Musician uses hate against Flock to boost his social media presence

Musician-turned-anti-Flock-influencer gained attention online by making a fake cease-and-desist letter.

One topic these days that not only catches people’s attention but also provokes strong reactions is mass surveillance and facial recognition tech.

And while it might seem great that more people want to raise awareness and participate in discussions about what is happening in society, some might seek ways to exploit this for their own benefit.

One of the companies that often seems to attract negative attention is Flock Safety, a manufacturer and operator of security hardware and software that has installed 80,000-100,000 surveillance cameras across the US, according to the ACLU.

Creating relatable content

Noah Orion, a singer and American Idol contestant, began sharing content expressing his negative views of Flock, capitalizing on how strongly people react to news about the company.

While his social media content previously focused on music, now it revolves around protests against Flock Safety.

The musician who suddenly got involved in resistance to mass surveillance even started his own campaign where he distributes stickers that say “Fuck Flock,” boasting stacks of orders on his TikTok page.

The man also filmed himself putting stickers on what he claims are Flock cameras.

In one of these videos, Orion said he received a cease-and-desist letter from Flock Group Inc. for engaging “in conduct involving the unauthorized dissemination of photographs, videos, memes, screenshots, or other visual materials in a manner that encourages [Orion’s] fans to claim and place stickers that constitute a rude and unusual manner towards our company and association.”

The singer is then asked to immediately stop distributing the stickers and engaging in “demeaning actions” to avoid any legal consequences.

“Big Brother didn’t like that.” Actually, it doesn’t care

Orion then talked about the letter, provided updates, said he’s not afraid of the outcome, and promoted his stickers.

“Big Brother didn’t like that,” he said in another update on the situation.

Videos related to Flock content, especially the one linked to the cease-and-desist letter, have racked up hundreds of thousands of views on TikTok.

The singer currently has 96K followers on TikTok and 814K followers on Instagram.

The reason why Orion may feel so confident about Flock’s legal actions against him is that the letter isn’t actually real, reported 404 Media.

According to the news outlet, the musician created the letter himself to increase attention and engagement for his social media accounts.

Milking Flock's narrative brought Orion more than 30,000 new Instagram followers during the last month, according to the Instagram tracking website, NotJustAnalytics.

While it might still seem that the singer is raising awareness of mass surveillance, the exaggeration and fake information are for his own benefit and are not helpful to journalists and activists who actually want to draw attention to the problem.

Going against Flock

It’s been recently reported that at least 150 universities and colleges in the US use Flock cameras, raising concerns over mass surveillance.

Flock AI-powered cameras have been under attack across the US for a while now. To help identify who's behind the attacks, the company used Flock data to investigate them further.

The antitrust against Flock has escalated to the point where a person was recently arrested after threatening to kill its employees because he didn’t want to be filmed.

More people are becoming aware that they’ve been surveilled, and many are already concerned about being scanned even when they’re shopping, with their data being used against them in cases of wrongful theft accusations and dynamic pricing.