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.
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?
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.
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.
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.")
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.
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.
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.
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?
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
There have been news stories of localities canceling their Flock contracts and quietly switching to Axon.
Some of their customers have even asked them to redesign their cameras so they don't look like Flock cameras.
I think word is spreading about Axon as well, I'm heartened by the amount of pushback surveillance and abuses of privacy are getting.
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.
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.")
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.
Related from a couple days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49762835
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.
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.
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.
A Milgram experiment in real life.
> 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
Shut down, rebrand, try some different approach to security services
Being a magnet of attention as a despised surveillance corp has to be tiring
[dupe] Discussion on source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49762835
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?
It's not PG, it's Garry Tan.
And Garry Tan has repeatedly defended Flock and badmouthed people who oppose them.
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
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.
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.
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."