Presumption of innocence runs counter to general surveillance, in a broad sense.
- peteforde 5mo agoThe "Who's your ideal dinner companion (deceased or alive)?" survey at the end is icing on this cake. I honestly think I'd rather go hungry at this point.
- vjvjvjvjghv 5mo agoHe will retreat on his Hawaiian island and obviously nobody will watch him there.
- black_13 5mo ago[dead]
- polotics 5mo agoBe careful what you wish for Larry. If I may point to the examples of Fritz Thyssen, Hugo Junkers, Alfried Krupp... There are many examples of succesful clever mega-wealthy industrialists who really thought they were above the fray, had it all figured out, and could push all the levers to their advantage.
- sarabande 5mo agoWhat happened then?
- IAmBroom 5mo agoFritz Thyssen and Hugo Junkers were arrested by the Nazis for being unhelpful. Alfried Krupp was helpful to them... and was declared a war criminal by the Allies. The point being: no one is above karma's reach, until they die. And if they care about their reputation, not even then.
- voakbasda 5mo agoJust yesterday, I was accosted in a public space by an individual that immediately provoked an aggressive confrontation, falsely claiming that I had invaded their personal space. After that initial accusation, they whipped out a pair of smart glasses and begin recording the conversation. It was not immediately obvious that they were recording, even though I am familiar with such devices. Their devive presumably recorded audio (otherwise what’s the point?), and that is a class A misdemeanor in my state. Of course, that presumes that the police would actually bother to enforce that law in the first place. It seemed clear to me that the individual was trying to provoke a confrontation, as they framed it in such a way that they were justifying their actions in advance. Much like a bully will tell on onlookers lies to justify the beating they’re giving. And that’s a problem with panoptic on surveillance, they will edit and frame footage to produce whatever narrative they want to promote. This goes for both state and individual actors. Context is King, and when only one side can provide and control the context, lies can be passed as truth with very little effort.
- bananamogul 5mo agoIn which state is that a class A misdemeanor? In some states it's a crime to record phone calls or other private conversations without all-party consent, but I wasn't aware that it was a crime to record a conversation in public anywhere. I hike in Oregon and I've seen bodycams becoming increasingly common. I don't think that's a bad thing.
- dannersy 5mo ago"We" is a very telling way to say that, in the sense that he, a citizen, seems to think he is above such systems. He's not wrong, sadly.
- cyanydeez 5mo ago"We'll be the only ones capable of manipulating the system if all the citizens are under surveillance"
- jameson 5mo agoI believe surveillance can only work in society at a very small scale. Surveillance == Information == Power. Who then, manages the surveillance? You? Me? A government? How do I trust them? *Trust* is the fundamental problem with surveillance. An innocent person was killed on a street. Surveillance camera on every corner of the street would've easily caught the murderer. Who manages the recording? An individual? Entity? A government? How do I know they aren't face-tagging and selling the data? It's always about trust. An interesting case to consider is Seoul, South Korea which actually has cameras almost on very corner of the street. In my view, general population prefers streets recorded to avoid aforementioned situation, and it can only work if people have trust in the government. In the US contrary, my view is that the disconnect between the government and the people are too wide to have such trust.
- sys_64738 5mo agoAnybody that advocates like this should be the first to sign up for 24x7x365 monitoring. That also includes all their family.
- Duplicake 5mo agoIf this really happens, people will rebel
- jotaroDeon 5mo agoWhatever Larry, just don't force us to play your daughters terrible game.
- throw1113 5mo agoSomewhat of a clickbait headline. He used "Citizens" in contrast to police, in a discussion about body cameras: >Another thing: body cameras, we completely redesigned body cameras. [...] Remember this terrible case in Memphis where the 5 police officers basically beat to death another citizen in Memphis, well that can't happen because it would be on TV at headquarters, everyone would see it, your body cams would be transmitting that. The police would be on their best behavior, because we're constantly recording and reporting everything that's going on, citizens would be on their best behavior, because we're constantly recording and reporting everything that's going on. I'm not a fan of surveillance, but this article seems weird. The entire article, including the headline, consisting of a single quote, and without adding any context. A charitable interpretation would be that "citizens would be on their best behavior with police, because they know police can check the footage." I'm not necessarily advocating for charitable interpretations, but when you don't even provide the full sentence of the quote, you are not even allowing the reader to attempt to draw their own conclusion. https://www.oracle.com/events/financial-analyst-meeting-2024/ https://www.oracle.com/events/financial-analyst-meeting-2024... 1:10:03
- MomsAVoxell 5mo agoThere is another stance which I feel is often overlooked in these discussions, and it is the absolutist 100% pro-“record all the things” realm, which is maybe not as obvious as it may seem at first - but is equally important to protect. There shouldn’t be a secret surveillance apparatus. But there should also be a massive human archive of recordings, accessible to all, forever. Like, I legitimately think beyond the voyeur/exhibition equation, there is a service which governments could be providing to their citizens. If the NSA is going to copy everything, give me access to my data. I can operate as a responsible citizen of the state, if I have it giving me a metric lifetime of storage. There are many, many applications where it would actually be fine to have an efficient, well-financed organization, taking care of my personal, private data - properly, standardly, safely - like all the other services it provides citizenry. Standard encryption which allows me to broker my data with third parties, etc. I’d be a lot less resistant to the surveillance state - of any nature, not just governmental - if it would at least give me access to my data. Besides which, there are many great reasons to just always be recording.
- elzbardico 5mo agoWhy most media uses those 30 year old photos of Mr. Elison instead of current ones?
- 0xbadcafebee 5mo agoFear. He's talking about fear. Making every citizen afraid through mass surveillance. You know, the core part of the book 1984, where a dystopian authoritarian regime rules by mass surveillance, propaganda, and allegiance to one party. Truth really is crazier than fiction.
- tejtm 5mo agothe classic "Do not fall into the trap of anthropomorphizing Larry Ellison. You need to think of Larry Ellison the way you think of a lawnmower. You don’t anthropomorphize your lawnmower, the lawnmower just mows the lawn - you stick your hand in there and it’ll chop it off, the end. You don’t think "oh, the lawnmower hates me" – lawnmower doesn’t give a shit about you, lawnmower can’t hate you. Don’t anthropomorphize the lawnmower. Don’t fall into that trap about Oracle." — Bryan Cantrill at about 34-39 minutes in: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=2308s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=2308s]
- atmavatar 5mo agoI get a chuckle out of that quote like the rest of us, but what I don't like about the metaphor is that the lawnmower has no agency and thus bears no responsibility for the damage it causes, whereas Larry Ellison does.
- shepherdjerred 5mo agoClearly you have already fallen into the trap
- pnt12 5mo agoBoth can be true: It may not be worthy to question Oracle and Larry motives - it's money, at the cost of anything else (although his pro Israel stance may unveil some other ideology too). But it's worthy to say they should be held accountable for the scrap they do. Unless we grow so cynical to think the system is deeply rotten and cannot be changed - which is a valid feeling to have given all ongoing events, but there's also some glimmers of hope here and there that are gaining traction.
- Gud 5mo agoThis will only happen in fucked up nations such as the USA, where cameras are popping up all over the place.
- baal80spam 5mo agoI think you misspelled UK.
- downrightmike 5mo agonope, everywhere
- poolnoodle 5mo ago1984
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- GuestFAUniverse 5mo agoEverytime someone like this opens his mouth I look up their year of birth. He's 82 already. That calms me. And I wholeheartedly hope that there won't really be life prolonging biotech. I like a merciful natural death. It's the ultimative emergency fix for gerontocracies.
- NoGravitas 5mo agoHis son is just as bad or worse, though, and is well-positioned to pick up where Lawnmower Larry leaves off.
- frm88 5mo agoThat does not safe us from the young generation of the "fentanyl laced urin" Andreessen, "women should not vote" Thiel, "humans are NPCs" Musk. I have no idea how they educate their children, but if David Ellison is any parameter to go by, there will be no fix, just emergency.
- IAmBroom 5mo agoTrump is near his age. Trump is threatening the safety of innocents the world over. I am not calmed by their ages.
- ChoGGi 5mo agoOh yeah, lawnmower man is the paragon of humanity.
- jeanlucas 5mo agoLet me just add one interesting layer: The current experiment in São Paulo, 8k+ cameras were added to the city with the same justification: security. But, at least for smartphones robberies, the results are not obvious: on an average of 24 smartphones stolen every hour[1] in one neighborhood (Pinheiros is a big "tech" area). I just want to point this out because this premise of more recording = more security = more behavior is not necessarily true. [1] https://g1.globo.com/sp/sao-paulo/noticia/2026/05/21/cameras-do-smart-sampa-nao-inibem-furtos-e-roubos-de-celulares-em-pinheiros-regiao-lidera-casos-em-sp.ghtml https://g1.globo.com/sp/sao-paulo/noticia/2026/05/21/cameras...
- tim-tday 5mo agoWe need to separate the conversation. Most people operate in good faith. 99% of the population of SF would never kick in a car window and steal a laptop. But a handful of people is all it takes. We should 100% surveil, track, arrest and prosecute those people. Painting everyone with the same brush is never correct. Find the problem people and deal with them. Hopefully in a way that teaches them not to be problem people. And failing that lock them up so we don’t have to deal with their bullshit.
- smarm52 5mo ago> the fact that the inmates cannot know when they are being watched motivates them to act as though they are all being watched at all times. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon
- RajT88 5mo agoThey can't arrest all of us.
- hattimaTim 5mo agoAnd who will record them? We should have their recordings too right?
- blubber 5mo agoSome additional sound bites from last year: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheLevant/comments/1nv9521/larry_ellison_new_tiktok_owner_is_a_close/ https://www.reddit.com/r/TheLevant/comments/1nv9521/larry_el...
- johnpaulgeorge 5mo agoSon of a bitch / whore / mother fucker
- defrost 5mo agoDon't anthropomorphise the lawnmower.
- anotherevan 5mo agoYou first, Larry, you first.
- amai 5mo agoLet's record Larry Ellison then. He is not showing his best behavior lately. Does anyone already track his private jet or private yacht?
- shantnutiwari 5mo agoI dont get it-- the article was written 2 days ago, but the speech was in 2024-- why wait 2 years? What are his latest views?