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Flock is rolling out a voluntary severance program
- erelong 11d agoShut down, rebrand, try some different approach to security services Being a magnet of attention as a despised surveillance corp has to be tiring
- cindyllm 11d ago[dead]
- smt88 11d agoHow could those innocent employees have predicted that helping to build out a surveillance state would make them unpopular?
- SoftTalker 11d agoI'm actually surprised. The usual thing is that people don't care, or think "I have nothing to hide" and just go on with their lives. That's mostly been the case with online surveillance, tracking, etc. done by Google, Meta, and the ad industry. For some reason, Flock became a rallying point on both the left and the right.
- beepbopboopp 11d agoThis ones easy, it's because the other ones provide a service people generally want, so the faustian bargain is always "Ill give you this thing I dont want to as long as you keep providing the thing I like." Flock provides nothing direct to the consumer which means this is going to get worse and Id stake a wager they rebrand after raising their next huge round.
- treis 11d agoPlenty of people support Flock or at least its mission. They're just not vocal because the opposition is vociferous. Like most things the country is fairly divided. This poll has it 46% opposed and 38% support: https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/28/more-americans-oppose-police-license-plate-cameras-than-support-them-survey/ https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/28/more-americans-oppose-poli...
- bicx 11d agoI think Google/Meta surveillance just feels like something painless, benign, and invisible. You couldn’t see a reason a huge corporation would really want to target you or put you in danger. With Flock, your local law enforcement has access, and that feels like a much more real threat (warrantless tracking of your real-world activity with the ability to ruin your day/life), not to mention how it’s already been abused to track exes of officers, had be easily hacked in the past, and that AI face recognition matched the wrong people.
- mattstir 11d agoHonestly I think the only significant difference is in branding: Flock isn't consumer-facing and is explicitly marketed for tracking people's movements. The major tech companies that make your phone, browser, maybe a few smart home devices with always-on microphones or cameras, all have more data about you and your habits than Flock could ever obtain, and with us paying for the privilege no less. I get that the average person doesn't care when the product works as advertised, but I don't think that's healthy. People should care as much about privacy when it's Google or Meta as when it's Flock.
- taormina 11d agoIt's like nobody, left or right, wanted for or consented to the surveillance state. Nothing like shoving the biggest, dumbest camera you can find in everyone's face to rub it all in. Obviously, the surveillance state is part and parcel post-9/11, but it's too easy to ignore the tech nerds when they talk about abstract things like "privacy" and "abusing the system". Then we get visible things for them to rally against like Flock.
- Retr0id 11d agoThe bipartisan nature isn't that surprising, given that surveillance is more of an authoritarianism vs libertarianism issue i.e. orthogonal to left vs right (in an oversimplified kinda way).
- nilamo 11d agoOne is just tech shit for nerds. The other is actual cameras watching everything that's really happening. Idk, doesn't seem that surprising that it ruffles more feathers.
- Zigurd 10d agoOne reason is that the CEO comes off as a raving lunatic. I saw a video snippet of him ranting about how anti-flock activists are terrorists. That's going to become a classic in how not to do crisis communication.
- jsrozner 11d agoShame 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).
- uberman 11d agoI have a friend who is one one the best programmers I know. He worked for an ad tech company more than a decade ago optimizing time to respond for personalized ad delivery. He was not proud of working to act on fingerprinting to optimize delivery but it was a challenging task and he framed his part as addressing the challenge not the ethics. People in our circle where like "good for you optimizing network delivery to 50ms!" even people who despised the idea of tracking users around the internet to serve them ads. I'm sure most people who work for flock compartmentalize their jobs to "I work on fingerprinting vehicles" or "I work on advanced OCR", or "I work on creating camera to camera trajectory graphs". This way they don't need to think about (too often) the larger ramifications of what they are doing. When the press points out what is the reality and that most people are pissed at Flock then the employees likely have to confront what they do in a way that they never had to.
- wartywhoa23 11d agoA Milgram experiment in real life.
- loeg 11d agoIt is also reasonable for employees to hold the position that Flock is a public good and the vocal minority of people complaining about it are simply wrong.
- SoftTalker 11d agoThis isn't an uncommon opinion among the public either. It's probably a minority, at least among those who are vocal about it, but it's not hard to find people who think they are beneficial.
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- Analemma_ 11d agoUnfortunately 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.
- krupan 11d agoThankfully they will be greatly outnumbered among general society. Most humans are good people.
- ticulatedspline 11d agoIt doesn't take a lot of bad people to subjugate a lot of good people.
- charcircuit 11d agoPeople defending society from criminals are good people too. It's the literal definition of "good guys."
- preg_match 11d agoFlock doesn’t defend anyone from anything, it’s just surveillance technology. The defending is done by other people, who may or may not use the surveillance for good. Historically, surveillance is used for good and evil. Certainly, Nazi Germany would have killed many more Jews if flock had existed during that time. Their surveillance was pretty primitive by modern standards, and they still managed to track, identify, and execute millions of Jewish people. Ultimately, we have to take a step back and analyze if our incentives and systems are designed such that surveillance is used for good, and evil use is deterred. And, regardless of political affiliation, the answer to that analysis should be a resounding no. Do we keep our officials and law enforcement officers accountable? When surveillance is misused, does anyone even know, let alone prosecute? How difficult is it to misuse surveillance? How much transparency is built-in to how the surveillance is used? These are the questions we should be asking.
- wyrdcurt 11d agoRelated from a couple days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49762835 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49762835
- deleted 11d ago[deleted]
- andix 11d agoMy 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.
- adamnemecek 11d agoThis is not something you can hide like that, people notice cameras being installed.
- andix 11d agoSure, but they might tell people: no, it's not Flock, it's something much safer, not such a privacy invading AI camera like Flock.
- dghlsakjg 11d agoAxon, formerly known as TASER did a reputational name change. Worth mentioning that they are also a flock competitor, but they are not in the headlines anymore.
- SoftTalker 11d agoThere have been news stories of localities canceling their Flock contracts and quietly switching to Axon.
- Avicebron 11d agoI think word is spreading about Axon as well, I'm heartened by the amount of pushback surveillance and abuses of privacy are getting.
- andix 11d agoI think that's why they are going to create many subsidiaries with a lot of different brand names. Until those names can't "spread" anymore, because it's too many different names and they often change.
- ChrisArchitect 11d ago[dupe] Discussion on source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49762835 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49762835
- dkobia 11d agoAxon which is already well established is quietly stealing Flocks market share while avoiding all the scrutiny.
- wilburx3 11d agoMotorola Solutions is right up there with them.
- Zigurd 10d agoWhat most people think of as Motorola is now owned by a Chinese company, while the US kept the surveillance technologies.
- SoftTalker 11d agoAlso a lot of traffic lights already have cameras installed for cycle timing, would not be a stretch to imagine that ALPR could be added, and that would not be an outwardly visible change at all.
- ck2 11d agohave 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 11d agoFlock 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?
- neilv 11d agoFacebook 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.")
- bentt 11d agoWe're at the tail end of that with Meta, which is "Just hang on and get your bag!"
- jamiesonbecker 11d agoI ran back to grab my towel, but my house was getting bulldozed.
- bensyverson 11d agoIt'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.
- michael_j_x 11d agoit's different when we voluntarily surveil ourselves
- epochbtc 11d agoFlock 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!
- jgerrish 11d agoIt's going to be difficult saying no in other situations where the surface product of the business isn't hated by left or right groups in the US. I hope people don't need that strength.
- ICHx 11d agothere will be another flock
- pseudony 11d agoWell, 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 11d agoThis 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 11d agoIs YC seriously still invested in this trash?
- dlcarrier 11d agoI 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 11d agoUntil 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 11d agoThat's great that they are quitting. It is not ethical to spy on fellow people.
- wildrice 11d agoCrazy how fast SV VCs got behind companies like this.