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points by zer0x4d 3 days ago | 0 comments

Because the rest of the people just don't care about it and understand the technology has been a thing for a long time. You know 100 people that want to take them down but you probably also know 1000 people who don't care and aren't even speaking about it. People just became obsessed with one company, then some agitators sprinkled in a healthy dose of antisemitism plus conspiracies, now you got the public lynching of a company. It's unfortunate.

Don't get me wrong, Flock did have and still has some issues, just like any other company. They've been trying to fix the issues. But, as far as I'm concerned, the positives heavily outweigh the negatives, even though there are rare cases of abuse.

[–] felixgallo 3 days ago

I ran an in depth study of Flock for my city. It's been deployed here for several years. What I found is that there is no statistically significant correlation between Flock being installed and any reduction in any kind of crime. I suspect my city is not unique in this regard.

Flock rode a post-COVID wave of general crime reduction and claimed responsibility for it, but it appears that the only meaningfully effective use of Flock is for stalking, terrorizing immigrants, assembling opposition dossiers, and parallel construction.

[–] chasd00 3 days ago

It doesn't seem to me like Flock would reduce crime but increase the rate at which crime's are solved. Maybe a better stat would be median age of a criminal case involving a vehicle before and after Flock was deployed.

edit: i dont know if any stat would work at the city level, the advantage of Flock is the network works across state/county lines. So someone committing a crime in one state and then driving all night can still be located two states away without police departments having to coordinate a search.

[–] felixgallo 3 days ago

There is one independent national study ( https://www.flocksafety.com/blog/independent-study-vehicle-t... ) which indicates vehicle thefts fell 11% following a flock installation.

However, the vast majority of vehicle thefts self-resolve ( 85% of passenger vehicle thefts are recovered, a third within one day ). Flock's apparent impact was that vehicles came back on average 1/4 day sooner; it did not appear to impact the rate at which they were recovered, so your instinct would be incorrect.

Additionally, vehicle theft has been steadily decreasing year-over-year since COVID, and it's possible/likely that the effects seen in the study were continuations of that trend rather than anything attributable to flock. The paper even says as much -- that the effect began in the months preceding flock installation.

Intuitively, you'd think that flock cameras would help a lot. I would think so too! But at least in my small-to-mid-sized city, they don't noticeably help at all with any kind of crime.

https://ij.org/how-flock-is-trying-to-take-credit-for-the-po...

[–] wyre 3 days ago

I think its more likely that people don't know about Flock, not that they don't care.

[–] rootusrootus 3 days ago

> healthy dose of antisemitism

Uh, what?

[–] red_candle_wax 3 days ago

Its the new "terrorism", "fascism", and "communism" but all rolled up in one for brain dead propagandists.

You can kinda just apply it to anything you dont like to paint it as inherently bad.

[–] slowin 3 days ago

Antisemitism? Public lynching? We're talking about a fascist spy company not a human being.