Flock's Employees Are Demoralized and Quitting as Backlash Mounts
Flock is rolling out a voluntary severance program
Flock, the surveillance camera startup, is offering voluntary severance as public opposition takes a toll on staff morale. Hacker News commenters predict a rebrand or subsidiary shuffle to escape scrutiny, comparing it to Axon's name change from TASER. Many note the bipartisan anger is unusual, since Flock provides no direct consumer benefit, making the surveillance feel more immediate and threatening.
How could those innocent employees have predicted that helping to build out a surveillance state would make them unpopular?
- wyrdcurt
Related from a couple days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49762835
- andix
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.
- dkobia
Axon which is already well established is quietly stealing Flocks market share while avoiding all the scrutiny.
- epochbtc
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!
- neilv
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.")
- cush
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.
- bentt
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.
- jsrozner
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).