Android app shames parking jerks in real time

1 hr.

Helen A.S. Popkin

Inconsiderate parking is a universal problem. Curb-climbing SUVS, sports cars angled across the lines, double-parked delivery trucks and motorists with no personal boundaries, leaving you little room to get in your car, or pull out of the spot,?are everywhere. Now, a Russian online newspaper is attempting to remedy the rudeness ? at least in its corner of the world.

Parking Douche, an Android app developed by The?Village, invites irritated Android users to upload plate numbers and?photos of poorly parked cars.

People online?nearby are served with a?pop-up ad?on The Village news?website?that show which jerks have parked where, and just?how egregiously they have abused the social contract.

"The data is streamed live through an IP address, so (only) people who live or work near the locations where the car was parked see it," the video goes on to explain. And, it seems, the only way the online witness can dismiss the pop-up is by sharing the car's info on social media such as Facebook.

But the description for Parking Douche and the video fail to mention the Android app's major flaw: It's only available in Moscow.

"Please make it for other countries!," wrote one commenter on the app's page in the?Google Play store.

Right?!

OK, so there's a few Big Brother aspects that make such an app problematic. Posting the plate and location of someone else's car on a local Web newspaper, let alone Facebook, is more than a little privacy invasive.

Then there are the harassment possibilities, as the entire goal of this product is to humiliate someone publicly. It's not clear how much due diligence this app can do, screening for proper?jerks rather than just?reporting the perfectly parked car of someone that an app user just really wants to annoy. ?

Still ... wildly problematic?privacy?heebie jeebies?aside, the applications for a?viable real time shaming technology available to with a smartphone are astronomical! Think how awesome the world could be if could humiliate the world out of:

• Jerks who use their cellphones in movie theaters!?
  
• Jerks uses the escalator as a phone booth ... for their cellphones!
  
• Jerks who text while they're in my way.
• That one dude?who uses the sidewalk in front of my building to do push ups in?between sprints.
• Jerks who use cellphone apps to complain about other people!?

Working together, we could?shame the whole planet into polite compliance. As the Parking Douche video claims,?"Thanks to this naming and shaming campaign, more and more people are now caring about where and how they park." ?Alas, whether you're for or against such humiliation campaigns, the app's video provides no imperial data is provided to back up that claim.?

??Via Mashable

Helen A.S. Popkin goes blah blah blah about Internet privacy, then asks you to join her Twitter?and/or?Facebook. Also,?Google+. Because that's how she rolls.

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