A harassment campaign on Goodreads

And that's the answer that GR doesn't want to hear - clear patterns of abuse are apparent and they need to allocate more manual labour into moderation - automatic moderation can get pretty decent accuracy, but there's always a grey zone where you need some manual review - as much as we shrink that zone I don't think we'll ever make it disappear.

"Yes, when are you available?"

> Ladies and gentlemen, we got him.

Surely can't be that hard to find out if the business owner set up that sign, right?

Go watch Zodiac to get an idea of how circumstantial evidence is insufficient

While I'm at it, I leave your business card at the scene of a heist.

Decreasing effectiveness is kinda hard, so for short term putting on a trash can I guess, for the long run littering the street can be better option (can maybe push city to increase fines etc for this kind of advertisement)

[1] https://www.dummies.com/education/science/forensics/direct-v...

Like seriously, do you expect an employee to go "oh I don't know of any signs we advertise on, so I guess we can't buy your house"? Even if they know for a fact that the company doesn't have any sign-based advertising they're still not going to turn away the customer.

It is moral to clean up after yourself. Cleaning up after others is a job that demands payment. Cities must tax advertisers so they can employ people to clean up after them.

The reason the police don't do what the parent says is not because of difficulties with attribution of the act, it's because they care so little about the offense that they're not going to expend even the slightest effort to prosecute it. If they saw someone putting out signs, they might tell them to stop. Maybe.

Suppose I were operating such a business with legal advertisements only and the detective asked me "Hey I saw a sign on a telephone pole saying you buy houses for cash, is that right?" why would I answer in the affirmative?

> "No, it's weird that you saw that. I don't post signs on any telephone poles, this is a highly reputable business.

They'd only say that if they're smart. Many of them probably aren't, and their guard will be down if the detective can do a passable "desperate alcoholic" impression over the phone. But regardless, I agree that false negatives are more likely than false positives.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/06/psychologist-explain...

If I didn't advertise on telephone poles but somebody else was trying to frame me, and then I proceeded to act as though those signs were my own, then why would I not deserve punishment? If those signs advertised my business and I neglected to disown the signs because I was greedy, I think I'd deserve to be fined by the city. If I admitted on a recorded telephone call with a detective that the signs were mine, even if they weren't, then I've screwed myself with my own greed, which is fitting and just.

If a detective merely asks you "do you post signs with your name and number with an offer to buy houses", a lot more steps have to take place before reaching the point where you, personally and individually would see a fine for what is in more cases than not going to be a civil infraction that I would imagine, one can take photos of, go to your municipality and contest and say "those signs are illegal but are not mine, these signs are legal and belong to me".

You're missing the point were the detective specifically asks you if you placed signs on telephone poles and got a voice recording of you admitting you did place illegal signs. The real reason this doesn't happen is simply because detectives can't be bothered, not because it's an impossible case to make in court.

And because it's highly improbable that "yes, those are my signs" over the phone is enough to result in an infraction if they did.

Chances are, you're not even going to get the phone call in the hypothetical you're propping up, even from a clerk's office. If your name and phone number is on it, you'll likely just end up getting it in the mail without even the courtesy of a phone call to ask how your morning is going.

The possibility of a false negative does exist, but the possibility of a false positive seems greatly overstated and I do not believe aversion to false positives motivates the lack of enforcement as was suggested above.

"No, it's weird that you saw that. I don't post signs on any telephone poles, this is a highly reputable business. However, as long as you're here, I definitely do buy houses for cash, and it sounds like you're interested in that."

I was talking about clerks of the local government agency who would have an issue with illegal sign placements...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berwyn_Heights,_Maryland_mayor...

This way police is free to handle actual crime.

Throw the card in the trash, like a decent human being.

They are counting on people being decent human beings who do what they're supposed to do without complaint. That's exactly what enables them and lets them get away with their unacceptable behavior. If nobody did that, maybe the situation would become unmanageable and the city would be forced to deal with it.

The right thing to do is to put an end to all advertising. That's the true solution. Nobody's gonna do it because the money speaks much louder than right and wrong.

I was thinking more as tool for insurance and/or attempting to force the company to pay for the cost of an exterior detailing of your car since they plastered something to it (with the help of the weather).

In many US areas there are online police reports for minor incidents and the purpose of the report is almost solely so that you have a record for insurance.

It may also help if you call up the company (or publicly shame them with a tweet) to ask for reimbursement for the cost of a car detailer to remove their litter from your car without damage. Having a police report means you could put it all in the hands of your insurance company who have lawyers on staff or use it as part of the negotiation with the company.

Maybe enough police reports about a given company and you could petition the council to revoke that company's ability to flyer any longer?

I know I'm probably dreaming that it would make a difference. The only time I've had an experience with this a friend used twitter and got a public apology from the company along with some monetary compensation around the removal of the ink residue from the windshield.

People that put the flyers on the windshields are just a step from insolvency, so no use to go against them. The "company" behind them, just a little step up the food chain.