alt Hacker NewsAround here, folks wipe off the paint from their license plates with paint thinner. The plate still has the number, but an ALPR won’t be able to read it.
I’m told the reason is so that they don’t have to pay bridge tolls (which are quite high).
It’s illegal, but I see cars with bare-metal license plates, all the time.
(Assuming this is NY) Worth noting that NY license plates had a defect that caused the paint to delaminate [1]. I am not surprised that people intentionally do it, but this delamination used to be extremely common.
[1]: https://www.syracuse.com/news/2019/08/new-york-ends-contract...