Now we just need the same shame for broader surveillance capitalism (Google, Facebook, AI companies, etc).
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.
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
I wonder what Paul Graham says to the Flock executives now?
Being a magnet of attention as a despised surveillance corp has to be tiring
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.")
I didn’t know that Arendt’s concept of the banality of evil was something people willfully embraced.
I think you would be surprised. Now, whether or not the average local politician is indifferent is not the same as the average person.
smt88•1h ago
SoftTalker•48m ago
For some reason, Flock became a rallying point on both the left and the right.
beepbopboopp•42m ago
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•29m ago
https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/28/more-americans-oppose-poli...
bicx•41m ago
taormina•40m ago
Retr0id•39m ago