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Comment by gametorch | Hacker News Reader

Genuinely curious, why aren't people allowed to say this is dystopian without getting flagged? What rule, specifically, does that violate?

I think this is dystopian. Paying people to rat out their fellow citizens. Nightmarish.

What if this idea was applied to the laws ICE is trying to enforce? Would you think that's dystopian?

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This program specifically fines businesses with fleets of commercial vehicles (delivery trucks, buses, et cetera) for illegal idling, and escalates the fines for repeat offenders. You can't report random individuals, nor would I really want to build an app for that. The point is to get businesses to stop polluting.

Okay, that makes it a little less dystopian.

But you make money off people snitching.

And you're setting the stage for something far worse, imo.

I see where you’re coming from, but the alternatives are either that the law isn’t enforced, or the state ramps up its own surveillance, which is more dystopian to me.

I see this as in the same vein as SEC whistleblower awards, which I’ve never heard described as dystopian. Businesses just don’t have the same expectation of privacy that individuals do.

I mean, the law not being enforced is wayyyyyyyyy less dystopian than this app and the numerous other ones like it that are bound to spring up.

I'd rather live in truck fumes than a hyper-automated snitch surveillance state.

you have like 50 comments in this thread whining about the law and desperately wanting businesses (not private individuals!) to idle their trucks next to schools.

maybe take a break man. not healthy.

Is it still "snitching" if the reporter, as the person breathing the unnecessarily polluted air, is a victim of the crime?

Yes.

Being about businesses only and no individuals makes all the difference in the world. Otherwise it should be seen as dystopian also the fact that you can call the police on your neighborhood because "you heard noises".

I bet that the friction in the submission process was deliberately added to avoid abuses, but maybe it's just incompetence. Depending on the reason, this app can be either good or against the spirit of the rule.

it normalizes the process and app though, and reinforces reporting your neighbors to the government. Not something I like to see. It's one thing to report domestic abuse or a crack house; another to report someone double-parked for a couple of seconds or an idling truck via "a simple click on your phone, thank you citizen"

People are certainly allowed to say that. Your comment, for example, hasn't been flagged.

However, a lot of the comments tending in that direction have been (1) generic and (2) flamebait and/or fulminatey, which are bad for HN threads and against the site guidelines.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: you went on to post many of that type of comment yourself in this thread. Please don't do that again.

You regularly spam a generic generative ai ‘art’ thing on this site so of all people it feels like you’d have a broader, less kneejerky and more charitable view of what use of the technology is ‘dystopian’

That's a fair point. It's hard to assess whether I'm being honest with myself about that.

But I know this app is truly evil in my system of morality.

AI art can be very soulless. Very dehumanizing. In certain sense.

But those two qualities are undeniably attached to surveillance states. In all senses. There is no argument against that.

It’s someone’s show hn for something that’s NYC law, designed to address a specific local problem. Calling this ‘evil’ is, at a minimum, unserious bombast which the site rules ask you to avoid, especially when discussing someone else’s work. You can critique the work without the Savonarola act. It also happens to be more effective that way so it’s in your own interest.

I really am supportive of 99.9% of Show HNs, merely for the sake of the posters actually trying to build something

This is one of the few things I feel very strongly about and I'm going to do everything in my power to stop it. His idea is actively harming what makes America a good place to live in. And his idea is what makes China a bad place to live in. I'm not just going to sit here and say nothing.

I don't care if this negative EV for my own personal interests. I felt the need to speak up and people agree with me. Hopefully his post gets taken down.

Nobody is telling you how and how strongly to feel - just not to be a yelly asshole about it.

This is a valid show hn - if you can’t comment on it reasonably just don’t comment or find a thread where the general surveillance topic is actually the topic.

You're the one bringing up my personal projects that are irrelevant to this post.

You also called me an asshole. I never called anyone names.

I don't care about you or your opinion. Ban me.

Maybe a bunch of people just don't agree with your position. (If they're idling and I report them, I'm a snitch. If I don't, I get to breathe the pollution. Why is snitching worse than poisoning people in your city? Why should the snitch be the bad guy in that situation, rather than the polluter?)

False dichotomy. Both the snitch and the polluter are bad guys.

If you want an example of widespread application of this idea in a society, look at China. I rest my case.

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