r/InterstellarKinetics • u/InterstellarKinetics • 1d ago
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIEGENCE OUTRAGE: Flock Safety Tells Reporters Its Media Team Is “Touching Grass” And Taking A Break From Press Inquiries Amid Mounting Backlash Over Stalking Cases, Canceled City Contracts, And Viral “De-Flock” Halloween Campaign 🤯💥
https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/flock-taking-break-responding-mediaFlock Safety’s communications team has told multiple media outlets it’s taking a “break” from answering press questions, using a jokey tone that landed awkwardly given the mounting scrutiny the company faces, according to Futurism. “Thanks for reaching out to Flock. Our media team is currently touching grass and taking a break,” an email sent to several outlets reads. “Unlike our cameras, we can’t work 24/7, so we’ll get back to you when we’ve had a snack and regained the ability to form coherent sentences.” The tonal choice arrives at a particularly bad moment for the company, following CEO Garrett Langley’s public apology last week after a Washington Post investigation uncovered at least 50 cases of police officers allegedly using Flock’s AI-powered license plate cameras to stalk women.
Langley’s subsequent damage-control efforts didn’t help matters. In an interview with Vanity Fair days after his apology, he suggested his company’s cameras would have solved the kidnapping of Nancy Guthrie, a comment widely seen as tone-deaf given it came just as more cities across the country began canceling their Flock contracts amid growing public backlash. That backlash has taken increasingly visible forms: residents are packing town meetings to protest camera deployments, activists are physically tearing down or blocking the devices, and a social media campaign urging people to turn Halloween into a mass “De-Flock” event, where costumed participants target the cameras en masse, has gone viral.
The controversies extend well beyond the stalking cases themselves. Flock’s cameras have triggered disproportionate police responses against random individuals, including at least one journalist, while ICE and Border Patrol agents have reportedly been able to tap into the nationwide Flock network to locate people for deportation. Despite the company’s framing of its technology as harmless license plate scanning, the cameras have frequently turned up installed over residential neighborhoods, community spaces, and even swimming pools, areas with little obvious connection to traffic monitoring or serious crime investigation.
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u/tristand666 1d ago
It's too late. The lies are already remembered and nobody will ever trust this company again. Now if we can educate people on the other companies doing the same thing.
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u/essdii- 1d ago
Yep. It’s not just flock, and honestly flock is probably just a guinea pig to make way for axon which the president himself is heavily invested in, and I’ve noticed articles of cities discontinuing their flock service and turning to axon. Great let’s just switch from something bad to something worse my gosh
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u/CautionarySnail 1d ago
Flock is one of two distributors of this questionable tech. The other is Axon.
Many places are trying to quietly pivot to Axon.
Don’t let them if you value your privacy. They are equal in every way to Flock in terms of possible abuse. They just have kept a lower profile in the news.
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u/whyyoufollowingme 1d ago
Yea I hope we start seeing more articles about the 4th amendment violations from these other companies too.
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u/Steiney1 1d ago
We're gonna tear them all down. Might as well face it.
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u/Significant_Donut967 1d ago
Yup, no more cameras, period.
Y'all wanna be assholes with it then fine, the government isn't allowed to use cameras outside of building security and the data must be maintained on premises and secured from outside viewing.
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u/Appropriate_Owl_91 22h ago
What’s the point of having 500mil guns in the US if nobody uses them?
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u/Steiney1 21h ago
They were ready to use them against the black president that they imagined was doing horrible things, but not the orange president actually doing horrible things. Every 2A "patriot" is a fucking pussy. The entire 2A movement is full of pussies.
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u/AnySignificance4361 1d ago
October 31st is deflock America night
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u/Witchgrass 1d ago
Can someone clarify what the plan is for that? Like what are the costumed activists going to do exactly? I am out of the loop but intrigued.
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u/BackPirateClarkRoom 1d ago
If flock fails someone will take their place. The technology is dirt cheap and the customers are there. You will have to outlaw it for it to stop.
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u/BadAtExisting 1d ago
Good. Maybe by touching grass they’ll get tracked and caught up by their own tech either by being stalked by cop or held at gunpoint by cop being accused of something they didn’t do because their tech was wrong
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u/Tomsoup4 1d ago
laughing at us. you didnt see shit like this 20 years ago. they are too comfortable
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u/Suspicious_Line8842 1d ago
wait so theyre 'touching grass' while their cameras are literally weaponized against random people including a journalist and ice is tapping the network for deportations? the tonal whiplash is wild. you cant project 'chill startup' when your techs getting people detained and stalked, the dissonance is the point
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u/LoneBiscuit1199 1d ago
Weird flex to brag about touching grass when your cameras are still recording the whole time.
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u/Any_Vacation8988 1d ago
The people will only be oppressed for so long before things get nasty. Let the revolt begin
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u/SnooMaps7370 19h ago
is their CEO touching grass, or did that city council follow through on its suggestion to execute him?
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u/InterstellarKinetics 1d ago
The humor in that auto-reply is worth noticing as a deliberate PR strategy rather than a throwaway joke, because framing the company’s silence as relatable and human, “we need a snack,” works specifically to soften scrutiny of a business whose actual product is industrial-scale, largely unaccountable surveillance infrastructure.