I worked at an e-commerce clothing store in 2011 that made it abundantly clear you would get your ass handed to you if you went poking around in customer records you had no business looking at for curiosity's sake. I currently work with an online game where I will get asked difficult questions if I can't justify why I'm looking at the in-game actions a player took without clear justification, and we have barely any PII on most players beyond IP address.

It would seem reasonable to squarely blame Flock for not absolutely centering this feature.

I came from an email marketing company where this was not the case. celebrity accounts were accessible to everyone down to the level of first-line support which eventually resulted in someone getting fired because they were able to add a self-promo into a large account's public communique. it took years before basic access controls were implemented and even then that was only because we were acquired and our parent company was very unhappy with our current state

which isn't to say that Flock isn't at fault - they very much are and they made it simple for cops to stalk people at will and with very little visibility until recently. pair it with a very nominal reason to investigate, say, community organizing and it becomes (or, really, has already become) a way to stifle dissent [0]

[0] https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/inte...