> Would his statements be better if he were pro-Gaza or something else?
How about he and CBS News and TikTok be neutral and truth seeking rather than being pro-Israel or pro-Palestinian? I would like news organizations to be truth seeking and I would like social media to not be tinting my view of the world towards what their billionaire owners want.
> How about he and CBS News and TikTok be neutral and truth seeking rather than being pro-Israel or pro-Palestinian?
I agree. But easier said than done. Especially when it comes to something as polarising as Gaza, playing the moderate essentially cedes the debate. (Both sources you mention are supported by ads. Their metric is engagement, not informativeness.)
> Especially when it comes to something as polarising as Gaza
One should expect news sources to report that the main Israeli human rights groups believe it is a genocide, the main international human rights groups believe it is a genocide, UN investigatory panels believe it is a genocide, genocide scholars believe it is a genocide:
Those that disagree with this assessment are in a minority. But to you it is just "polarizing."
You are denying reality that is in front of you because you want to. And this is resulting in more families being wiped out, people starving to death and for Netanyahu and his coalition that want to "voluntary migrate" the Palestinians away from Gaza for Israeli settlements: https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/24/middleeast/israel-approves-pr...
The point is this comes down to a foreign policy disagreement that isn’t germane to Ellison’s comments on surveillance. (I can come with a litany of policy disagreements with anyone of Ellison’s stature, some of which I probably feel about strongly.)
Read in good faith, it’s overzealous advocacy. In bad faith, which I don’t assume here, it serves to get this discussion flagged off the front page.
2. Conservative billionaires, including Ellison, consolidating ownership of social media, print media, TV media, etc.
3. NSPM-7 & the current admin's appetite to criminalize speech
4. The current administration kowtows to Netanyahu, who relishes in conservative ownership of TikTok
The dots are all there: if you express something that doesn't following an accepted US stance, like maybe its stance on Israel, maybe on TikTok, it gives Trump the ability to easily find, label & punish you as a terrorist, maybe even at Netanyahu's request. Trump's desire to do things like this has been explicitly stated since the death of Charlie Kirk. He's always talked about his desires to throw his political enemies in jail.
Even before this, the admin has been targeting people like Mahmoud Khalil, Mario Guevara, etc. for speech.
You don't think that the fact that Ellison is a staunch defender of regimes that disregard the international order in favour of military might is relevant to the fact that is also advocating for building a surveillance state?
In case you don't, to me it's painfully clear that these are just different aspects of the move towards more authoritarian forms of government. You CANNOT support a genocide and expect that this will not have an effect on democracy.
EDIT: Also note that I am trying to take your comments on good faith, but characterising support for genocide as "a foreign policy disagreement" feels a bit like an understatement.
> it's painfully clear that these are just different aspects of the move towards more authoritarian forms of government
Sure. But, like, the evidence for that is the advocacy for a surveillance state. Not his support for a foreign policy project that yes, involves supporting an autocratic government in Israel (fighting, let’s be fair, an autocratic force in Gaza backed by an autocratic state in Iran), but also a whole bunch of other irrelevant things.
Yeah. His property would be better without Lanai in them, his businesses would be better without him at the helm, and his opinions would indeed be better if he wasn't rationalizing a genocide.
Larry Ellison cannot be anthropomorphized. His entire life is one sociopathic, misanthropic soap opera.
It would certainly better support his statement that the people are on their best behavior if being monitored.
If his statement is true, then the real Larry Ellison (not publicly known one) is worse than a genocide supporter. He basically discredits himself by making that statement.
> It would certainly better support his statement that the people are on their best behavior if being monitored
It literally wouldn’t. Whether people behave better when surveilled in independently verifiable. Whether or not bees exist doesn’t revolve around the political beliefs of the person claiming they do.
I found it amusing that someone would say something to the effect of "killing people is the furthest I am willing to go, but not further", as if there is any further...
Anyway, I agree it is a verifiable fact, but it also can be a personal belief. Does L.E. provide any evidence, or is he stating it authoritatively?
In any case, one big piece of evidence we have for the claim is that Israel doesn't allow any foreign journalists in Gaza, and is trying to control Tiktok, in which L.E. seems to be involved.
So by pointing that belief out, L.E. indicates he is even a worse guy, because in some cases he disagrees with such independent monitoring.
> one big piece of evidence we have for the claim is that Israel doesn't allow any foreign journalists in Gaza, and is trying to control Tiktok, in which L.E. seems to be involved
This is relevant! Consider how much more interesting the top comment would be if it called out this hypocrisy instead of the same old 'so and so is pro X and herego a bad guy'.
> It was the first conflict in which military action was precipitated by media involvement. The war grew out of U.S. interest in a fight for revolution between the Spanish military and citizens of their Cuban colony. American newspapers fanned the flames of interest in the war by fabricating atrocities which justified intervention in a number of Spanish colonies worldwide.
The single largest private donor the IDF is pushing for a very anti American policy. I think it’s extremely relevant to point out their true loyalties lie elsewhere.
> what does this have to do with the story?
This is like seeing a web page not load due to a 504, then asking why people are discussing a database failure when your page isn’t loading.
Patterns like Ellison are rife in American politics (look at some of trumps major donors, guys like Bill Ackman were lifelong dems that suddenly because conservative after Oct 7). It’s the reason we’re one of the only countries defending the genocide in Gaza. It plays a large part in our otherwise polarized congress showing bipartisan support for financing Israel’s “defenses”.
America makes a lot of anti American decisions because guys like Ellison are some of the most powerful in the country.
If anybody even insinuates that Weiss or Ellison have dual loyalty because of this they will be accused of anti-semitism.
The hard truth is that weaponizing your money — earned largely from Americans — to aid a foreign country at the expense of America is about as un-American as it gets. Aside from the potentially valid argument that your voice shouldn’t be louder just because you are a billionaire — you are corrupting American foreign policy and American stature in the world to advance the agenda of Israel. That is a betrayal of America.
I think most of the pro-Israel crowd legitimately believe that Israel's interests are aligned with the U.S.'s interests. The same with Canada, the U.K., and Australia. We share a set of values.
Israel does a lot of dirty work in fighting back against the darker forces of middle east terrorism, and it's reasonable to believe it is in the U.S.'s interest to let Israel do that work rather than take it on itself. It is a similar argument to why the U.S. should back Ukraine in the fight against Russia.
You can of course disagree with the above (arguing against interventionism; the risk of blowback; that Israel is creating more terrorism than it is solving; etc.), but I truly don't believe that any of the pro-Israel crowd believes they are acting against the U.S. interest.
Foreign policy is almost universally a quid pro quo. Whilst there may be something for the USA in this it feels very asymmetric unless I am missing something.
> Foreign policy is almost universally a quid pro quo
At the state level, often. At the individual level, I don't think so.
My pet war is Ukraine. I don't have any personal stake in the war. I just think it's abhorrent and poses a long-term risk to the security interests of places and people I care about. I can construct that into a narrative of fulfilling American geopolitical interests, but that's an exercise I'd be engaging in after I'd come to my view based on, essentially, a moral preference.
That preference is real. But it's mine and far from universal. That someone thinks Russia is justified in invading Ukraine is frankly irrelevant to the validity of their statements on other matters. That's where I'm calling bullshit on this connection.
What others have been doing thus far has not been helping either. The problem just gets worse every passing day. How many have to be killed using American money until this problem is eradicated?
I would love it if everyone who proposed more surveillance would be subject to that self same surveillance for at least a year before being allowed to push it onto other people. Go through their bank accounts with a fine toothed comb. Watch them om CCTV everywhere they go. Track their online activity. Scan all their messages for sexual abuse material. Go through all their luggage at every checkpoint. Do a cavity search at every border. Take their temperature whenever they want to enter a crowded venue.
Tired of all these "rules for thee" while certain classes remain unaffected.
I encourage people making snap comments to read at least one entire paragraph of the article:
> “We’re going to have supervision,” Ellison said. “Every police officer is going to be supervised at all times, and if there’s a problem, AI will report that problem and report it to the appropriate person. Citizens will be on their best behavior because we are constantly recording and reporting everything that’s going on.”
I'd say I'm about as much against the modern surveillance state as the next codger, but that doesn't mean I don't understand its implications. People do act differently when they know they are being watched. Even more so when they know they are being recorded.
There's still quite a bit of federation in that each store or home has its own cameras, and chaining them together to get an end-to-end view of a series of events is still manual. But that won't be like that forever. Whether we like it or not, that's only going to get easier.
We stop collaborating. Technologists, engineers, and support staff make this machine run. It must be made personally infeasible to continue contributing to our own shortsighted destruction. The incentive structure can and must be changed.
> We stop collaborating. Technologists, engineers, and support staff make this machine run.
"We" don't all view the world through the same lens. And moreover not on all matters. Your framing is erroneous, which leads to incorrect assumptions and strategy.
It may very well be true that in some cases, a bad actor asking you to do a bad thing X will simply find someone else to do it. However, consider the following:
* If there were someone more desperate than you and willing to do X, they would demand lower compensation, and the bad actor wouldn't even be talking to you.
* By saying no, you are inherently making bad thing X more expensive, because said bad actor has to spend more resources finding someone else to do it.
* Saying no gives cover for your peers who disagree with X to also say no.
* The person said bad actor finally finds to do X will inherently have more leverage to ask for greater compensation due to the fact that you, by saying no, have shrunk the pool of people capable of doing X.
* If enough people say no, said bad actor may never find someone both capable of doing X and willing to do it for the price point the bad actor is willing/able to pay.
I don't turn down jobs I disagree with because I necessarily believe it will stop those jobs from happening. I'm satisfied enough with keeping my conscience clear and knowing I made the job a little harder to accomplish.
> People do act differently when they know they are being watched
I really want to see more evidence for this. People act differently when they face consequences. More surveillance without enforcement wouldn’t be expected to positively change behaviour.
Just ask GPT, the awareness of being observed significantly impacts behavior even in rather primitive animals:
Research has demonstrated these behavioral changes in various species, including:
Primates: Monkeys and apes often alter their social interactions and grooming behaviors when they know they are being observed by humans or other primates.
Birds: Studies have shown that birds may change their foraging behavior when they detect human presence, often becoming more cautious.
Fish: Some fish species exhibit changes in swimming patterns and social behavior when they sense they are being watched.
These behavioral adaptations are thought to be evolutionary responses that help animals avoid predation and enhance their survival in the wild.
behavior will only get worse once people figure out that enforcement will either be entirely selective (based on the friends of whoever controls the programming) or entirely arbitrary. people will wish for anarcho-tyranny.
This. All that will happen is that if you come to the wrong person's attention your 'record' will be checked and consequences leveled. Too much happens in the world for our system to punish everyone. But to be able to selectively punish whoever you want at the push of a button, that is power. Maybe you didn't do anything. But your kids? Your business partners? Someone did something, if we record/save everything and look closely. Even if you are perfect we can make you a pariah if it get's known that anyone around you risks themselves/their children getting backlash for associating with you.
Cameras on police are mostly irrelevant. This has been proved repeatedly, at least as far back as Rodney King in 1992. We saw the video of the police beating Rodney King, but the police were nonetheless protected by the legal system. It's extremely rare for police to suffer consequences from their behavior.
Any minor transgression from most people will be punished severely. Even the worst transgression from powerful people will be forgiven. That's how our system works. Don't ever think that Orwellian surveillance will put everyone on a level playing field. As an ultra-powerful person, Larry Ellison is well aware of this.
In "a randomized controlled trial involving more than 400 police officers in Las Vegas, Nevada...officers equipped with body-worn cameras generated fewer complaints and use of force reports relative to officers without cameras. BWC officers also made more arrests and issued more citations than their non-BWC counterparts" [1].
More broadly, "there remains substantial uncertainty about whether BWCs can reduce officer use of force, but the variation in effects suggests there may be conditions in which BWC could be effective" [2]. ("Restricting officer discretion in turning on and off BWCs may reduce police use of force," and while "BWCs may reduce the number of citizen complaints against police officers...it is unclear why complaints decline.")
"Our meta‐analysis of 30 studies and 116 effects of police use of BWCs finds that this technology produces few clear or consistent impacts on police or citizen behaviors."
Overall, the effects are unclear. Drill in and there is statistical significance. It's not fair to say it's irrelevant, because we do have cases where it works. There are just more confounding variables than we've given attention to.
Video AI fraud is going to skyrocket, and you know there will be service organizations that cater to this "consumer need". Ellison is a short sighted thinker, opening Pandora's Box.
Great, please apply this to yourself, and livestream all of the time, leave the rest of us out of this.
People don't have one standard of behavior. I won't tell my kid jokes, I tell my wife. I won't complain about people in public, the way I vent to my sister (who gets it is just me venting, not how I feel all the time". I am not going to speak to a cop as I'm getting a speeding ticket, they way I will talk to one who is harassing a friend at a parade.
I won't talk to / about a co-worker in a meeting, the way I talk to someone he just (rightly, but very meanly) chewed out, and who needs a boss who listens, or will I talk to him in a meeting the way I will (a tad later) chew him out for making a coworker cry.
This take is so naive and emotionally / socially unintelligent about human behavior in various situations.
Even if he was sincere about wanting to hold the police accountable, hand-waving away that AI will figure it out correctly has not been working out for so far.
The AI is working perfectly for the citizen surveillance use case though. It will provide "reasonable" suspicion on anyone at any time.
We have been mired in a surveillance state for a long time now. They now will have the processing power to make sure nobody can keep their head down and slip through the cracks. I imagine it's going to be a rough century.
> People do act differently when they know they are being watched. Even more so when they know they are being recorded.
London is the most surveilled city in the world outside China, in terms of the number of intelligent cameras they have around the city, yet that does not stop crime from being significantly reduced.
Seems to be an awful lot of that recently to justify anything, from mass surveillance to crypto fascism. "Its just how things are guys, law of nature!".
As citizens of a civilized society, we collectively get to shape and orient how legislation is put into practice. But ofc, if all you and people like you have to offer is pre-deterministic fallacies, then we are indeed screwed.
If you read the article it actually outlines how Ellison views the connection between AI and surveillance.
Police surveillance is just one part, combining different data sources and analyzing them through AI is how he envisions law enforcement to function. That cops aren't above that is perfectly coherent with that.
I just assume that there's a recording of me, at pretty much all times. I have always acted as if I was under scrutiny, anyway, so it's not been that big a deal, but it is annoying, to have it as a fact of life; as opposed to a personal choice for living.
Even when people are doing stuff like browsing pr0n, there's likely to be someone paying attention. Maybe not like those silly spam emails, but they know that we watched dwarf pr0n.
Not necessarily. Broadly. Advocacy, petitioning, calling, electioneering, drafting, lobbying, organising, et cetera.
A civically inactive citizenry frankly doesn’t have that much to lose from surveillance. Someone failing to exercise their political rights (EDIT: leaving them unexercised) pretty clearly communicates the value they place in them.
Genuinely asked if you’re politically engaged because I’m curious how that squares with your views on this topic?
Most Americans are not civically engaged. That’s sort of expected. Their principal opposition to surveillance revolves around being creeped out. Most folks who are civically engaged, on the other hand, recognise the risks to themselves and their projects if the opposition can command these tools. (As well as the power that would come with commanding them oneself.) If that link is no longer true, or not universally valid, I’m genuinely interested in hearing it. Because that implies independent civic action can survive—or potentially even thrive in—a modern surveillance state.
Seems a lot more an indictment. Maybe you might consider phrasing it differently.
I'm a recovering drug addict. I have quite an appreciation for privacy and anonymity. I have a lot more skin in the game than most.
However, there's the fantasy world in our heads, and the reality of the truth. These don't always overlap.
It's my job to work with yucchy reality. It doesn't give a damn what I think it should be. It's my responsibility to modify my approach to be most effective, given the context.
"When the map and the terrain disagree; believe the terrain." - Swiss Army aphorism
Why is it that every single person born between 1940 and 1965 (or making more than $1 million per year) just wants to see all freedoms erased and every natural resource exhausted for their personal comfort?
Because they already own those assets and don't want anyone else to have them. The perception of wealth is always relative so if I can't make any more to maintain my status I must ensure that others can't get what I have.
Not sure if the causality there is the right way around, I would suggest that because they have these beliefs they are allowed to amass that wealth. Oracle is a CIA spin-off (1977), they even kept the code name. The CIA works closely with Mossad. The 'abolish all billionaires' plan is encouraged precisely because it will be ineffective - they're assets of the state secret police and good luck abolishing that.
People making a meager $1 million a year aren't in the same universe as Larry.
For one, he has direct access to (and these days also likely direct influence over) some of the most important members of the legislative and executive branches of the government.
This is deeply unfair. Plenty of people, including those responsible for more focus on environment and human rights, are in that age group. They are leaders and allies. Ageism is just another way divide society.
May I ask what your rationale was for picking $1m as the threshold? Hundreds of thousands of Americans make between $1m and $5m (another arbitrary range) and millions of Americans worth more than $1m.
Absolutely correct, but also... there is something about having your early growing-up years be in the context of consistent 5-6% annual GDP growth rates and the rollout of interstates/highways, performance automobiles, massive urbanization and the development of giant suburbs with McMansions, two cars in every garage, etc. etc. ... to convince you that you deserve prosperity, that exponential growth, and exploding CO2 emitting energy use is the Natural Order Of Things.
It so happens that in parts of North America this life experience is associated mostly with a certain set of of age/demographics.
There are still plenty of people in that group who don't want performance vehicles, highways, McMansions &c. Not only are there people who didn't "benefit" from that environment, there are many people who chose to focus on the needs of the planet or others. A lot of this comes down to urban/suburban/rural divides.
It's just really counterproductive to focus on these easy "majority" stats that break down on examination and contribute to the polarization of society.
Lately people with high a level of wealth and power like Ellison view themselves as a privileged class and have no pretense that their machinations should apply equally to all. The erosion of that norm, equality of all under the law, is the elephant in the room. If we can preserve that norm, points like yours easily undermine these arguments.
"Citizens will be on their best behavior because we are constantly recording and reporting everything that’s going on"
Video games and YouTube can't be entirely to blame for the significant falls in alcohol consumption and the night entertainment industry generally. People don't want to get drunk, do something stupid, and end up on blast all over the Internet now that everyone's carrying a camera connected to the entire world in real time.
I am absolutely convinced as well that this a huge factor behind younger generations not drinking as much, at least not in public. One night of fun going bad would have been forgotten in the 90s, now it could very well cost you your job or schooling.
Heck forget drinking, these days there's always someone nearby who's ready to upload your worst moment to Tiktok, so don't you dare have mental health issues either.
Ultimately both are just movies and I dislike when people compare them to the real world given how exaggerated they are, but the basic premise of Brazil happens regularly: one piece of paperwork filed incorrectly can seriously impact your life.
This relies on, normatively, shame, and legally, a Stasi-esque police state. I don’t know what about the last twenty years of politics or culture would imply the former is an option.
It feels like a handful of billionaires and politicians recently decided that the world’s problems aren’t rooted in them or the systems that elevated them. Since the system worked for them, it must be sound; the problem must be everyone else. Their solution seems to be more control, more oversight, and a few technocratic tweaks. And if we just let them keep steering society, utopia is right around the corner.
We should tax opinions like this right out of existence.
This dude has almost half a trillion dollars to his name.
Larry, instead of waxing lyrical about your desire for a police state, how about you bugger off to a private island and establish your own society there, and leave the rest of the world for people who don't clamor for more money after making hundreds of billions of dollars.
Some people just aren't satisfied with having too much. I'm not in favor of a "abolish billionaires" catch-all policy, but from having met a bunch of billionaires, some just need to call it a day and spend more time with their families.
You can get $10 million or even $100 million because you love business and love making money. When you start to approach levels north of $1 billion, you don't get there unless you just love something more than money. That amount of money is unnecessary for any person to materially better their own or their family's lives. You only get there if you love power. This is why so many billionaires seem to be turning into psychopaths - they were already power addicts and they just get to levels of wealth that enables them to express it fully. They never wanted islands and jets. They want complete control.
It could be so easy, just don't use anything related to Oracle. But it's the same as back in the days with IBM - nobody gets fired by buying stuff from Oracle.
It's interesting this thread is flagged, given that the scenario is a direct consequence of advances of technology, AI, and worship of wealth -- seems very core HN.
Entities with this level of resources and influence have very little in common with people, other than biology. We would do well to instead perceive them as dangerous alien parasites -- not precisely hostile, but lacking social connection to the rest of us, and indifferent to the suffering of humanity.
Reminder that London is the most surveilled city in the world and also has very high petty crime. Nonstop recording doesn't change anything unless laws are actually enforced.
Sure. Let's do a pilot run on billionaires, then a second pilot with the top-10%. If by then everyone still agrees, we can discuss a society-wide roll-out.
No doubt Ellison is a weirdo with some weird aspirations, but consider that this story came out last year and is being posted again everywhere since the TikTok deal is drawing near. Someone is going to a lot of trouble to try to convince us all of something.
The fact that an out of touch billionaire might say such a thing doesn't bother me much, he's out of touch after all.
The fact that we reliably and repeatedly see peasants (i.e. any less equal animal, so everyone here) who have no such excuse cheerleading for specific implementations in furtherance of their pet issues bothers me greatly. I'd say you ought to know better, but you do. When these subjects are discussed on a general level everyone acknowledges they're bad so clearly everyone gets it on a big picture level. But when the discussion is speed cameras, surveillance at the park, siphoning off of mundane consumer financial transaction data, etc, etc those things have strong support. People are clearly happy to put up with the threats posed by pervasive surveillance lest some other peasant step the slightest bit out of line and get away with it. I think this contradiction speaks volumes about character.
He's not out of touch. He's the first or second richest person on Earth, he has substantial influence over the president of the United States, and he's about to control one of the largest media empires in the country. You should be bothered by what he says because whatever dumb idea he has is going to become reality. He's one of the most powerful people on the planet.
Sure, he might know what he's saying in a sort of evil mustache twirling realpolitik way. But as someone who experiences everything in a different way than the other 99.99% of society because of his wealth and power he is tautologically "out of touch".
"we'll just surveil everything and use AI and it'll work" " = "let them eat cake". What he's peddling just won't work (in all likelihood) and everybody else (most of the other 99.99%) knows it.
Billionaires are out of touch because their money, their power, and their social circle insulates them from the challenges everyday people experience. Their goals are to find ways to protect and expand their wealth and their power. You don’t become a billionaire by looking out for other people.
Their goals and their perspectives should mean that they have absolutely no business making policy decisions for society but unfortunately people are naive and easily influenced.
It is pretty clear that Ellison seeks to shape the society he lives in and since he has the means to do so, that clearly makes him more in touch than every single ordinary person.
>Their goals and their perspectives should mean that they have absolutely no business making policy decisions
He doesn't make policy decisions and claiming he does completely undermines how corporations and their leaders wield their influence.
A very successful evergreen (authoritarian) playbook is to keep people anxious, so that they'll accede -- nay demand -- to ever more draconian, reactionary policies.
Something we're experiencing firsthand right now in the USA.
My gripe is even more meta than that. It's an unwillingness to mentally grapple with what they're advocating for and if they do understand it then
Like if we want to run society with summary execution for petty thieves or inequality under the law or whatever then fine, but have the balls to say that, because without an understanding of the goals and acceptable tradeoffs we can't effectively pursue the goals without hitting unacceptable tradeoffs.
But people don't come out and say these things because if you reason about the implications it's pretty clear they're shit ideas so what people do instead is lie and misdirect and whatnot in order to advocate for "bad in principal, arguably positive in result" things on their pet issue. But when you multiply by everyone's pet issues we get the current garbage and current trajectory.
I think part of the problem is that as material plenty increases the number of people partaking in discourse because they have existential problems that need solving goes down so discourse is increasingly dominated by "fake problems". This is also why you're seeing a pendulum shift away from "feel good" policies toward more "tough decision" policies as it gets harder for people in the lower majority of society (70%, 80%, idk) to make ends meet. So basically I'm hopeful that things get more honest and more sane as we get poorer, which sucks, I guess, but hey, silver linings.
Remind me, is this the guy who keeps landing his plane at the airport after it's closed, against the rules? On camera? Is that recording of him putting him on his best behavior? No, it's actually not.
I think this warrants an investigation as to at what point exactly did he completely disconnect from our reality. I think another parallel investigation should be begun as to how such a phenomenon could have been dismissed as science fiction when we have living evidence of it.
This goes double for him personally. I take his insistence on singing the praises for pervasive surveillance while avoiding it himself as an admission of him committing the worst crimes.
I don't know but isn't this the usual go-to for all those supporting the surveillance state? Think of the kids? But the terrorists? What's good for the goose is good for the gander, if he eschews being surveilled just like everyone else then it's because he wants to commit the crimes that we want to prevent others committing. Take your pick.
GP's claim is that UK is massively surveilled and the UK is unsafe, therefore surveillance does not improve safety. However the UK is a long way above the USA; if one wants to argue that the surveillance isn't the cause of the safety, they can, but they can't take that for granted by snarkily saying the UK isn't safe.
If I was trying to say that the UK is safe because it's #30 on the Peace Index when the USA was higher, then my comment wouldn't carry much weight. Or if the USA was a place or two behind then my comment wouldn't be strong.
Larry Ellison is in the USA and presumably his "Citizens will be on their best behaviour" is mostly aimed at USA citizens, and HN and the internet are USA-centric so USA makes a big obvious comparison.
No. Cameras will only help potentially identify someone after the fact. At some point we may find ourselves in a Black Mirror dystopia where AI is used to precog individuals to determine someone is going to commit a crime where video surveillance helps locate this person before the crime is committed. However, since no crime has been committed, there's no reason to detain them. Unless, you just really want to commit to that dystopian nightmare of allowing AI to make those decisions.
I'm actually having difficulties trying to find where the UK was brought into it if not by the commenter in question. If we are pointing out lapse of context, that is.
this proves that freedom of speech is the only thing that ever mattered. the left toyed with it and now its the right turn. we can see now the same thing being deployed in UK targeting people sending memes. It will be same for the US.
don't ever create a precedent if you dont want your enemies to use your tools against you. that + the fact that LLMs will accelerate a lot of the surveillance industry.
This is the fascist dream. Who defines 'Best Behavior?' Whoever owns the cameras, and the cops.
Criticize the president? Not best behavior.
Kiss someone of your sex/gender? Not best behavior.
Call AI stupid? Not best behavior.
Whistleblower on out a deadly chemical leak? Not best behavior.
Disagree with a politician? Not best behavior.
Defined LGBTQ+ people's rights? Not best behavior.
Criticize Isreal ? Not best behavior.
They are going to define "best behavior" in a way that never threatens their feelings, let alone threatens their powers, if you let them.
Looking at that list of extremist indicators, I would agree that they qualify as common beliefs. It's hard to be too outraged though, because they also seem to genuinely reflect destructive beliefs that are absolutely antithetical to American society.
At one point, being gay was against the law, abortion is against the law in some places, at one time being an atheist could get your head cut off. Let's do some nonstop recording of Larry Ellison, his children, his entire family, his neighbors, because they'll "be on their best behavior, a midnight nonstop recording"
The rich and elite never think about these things because they never consider that it might also effect them.
With that much money, you stop being any any category. You now become extra-categorical. If someone tries to hold you accountable to the rules of some category you don’t feel like you should, you just spend money to make the situation go away
A surprising number of Russian oligarchs were very surprised to find their wealth didn't protect them from a crunchy encounter with the ground after mysteriously falling out of a window.
Evil always eats its own. Why would the US be any different? It only takes one ruthlessly ambitious murderous psychopath with a deviant personal life to spoil things for everyone.
Is your contention that the only anti-gun countries are, er, the UK and Singapore?
And to be honest, the UK surveillance thing is somewhat exaggerated; it's highly London-centric, and they're mostly privately-owned cameras; the main driving factor is the insurance industry.
Ireland, say, has some of the strictest gun laws in the developed world, and doesn't have a large number of CCTVs or other forms of surveillance.
"And to be honest, the UK surveillance thing is somewhat exaggerated; it's highly London-centric, and they're mostly privately-owned cameras; the main driving factor is the insurance industry."
The big cities is where the most crime happens. It's not really 'exaggerated'. If you legally aren't allowed to protect yourself during a crime, it's best to have a camera in place that catches the person that's doing it (and put fear in others, so the situation is avoided).
"Ireland, say, has some of the strictest gun laws in the developed world, and doesn't have a large number of CCTVs or other forms of surveillance."
Not true. Until a couple of decades ago, there was very little surveillance of Western European, and if citizens thought about guns at all, antipathy would have been the dominant attitude. Nevertheless, there was very little “bad behaviour” since the Second World War ended.
You can google it yourself: "does ireland have surveillance cameras"
"Where you'll find surveillance cameras:
Public Transport: Cameras are installed on Luas trams and at major train and bus stations.
Public Buildings: The Office of Public Works (OPW) uses security cameras in public buildings.
Streets and Cities: An Garda Síochána has a network of cameras, and community groups and businesses also request and install them in their towns and cities.
Private Businesses: CCTV systems are prevalent in banks, casinos, pubs, shopping centers, and large department stores.
Private Homes: Many homeowners use security cameras for protection, with potential eligibility for insurance discounts"
Have you even been to Ireland? Because it sure looks like they have camera systems everywhere.
It seems nobody wants to actually reduce crime here. You want:
Larry Ellison is ultra-pro Israel if you didn't know.
He and others are pushing for Bari Weiss take a key role at CBS to better "defend Israel":
https://nypost.com/2025/09/19/media/shari-redstone-says-bari...
And many people are worried about a similar type of agenda setting at TikTok now:
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/will-tiktoks-new-own...
Netanyahu, for his part, believes it is super consequential for Ellison to takeover TikTok:
https://x.com/TheTNHoller/status/1972326967983923636 (Video)
https://jewishinsider.com/2025/09/tiktok-sale-netanyahu-amer... (Summary)
(And if that wasn't enough, Ellison has his eyes set on Warner Brothers next, which includes CNN: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/11/business/media/paramount-... )
That’s a study shoehorn…
Would his statements be better if he were pro-Gaza or something else?
> Would his statements be better if he were pro-Gaza or something else?
How about he and CBS News and TikTok be neutral and truth seeking rather than being pro-Israel or pro-Palestinian? I would like news organizations to be truth seeking and I would like social media to not be tinting my view of the world towards what their billionaire owners want.
Maybe that is too much?
> How about he and CBS News and TikTok be neutral and truth seeking rather than being pro-Israel or pro-Palestinian?
I agree. But easier said than done. Especially when it comes to something as polarising as Gaza, playing the moderate essentially cedes the debate. (Both sources you mention are supported by ads. Their metric is engagement, not informativeness.)
> Especially when it comes to something as polarising as Gaza
One should expect news sources to report that the main Israeli human rights groups believe it is a genocide, the main international human rights groups believe it is a genocide, UN investigatory panels believe it is a genocide, genocide scholars believe it is a genocide:
https://www.btselem.org/publications/202507_our_genocide
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/12/amnesty-inter...
https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/09/israel-has-c...
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cde3eyzdr63o
Those that disagree with this assessment are in a minority. But to you it is just "polarizing."
You are denying reality that is in front of you because you want to. And this is resulting in more families being wiped out, people starving to death and for Netanyahu and his coalition that want to "voluntary migrate" the Palestinians away from Gaza for Israeli settlements: https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/24/middleeast/israel-approves-pr...
Yes, because I have less trust in people who support genocide than those who do not.
Well, yes, it would be better if he didn't amplify propaganda for the country that is committing a genocide and would raise awareness for the victims.
Is this not self-evident?
The point is this comes down to a foreign policy disagreement that isn’t germane to Ellison’s comments on surveillance. (I can come with a litany of policy disagreements with anyone of Ellison’s stature, some of which I probably feel about strongly.)
Read in good faith, it’s overzealous advocacy. In bad faith, which I don’t assume here, it serves to get this discussion flagged off the front page.
These things are not happening in a vacuum:
1. Ellison's comments about surveillance
2. Conservative billionaires, including Ellison, consolidating ownership of social media, print media, TV media, etc.
3. NSPM-7 & the current admin's appetite to criminalize speech
4. The current administration kowtows to Netanyahu, who relishes in conservative ownership of TikTok
The dots are all there: if you express something that doesn't following an accepted US stance, like maybe its stance on Israel, maybe on TikTok, it gives Trump the ability to easily find, label & punish you as a terrorist, maybe even at Netanyahu's request. Trump's desire to do things like this has been explicitly stated since the death of Charlie Kirk. He's always talked about his desires to throw his political enemies in jail.
Even before this, the admin has been targeting people like Mahmoud Khalil, Mario Guevara, etc. for speech.
You don't think that the fact that Ellison is a staunch defender of regimes that disregard the international order in favour of military might is relevant to the fact that is also advocating for building a surveillance state?
In case you don't, to me it's painfully clear that these are just different aspects of the move towards more authoritarian forms of government. You CANNOT support a genocide and expect that this will not have an effect on democracy.
EDIT: Also note that I am trying to take your comments on good faith, but characterising support for genocide as "a foreign policy disagreement" feels a bit like an understatement.
> it's painfully clear that these are just different aspects of the move towards more authoritarian forms of government
Sure. But, like, the evidence for that is the advocacy for a surveillance state. Not his support for a foreign policy project that yes, involves supporting an autocratic government in Israel (fighting, let’s be fair, an autocratic force in Gaza backed by an autocratic state in Iran), but also a whole bunch of other irrelevant things.
I don't think I understand your point, beyond downplaying the severity of current events.
I’m not downplaying the severity of anything. Just its relevance. Someone can be severe and irrelevant, and I think that’s the case here.
Your language suggests a sort of "explaining away" that is pernicious in certain cultures abroad.
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> beyond downplaying the severity of current events.
He is definitely calling it "polarizing" and minimizing it. I infer that he is supportive of it then.
Yeah. His property would be better without Lanai in them, his businesses would be better without him at the helm, and his opinions would indeed be better if he wasn't rationalizing a genocide.
Larry Ellison cannot be anthropomorphized. His entire life is one sociopathic, misanthropic soap opera.
It would certainly better support his statement that the people are on their best behavior if being monitored.
If his statement is true, then the real Larry Ellison (not publicly known one) is worse than a genocide supporter. He basically discredits himself by making that statement.
> It would certainly better support his statement that the people are on their best behavior if being monitored
It literally wouldn’t. Whether people behave better when surveilled in independently verifiable. Whether or not bees exist doesn’t revolve around the political beliefs of the person claiming they do.
I found it amusing that someone would say something to the effect of "killing people is the furthest I am willing to go, but not further", as if there is any further...
Anyway, I agree it is a verifiable fact, but it also can be a personal belief. Does L.E. provide any evidence, or is he stating it authoritatively?
In any case, one big piece of evidence we have for the claim is that Israel doesn't allow any foreign journalists in Gaza, and is trying to control Tiktok, in which L.E. seems to be involved.
So by pointing that belief out, L.E. indicates he is even a worse guy, because in some cases he disagrees with such independent monitoring.
> one big piece of evidence we have for the claim is that Israel doesn't allow any foreign journalists in Gaza, and is trying to control Tiktok, in which L.E. seems to be involved
This is relevant! Consider how much more interesting the top comment would be if it called out this hypocrisy instead of the same old 'so and so is pro X and herego a bad guy'.
what does this have to do with the story?
> what does this have to do with the story?
Historical precedent:
> It was the first conflict in which military action was precipitated by media involvement. The war grew out of U.S. interest in a fight for revolution between the Spanish military and citizens of their Cuban colony. American newspapers fanned the flames of interest in the war by fabricating atrocities which justified intervention in a number of Spanish colonies worldwide.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_propaganda_of_the_Spa...
* https://history.state.gov/milestones/1866-1898/yellow-journa...
Well in part because Israel acts like a police state supported by a lot of Orwellian technology
Example: https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_(spyware)
If the targets are in other countries, deployed by other countries, I don't think this is a good example.
Better example? https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/sep/25/microsoft-bloc...
How could Ellison's motivation for creating a surveillance state possibly not be relevant?
> How could Ellison's motivation for creating a surveillance state possibly not be relevant?
What is his motivation? Why is Israel relevant?
You're asking how Israel is relevant in American politics?
He's trying to create a digital panopticon to silence dissent and enslave Americans to Israeli interests.
The single largest private donor the IDF is pushing for a very anti American policy. I think it’s extremely relevant to point out their true loyalties lie elsewhere.
> what does this have to do with the story?
This is like seeing a web page not load due to a 504, then asking why people are discussing a database failure when your page isn’t loading.
Patterns like Ellison are rife in American politics (look at some of trumps major donors, guys like Bill Ackman were lifelong dems that suddenly because conservative after Oct 7). It’s the reason we’re one of the only countries defending the genocide in Gaza. It plays a large part in our otherwise polarized congress showing bipartisan support for financing Israel’s “defenses”.
America makes a lot of anti American decisions because guys like Ellison are some of the most powerful in the country.
If anybody even insinuates that Weiss or Ellison have dual loyalty because of this they will be accused of anti-semitism.
The hard truth is that weaponizing your money — earned largely from Americans — to aid a foreign country at the expense of America is about as un-American as it gets. Aside from the potentially valid argument that your voice shouldn’t be louder just because you are a billionaire — you are corrupting American foreign policy and American stature in the world to advance the agenda of Israel. That is a betrayal of America.
I think most of the pro-Israel crowd legitimately believe that Israel's interests are aligned with the U.S.'s interests. The same with Canada, the U.K., and Australia. We share a set of values.
Israel does a lot of dirty work in fighting back against the darker forces of middle east terrorism, and it's reasonable to believe it is in the U.S.'s interest to let Israel do that work rather than take it on itself. It is a similar argument to why the U.S. should back Ukraine in the fight against Russia.
You can of course disagree with the above (arguing against interventionism; the risk of blowback; that Israel is creating more terrorism than it is solving; etc.), but I truly don't believe that any of the pro-Israel crowd believes they are acting against the U.S. interest.
> anybody even insinuates that Weiss or Ellison have dual loyalty because of this they will be accused of anti-semitism
No, they’ll be accused of derailing the conversation.
Every pro-Palestinian activist isn’t civically compromised because they have strong views on foreign policy.
> you are corrupting American foreign policy and American stature in the world to advance the agenda of Israel. That is a betrayal of America.
This is a convoluted and hyperbolic way of expressing foreign-policy disagreement.
> expressing foreign-policy disagreement
Foreign policy is almost universally a quid pro quo. Whilst there may be something for the USA in this it feels very asymmetric unless I am missing something.
> Foreign policy is almost universally a quid pro quo
At the state level, often. At the individual level, I don't think so.
My pet war is Ukraine. I don't have any personal stake in the war. I just think it's abhorrent and poses a long-term risk to the security interests of places and people I care about. I can construct that into a narrative of fulfilling American geopolitical interests, but that's an exercise I'd be engaging in after I'd come to my view based on, essentially, a moral preference.
That preference is real. But it's mine and far from universal. That someone thinks Russia is justified in invading Ukraine is frankly irrelevant to the validity of their statements on other matters. That's where I'm calling bullshit on this connection.
"Dual loyalty" is kind of a joke for somebody like Ellison, because it implies a loyalty to America.
I’m glad that we are at last having this kind of conversation. Just a few years ago this was simply impossible. There’s too much vermin in the elites.
It's "simply impossible" because people like you make new accounts and use words like "vermin". You are not helping!
What others have been doing thus far has not been helping either. The problem just gets worse every passing day. How many have to be killed using American money until this problem is eradicated?
Alternatively, I propose we seize Larry's assets, starting with the boats, then liquidate them for the benefit of developing families.
I would love it if everyone who proposed more surveillance would be subject to that self same surveillance for at least a year before being allowed to push it onto other people. Go through their bank accounts with a fine toothed comb. Watch them om CCTV everywhere they go. Track their online activity. Scan all their messages for sexual abuse material. Go through all their luggage at every checkpoint. Do a cavity search at every border. Take their temperature whenever they want to enter a crowded venue.
Tired of all these "rules for thee" while certain classes remain unaffected.
And Lanai, the 6th largest of the Hawaiian islands, which is owned 98% by Larry.
And with that, Larry will be on his best behaviour.
I encourage people making snap comments to read at least one entire paragraph of the article:
> “We’re going to have supervision,” Ellison said. “Every police officer is going to be supervised at all times, and if there’s a problem, AI will report that problem and report it to the appropriate person. Citizens will be on their best behavior because we are constantly recording and reporting everything that’s going on.”
I'd say I'm about as much against the modern surveillance state as the next codger, but that doesn't mean I don't understand its implications. People do act differently when they know they are being watched. Even more so when they know they are being recorded.
There's still quite a bit of federation in that each store or home has its own cameras, and chaining them together to get an end-to-end view of a series of events is still manual. But that won't be like that forever. Whether we like it or not, that's only going to get easier.
> and if there’s a problem, AI will report that problem and report it to the appropriate person.
The long march of us making terrible decisions with technology continues. I'm not sure how to get away from it.
We stop collaborating. Technologists, engineers, and support staff make this machine run. It must be made personally infeasible to continue contributing to our own shortsighted destruction. The incentive structure can and must be changed.
> We stop collaborating. Technologists, engineers, and support staff make this machine run.
"We" don't all view the world through the same lens. And moreover not on all matters. Your framing is erroneous, which leads to incorrect assumptions and strategy.
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Then they'll outsource the work to someone more desperate than you.
That's a cop-out.
It may very well be true that in some cases, a bad actor asking you to do a bad thing X will simply find someone else to do it. However, consider the following:
* If there were someone more desperate than you and willing to do X, they would demand lower compensation, and the bad actor wouldn't even be talking to you.
* By saying no, you are inherently making bad thing X more expensive, because said bad actor has to spend more resources finding someone else to do it.
* Saying no gives cover for your peers who disagree with X to also say no.
* The person said bad actor finally finds to do X will inherently have more leverage to ask for greater compensation due to the fact that you, by saying no, have shrunk the pool of people capable of doing X.
* If enough people say no, said bad actor may never find someone both capable of doing X and willing to do it for the price point the bad actor is willing/able to pay.
I don't turn down jobs I disagree with because I necessarily believe it will stop those jobs from happening. I'm satisfied enough with keeping my conscience clear and knowing I made the job a little harder to accomplish.
> People do act differently when they know they are being watched
I really want to see more evidence for this. People act differently when they face consequences. More surveillance without enforcement wouldn’t be expected to positively change behaviour.
Just ask GPT, the awareness of being observed significantly impacts behavior even in rather primitive animals:
Research has demonstrated these behavioral changes in various species, including:
These behavioral adaptations are thought to be evolutionary responses that help animals avoid predation and enhance their survival in the wild.It has a name: chilling effect https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilling_effect
behavior will only get worse once people figure out that enforcement will either be entirely selective (based on the friends of whoever controls the programming) or entirely arbitrary. people will wish for anarcho-tyranny.
This. All that will happen is that if you come to the wrong person's attention your 'record' will be checked and consequences leveled. Too much happens in the world for our system to punish everyone. But to be able to selectively punish whoever you want at the push of a button, that is power. Maybe you didn't do anything. But your kids? Your business partners? Someone did something, if we record/save everything and look closely. Even if you are perfect we can make you a pariah if it get's known that anyone around you risks themselves/their children getting backlash for associating with you.
"Please read the full quote it makes the whole thing make more sense and is just generally better"
It's really not.
> People do act differently when they know they are being watched. Even more so when they know they are being recorded.
Police (in the US) demonstrably do not care that they're being recorded and don't act any differently.
You're naive if you think cops won't find a way to hide the footage or simply refuse. They already find plenty of excuses not to release body cam footage: https://www.npr.org/2023/12/31/1222337130/bodycam-footage-wa...
We do get a say on whether we like it or not. You CAN just decide to uphold privacy rights. We make the laws
Cameras on police are mostly irrelevant. This has been proved repeatedly, at least as far back as Rodney King in 1992. We saw the video of the police beating Rodney King, but the police were nonetheless protected by the legal system. It's extremely rare for police to suffer consequences from their behavior.
Any minor transgression from most people will be punished severely. Even the worst transgression from powerful people will be forgiven. That's how our system works. Don't ever think that Orwellian surveillance will put everyone on a level playing field. As an ultra-powerful person, Larry Ellison is well aware of this.
> Cameras on police are mostly irrelevant
Not really.
In "a randomized controlled trial involving more than 400 police officers in Las Vegas, Nevada...officers equipped with body-worn cameras generated fewer complaints and use of force reports relative to officers without cameras. BWC officers also made more arrests and issued more citations than their non-BWC counterparts" [1].
More broadly, "there remains substantial uncertainty about whether BWCs can reduce officer use of force, but the variation in effects suggests there may be conditions in which BWC could be effective" [2]. ("Restricting officer discretion in turning on and off BWCs may reduce police use of force," and while "BWCs may reduce the number of citizen complaints against police officers...it is unclear why complaints decline.")
[1] https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/jclc/vol108/is...
[2] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8356344/
> [2] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8356344/
"Our meta‐analysis of 30 studies and 116 effects of police use of BWCs finds that this technology produces few clear or consistent impacts on police or citizen behaviors."
Overall, the effects are unclear. Drill in and there is statistical significance. It's not fair to say it's irrelevant, because we do have cases where it works. There are just more confounding variables than we've given attention to.
Video AI fraud is going to skyrocket, and you know there will be service organizations that cater to this "consumer need". Ellison is a short sighted thinker, opening Pandora's Box.
Great, please apply this to yourself, and livestream all of the time, leave the rest of us out of this.
People don't have one standard of behavior. I won't tell my kid jokes, I tell my wife. I won't complain about people in public, the way I vent to my sister (who gets it is just me venting, not how I feel all the time". I am not going to speak to a cop as I'm getting a speeding ticket, they way I will talk to one who is harassing a friend at a parade.
I won't talk to / about a co-worker in a meeting, the way I talk to someone he just (rightly, but very meanly) chewed out, and who needs a boss who listens, or will I talk to him in a meeting the way I will (a tad later) chew him out for making a coworker cry.
This take is so naive and emotionally / socially unintelligent about human behavior in various situations.
Even if he was sincere about wanting to hold the police accountable, hand-waving away that AI will figure it out correctly has not been working out for so far.
The AI is working perfectly for the citizen surveillance use case though. It will provide "reasonable" suspicion on anyone at any time.
We have been mired in a surveillance state for a long time now. They now will have the processing power to make sure nobody can keep their head down and slip through the cracks. I imagine it's going to be a rough century.
> People do act differently when they know they are being watched. Even more so when they know they are being recorded.
London is the most surveilled city in the world outside China, in terms of the number of intelligent cameras they have around the city, yet that does not stop crime from being significantly reduced.
> yet that does not stop crime from being significantly reduced
Source? (I'm inclined to agree with you. Hence my desire for substantiation.)
> People do act differently when they know they are being watched. Even more so when they know they are being recorded.
There is a whole genre of short form and streaming videos where the subject films himself violating social norms and breaking the law.
The majority of perpetrators do not care.
> Whether we like it or not,
Seems to be an awful lot of that recently to justify anything, from mass surveillance to crypto fascism. "Its just how things are guys, law of nature!". As citizens of a civilized society, we collectively get to shape and orient how legislation is put into practice. But ofc, if all you and people like you have to offer is pre-deterministic fallacies, then we are indeed screwed.
If you read the article it actually outlines how Ellison views the connection between AI and surveillance.
Police surveillance is just one part, combining different data sources and analyzing them through AI is how he envisions law enforcement to function. That cops aren't above that is perfectly coherent with that.
I just assume that there's a recording of me, at pretty much all times. I have always acted as if I was under scrutiny, anyway, so it's not been that big a deal, but it is annoying, to have it as a fact of life; as opposed to a personal choice for living.
Even when people are doing stuff like browsing pr0n, there's likely to be someone paying attention. Maybe not like those silly spam emails, but they know that we watched dwarf pr0n.
> just assume that there's a recording of me, at pretty much all times. I have always acted as if I was under scrutiny
Have you ever taken any civic action?
I assume you mean like demonstrations and whatnot. Not especially. I tend to roll up my sleeves and work in the shade.
I'm not saying it's a good thing. I'm just saying it's a thing; no matter what we think of it.
> assume you mean like demonstrations and whatnot
Not necessarily. Broadly. Advocacy, petitioning, calling, electioneering, drafting, lobbying, organising, et cetera.
A civically inactive citizenry frankly doesn’t have that much to lose from surveillance. Someone failing to exercise their political rights (EDIT: leaving them unexercised) pretty clearly communicates the value they place in them.
> Someone failing to exercise their political rights
I see what you did, there...
I tend to get a lot done. Not really into the whole "sound and fury" thing. I like to actually have results.
> see what you did, there
Genuinely asked if you’re politically engaged because I’m curious how that squares with your views on this topic?
Most Americans are not civically engaged. That’s sort of expected. Their principal opposition to surveillance revolves around being creeped out. Most folks who are civically engaged, on the other hand, recognise the risks to themselves and their projects if the opposition can command these tools. (As well as the power that would come with commanding them oneself.) If that link is no longer true, or not universally valid, I’m genuinely interested in hearing it. Because that implies independent civic action can survive—or potentially even thrive in—a modern surveillance state.
Seems a lot more an indictment. Maybe you might consider phrasing it differently.
I'm a recovering drug addict. I have quite an appreciation for privacy and anonymity. I have a lot more skin in the game than most.
However, there's the fantasy world in our heads, and the reality of the truth. These don't always overlap.
It's my job to work with yucchy reality. It doesn't give a damn what I think it should be. It's my responsibility to modify my approach to be most effective, given the context.
"When the map and the terrain disagree; believe the terrain." - Swiss Army aphorism
For a description of the consequences of mass surveillance and repressive regimentation of individual behavior in a society, read:
"Nineteen Eighty-Four" by George Orwell.[a]
---
[a] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four
Easily the most explicit and pedantic citation of 1984 that I've seen - big fan
Why is it that every single person born between 1940 and 1965 (or making more than $1 million per year) just wants to see all freedoms erased and every natural resource exhausted for their personal comfort?
Because they already own those assets and don't want anyone else to have them. The perception of wealth is always relative so if I can't make any more to maintain my status I must ensure that others can't get what I have.
Not sure if the causality there is the right way around, I would suggest that because they have these beliefs they are allowed to amass that wealth. Oracle is a CIA spin-off (1977), they even kept the code name. The CIA works closely with Mossad. The 'abolish all billionaires' plan is encouraged precisely because it will be ineffective - they're assets of the state secret police and good luck abolishing that.
> The 'abolish all billionaires' plan is encouraged precisely because it will be ineffective - they're assets of the state secret police
Sorry, all billionaires are “assets of the state secret police”? So who calls the shots?
Lol, you again, I already know that engaging with you is a waste of time
People making a meager $1 million a year aren't in the same universe as Larry.
For one, he has direct access to (and these days also likely direct influence over) some of the most important members of the legislative and executive branches of the government.
Lead poisoning.
Extremely overlooked
Mostly agree but your income number is a bit low. Suggest 3-5M per year and 20M net worth.
This is deeply unfair. Plenty of people, including those responsible for more focus on environment and human rights, are in that age group. They are leaders and allies. Ageism is just another way divide society.
You are correct, I put income level in there too. We can't let Peter Thiel or Mark Zuckerberg off the hook either.
Your edited comment is still ageist.
>Why is it that every single person born between 1940 and 1965 (or making more than $1 million per year)
Every single person in that age range?
> I put income level in there too
May I ask what your rationale was for picking $1m as the threshold? Hundreds of thousands of Americans make between $1m and $5m (another arbitrary range) and millions of Americans worth more than $1m.
Absolutely correct, but also... there is something about having your early growing-up years be in the context of consistent 5-6% annual GDP growth rates and the rollout of interstates/highways, performance automobiles, massive urbanization and the development of giant suburbs with McMansions, two cars in every garage, etc. etc. ... to convince you that you deserve prosperity, that exponential growth, and exploding CO2 emitting energy use is the Natural Order Of Things.
It so happens that in parts of North America this life experience is associated mostly with a certain set of of age/demographics.
There are still plenty of people in that group who don't want performance vehicles, highways, McMansions &c. Not only are there people who didn't "benefit" from that environment, there are many people who chose to focus on the needs of the planet or others. A lot of this comes down to urban/suburban/rural divides.
It's just really counterproductive to focus on these easy "majority" stats that break down on examination and contribute to the polarization of society.
Ok Larry, where's the minute-by-minute footage of your private life?
Lately people with high a level of wealth and power like Ellison view themselves as a privileged class and have no pretense that their machinations should apply equally to all. The erosion of that norm, equality of all under the law, is the elephant in the room. If we can preserve that norm, points like yours easily undermine these arguments.
He doesn’t need to provide that, he’s a lord.
He’s already on his best behavior.
TBF, this article kinda is it, as they're playing back comments he made a year ago (under a different administration) during an earning's call.
An earnings call is not private.
"Citizens will be on their best behavior because we are constantly recording and reporting everything that’s going on"
Video games and YouTube can't be entirely to blame for the significant falls in alcohol consumption and the night entertainment industry generally. People don't want to get drunk, do something stupid, and end up on blast all over the Internet now that everyone's carrying a camera connected to the entire world in real time.
I am absolutely convinced as well that this a huge factor behind younger generations not drinking as much, at least not in public. One night of fun going bad would have been forgotten in the 90s, now it could very well cost you your job or schooling.
Heck forget drinking, these days there's always someone nearby who's ready to upload your worst moment to Tiktok, so don't you dare have mental health issues either.
I think the choice of drinking or not is really disconnected from cameras. You can drink just fine at home and people are just drinking less.
r/tooktoomuch has probably done more for the war on drugs than years of DARE programs
Winston kept his back turned to the telescreen. It was safer, though, as he well knew, even a back can be revealing.
'Yes,' said O'Brien, 'we can turn it off. We have that privilege.'
What's the difference between God and Larry Ellison?
God knows he's not Larry Ellison.
I heard that over 35 years ago. I wonder how much older it is.
This is precisely the kind of opinion I'd expect a lawnmower to express.
https://simonwillison.net/2024/Sep/17/bryan-cantrill/
1984 was meant to be a satire, not a manual.
Yet somehow it’s turning into reality with big nations threatening to eat small ones and become super states.
> big nations threatening to eat small ones and become super states
what are a couple of examples you have in mind that support your claim of this trend? I must be living under a rock because I have not detected this.
Russia?
USA threatening to take over Greenland? That’d increase its area by another ~20%.
I always felt the movie "Brazil" was the satire. 1984 was the horror film.
Ultimately both are just movies and I dislike when people compare them to the real world given how exaggerated they are, but the basic premise of Brazil happens regularly: one piece of paperwork filed incorrectly can seriously impact your life.
See this woman for an example: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/live-woman-decl...
This relies on, normatively, shame, and legally, a Stasi-esque police state. I don’t know what about the last twenty years of politics or culture would imply the former is an option.
> This relies on, normatively, shame, and legally, a Stasi-esque police state.
You can get the populace to swallow surveillance if you give them an enemy. See: PATRIOT act. Anyone wanna take bets on what this one will be called.
The Fuck You, Peasants, Act
A decade of social media has already proven that to be false
It feels like a handful of billionaires and politicians recently decided that the world’s problems aren’t rooted in them or the systems that elevated them. Since the system worked for them, it must be sound; the problem must be everyone else. Their solution seems to be more control, more oversight, and a few technocratic tweaks. And if we just let them keep steering society, utopia is right around the corner.
I'm afraid to comment due to the fact that an AI may attach a negative tag to my internet-wide profile/record.
So lets record Larry Ellison constantly to make sure he will show best behavior.
We should tax opinions like this right out of existence.
This dude has almost half a trillion dollars to his name.
Larry, instead of waxing lyrical about your desire for a police state, how about you bugger off to a private island and establish your own society there, and leave the rest of the world for people who don't clamor for more money after making hundreds of billions of dollars.
Some people just aren't satisfied with having too much. I'm not in favor of a "abolish billionaires" catch-all policy, but from having met a bunch of billionaires, some just need to call it a day and spend more time with their families.
You can get $10 million or even $100 million because you love business and love making money. When you start to approach levels north of $1 billion, you don't get there unless you just love something more than money. That amount of money is unnecessary for any person to materially better their own or their family's lives. You only get there if you love power. This is why so many billionaires seem to be turning into psychopaths - they were already power addicts and they just get to levels of wealth that enables them to express it fully. They never wanted islands and jets. They want complete control.
Who watches the watchmen?
Well according to the exceptions in chat control: Nobody
And toddlers at a trampoline park will not be monkeys bouncing off the wall on their 15th pack of gummy bears.
We should have a Larry Cam then like from the movie Ed TV.
Prohibited content, so sayeth Dang, keeper of all words and allower of some.
It could be so easy, just don't use anything related to Oracle. But it's the same as back in the days with IBM - nobody gets fired by buying stuff from Oracle.
It's interesting this thread is flagged, given that the scenario is a direct consequence of advances of technology, AI, and worship of wealth -- seems very core HN.
Entities with this level of resources and influence have very little in common with people, other than biology. We would do well to instead perceive them as dangerous alien parasites -- not precisely hostile, but lacking social connection to the rest of us, and indifferent to the suffering of humanity.
It went off topic at the top of the thread. I didn't flag. But if you want to get something flagged off the front page, I guess that's how it's done.
Now may be a good time to support/use tor: https://www.torproject.org/download/ https://donate.torproject.org/
Or even i2p: https://geti2p.net
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
You know, it's fun how Ellison's been selling this same dystopian hellscape since Bush II. What is life that we're back here again?
In case you were wondering: What you are currently experiencing is "disgust" - a natural and healthy reaction.
Reminder that London is the most surveilled city in the world and also has very high petty crime. Nonstop recording doesn't change anything unless laws are actually enforced.
Sure. Let's do a pilot run on billionaires, then a second pilot with the top-10%. If by then everyone still agrees, we can discuss a society-wide roll-out.
Quickest way to kill this dangerous idea.
Lots of discussion and submissions in 2024 when this was fresher news:
Omnipresent AI cameras will ensure good behavior, says Larry Ellison
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41562750
Larry Ellison: vast AI surveillance can ensure citizens are on best behavior
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42825097
No doubt Ellison is a weirdo with some weird aspirations, but consider that this story came out last year and is being posted again everywhere since the TikTok deal is drawing near. Someone is going to a lot of trouble to try to convince us all of something.
The fact that an out of touch billionaire might say such a thing doesn't bother me much, he's out of touch after all.
The fact that we reliably and repeatedly see peasants (i.e. any less equal animal, so everyone here) who have no such excuse cheerleading for specific implementations in furtherance of their pet issues bothers me greatly. I'd say you ought to know better, but you do. When these subjects are discussed on a general level everyone acknowledges they're bad so clearly everyone gets it on a big picture level. But when the discussion is speed cameras, surveillance at the park, siphoning off of mundane consumer financial transaction data, etc, etc those things have strong support. People are clearly happy to put up with the threats posed by pervasive surveillance lest some other peasant step the slightest bit out of line and get away with it. I think this contradiction speaks volumes about character.
He's not out of touch. He's the first or second richest person on Earth, he has substantial influence over the president of the United States, and he's about to control one of the largest media empires in the country. You should be bothered by what he says because whatever dumb idea he has is going to become reality. He's one of the most powerful people on the planet.
Sure, he might know what he's saying in a sort of evil mustache twirling realpolitik way. But as someone who experiences everything in a different way than the other 99.99% of society because of his wealth and power he is tautologically "out of touch".
"we'll just surveil everything and use AI and it'll work" " = "let them eat cake". What he's peddling just won't work (in all likelihood) and everybody else (most of the other 99.99%) knows it.
How is he out of touch? He clearly is extremely in touch with the current direction of AI and the abilities to use it for mass surveillance.
Portraying these people as naive villains is not helpful at all. They have very clear goals and the means to accomplish them.
Billionaires are out of touch because their money, their power, and their social circle insulates them from the challenges everyday people experience. Their goals are to find ways to protect and expand their wealth and their power. You don’t become a billionaire by looking out for other people.
Their goals and their perspectives should mean that they have absolutely no business making policy decisions for society but unfortunately people are naive and easily influenced.
It is pretty clear that Ellison seeks to shape the society he lives in and since he has the means to do so, that clearly makes him more in touch than every single ordinary person.
>Their goals and their perspectives should mean that they have absolutely no business making policy decisions
He doesn't make policy decisions and claiming he does completely undermines how corporations and their leaders wield their influence.
Since becoming politically active, my recurring facepalm is discovering that a whole lot of people don't see the world as I do.
I just finished If We Burn by Vincent Bevins and When the Clock Broke by John Ganz
One point (of many) repeatedly hammered home, with IRL examples, is that a whole lot of people demand Order, even at the expensive of Justice.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_We_Burn
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/195790601-when-the-clock...
A very successful evergreen (authoritarian) playbook is to keep people anxious, so that they'll accede -- nay demand -- to ever more draconian, reactionary policies.
Something we're experiencing firsthand right now in the USA.
My gripe is even more meta than that. It's an unwillingness to mentally grapple with what they're advocating for and if they do understand it then
Like if we want to run society with summary execution for petty thieves or inequality under the law or whatever then fine, but have the balls to say that, because without an understanding of the goals and acceptable tradeoffs we can't effectively pursue the goals without hitting unacceptable tradeoffs.
But people don't come out and say these things because if you reason about the implications it's pretty clear they're shit ideas so what people do instead is lie and misdirect and whatnot in order to advocate for "bad in principal, arguably positive in result" things on their pet issue. But when you multiply by everyone's pet issues we get the current garbage and current trajectory.
I think part of the problem is that as material plenty increases the number of people partaking in discourse because they have existential problems that need solving goes down so discourse is increasingly dominated by "fake problems". This is also why you're seeing a pendulum shift away from "feel good" policies toward more "tough decision" policies as it gets harder for people in the lower majority of society (70%, 80%, idk) to make ends meet. So basically I'm hopeful that things get more honest and more sane as we get poorer, which sucks, I guess, but hey, silver linings.
But we're all going to be billionaires soon, right? Right?
Edit: /s, in case it wasn't obvious
Even if we are, if there are trillionaires (on the long scale) or quadrillionaires, there will still be vast (problematic[1]) inequality.
[1] Problematic in the sense that the persons holding such vast wealth seem to go bonkers AND for the problems inequality leads to for society
I guess I forgot my /s
Well understood!
You got like 7 phds in your pocket... it's on you if you don't use them. smh.
By that logic Larry Ellison should be monitored 24/7 to motivate him to be on his best behavior.
Remind me, is this the guy who keeps landing his plane at the airport after it's closed, against the rules? On camera? Is that recording of him putting him on his best behavior? No, it's actually not.
I think this warrants an investigation as to at what point exactly did he completely disconnect from our reality. I think another parallel investigation should be begun as to how such a phenomenon could have been dismissed as science fiction when we have living evidence of it.
This goes double for him personally. I take his insistence on singing the praises for pervasive surveillance while avoiding it himself as an admission of him committing the worst crimes.
> admission of him committing the worst crimes.
such as?
I don't know but isn't this the usual go-to for all those supporting the surveillance state? Think of the kids? But the terrorists? What's good for the goose is good for the gander, if he eschews being surveilled just like everyone else then it's because he wants to commit the crimes that we want to prevent others committing. Take your pick.
Right because the UK is such a safe place.
> because the UK is such a safe place
Objectively, it is [1].
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intenti... 1.1 vs 5.8 intentional homicides per 100,000
On the Global Peace Index, the UK is number 30 in the world and the USA is 128, below Rwanda, China, South Africa, India, Bangladesh.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Peace_Index
The GP’s comment has nothing to do with the US though. So what’s your point?
GP's claim is that UK is massively surveilled and the UK is unsafe, therefore surveillance does not improve safety. However the UK is a long way above the USA; if one wants to argue that the surveillance isn't the cause of the safety, they can, but they can't take that for granted by snarkily saying the UK isn't safe.
If I was trying to say that the UK is safe because it's #30 on the Peace Index when the USA was higher, then my comment wouldn't carry much weight. Or if the USA was a place or two behind then my comment wouldn't be strong.
Larry Ellison is in the USA and presumably his "Citizens will be on their best behaviour" is mostly aimed at USA citizens, and HN and the internet are USA-centric so USA makes a big obvious comparison.
> GP's claim is that UK is massively surveilled and the UK is unsafe, therefore surveillance does not improve safety.
So do you think Ellison is right? That surveillance would make the US much safer?
No. Cameras will only help potentially identify someone after the fact. At some point we may find ourselves in a Black Mirror dystopia where AI is used to precog individuals to determine someone is going to commit a crime where video surveillance helps locate this person before the crime is committed. However, since no crime has been committed, there's no reason to detain them. Unless, you just really want to commit to that dystopian nightmare of allowing AI to make those decisions.
I'm actually having difficulties trying to find where the UK was brought into it if not by the commenter in question. If we are pointing out lapse of context, that is.
> GP’s comment has nothing to do with the US though
To which country’s citizens do you think the article featuring Larry Ellison on a podium next to Donald Trump is referring ?
These oligarchs are becoming a danger to democracy & society
Becoming? Wealth has always been a danger. The becoming part isn’t the danger but how the inequality balance is becoming so lop sided
this proves that freedom of speech is the only thing that ever mattered. the left toyed with it and now its the right turn. we can see now the same thing being deployed in UK targeting people sending memes. It will be same for the US.
don't ever create a precedent if you dont want your enemies to use your tools against you. that + the fact that LLMs will accelerate a lot of the surveillance industry.
Where can I watch the 24/7 livestream showing what Larry Ellison is doing? He wants to be on his best behavior, right?
This is the fascist dream. Who defines 'Best Behavior?' Whoever owns the cameras, and the cops.
Criticize the president? Not best behavior. Kiss someone of your sex/gender? Not best behavior. Call AI stupid? Not best behavior. Whistleblower on out a deadly chemical leak? Not best behavior. Disagree with a politician? Not best behavior. Defined LGBTQ+ people's rights? Not best behavior. Criticize Isreal ? Not best behavior.
They are going to define "best behavior" in a way that never threatens their feelings, let alone threatens their powers, if you let them.
> They are going to define "best behavior" in a way that never threatens their feelings, let alone threatens their powers, if you let them.
You are painfully correct https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/trumps-nspm-7-labels-commo...
Looking at that list of extremist indicators, I would agree that they qualify as common beliefs. It's hard to be too outraged though, because they also seem to genuinely reflect destructive beliefs that are absolutely antithetical to American society.
how people vote these psychopaths?
"If you've done nothing wrong, you've got nothing to worry about."
Eric Schmidt
At one point, being gay was against the law, abortion is against the law in some places, at one time being an atheist could get your head cut off. Let's do some nonstop recording of Larry Ellison, his children, his entire family, his neighbors, because they'll "be on their best behavior, a midnight nonstop recording"
The rich and elite never think about these things because they never consider that it might also effect them.
I think it's that increasingly the "wrong" things they're worried that people are doing... are direct threats to them (oligarchical wealth holders).
The thing that billionaires don't realize is that they fall into the "citizens" category.
Imagine non-stop monitoring billionaire sociopaths and inflicting consequences on them for failing to abide by the social contract.
Edit: Yes, HN, I realize billionaires get special privileges. This is a thought-experiment.
Do not fall into the trap of anthropomorphising Larry Ellison.
> The thing that billionaires don't realize is that they fall into the "citizens" category.
Or they realize they don't?
With that much money, you stop being any any category. You now become extra-categorical. If someone tries to hold you accountable to the rules of some category you don’t feel like you should, you just spend money to make the situation go away
A surprising number of Russian oligarchs were very surprised to find their wealth didn't protect them from a crunchy encounter with the ground after mysteriously falling out of a window.
Evil always eats its own. Why would the US be any different? It only takes one ruthlessly ambitious murderous psychopath with a deviant personal life to spoil things for everyone.
[flagged]
Is your contention that the only anti-gun countries are, er, the UK and Singapore?
And to be honest, the UK surveillance thing is somewhat exaggerated; it's highly London-centric, and they're mostly privately-owned cameras; the main driving factor is the insurance industry.
Ireland, say, has some of the strictest gun laws in the developed world, and doesn't have a large number of CCTVs or other forms of surveillance.
"And to be honest, the UK surveillance thing is somewhat exaggerated; it's highly London-centric, and they're mostly privately-owned cameras; the main driving factor is the insurance industry."
The big cities is where the most crime happens. It's not really 'exaggerated'. If you legally aren't allowed to protect yourself during a crime, it's best to have a camera in place that catches the person that's doing it (and put fear in others, so the situation is avoided).
"Ireland, say, has some of the strictest gun laws in the developed world, and doesn't have a large number of CCTVs or other forms of surveillance."
This isn't true at all.
Not true. Until a couple of decades ago, there was very little surveillance of Western European, and if citizens thought about guns at all, antipathy would have been the dominant attitude. Nevertheless, there was very little “bad behaviour” since the Second World War ended.
"Until a couple of decades ago, there was very little surveillance of Western European"
It's because the technology was too expensive.
"citizens thought about guns at all, antipathy would have been the dominant attitude."
In a world where most people have similar values, this is the case. This has changed in the last decade or so, however.
Ireland doesn't fit your claim.
You can google it yourself: "does ireland have surveillance cameras"
"Where you'll find surveillance cameras: Public Transport: Cameras are installed on Luas trams and at major train and bus stations.
Public Buildings: The Office of Public Works (OPW) uses security cameras in public buildings.
Streets and Cities: An Garda Síochána has a network of cameras, and community groups and businesses also request and install them in their towns and cities.
Private Businesses: CCTV systems are prevalent in banks, casinos, pubs, shopping centers, and large department stores.
Private Homes: Many homeowners use security cameras for protection, with potential eligibility for insurance discounts"
Have you even been to Ireland? Because it sure looks like they have camera systems everywhere.
It seems nobody wants to actually reduce crime here. You want:
- No guns - No cameras - less police