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Comment by oh_sigh | Hacker News Reader

How do security cameras remove the "vibrancy of your young urban block" or "the sense of trust and community in your suburb"?

Do the locks on your door accomplish the same incredible feat?

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No, because my lock does not monitor?

You can seriously not see how the the entanglement of psychological effects of being watched, mob justice, alienation, gossip, public shaming and threatening and first and foremost real or imagined social scoring breeds dull monoculture?

Security cameras generally don't actively monitor either - they merely record and let someone go back and look at the footage if they feel there is a reason to

So you list every possible bad thing that possibly could happen, and that is reason enough to not even bother with something? Have these horror scenarios played out in any place that actually is heavily surveiled?

Are there no young vibrant urban blocks in London? No sense of trust in Islington?

There are gentrifying city streets that I, a white male, will not walk down because the entire street is new construction with builder included Ring systems. I don't want to walk down a street and have literally 30 people get notifications on their phones that I'm there.

I can't imagine how the local PoC that are getting pushed back feel about that. Existing neighborhood watch networks already have people crying wolf at the smallest things. This is how the culture of the area dies.

I guarantee you whatever route you take in a city, you will fall under the gaze of at least one security camera.

It doesn't appear you have any evidence for your viewpoints, just vague fears, topped off with a standard appeal of "what about PoCs?"

Yeah but there's a difference between an entire street of personal security systems accompanied by apps and social networks built on fear mongering.

"just vague fears" they're called opinions which I'm allowed to have and voice in a public forum. Sorry for trying to consider the well being of the less privileged overly targeted people getting aggressively kicked out of their neighborhood.

PoC have a voice. If they have a fear, they can express it. They don't need a random white person hand-wringing on their behalf when that person self-admittedly doesn't even know how they might feel on the subject.

I think white people giving a shit and talking about these issues is the only reason we've come so far. Your attitude would have kept us on the 1700s.

I never said white people couldn't "give a shit". I said that you self-admittedly don't even know the viewpoints of PoCs on ring doorbells. "Is slavery morally wrong" is a fairly easier question to answer in my book than "are cheap cameras available to most people morally wrong"

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