Carolyn Marvin, 78, said she is exercising her First Amendment right to protest — and will do it again.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/53250107

Police confirmed they had responded to a report of “criminal mischief involving a robot” on the 1200 block of Filbert Street around 1:16 p.m. on Wednesday. A woman on the scene ignored “multiple commands” to move, they said, resulting in a criminal violation notice for disorderly conduct.

Uber declined to comment.

Marvin, who plans to contest the charge on the grounds of her First Amendment right to protest, has been undeterred by the arrest. She plans to continue blocking Uber Eats robots and chatting with curious passersby who ask what she’s doing.

“It allows me to talk to people about what’s going on,” she said. “It’s always very interesting conversations that we have, and I think it’s good to have those kinds of conversations in public space.”

  • Sunflier@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    22 days ago

    This is basically the start of the counter to the automation. We still tell fables about people who stood againt the devaluation of workers like this.

    • freedom@lemy.lolEnglish
      0·
      21 days ago

      All hail forced labor? The only “value” AI strip away is a value stamped on the top of your head derived from capitalism. Flipping burgers at McDonalds has value, but it’s no first choice, and the value isn’t extracted by the burger flipper. It’s extracted by the top as the labor is exploited.

      If anything, I’m hoping AI is a fuck you to the current broken, down hill rolling system. The world will never be rid of exploitation, but we can point the harm at machines instead.

      • bthest@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        20 days ago

        If anything, I’m hoping AI is a fuck you to the current broken, down hill rolling system.

        lol, well, considering the system is currently licking AI’s nasty little clit like there’s no tomorrow… I just don’t AI is going to do whatever it is you think it’s going to do, lol.

  • Hueristic_Autistic@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    22 days ago

    Steal one and inject a virus into it and then make it run into a wall a bunch of times, ensuring the complete destruction of the device… 😜 Call the nearest news outlet and claim that the robot was suicidal-homicidal and was trying to smash you and it into a wall and wait for a news report. The robots get pushed back by skepticism of safety towards humans.

      • Hueristic_Autistic@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        22 days ago

        If there’s people who believe the rogue ai news reports, there’s people who will believe that a delivery drone was trying to kill them.

        • grepe@lemmy.worldEnglish
          0·
          22 days ago

          my point was that the news will happily push a story like the “rogue AI” bullshit, since it is in the best interest of the people who own the media companies, but will completely ignore or actively suppress stories that are afainst their interests…

          • Hueristic_Autistic@lemmy.worldEnglish
            0·
            22 days ago

            Well I think the rogue Ai thing was also pushed so that the owners of Ai company’s can have the platform to get people to listen about how we shouldn’t be accelerating the use and expansion of Ai but rather, trying to make more regulations surrounding it.

            I think bad news for good publicity, happens more than we think and I think that in this economy, an economy where people are choosing between groceries and medication people can’t afford to lose an opportunity to earn.

            I think that making a hacked delivery drone bash into a wall with a person who knows it’s gonna happen move out of the way at the last second while the drone goes at high velocity, could be the bad publicity for good purposes. It’ll make a lot of companies contemplate the roll out, it’ll prolong it from happening and it’ll give more people time to protest.

            ☝🏻 However, it is a crime to steal, hack and destroy a delivery drone and I do not promote nor condone the actual attempt.

  • olejellylegs@lemmy.zipEnglish
    0·
    23 days ago

    Ah see that’s where she went wrong, making a scene standing there.

    Just spray paint the sensor and move on with your life. Or tip it over. Or put a cone over the sensor. Then disappear.

      • douglasg14b@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        22 days ago

        Your rights are being slowly pulled tighter around your neck, and the legal system is not your friend anymore.

        When communicating online, like we are right now, is longer considered a legally protected activity, do you roll over like a good puppy and stop communicating with others online in information free forums?

        It was legal to kill Jews. Does that mean it was okay, since that was a legally protected activity? Does that mean living as a Jew, no longer being a legally protected activity, requires that you turn yourself in because you are no longer allowed to exist where you are?

      • XiJinpingStanAccount@lemmy.mlEnglish
        0·
        22 days ago

        Well according to this article the cops don’t really give a fuck about what is or isn’t legally protected so why should anyone else?

        • Andy@slrpnk.netEnglish
          0·
          23 days ago

          Respectfully, you’re missing a key piece.

          You’re making the point that you can’t stand up to oppressive powers like Uber while operating within the law.

          Crucially: so is she.

          This woman is an academic expert on law and our rights, and what she’s doing is exploiting a loophole in Uber’s control scheme in public and forcing everyone to watch what happens.

          She is creating a problem for Uber while denying them a legally justifiable reason to wield law against her. Which will either demonstrate to more people an action that allows protestors to impose harm on a powerful company while remaining out of reach of their ability to impose punishment, or force them to reveal that their ability to impose punishment isn’t actually based on law, it’s based on power.

          In doing so, she helps analyze the strength of various legal rights that can still be used and unmasks which ones no longer exist.

      • douglasg14b@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        22 days ago

        Almost no activity is a legally protected activity in a society and government hellbent on control.

        The law did actually use to mean something, as it was, to some degree, written and enforced with care and consideration.

        The law means considerably less now that it has been captured and written by those in power without consideration and simply as a tool to selectively enforce their power and target undesirable sub cultures.

        Just like flock cameras, no one cares if someone goes and spray-paints or vandalizes some wandering piece of corporate equipment from corporations that are abusing their power and cuddling up to the current regime. It being a legally protected activity or not doesn’t matter, because what is considered a legally protected activity no longer matters. The law is no longer something that applies based off the will of the people, but instead is something that applies and is built based off the will of a select few (many of whom are loyal and funded by the same corporations).

      • olejellylegs@lemmy.zipEnglish
        0·
        23 days ago

        That’s irrelevant.

        There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part! You can’t even passively take part! And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels … upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop! And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!
        — Mario Savio

      • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        23 days ago

        Not sure this will be either. Just because we agree with it doesn’t mean that intentionally stopping a service provided by a company won’t make you liable in court if they sued them. “People have increased doubts about ordering products on our platform because they were intentionally stopping the products from arriving”

        I can’t see a reasonable judge not finding them liable and therby any damages the company can prove plus court fees would be on this person.

  • Bluedragon012@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    22 days ago

    You know… I’m surprised that no one has… Done more? I’m surprised hunting these things isn’t a trend…

    • kalkulat@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      22 days ago

      I imagine that the non-violent sport of ‘Robot-hassling’ will emerge from pioneers like this before long. Tying a rope around it and to a tree will only be the start, with championships and awards for the simplest, cleverist and most-effective. Getting one to lose it will be high-ranking. There’ll need to be a special section for electronic tricks and traps, and another for reality-shifting. Getting one to forget it’s job and help you with gardening would be one fine example.

      • merc@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        0·
        23 days ago

        I’m sure they have a whole call center in India or something that gets reports when a vehicle isn’t able to move towards its delivery, so they check the cameras and then call the local cops if someone is in the way.

      • JoeBigelow@lemmy.caEnglish
        0·
        23 days ago

        They have pilots? Like, I could get paid for driving an FPV RC car all night instead of not getting paid for that like I do now!? I figured they were autonomous.

        • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.worldEnglish
          0·
          23 days ago

          I imagine they are self driving and someone monitors several remotely. If one appears to be stalled or throwing an error code it likely pops an alert, you select the device view the cameras to see what’s gone wrong and place a suggested input of how to resolve the situation. That’s essentially what they did for their self driving cars when they start out, then eventually the alerts become less and less but someone still exists.

  • Simulation6@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    0·
    23 days ago

    If she was not touching the thing then why didn’t it try and get out of her way? It should not be on the sidewalk in the first place, and should not have right of way.

    • merc@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      0·
      23 days ago

      That’s always one of the tricks these companies pull. They take some communally-owned thing that used to have a clear purpose and start using it for their different for-profit use.

      Take sidewalks. They’re surprisingly expensive to build, but they’re built from community tax money so that people walking don’t have to walk on the road. Now Uber is using them as a place where they can drive their robots. Are they paying anything? I assume not. Sidewalks have also become a favourite parking spot for rental scooters. Do the scooter companies pay for that? Of course not. Even when they’re parked well they reduce the space available for walking, and when they’re parked badly they can force pedestrians out into the street.

      • stickyprimer@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        23 days ago

        Ugh the rental scooters. Thankfully I’ve seen this dying down. A more common sight in my city now is parking spaces getting turned into bike rental stations. I’m all for that.

        • boonhet@sopuli.xyzEnglish
          0·
          23 days ago

          The scooters are so much better though? Just park near where you need to go, not where the bike station is. Just take photos of the poorly parked ones and whoever last parked it gets a fine.

          • Blisterexe@lemmy.zipEnglish
            0·
            22 days ago

            A proper bike system is better though, my city has a city-run bike system with stations on practically every street corner, so it’s much better and just as practical

          • stickyprimer@lemmy.worldEnglish
            0·
            23 days ago

            Better only for the person who drops it right where they arrives at their destination. That is almost never also a sensible place for these things to be. What if everyone just got out do their car the second they were in front of the building they want to go to? That would be so much “better” for them!

          • bedwyr@piefed.caEnglish
            0·
            23 days ago

            Except you jjust know they are taking audio and visual, and scanning wifi and phone and other freqencies and sending it all back to base, that’s the problem.

            Throw them all into the river! Why rent everything we used to own anyway?

            • sem@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
              0·
              23 days ago

              Rental makes sense for this because not everyone wants to take a scooter back home and charge it

              • bedwyr@piefed.caEnglish
                0·
                23 days ago

                Not the way it’s being done it doesn’t make sense. A locally owned place that had rules against spying on everyone, and sweeping electronics, yes. A silicon valley operation whose purpose is as much collecting data as it is rental fees, is not.

            • lad@programming.devEnglish
              0·
              23 days ago

              Even if I had my own, I wouldn’t carry it across country for a visit of a few days, but I did rent in such a case more than once.

              It’s really more about unenforced safety rules, people sometimes drive like crazy and they always do that on the scooters they own, because rental have a speed limit

          • frongt@lemmy.zipEnglish
            0·
            23 days ago

            Yeah the scooters are great, it’s the lack of enforcement for proper parking that sucks.

            Like they make you take a picture to prove you parked it properly. One time I screwed up and took a picture of only my feet. Nothing happened.

            • RampantParanoia2365@lemmy.worldEnglish
              0·
              21 days ago

              Um, no. They cut down on car traffic. Hoooooooly shit you people are unfucking real. I see bitching about car culture on here constantly, but when an urban area has municipal tools for reducing it, you still bitch. God fucking damn.

    • stickyprimer@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      23 days ago

      I found myself wondering about this. If you stand blocking the entrance to a building, and won’t move when the police tell you to, I guess I can see them turning that into a disorderly conduct charge. Of course we are solely debating whether blocking a robot is a crime, but their rationale iin court is probably going to be more based around obstructing a place of public accommodation or something like that.

      • bedwyr@piefed.caEnglish
        0·
        23 days ago

        They should’ve given her a warning, the police. To go right to arrest, is a favour that waymo called in to the local policians, probably followed by others donating some cash.

        It really is like that, even with prosecuting attorneys that drop charges against the rich, like former manhattan city da with several people, including Weinstein was it? 30k or something donation right after he drops charges. There were several incidents, they didn’t even bother to use intermediaries there.