@blake I feel the same way. It reminds me of the app they built/used for Georgetown (in DC) neighborhood watch to announce suspicious persons which it ended being all black men. It became very racist very quickly. I'm sure the developer means well, but this has the potential of being discriminatory.
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@troy_ruediger places that are considered "shady" = places white people feel unsafe in = places primarily inhabited by low-income people of color
@maxwellhallel that was understood, I guess my point was to elaborate.
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lol I live in a red zone and walk around the area at all hours. Guess this is for suburb people that are afraid of everybody.
edit: wow this is for rerouting driving directions? like you're so afraid that you can't even drive through downtown Dallas? hahaha
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Given the brouhaha over SketchFactor two years ago (see Gothamist story "Tone-deaf App Helps Naive Travelers Avoid 'Sketchy' Neighborhoods") I wonder if / how this is different?
I'm not a lover of this because it's segmenting areas of towns that more than likely have great things to offer, but don't get the chance... But at least, there will be no more issues like this:
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the ‹shady› parts are most of the time the interesting parts 😉
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Yeah this is pretty dumb. Of course there will be enough anecdotal evidence of somebody using it and finding some non-stereotypically "shady" area listed as shady, but at its core, as someone mentioned, this is mostly so white hipsters don't accidentally stray too far from the Gentrified Zone, losing sight of Whole Foods and, with it, all hope as well.
Two stories that make this product relevant in my eyes:
1) I was on a bus going towards a train station. Train comes every hour, so I *really* didn't want to miss it. Bus got stuck in traffic, so I figured out where we were and realized that I could get off the bus early, run a few blocks, and get to a different train station. Happens to be that those few blocks are the red light district. Would have been nice to know.
2) I used Google Maps to commute from one bus to another (train was under maintenance). Google Maps told me to pick up my bus at a certain address. That address was an abandoned building between a sketchy sex shop and a brothel. There was no bus stop there.
All in all, I met some interesting people who were offering interesting services, so I guess that was cool. But truthfully I would have rather avoided that entire area. This entire idea really comes down to your personal definition of "shady".
Side note: the people in that neighborhood really don't know how to market themselves well. So if anyone is looking for a new startup idea...
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