- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
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BlackVue used to be the best and everyone went for these as they were really easy to install and use.
Over the years it has quickly degraded, their app got worse, privacy got worse, intrusive ads, hardware malfunctions, support going downhill… Enshittification at its finest.
Sounds like the perfect dash cam for law enforcement.
Allow anyone to view and know their location. It’s all in the name of safety! Think of the children! If I have a heart attack and my phone got stolen and my child needs to know where the closest cop is, they can check! think of the children reeeeee
Unironically want these in cop cars tho. It should help keep an eye on them when they pull shady shit if everyone can view their dashboard camera at all times
Why do dash cams or their apps need any connectivity at all?
Cop sees camera, cop grabs camera, no proof of camera.
I guess it’s good if your vehicle goes up in flames after being hit by a tanker or something. Grabbing my dashcam’s SD card might not occur to me on the way out of escaping my burning vehicle.
They tried to upsell me with my new car a few years ago. $1200 for one of these dashcams, Jesus. I said no and bought a $80 one at Officeworks.
But they said that basically the idea is if your SD card is destroyed or lost you have no evidence. This device always streams to the cloud, so theoretically it’s more robust. If the police takes your SD card at a crash (common in Australia), and then it’s lost or “lost”, your SOL. But of course you get privacy problems with any cloud…
General Info
This site compares and reviews dash cams. It’s solid.
https://dashcamtalk.com/best-dash-cams/
I’m unaffiliated with it.
.
I still have my DR750-2CH which has no cellular connection (so I should be unaffected), but it’s sad to see Blackvue enshittify like this. This dashcam has been pretty good and continues to serve me well.
But once it dies I planned on getting a USB powered one anyway (as Blackvue ones run with a barrel jack) so that I could more easily hook up a power bank in between if I planned to park the car for a while (like a week)
That sounds like a pretty obvious feature, though? I’m not saying it’s good but the original article by Nine News Australia just makes it sound like it’s just a feature of the app.
If you want to buy anything, don’t get one that has an app associated with it.
Absolutely disgusting. Who would intentionally broadcast this??? “Hey guys, I’m not home and won’t be for a while, so please rob me!”
It would be a great feature for someone who is being harassed by authorities like ICE and wants a public record to be available even if they are abducted or killed.
But you’d have to go into it knowing that’s happening. I wouldn’t otherwise want this around for any other reason. Personally.
You asked who would intentionally broadcast this. It is a feature that some people would want, and I provided an example. That example person might want it on all the time because they don’t know when they will be harassed.
I personally would not want it either.
Well, Touché
Except that it’ll also help ICE abduct and kill them…
Would be a better feature in that situation if it could store the footage on a self hosted server with a dead man switch to publish the footage…
I have a Blackvue camera, and just checked the settings. I don’t think I’ve looked at it before when setting it up, but it seems to be defaulted to off. You have to opt in to this. I’m not sure why anyone would. Maybe to attempt tracking your car if it gets stolen? I’d be pretty easy for any thief to thwart by unplugging the camera, but in the heat of the moment they might miss it.
Or maybe it’s for those vain idiots that constantly broadcast their lives as if anyone else gives a fuck, in which case I hope they get everything they deserve.
Have you traffic sniffed it or are you just trusting?
I was in bed when I checked the app, so no, but I will.
Later: looking in the app while the camera was on, I couldn’t even find the screen that showed other cameras on the map. :shrug:
Are they new to profit maximisation?? Did they forget to paywall that info? Don’t they know they could charge monies for that exact personal info, like the rest of the megacorps do?
Remember - you should probably consider that anything you “give” (ie they have the ability to get from you, regardless of tos) to a company can or is getting to known & unknown third-parties. At the very least for targeted ads.
But it’s tough in cases where alternatives don’t really exist, or are there significant hurdles for average ppl.
