Hacker News Reader

Comment by legobmw99 | Hacker News Reader

Further down it mentions that “20 or so” people submit 85% of complaints

I suspect that’s about to jump up.

The article also says the city does not make getting the payout easy and it requires many hours of follow up to maybe get paid.

I look forward to some startup automating the steps and taking a slice.

"It's like Uber but for tattling!"

I kid, I'm down for this sort of citizen engagement when it comes to externalities.

We can call it:

https://www.tatler.com/

stich.es?

Thanks for this look into a bizarro world. :)

You mean snitch.ai.of course. Get your own personalised snitches to avoid stitches.

It's like the Texas approach to abortion.

The whole thing just doesn't feel right. I don't care if, in this particular case, the cause is not-terrible (preventing pollution). There's just something "off" about the enforcement mechanism.

Serious crimes? Sure: Do your civic duty; call the police. But this? Mind your own business.

It feels vaguely East-German.

Not to me. East German reporting was about controlling the citizenry to support the regime in power. This is about protecting the health and comfort of one's neighbors and oneself. That is very much my business.

The Texas approach is quite different -- it encourages people to sue other people with completely artificial standing. In fact the Texas approach was designed to be entirely different from a government run bounty program in an attempt to undermine the constitution.

This is more similar to whistleblower laws that pay a bounty for taxes recovered by the IRS. In both cases the government is the one taking the action that fines the perp.

In any case, pollution is my business.

I’m Texas’ approach the gov is not involved in taking any action. That’s why the law can stand as there is no gov office enforcing it.

In both cases it pits citizens again citizens, which is what’s starting to feel creepy.

Sounds right up the alley of www.donotpay.com

Or maybe they would be on the other side, helping truck drivers fight the tickets? Heck, they're VC-funded. They'll probably be on both sides! Think of it as the new "two-sided marketplace".

Maybe HN could no-code it. Find some NYC public camera feeds, pipe it to an ML algo to detect cars with vapour coming out of the exhaust, record and send off for $$.

This is why labor markets are so tight /s

Reply on news.ycombinator.com