7 comments

  • Aurornis 13 minutes ago
    I think this is getting upvoted because the headline is about surveillance with a LOTR reference. The subject is about surveillance cameras that people put in their own homes. I see all of these comments about “the panopticon” or surveilling board members and CEOs from people who have apparently not realized this is about people’s private homes.

    The authors use prose and structure to look like a scientific study, but they only interviewed some domestic workers and didn’t consider anything else, like the homeowners.

    I’m sorry, but if I invite a contractor into my house I’ve been putting temporary cameras up. It’s helpful to see when they come and go and it’s invaluable if anything goes wrong and contractors start pointing fingers at each other. Would be great if we lived in a world where everyone was trustworthy without a second thought, but we don’t. If you don’t want to put cameras up in your own home then I support you 100%. If a contractor doesn’t want to work in my home with cameras then I completely support their decision too.

  • jsLavaGoat 7 minutes ago
    Someone should train models to generate clickbait using this.
  • Almondsetat 31 minutes ago
    >We conducted semi-structured interviews with 18 UK-based DWs

    This "article" is as good as a blog post

  • gsibble 48 minutes ago
    Should domestic workers not be surveilled while doing their job?

    I get the threat of pervasive AI but this hardly seems like it.

    • swatcoder 34 minutes ago
      That depends entirely on whether you want to culture a humane trust society or a transactional surveillance society.
      • DriverDaily 28 minutes ago
        I’m not sure an absence of surveillance is what creates “humane trust”. I’m certain we had locks on doors and security guards before the internet.
        • majormajor 15 minutes ago
          Yeah the trust was gone pre-internet, pre-networked-cameras. People would've thrown doorbell cams on their front door at the same time as the deadbolt if they'd had the option.

          Many of the high-trust smaller societies before those locks were actually pretty low privacy.

        • feanaro 23 minutes ago
          Surveillance is decidedly and completely unlike locks.
          • DriverDaily 15 minutes ago
            Surveillance and locks are both imperfect solutions to the trust problem.
          • HPsquared 11 minutes ago
            Surveillance can remove the need for locks.
        • causal 17 minutes ago
          So you can also destroy trust other ways. What’s your point?
      • paytonjjones 28 minutes ago
        I think everyone wants a high trust society but you can't just remove all guardrails and expect that to be the result. The causality goes the other way.
        • newspaper1 24 minutes ago
          I would absolutely support the surveillance of CEOs and board members. They have demonstrated themselves, as a class, to not be trustworthy. I think as a society, we should be reviewing Alex Karp's decision making for instance.
          • b112 12 minutes ago
            There are hundreds of millions of CEOs, and board members. Every single company in the West has a CEO and a board.

            I've heard of some bad behaviour. I haven't heard of millions of cases of bad behaviour. Do you have numbers to back up your assertions?

            • graemep 1 minute ago
              > Every single company in the West has a CEO and a board.

              Outside the West too!

            • newspaper1 7 minutes ago
              There are orders of magnitude more workers than there are CEOs and board members. If surveiling workers is on the table, certainly the much easier and higher return task of monitoring this much smaller group, who has the potential to do much more damage to society, is a better idea.
    • thatguy0900 38 minutes ago
      Somehow we've made it the vast majority of human history without it. Or at least surveillance that is generally not great. I would wager real money that there is going to be psychological effects of 100% accurate at all times complete surveillance of a person everywhere outside of their own homes (for now, I'm sure the time is coming for that as well)
    • geraneum 34 minutes ago
      > I get the threat of pervasive AI

      I think this contradicts with your first sentence.

    • newspaper1 29 minutes ago
      No worker should be surveilled while doing their job. Only weak and insecure management would even consider something like that.
    • fithisux 39 minutes ago
      Then, stay home if you feel unsafe.
    • bigyabai 38 minutes ago
      Forget domestic workers, shouldn't you be surveilled whenever you're alone and unattended?

      When the panopticon is flipped inwards, everyone scrapes together an excuse for why their solitude is more important than others.

      • Spooky23 27 minutes ago
        Exactly. Won’t someone think of the children?
  • cs702 59 minutes ago
    The title is really clever in its association of pervasive surveillance with the all-seeing eye of evil incarnate from The Lord of the Rings.
    • bcraven 49 minutes ago
      I'm not sure that's a particularly difficult insight.
      • calmingsolitude 45 minutes ago
        Eh, millions of households have a smart speaker that's constantly recording and I doubt that the majority of people that use one have truly internalized the ramifications of having such a device at home.
        • esrauch 37 minutes ago
          Can you spell out the ramifications for the plebs?

          As far as I can tell home smart speakers are being used for warrantless mass surveillance, unlike Flock for example. Do you mean the possible future situation where they are?

      • BoingBoomTschak 43 minutes ago
        I think you're replying to sarcasm.
        • skrebbel 38 minutes ago
          I think you’re mistaking a shallow AI take for sarcasm.
          • jkestner 12 minutes ago
            My new venture-backed social network is called Wormtongue, no reason.
          • jMyles 30 minutes ago
            What a time for Poe's law.
    • exe34 48 minutes ago
      Give me a recipe for custard pie.