Related from a couple days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49762835

My 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.

There was a period when automated red-light cameras were really popular with municipalities, followed by significant backlash. Since then, the companies selling them have not recovered financially and the cameras never regained popularity. It could happen with Flock, too.

I believe much of the backlash was the fact that companies were bribing municipalities and the majority of fines collected just went to the private companies themselves; https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/former-red-light-camera...

They also did stuff like shortening the yellow light duration so that people got caught in the intersection with the light red.

As with may things in this sphere, that deserves jail

Shortening the yellow light duration killed people. So far, misuse of flock data has only resulted in people having undertrained cops draw down on them. But somebody's going to pull a trigger soon enough.

Maybe they'll rename to something which has only ever had negative connotations for decades. Maybe something like Palantir. Or maybe Nazgul, Leviathan, Beelzebub, Cyberdyne, or Moloch?

"Moloch" only means "Lord" in its essential consonants. It's the same Semitic triple-root for "Malik" and "Melkite" and "Melchizedek". Cognates: certainly still in widespread use today as forenames and surnames, et. al.

"Leviathan": The full name certainly strikes fear. One of my ancestors brought his family over from Scotland on the Leviathan which was a captured-and-repurposed German passenger vessel. We can imagine: it was ginormous. has an interesting derivation if we take it apart into component parts: they would be recognizable as good guys, or denim jeans I guess. Since Semitic roots standardized on the triple-consonant, we may see ancient tongues incorporated for this one.

"Be-el-ze-bub": "Lord of the Flies", of course; the implication of the English name of the novel about those good children on a desert island, who lived in interesting times. A theophoric name. Shares a root with "Ba'al" of the Tanakh. Glottal stops FTW.

"Nazgûl" -- mainly sounds like "ghoul" to us! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazg%C3%BBl#Etymological_conno...

Godwin's Law endures

I’d just suggest skipping the references and going directly to EvilCorp.

They'll change their name to Meta to get away from a scandal. I don't think that's ever happened before.

This is not something you can hide like that, people notice cameras being installed.

The widespread opposition to flock is unfortunately an aberration. The average person is largely indifferent to mass surveillance, and I think a rebrand has a good chance of working. They'll give it a try either way.

> The average person is largely indifferent to mass surveillance

I think you would be surprised. Now, whether or not the average local politician is indifferent is not the same as the average person.

In a poll of "do you want to be surveilled", "do you think mass surveillance is good", sure. But in terms of revealed preferences, people will happily give up privacy for mild convenience.

"Revealed preferences" are bullshit.

What's really true is that people are, 99% of the time, not actually given that choice. For "revealed preferences theory" to work, the people involved would need to consistently have a free choice between two options. And for people who have had their finances gradually stretched and stretched over the past 40 years of growing inequality, "cheaper but worse" is not a free choice.

People can choose Facebook or to get in contact with people individually via phone, email or visits, but they prefer Facebook because it's more convenient to put a message there and count as maintenance of a group of relationships. People can choose between accepting the cameras or participating in the democracy they belong in and protest and pressure their representatives, but it's more convenient to accept.

It's true there are people without choice, but most people aren't without choice, and they choose convenience.

This is a specious argument because it neglects to take into account information asymmetries and change over time. When Facebook was first launched, there wasn't any widespread understanding of the breadth/intensity of their data collection and its downstream implications.

People initially chose Facebook because it truly offered a novel and improved service, and the true cost users would pay for it wasn't obvious to anyone yet. The "wall", chronological friends-only feeds, etc. provided genuine value, and at that point the public at large were almost completely oblivious to how much personal data was being collected from them (and even less as to how it might be used in ways counter to their own interests). Once they'd fully captured the vast majority of user share, Facebook clawed back value by deprecating the chronological feed, serving ads and "high-engagement" posts in place of friend submissions, and generally ramped up their data harvesting significantly further since.

Most people would agree that the service is far worse than what they initially signed up for, but feel like there's no longer a viable alternative that would allow them to maintain the same level of communication with the people they care about.

Facebook users are not "choosing convenience" by staying on the only platform that all of their friends and family use exclusively. They're effectively held hostage by network effects that were intentionally planned and designed around producing that lock-in effect and guaranteeing that all potential alternatives either withered on the vine or were absorbed (e.g. Instagram). To the extent there's a "choice," it's a coerced choice on purpose.

> When Facebook was first launched, there wasn't any widespread understanding of the breadth/intensity of their data collection

Come on, you're trying to tell me that people didn't understand that when they give someone a thing, that someone has the thing they gave them?

> provided genuine value

Yes, the convenience.

> how much personal data was being collected from them

"They collected it; I didn't give it to them."

> but feel like there's no longer a viable alternative that would allow them to maintain the same level of communication with the people they care about.

Yes, "the pesky convenience is forcing me."

> Facebook users are not "choosing convenience" by staying on the only platform that all of their friends and family use exclusively.

"My friends and family are forcing me."

Despite my comments, I'm not totally against the use of Facebook, but I am against the absolution of personal agency these comments are demonstrating.

> Come on, you're trying to tell me that people didn't understand that when they give someone a thing, that someone has the thing they gave them?

This is a bad faith argument, because Facebook collects far, far more than "the thing they gave them".

It's true they collect more, but I wouldn't say "far, far more". They get the most from what you provide yourself. That's unless you have relationships that share too much about you.

Did they stop tracking people through their like buttons by now? If not, there's no argument - they're literally tracking non-users on every site they can! Besides Google, what company is doing as much tracking as much as Facebook?

Wasn't it just last year that it became known how Facebook and Instagram apps track your browsing through WebRTC? That alone is far far more than people knowingly give them.

Learning about their tracking web browsing through WebRTC ports from the apps, you have a point on users not knowingly providing that. Still, if you dissociate from Facebook (not having their apps, not being logged on, etc.) then that tracking would've been ineffective. The rest of my comment stands on their being able to leave it.

Why would the tracking be ineffective? How do you know?

De facto no choice is still no choice. A captured market isn't the same as people choosing convenience.

The world when Facebook was introduced: "Oh well, I guess I have no choice. There's nothing like Facebook, so I'm forced to upload my family photos to these people. I'm not responsible for doing that. Let me just find somebody to blame, maybe the family that's already using it? Nevermind that there are alternatives for keeping in touch. We don't talk about that. They're just not as convenient, so they're obsolete."

You do know that there were over a dozen social media networks that facebook bought over and effectively extinguished or merged into their behemoth right ? They deliberately ensured that choices were extremely limited. Any "alternative" that got popular and not under control of another behemoth was effectively taken over or killed. So your "use an alternative" logic just does not compute.

>> alternatives for keeping in touch

Phone calls, knocks on doors, emails, regular meetups at places.

The thing with choices is that not choosing a thing can imply losing the benefits of that thing. You prioritize. "Choosing" isn't just a matter of getting more. It also implies loss.

What's typical is saying "I have nothing to hide" or valuing a bit of convenience over privacy and other principles.

You could be right regarding the reaction but how do you know that? What would be the counterexample?

The median internet user doesn't even block ads (and associated surveillance). Facebook has 2bn DAU. And so on.

Eh I think it depends on the country a lot too. The average UK citizen? Probably. Even as someone from abroad, I know the British are widely stereotyped as having cameras everywhere.

But Americans are raised from birth with the idea of “freedom” and a camera pointed at you recording your every move is antithetical to that. They somewhat tolerate it in private establishments like malls and restaurants but not in public spaces.

Axon, 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.

They did such an amazingly bad job on their PR. Their best known products literally exist to keep police from killing people or violating their rights undetected, and instead of meeting the moment and explaining why their products should become mandatory, always-on, permanent replacements for firearms or ADVOKATE-style sworn statements they just kind of... pretended that misuse of their products was WAI and ate the consequences of that.

Well put, they had a delicate line.

Those departments buy their products. If they took that angle publicly I bet many departments would suddenly been much less interested in buying/renewing. Accountability seems to be super unpopular (which says A LOT) with their customers.

I get it, but I also just don't understand why they couldn't effectively explain to the police that they were a for-profit company. The police definitely understand that!

Like, when the police were saying "we can't turn on body cameras all the time because it might violate victims rights" the correct response from axon was "we also happen to sell a very expensive victim redaction software on a separate SKU, until you buy that probably just want to let your officers use discretion wink-nod."

(I am maybe unfairly assuming here that their actual intent was to make money rather than protect the public from police abuses. I'd love to hear from folks at Axon if that isn't true!)

They could have just talked out of both sides of their mouths. Tell the public it’s to curb abuse, tell the police in private “we all know what it’s really for” wink-wink-nudge-nudge.

Maybe offer up a few token cases where they caught abuse and the cop got in trouble or something changed as proof.

Nope. You’re right, they ran right into that wall.

WAI?

Working As Intended

There have been news stories of localities canceling their Flock contracts and quietly switching to Axon.

I think word is spreading about Axon as well, I'm heartened by the amount of pushback surveillance and abuses of privacy are getting.

I 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.

Some of their customers have even asked them to redesign their cameras so they don't look like Flock cameras.

Sure, but they might tell people: no, it's not Flock, it's something much safer, not such a privacy invading AI camera like Flock.

No they don't. That's why nobody noticed the Motorola cameras going up in places where Flock cameras came down.

It’s Comcastic!

Axon which is already well established is quietly stealing Flocks market share while avoiding all the scrutiny.

Also 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.

Motorola Solutions is right up there with them.

What most people think of as Motorola is now owned by a Chinese company, while the US kept the surveillance technologies.

Facebook 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.")

We're at the tail end of that with Meta, which is "Just hang on and get your bag!"

I ran back to grab my towel, but my house was getting bulldozed.

Until 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.

This 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.

It'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.

it's different when we voluntarily surveil ourselves

Flock 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!

It'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.

Well, 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 ! :)

Is YC seriously still invested in this trash?

Shame 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).

I 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.

It 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.

This 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.

Such an opinion does not seem plausibly believable, by the people building it and in full knowledge of what it can do, and is being used to do.

That’s not a reasonable position to hold, unless and until Flock does much, much more when it comes to safeguards against abuse.

I can understand being pro-surveillance, but Flock is a case study in how not to implement surveillance systems. Believing that surveillance can be a public good can’t somehow turn Flock into a public good. It’s not.

A Milgram experiment in real life.

Good essay about this: https://calebhearth.com/dont-get-distracted

> he framed his part as addressing the challenge not the ethics

I didn’t know that Arendt’s concept of the banality of evil was something people willfully embraced.

I'm not sure why you're being downvoted. Perhaps it makes some people uncomfortable about their own jobs. In any case, it's not uncommon for people to moralize about something they're not doing, but given the opportunity to do that thing for some handsome reward (good pay, prestige, technically interesting work, etc), they easily rationalize their choice to participate in that thing.

except when people have no shame, i.e the entirety of the trump admin

That's great that they are quitting. It is not ethical to spy on fellow people.

I 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.

Shut down, rebrand, try some different approach to security services

Being a magnet of attention as a despised surveillance corp has to be tiring

Flock 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?

In case anyone's wondering (I was). Flock was in the summer 2017 batch and more recently YC invested in their 2025 raise.

It's not PG, it's Garry Tan.

And Garry Tan has repeatedly defended Flock and badmouthed people who oppose them.

PG is still involved in Y combinator batches and all that right? He regularly posts about giving advice to founders on his twitter account.

[dupe] Discussion on source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49762835

How could those innocent employees have predicted that helping to build out a surveillance state would make them unpopular?

I'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.

This 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.

Plenty 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-poli...

I 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.

Honestly 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.

One 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.

The 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).

It'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.

One 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.

there will be another flock

have 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

Unfortunately 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.

Thankfully they will be greatly outnumbered among general society. Most humans are good people.

It doesn't take a lot of bad people to subjugate a lot of good people.

It's wild that you think good people can't support enforcing laws.

Are you a good person?

good enough

People defending society from criminals are good people too. It's the literal definition of "good guys."

Flock 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.

>Flock doesn’t defend anyone from anything

Flock has caught criminals and has prevented further crimes from happening. This is something that cannot be denied. The existence of Flock has defended people, and it has provided value to society. Saying that Flock is a just technology company and police officers are just humans. That trivializes what these entities are doing in society.

>Nazi Germany would have killed many more Jews if flock had existed during that time.

Or they could have more efficiently got the Jews out of the Germany before things got to the point where things got more extreme. This could have resulted in fewer Jews dying.

>Do we keep our officials and law enforcement officers accountable?

I think AI will be a major boon to being able to audit such queries for irregularities. The fact you can have a relatively impartial system able to highlight things makes it harder to cover up things.

> they could have more efficiently got the Jews out of the Germany before things got to the point where things got more extreme. This could have resulted in fewer Jews dying.

Wrap it up folks, we've officially reached the worst take on the internet.

This ignores all of history - this isn't how the Nazis operated then and isn't how fascists have ever worked. Forced eviction and taking property is still a crime against humanity, and it's not like other countries were welcoming large numbers of jews with open arms.

Crazy how fast SV VCs got behind companies like this.