https://www.washingtonian.com/2022/08/24/this-dc-area-high-tech-toilet-startup-wants-to-solve-the-public-bathroom-problem/>User IDs are part of Throne’s accountability system: After you use a restroom, you’re asked to rate its cleanliness. Meanwhile, each user gets a “Throne score,” similar to Uber, and repeat offenders who abuse the restroom will be blocked. Weight sensors also track if someone’s been in the bathroom too long. “Very few people create issues in [public] bathrooms, don’t respect that amenity, and then ruin it for the majority. Most people really want and value that clean experience and will leave the bathroom as good as they find it,” Heinzelman says, adding that user IDs are a way to “create the accountability that is currently missing in the shared bathroom space.” "user id accountability system" is one of those phrases that makes me really question why, exactly, "accountability", which is a buzzword which is thrown around to justify all kinds of mutual overwatch, has become something so constantly harped about in the modern context.
at a certain point "accountability" stops being something which is done on the basis of being accountable to a specific community, or a specific social group, and more something which is done solely to create an informational panopticon of paranoia for the benefit of power.
when people say "[x] needs to be held accountable]" - to whom? by what process? why does this entity, who is the fount of accountability, have this power at all? or is it just this vague gesticulation at a Big Other, aimed towards neuroticizing us as people? and who is that Big Other? in this society, in this capitalistic society, if you are appealing to the Big Other, you are appealing to this ideal form of being - this ideal subject of the contemporary society - against which all human beings can only be seen as lack.
if tech startups can justify operating their paid, user ID'd public toilets using the language of accountability, if all sorts of harassment campaigns and inane arguments are justified because of "accountability", you have to wonder if this all isn't deliberate mutual paranoia.