[HN Gopher] Capitol Attack Was Months in the Making on Facebook
___________________________________________________________________
Capitol Attack Was Months in the Making on Facebook
Author : alexrustic
Score : 188 points
Date : 2021-01-19 17:20 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.techtransparencyproject.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.techtransparencyproject.org)
| traveler01 wrote:
| So won't get the same Parler treatment?
|
| Cool...
| stretchcat wrote:
| It was planned for months, openly on Facebook in plain view of
| everybody. Remember that when politicians call for more intrusive
| surveillance in response.
| api wrote:
| Yeah "we need to break all encryption to catch people planning
| terrorism in Facebook groups, e-mail, and unencrypted SMS..."
|
| Most terrorists are idiots because most people who are not
| idiots are not terrorists.
| wolco5 wrote:
| Most people who are idiots are not terrorists either.
|
| On average a terrorist would be smarter than the average
| person. Terrorists are highly motiviated individuals, they
| can deeply understand an ideology and they activity
| learn/train in specialized skills. Compared to the average
| person their IQ would be 20 points higher.
|
| Being a terrorist isn't easy. It's not a job for everyone.
| shmageggy wrote:
| > _they can deeply understand an ideology_
|
| Looking at what motivated most of the Capitol
| insurrectionists does not support this claim. They are
| seemingly unable to distinguish reality from obvious
| propaganda or wild conspiracy theories.
| alwaysdoit wrote:
| Yeah, it's weird that the discussion has centered around
| censorship, rather than like... why didn't law enforcement shut
| this down sooner? Or at least properly prepare for it?
| throw-239582woh wrote:
| A few possibilities:
|
| - Overcorrection: law enforcement had come under fire for
| using excessive force against protests and they erred on the
| other side.
|
| - Conspiracy: the security state is firmly under the control
| of the pro-Trump faction, who (incorrectly) thought they
| could make Trump president for life once the Q Shaman took
| the Senate.
|
| - Conspiracy: the security state is firmly under the control
| of the anti-Trump faction, who (correctly) thought that
| letting the protest go too far would be politically
| devastating for their enemies, and would provide the hook for
| passing new security laws.
|
| - Incompetence: America can't protect its capitol for the
| same reason it can't distribute a vaccine, build railways or
| put a man on the moon.
| whoknew1122 wrote:
| Far-right terrorism in the US has never really been taken
| seriously. No one took them seriously. Until the Capitol was
| attacked.
|
| The Feds are starting to roll up high ranking militia
| members, so hopefully they learned their lesson this time.
| neartheplain wrote:
| _Far-right terrorism in the US has never really been taken
| seriously. No one took them seriously._
|
| That's not really true.
|
| Far-right terror was taken _very_ seriously in 1995 after
| the Oklahoma City bombing. The FBI hired 500 agents
| specifically to focus on domestic terrorism [0],
| particularly the then-new militia movement. Virtually every
| state and federal law enforcement agency established a
| domestic terror unit. Through continuous effort they 'd
| pretty much quashed the militia movement by 2004, despite
| the shift of federal resources to the Global War on Terror
| post-9/11. However, far-right militias surged again in the
| Obama years [2].
|
| (Much further back, U.S. Grant used the Army to crack down
| on the Klan [3]. Unfortunately, his successor Rutherford B.
| Hayes effectively ended Reconstruction and rolled back much
| of this progress.)
|
| [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20120210125747/http://news.
| bbc.c... [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20110623153230/htt
| p://www.rickro... [2] https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-
| way/2012/03/08/148217754... [3]
| https://www.historynet.com/grant-takes-klan.htm
| whoknew1122 wrote:
| I apologize for being imprecise. Far-right terrorism
| hasn't been taken seriously until a far-right terrorist
| actually commits violence. Then government is vigilant
| for a couple of years and goes back to ignoring them.
|
| Far-right terror was taken seriously after the OKC
| bombing. But the far-right terrorist threat had been
| steadily increasing for three years at that point. Ruby
| Ridge and the Waco Siege contributed to a surge in far-
| right militias and other terrorist groups. It took
| someone driving a truck bomb and killing hundreds of
| people (in an attempt to spark a race war) to take far-
| right terrorism seriously.
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| Far-right terrorism _has_ been taken seriously, but
| conservatives complained they were being treated unfairly
| and the efforts were abandoned.
|
| 2009 reporting:
| https://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/04/15/extremism.report/
|
| 2012 update: https://www.wired.com/2012/08/dhs/
|
| 2017 update: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteveryt
| hing/wp/2017/0...
|
| 2020 update: https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2020/07/21/right-
| wing-terrorism...
| [deleted]
| s__s wrote:
| When it happened, there was a reporter on CBC talking about
| how it was common knowledge in DC for a long time that there
| was a protest planned there.
|
| So indeed. The real question is why was there seemingly no
| preparation to handle it.
| dgellow wrote:
| The protest was planned, that's for sure. But here the
| context is the attack, not the protest.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Yup, that's what really stinks about these protests. You
| could go to several social media sites and see the 6th
| plans.
|
| It was incredible to see so few Capitol police guarding the
| capitol. Further, the fact that they didn't employ things
| like tear gas sooner was incredible. They just sort of let
| the rioters through the weak barriers they setup.
|
| Security HAD to have known this was coming. This wasn't
| some secret plot. I knew this was coming just because I
| like to keep tabs on what the trump supporters are saying.
| It was all over the reddit knockoff (win).
| rayiner wrote:
| There have been a bunch of Trump protests in DC since the
| election. The city was boarded up in preparation for
| them. But they've all been completely peaceful. People
| got complacent.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Compared to other DC protests, the absence of preparation
| _was_ the preparation.
|
| Clearly some of the Establishment wanted it to succeed.
| cogman10 wrote:
| They employed tear gas to get Trump to hold a bible
| upside down. [1]
|
| It's hard to overstate how poorly they managed this. This
| is something a special investigation should be
| commissioned out by congress/the DOJ.
|
| [1] https://www.npr.org/2020/06/01/867532070/trumps-
| unannounced-...
| dmkolobov wrote:
| Who would have thought that the police would softball their
| response to a large group of armed right-wing racists. lol.
| sanderjd wrote:
| There are different conversations in different places. The
| conversation here is obsessed with "censorship" for fairly
| clear reasons; more of our livelihoods depend on how these
| rules work. But there is a very active conversation about the
| law enforcement breakdown on multiple levels. I expect there
| will be a 9/11 style commission. I expect its findings to be
| very depressing (along the lines of the people in charge
| going easier on people they viewed more as "us" rather than
| "them").
| osgovernment wrote:
| If government uses this as another 911 to push another Patriot
| Act, then we should suspect our government was not only aware
| of what was happening but they also participated in it.
| beefee wrote:
| It's chilling how quickly the tech industry has coalesced around
| oppressive and biased social media censorship policies. A scant
| few years ago, the tech industry was a beacon of free expression.
| bananabreakfast wrote:
| It's chilling how quickly radical terrorist groups have
| coalesced around using social media to coordinate their hatred
| and their attacks. A scant few years ago, America actively
| fought terrorists instead of encouraging and facilitating them.
| trident5000 wrote:
| Yes, the terrorists who caused 1-2 billion in damage this
| summer and destroyed peoples livelihoods with a dozen deaths
| over a false narrative according to public and easily
| accessible FBI statistics, and also the terrorists who
| stormed the capital. Both sets of terrorists who are
| coordinating on all of the platforms.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Where is this $20B number coming from? It doesn't appear to
| reflect reality.
|
| https://www.axios.com/riots-cost-property-
| damage-276c9bcc-a4...
| trident5000 wrote:
| I stand corrected and edited. Its still a non trivial
| amount and apparently "most expensive riot in history"
| according to your source.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| There's some apples to oranges going on there.
|
| You'll see in the top ten list several listings in April
| 1968, when Martin Luther King was assassinated. Counting
| these (and the many, many other cities they took place in
| in 1968) separately, while lumping together "protests
| that took place in 140 U.S. cities this spring", is
| fairly hard to justify.
|
| You should also consider what _else_ your preferred news
| sources may have blown out by a similarly inaccurate
| 10-20x amount about the BLM protests.
| eplanit wrote:
| Are you referring to Antifa and BLM, who also organized on FB
| and Twitter during 2020, too?
| baggachipz wrote:
| Oh right, I forgot about the part where "Antifa" or the BLM
| protests ended in them infiltrating the United States
| Capitol, killing guards with fire extinguishers and
| american flags, stole laptops from members of congress and
| attempted to sell them to Russia, and were wearing literal
| Nazi propaganda and claiming a revolution.
| bananabreakfast wrote:
| You mean the fictitious boogeyman "group" that not one
| member has ever been identified and the movement for black
| rights that was widely brutalized by the police?
|
| I suppose not, seeing as one is a fantasy and the other
| clearly had the police paying attention to their plans.
| Besides, neither has attempted a coup to overturn an
| election so it's not really the same is it?
| yonaguska wrote:
| Do you honestly believe that Antifa is not real?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| "Real" and "worth pissing your pants over" aren't quite
| the same.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| Antifa is a very minor left wing subculture centered
| around protests.
| dylan-m wrote:
| Antifa are Facebook's version of Anonymous.
| hetspookjee wrote:
| Off topic but I'm having increasingly more difficulty with
| the term Terrorist. How'd you call American intrusions in
| sovereign states? Just somewhat recently the drone strike of
| the General Soleimani on sovereign grounds were an act of
| terrorism if perceived through the eyes of most Iranians, and
| possibly Iraqis as the strike was on their ground. Terrorist
| is a term that is stretched and applied beyond meaning.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| We all know how things are - the world is not a fair place.
| It never was, and so far its rigged in a way that it never
| will be. Strong oppress the weak. Skillful strong oppress
| in a way that weak don't even notice but that's another
| topic. The word terrorist currently means 'enemy of me', if
| me is state powerful enough to project its power on others.
| US took any other meaning internationally from this word
| over last 17 years pretty effectively.
|
| If you actively object the biggest military in the world,
| there is no safe place on this planet. A country that
| effectively uses black op sites to do torture on suspects
| that would be illegal back home, a country that actively
| uses a prison to indefinitely detain (and torture) suspects
| without any legal process (and so on and on... really,
| there are whole books about this), has absolutely 0 issues
| with bombing some enemy general. It can be even in the
| centre of Brusel for all they care, if the benefits
| outweigh the cons. If they kill 50 kids along, all they do
| is try to minimize media damage. Do you see many americans
| shedding tears over this? From outside its pretty hard to
| spot any, and anybody who cares knows how things are.
|
| Let's not pretend wars are something nice, fair and some
| gentlemanly approach is applied. Almost anything that works
| will be used.
| bananabreakfast wrote:
| I would define terrorism as forced coercion of an outside
| group (or group perceived to be "outside") through violent
| actions. Controlling through fear. So yes, any
| assassination, and especially that one, would be terrorism.
| However, terrorism committed by independent actors makes
| them terrorists, but terrorism committed by the state is
| more appropriately classified as military aggression, or
| acts of war.
|
| The whole point of the military doing anything short of all
| out war is to scare an "enemy" into compliance through
| threat of violence. So it's not classified as terrorism for
| the same reason as lethal action by police is not murder.
| The blessing of the state changes its definition.
| guerrilla wrote:
| That's not the standard understanding:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_terrorism
| refurb wrote:
| It amazing how the same people saying "terrorism is
| overblown" a few years back are jumping on the "terrorism is
| threatening our republic" bandwagon.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| I think it's simultaneously funny and I feel a bit of empathy
| for them. They imagined puppies and rainbows on their free
| speech platform, but what they got was Donald Trump tweeting
| his way into the White House. They facilitated that and it's
| gotta be a big punch in the gut to people who consider him
| literally hitler, an existential threat, etc. When they looked
| around their very liberal cities they felt like they were the
| 99%, but a shocking reality check came for them.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| What is the bias, beyond "anti-terrorism"?
| osgovernment wrote:
| Twitter and Facebook never claimed to be the anti-censorship
| platforms. If you want anti-censorship then you look for
| platforms designed for this, not hope that the government
| strips business rights in order to make it so.
| redelbee wrote:
| I agree with your use of "chilling" but more in the traditional
| sense when it comes to expression: that any censorship/bans/etc
| will likely have a chilling effect on this type of speech. In
| this case I think "this type of speech" comes down to people
| expressing their violent fantasies or plans, and I don't think
| it's bad if we have less of that particular kind of speech. As
| the classic argument goes, however, you can't have it both ways
| with both total freedom of speech and some kind of moderating
| censorship.
|
| All that said, if we can make our way past the obvious
| consequences of limiting speech we might get to a more
| interesting place. In particular I'm more interested in how
| social media moderation might change our opinions and laws
| about speech itself. Does everyone's speech deserve to be
| treated the same way by the algorithms that decide what gets
| traction and what doesn't? Should the algorithms or platforms
| themselves be restricted in their "speech" in some way? How do
| we square our desire to allow corporations to develop
| algorithms to increase commerce when those same algorithms also
| necessarily foment rage and violence?
|
| I don't think it's worth arguing whether free speech is worth
| protecting (it is, despite the evils you also have to protect)
| but I do think it's worth considering how we think about what
| constitutes speech when commerce, social media platforms, and
| algorithms come into play.
| ryandrake wrote:
| You know what's also chilling? Major tech platforms choosing to
| publish, amplify, and normalize: white supremacy, antisemitism,
| serious calls to violently overthrow democracy, conspiracies
| about the deep state cabal of satan-worshiping pedophiles, the
| health benefits of drinking bleach, denial of well understood
| scientific facts, etc.
|
| These things are fine for the town square, since people have
| free speech, but nobody should be handing them a megaphone that
| reaches 7 billion people.
|
| Free speech does not mean you are entitled to have your speech
| broadcast to a global audience.
| simple_phrases wrote:
| Weird, I distinctly remember Twitter, Facebook and Google
| removing Islamic religious content under the guise of stopping
| terrorism a decade ago. What I don't remember is the current
| free speech absolutist crowd objecting to such censorship. In
| fact, I remember them cheering those companies on.
| oji0hub wrote:
| People don't care until they are censored themselves.
|
| "First they came for the..."
| JohnBooty wrote:
| It's chilling how quickly misinformation merchants, hostile
| foreign agents, and other bad actors coalesced around using
| popular mainstream social media as the world's most effective
| megaphone.
|
| A scant few years ago, they lacked a direct communications
| channel by which they could radicalize the average American.
| potency wrote:
| I'd argue that this has been creeping for a while. At first
| it's used to ban blatantly illegal posts and obvious spam.
| However the power to moderate is easily abused. Big Tech is now
| effectively punishing wrong-think, and it doesn't even have to
| happen on the platform in question.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| Society has been steadily picking off free speech diehards. I
| think the turning point is when reddit started cracking down
| tareqak wrote:
| I had a thought that came about as a result of this post and
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25836503 both being on the
| HN front page at around roughly the same time I perused HN.
|
| The thought is: why is GitHub so fast at taking down a
| potentially infringing code repository in response to a DMCA
| request but Google, Facebook, Twitter et al. so slow at taking
| down violence-promoting content?
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| When will Apple remove FB then?
|
| FB has said it is too big to moderate effectively, ergo in
| principle it is unmoderated just like Parler.
|
| FB has a point, for example, in Myanmar the platform is being
| used to organize genocide. There is no way FB could hire enough
| local moderators to deal with this without turning off the
| service.
| klmadfejno wrote:
| I honestly doubt that is the case. Movements like this are
| going to have a small number of popular leaders. Ban people,
| rather than just removing some posts, and you can disrupt that
| social graph pretty quick.
| efwfwef wrote:
| If people had called one another to prepare this, would we say
| that the phone was responsible for the attack? And would we try
| to ban phones?
| vb6sp6 wrote:
| we did declare that phones were dangerous and we did take steps
| to mitigate their ability to carry out attacks:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MYSTIC_(surveillance_program)
| kgog wrote:
| So Facebook is a public utility?
| dr-detroit wrote:
| Its backed by the CIA according to ABC news they wouldn't
| exist without a ton of taxpayer subsidies and special
| treatment.
| lhorie wrote:
| Aren't phone lines also technically managed by private
| companies?
|
| AFAIK, postal service is a public service, but not phones.
| monocasa wrote:
| I think the parent is referring to how phones are Title II
| common carriers.
| osgovernment wrote:
| Based on the centralization of hosting and cloud
| services, it is about time that we re-evaluate ISPs and
| cloud providers.
| ghostbrainalpha wrote:
| A better analog for a specific Facebook Group might be a
| hotline, like "1-900-Do-Terrorism".
|
| I would have no problem banning certain phone numbers that only
| exist to incite violence.
| kgwxd wrote:
| No, but no one seems to be trying to blame ISPs either. If
| there was a domestic terrorist 900 number, it would be a
| target.
| lqet wrote:
| Phones don't broadcast. A small group of agitators could have
| used a pirate radio station to call for an attack on the
| capitol 50 years ago and reach millions of people, which is
| exactly why pirate radio stations are illegal.
| pokstad wrote:
| Phones don't broadcast, but the two human callers can.
| entropea wrote:
| Pirate Radio stations & new LPFM are primarily illegal
| because Clear Channel/iHeartRadio cannot profit & control the
| flow of information as well as they do when they have
| competition. The things Clear Channel hosts, especially on
| AM, are not even very much different from calling for an
| attack on the Capitol, having listened to 20+ years
| (unfortunately) of Rush Limbaugh my grandfather was listening
| to. You can contact a lot of people on Amateur Radio or CB
| radio, but it's not illegal because it doesn't compete with
| big business.
| jpollock wrote:
| Pirate Radio stations are illegal because when it was more
| of a free-for-all, people would transmit at megawatt power.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_R._Brinkley
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| Why would clear channel have anything to do with making
| pirate radio illegal, which it was for decades before the
| former ever existed?
| entropea wrote:
| The same reason, just replace with that generations Clear
| Channel lobbyists. FM/AM Radio is extremely anti-
| competitive.
| ardy42 wrote:
| > If people had called one another to prepare this, would we
| say that the phone was responsible for the attack? And would we
| try to ban phones?
|
| That's a moot point, because an attack like this can't
| realistically be organized via one-to-one communication. It
| needs a broadcast medium, which the phone network isn't.
| pokstad wrote:
| Really? How did past revolutions and terrorist attacks get
| organized? You realize most of world history existed before
| the Internet, right?
| akira2501 wrote:
| A small-scale printing press and a little bit of Common
| Sense [1].
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Sense
| iooi wrote:
| Unnecessarily combative comment. There's a reason why radio
| and television stations are among the first things seized
| in a coup. Broadcast media is _crucial_.
| ardy42 wrote:
| > Really? How did past revolutions and terrorist attacks
| get organized? You realize most of world history existed
| before the Internet, right?
|
| Yeah, of course. Broadcasting means one-to-many
| communication. Before modern technology, those things were
| organized using other kinds of one-to-many communication,
| such as in-person meetings, rallies, and through newspapers
| and other kinds of publications.
|
| Movements aren't organized one-to-one like on a telephone,
| because that's a far slower way of spreading a message.
| It's also an unreliable medium, as the children's game
| "telephone" shows.
| ruffrey wrote:
| It's certainly easier with social media, but before that
| people used phones and in person meetings.
| beaner wrote:
| Is CNN, a broadcast television network, considered a
| broadcast medium for attacks and terrorism for promoting and
| defending violent riots, and for giving reach to similar
| statements of support and justification from congress members
| such as AOC and Nancy Pelosi?
| andrewvc wrote:
| The idea that this summers riots were at all comparable to
| an attack on our nation's legislative body as it certified
| results of an election is repugnant and absurd.
|
| Its easier to point fingers at the other side than take any
| blame for your own.
|
| The insurrection at the nations capitol is a singular
| event, one that Republicans need to reckon with on its own
| terms. Some have done this, and I applaud them. They are
| proving to be the grown ups in the room.
| beaner wrote:
| What makes you think I'm on a side? I see hypocrisy all
| around. I think the capitol protests should not have
| happened, and the people who participated in them should
| be held accountable.
|
| I agree with you that the capitol riots and the summer
| riots are incomparable. The summer riots were much worse,
| lasted longer, targeted innocents rather than political
| institutions, were widely excused and often promulgated
| by the newsmedia and politicians, are still talked about
| as if they were just, continually avoid criticism by
| cowardly saying that such points are a "distraction" in
| the face of things like the capitol riots, and use
| dishonest sleights of hand like the changing of language
| from "riot" to "attack" to gaslight.
| TheAceOfHearts wrote:
| Could you give some concrete examples?
|
| I think the scale of events resulting from a statement are
| taken into consideration. Terrorists have sprung up after
| being radicalized by what they heard from one politician or
| another, but we typically won't consider the politician
| responsible for those actions.
|
| This probably starts going into whataboutism territory, but
| doesn't this stuff tend to go both ways? I'd postulate we
| can probably find a few damning quotes made on Fox as well.
|
| I'll note I'm very ignorant on this topic as I haven't
| actually watched television or any of these networks in
| years.
| beaner wrote:
| Examples are everywhere, you just have to not be in a
| bubble and be open to seeing it. I could keep going but
| you tell me, do you need more?
|
| AOC: "The whole point of protesting is to make ppl
| uncomfortable." [-1]
|
| Slate: "Non-violence is an important tool for protests,
| but so is violence" [0]
|
| Vox: "Riots are destructive, dangerous, and scary -- but
| can lead to serious social reforms" [1]
|
| Pelosi: "we welcome the presence of these activists" vs
| "our election was hijacked" [2]
|
| "CNN Promoted Charged Leftist Rioter Who Masqueraded As
| Reporter Despite No Credentials, Urged Assault On
| Capitol" [3]
|
| Chris Cuomo: "Show me where it says that protests are
| supposed to be polite and peaceful" [4]
|
| Supercut of news media justifying and excusing riots: [5]
|
| Daily beast and salon writer Arthur Chu calling for
| explicit murder of people he calls Nazis: [6]
|
| Difference in tone & presentation of NYT covering violent
| riots: [7]
|
| Sally Kohn, USA today writer: "I don't like violent
| protests but I understand them" [8]
|
| Kamala Harris: "Protests should not let up"
|
| Maxine Waters "If you see anybody from that cabinet in a
| restaurant, in a department store... You get out and you
| create a crowd and you push back on them."
|
| Nancy Pelosi: "I just don't know why there aren't
| uprisings all over the country. Maybe there will be
| soon."
|
| Ayanna Pressley: "There needs to be unrest in the
| streets"
|
| (I would agree that some of the politicians' quotes are a
| little weak, but in the name of consistency, these are at
| least worse than some types of language from Trump that
| would be called out as violence.)
|
| [-1] https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1334184644707758080
|
| [0] https://twitter.com/slate/status/1268415955937513473?
| lang=en
|
| [1] https://www.vox.com/2015/4/30/8518681/protests-riots-
| work
|
| [2] https://twitter.com/ConceptualJames/status/1348439232
| 4157521...
|
| [3] https://thenationalpulse.com/breaking/cnn-promoted-
| capitol-r...
|
| [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAe86my9r7A
|
| [5] https://twitter.com/tomselliott/status/13473025884342
| 84544
|
| [6] https://twitter.com/Malcolm_fleX48/status/13471862877
| 5795917...
|
| [7] https://twitter.com/ConceptualJames/status/1347055222
| 9805506...
|
| [8] https://twitter.com/DineshDSouza/status/1346927304073
| 744388
|
| More: https://thefederalist.com/2021/01/08/10-times-
| democrats-urge...
| ardy42 wrote:
| > Examples are everywhere, you just have to not be in a
| bubble and be open to seeing it. I could keep going but
| you tell me, do you need more?
|
| If you strip out enough context, you can make any false
| equivalency you like. For instance: weren't the Allies
| and Axis in WWII basically the same? After all, they both
| used guns and bombs to commit violence.
| beaner wrote:
| I can't say that I know enough about that part of WWII,
| but yeah I agree with that statement. Which isn't to say
| that it applies here. Simply pointing out that stripping
| out context can lead to false equivalences is lazy, it
| needs to be shown.
|
| Each of these things certainly has a context that can be
| gone and read. That's why I included sources rather than
| not including them. There's also Google.
|
| In addition I'd simply say that whatever your perspective
| on context is and how it applies to calls to violence and
| interpretations thereof, that it should be applied
| equally to all sources from all sides. This doesn't
| really seem to be what is happening, which is the largest
| factor in what seems to me a rather clear observation
| that the newsmedia's portrayal, and those who promote it
| and give it reach uncritically, are full of shit.
| ardy42 wrote:
| > I can't say that I know enough about that part of WWII,
| but yeah I agree with that statement. Which isn't to say
| that it applies here. Simply pointing out that stripping
| out context can lead to false equivalences is lazy, it
| needs to be shown.
|
| Well, the key part is that the Axis was centered on the
| imperial ambitions of a a famous genocidal dictatorship
| that you've probably heard of. There's pretty much a
| unanimous consensus that that dictatorship was very, very
| bad and its allies were not much better.
|
| Regarding the recent violence, here the context:
|
| 1. BLM is mainly against the police's pattern
| disproportionate killing of black people, often unarmed,
| and racism in general. While there had been looting and
| rioting, it's worth noting that from the very beginning
| there's evidence that these protests were actually
| infiltrated by violent agitators with other aims (e.g.
| https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/illinois-man-
| accused-o... and
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/23/texas-
| boogaloo...).
|
| 2. The capitol attack was literally against the results
| of a free and fair election, and deliberately attacked
| some of the actual institutions of American democracy.
| There's also no evidence of infiltration, though such
| claims are now being made to deflect blame. And the riots
| often loudly expressed violent aims (e.g. erecting a
| literal gallows and chanting "Hang Mike Pence"
| https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/hang-mike-pence-chant-
| capi...).
| whoknew1122 wrote:
| It's true. And guess which side was antifa.
| bananabreakfast wrote:
| Notice how none of these entirely out of context quotes
| are encouraging crowds to overthrow the government to
| overturn an election.
|
| Also, note that when these people use forceful language,
| they are talking about fighting for their rights to not
| be murdered by police. When Trump uses violent rhetoric,
| he is talking entirely about keeping himself in power.
|
| Context matters.
| IfOnlyYouKnew wrote:
| People didn't, because phones are not useful for this purpose.
| And, yes, if they were, we would be asking ourselves how to
| prevent their use for this purpose.
|
| The phone network _is_ useful for other uses society deems to
| be net-negative, such as spammy calls. As a result, technical
| and legal barriers were erected to curtail such abuses.
| earthscienceman wrote:
| Phones don't pretend to be a moderated public platform. Also,
| the government has the legal right to monitor phones just as
| much as they do Facebook via the correct warrants.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Phones don't automatically make calls to people who disagree
| with your opinion or peddle misinformation all the time in
| order to generate "engagement" for the phone company.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Yea the difference in my mind is that the phone company does
| not moderate content or exercise editorial control over what
| gets sent over its lines, but Facebook does. So if Facebook
| decided that this kind of user generated content was
| acceptable to publish, they should be liable for the
| resulting problems.
| godelski wrote:
| I'm not sure Facebook is acting like an editor here. Those
| approve every post. Facebook can't practically do they. I'm
| critical of this case because it's a large group and thus
| Facebook should have been aware, but it seems like it's a
| tall order to ask Facebook to migrate everything. Isn't
| this what section 230 is about? Before you either migrate
| all our not at all. 230 let's you at least try to moderate
| (because let's be real, you can't moderate a billion
| people)
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Facebook does act like an editor by way of their
| algorithms. Facebook's (and other social media's)
| timelines are no longer limited to the people you
| explicitly follow.
|
| Whether they have the ability to moderate or not is
| irrelevant. If you can't afford the obligations of a
| publisher, don't be a publisher.
| godelski wrote:
| But how do you codify that in law? I clearly want some
| moderation (taking down illegal stuff, border line
| illegal, and etc) but if your choice is "moderate all or
| not at all" (as my understanding of pre section 230 is)
| then no one is going to moderate anything at all. I'm not
| trying to defend Facebook here, but I feel completely
| ignoring any of the nuance to the situation is
| disingenuous. It's not like you can moderate a billion
| people, you could only do your best (I'm not saying
| Facebook is doing their best). Removing the nuance of the
| situation to make an easy argument is exactly the problem
| that got us here in the first place so let's not continue
| it.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| I'm not talking about moderation here. I'm talking about
| the fact that Facebook promotes certain content in user's
| feeds (including content that these users have no direct
| relationship to - they're not friends with the author nor
| follow him) in order to generate "engagement". This
| should stop.
|
| Regarding moderation, it's true that you can't moderate
| billions of people with 100% accuracy, but you can
| discourage them from posting undesirable content in the
| first place by associating _real_ consequences such a a
| permanent ban (or a monetary loss, by charging an entry
| fee to create an account) or make them earn the
| _privilege_ of posting content (for example, not being
| able to post links until your account has certain
| reputation of good behavior).
|
| Discouraging people from posting bad content, and not
| amplifying the reach of bad content for engagement's sake
| should go a long way.
| mbg721 wrote:
| There's something to this. The things people hate about
| Facebook aren't caused by some user sitting down and
| typing a post, and in fact that kind of content gets
| buried in the feed anyway. The problems start with
| "sharing the story at the top of the feed" and "your
| friend liked X article which is really an ad". It's a
| more aggressive version of 90s email chain-letters.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Absolutely. I don't think most of these people woke up
| one day and suddenly decided "hey let's storm the
| Capitol".
|
| Instead, these people were groomed over a period of
| months or years by way of recommending conspiratorial or
| outrageous content and it finally blew up.
|
| So not only did Facebook create the problem in the first
| place, they also had plenty of early warnings about
| what's been going on, but it's hard to consider an
| increase in "engagement" (thus revenue) as a "warning"
| and even harder to act upon it.
|
| This also raises another question regarding the
| efficiency of our intelligence services if large-scale
| domestic terrorism was organized all in public on a
| platform they had privileged access to.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Phones don't allow complete strangers to discover each
| other and work themselves into a frenzy over their shared
| angst.
| bdamm wrote:
| Phones do in fact allow this, the difference is that it
| doesn't scale up in a 1:many relationship, and the phone
| users are not incentivized to use the phone more for this
| purpose over, say, calling their mom.
| drewg123 wrote:
| When telephones were a new technology, say in the 1890s, then
| yes, they probably would have.
| chmod600 wrote:
| We (collectively) said that about Parler.
| [deleted]
| burke wrote:
| Phones provide communication over distances unlike what was
| previously available. This is something that society has kind
| of settled into at this point.
|
| Social media is new, and it provides communication fan-out
| unlike anything we've dealt with before except from people that
| are powerful enough to be given a platform on major TV
| networks.
|
| Guns don't kill people, but...
| root_axis wrote:
| This has very little to do with technology. This is a culture
| war, and after the capitol riot the culture has shifted to openly
| reject the losing ideology. Conservatives are right to fight the
| threat of censorship because there's always a possibility this
| could slide out of control, but the rest of society is right to
| push back until they decide to drop the election fraud lies that
| are tearing this country apart.
| alexrustic wrote:
| See also BuzzFeed News article about this:
|
| _"If They Won't Hear Us, They Will Fear Us": How The Capitol
| Assault Was Planned On Facebook_
|
| https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/davidmack/how-us-capito...
| dgellow wrote:
| Off topic thing.
|
| > Two different "occupy" event listings were written in a Nazi-
| style font and began circulating on Facebook in December.
|
| Do they mean a gothic/Fraktur style? Is that considered nazi in
| the English world? I've always learned it as a German script with
| no relation to the 3rd reich.
|
| Edit: I off course understand that neo nazi use it to express
| their relationship with nazi Germany, I'm just surprised to see
| it described as a "nazi-font"
| wccrawford wrote:
| We live in an age where anything used by bad people is now bad,
| no matter how it was used in the past.
|
| That goes all the way from clear things like the swastika to
| not-so-clear things like the 'ok' hand sign. Yes, there are
| people who say you shouldn't use 'ok' hand signs now because
| it's used by an extremist group.
|
| So if neo-nazi use a font, that font is now, to those kinds of
| people, only a neo-nazi font.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| I recently found out that on May 30th, there were numerous Secret
| Service members injured in a BLM/antifa attack (oh, scratch that,
| "peaceful protest") on the White House. I briefly wondered why I
| hadn't heard about that, then I chuckled at my own naivete. Of
| course, one might ask how that was coordinated, but then it was a
| peaceful protest, so who cares?
| BoorishBears wrote:
| I don't know where you've been living that you didn't hear
| about the night Trump went into a bunmer.
|
| https://www.foxnews.com/politics/secret-service-took-trump-t...
|
| https://www.cnn.com/us/live-news/george-floyd-protests-05-31...
|
| https://www.secretservice.gov/newsroom/releases/2020/05/secr...
|
| You'll notice some very interesting words there in the Secret
| Service write up:
|
| > No individuals crossed the White House Fence and no Secret
| Service protectees were ever in any danger.
|
| Does that sound like the scene at the Capitol where
| Congresspeople were hidden behind a makeshift barricade while
| an officer was forced to shoot a woman dead literal steps away
| from them?
| edbob wrote:
| From your own source:
|
| > Numerous Secret Service agents were injured, fires set by
| rioters blazed near the White House and authorities were
| searching for car bombs
|
| > The official initially put the number of agents injured at
| over 50, but that may have referred to the weekend toll; the
| Secret Service has since said the number injured on Sunday
| was 14.
|
| 50 people injured is a serious attack. It's interesting that
| leftists are allowed to continue their violent attacks for
| days, weeks, or months while right-wing movements are
| immediately suppressed. Yet we're supposed to be afraid of
| right-wing violence. Right.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| You dodged the question with expert precision and ignored
| your very dishonest insinuation that this wasn't treated as
| a big deal.
|
| I linked multiple sources precisely to show it's your own
| fault you didn't know. No one hid or censored it.:
|
| > Does that sound like the scene at the Capitol where
| Congresspeople were hidden behind a makeshift barricade
| while an officer was forced to shoot a woman dead literal
| steps away from them?
|
| When even the _Secret Service_ is referring to them as
| injuries at a demonstration and saying that despite the
| injuries (for which 11 people needed medical attention,
| none of them with life threatening injury) no protectees
| were ever in harms way... who are you to overrule them?
|
| -
|
| And are you seriously complaining that the movement that
| actually breached the Capitol was... immediately shut down?
|
| Are you daft? You think if the May protestors had actually
| gotten into the White House they'd just be fine?
|
| -
|
| The irony here is delicious, one group was fought tooth and
| nail from even entering the grounds of the White House.
|
| They were teargassed for even being on public property for
| a photo op! An old man was given a TBI that left him
| bleeding from the ears and unable to walk for trying to
| return a police helmet near the _stairs_ to a government
| building
|
| The other group literally walked into the Capitol and had
| cops taking selfies with them.
|
| And yet you want to paint the former group as having gotten
| off easy? It'd be funny if it wasn't so sad.
|
| Imagine trying to paint being against political violence as
| a partisan issue.
| edbob wrote:
| I think you got me confused with someone else. I don't
| have any other comments in this thread.
|
| How can you honestly say "Imagine trying to paint being
| against political violence as a partisan issue." while
| doing absolutely everything you can to minimize and
| excuse left-wing violence?
| BoorishBears wrote:
| You read my comment before you replied right?
|
| You _completely_ dodged the one thing that is actually
| asked of the reader and tried to jump over the fact this
| entire thread is based on insinuating an abject lie: that
| anyone downplayed the George Floyd protests or what
| happened on Pennsylvania Avenue in any way.
|
| -
|
| And how is saying that a _successful_ breach of the
| Capitol Building while congress was trying to certify a
| new president that resulted in Congresspeople being
| subject to a clear and eminent danger...
|
| should naturally be a bigger deal than people _the Secret
| Service_ of all organizations are saying never posed a
| threat...
|
| excusing the latter?
|
| It's saying call a spade a spade.
|
| Some people just can't handle that though. They need to
| act like it's not that big of a deal and the fact
| breaching the Capitol building tends to turn up the heat
| more than a group that never made it to the fence of the
| White House is a conspiracy.
|
| If you can't handle the heat, don't breech the Capitol
| with Congress in session.
| cochne wrote:
| Can you provide a source please?
| Uhhrrr wrote:
| I hadn't heard about it either, but this Guardian article
| backs it up: https://www.theguardian.com/us-
| news/2020/may/30/protest-wash...
| at_a_remove wrote:
| I could, but why not search for it? As an exciting exercise,
| look at who reported it and, more interestingly, who didn't.
| Examine how the event was described, when it was described at
| all.
| entropea wrote:
| Did they forcibly enter into the White House, or like outside
| on public property? Protests with injuries aren't uncommon, but
| I really doubt they forcibly entered a government building and
| threatened people inside. Police & military are always well
| prepared ahead of time, well researched, in mass for leftist
| agitators.
| Simulacra wrote:
| I'm not sure I believe this. If it was months in the making on
| Facebook, why did Facebook not do more to stop it? Reading this
| it actually gives weight that Facebook was just as responsible
| for the insurrection as Parler.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Now that I think about it: most of the planning happened on
| American soil under the eyes of the American Government. I'm
| afraid there's no choice but to abolish government.
| akmarinov wrote:
| Facebook was way more responsible than Parler.
| Simulacra wrote:
| I don't disagree with you. The evidence appears to support
| that conclusion, so I'm trying to understand why Facebook is
| given a pass. IMO Facebook has been the single greatest
| catalyst for abusive online behavior in twenty years, but
| it's in a protected class. I would like to know why. Is it
| just money?
| trident5000 wrote:
| Because dems took total power in the elections and Apple
| and Google know they are under the antitrust microscope.
| Its likely indirect bribery in hopes of a returned favor.
| yonaguska wrote:
| Seems like every time big tech went in front of congress-
| it turned into a public fishing expedition for lobbying
| dollars.
|
| Democrats overwhelmingly called for censorship and
| regulation.
|
| Republicans overwhelmingly complained of unfair
| treatment.
|
| Big tech responds by preemptively censoring and
| regulating content.
|
| I believe that regulation is coming with dems in total
| power. Regulation will be written and paid for by big
| tech as a means to consolidate regulatory capture.
|
| I think you're right, it's indirect bribery. I doubt
| anything will be done about it.
| spoonjim wrote:
| It's also, what functions does Facebook serve beyond
| organizing violence? Clearly it's a lot.
|
| You can reasonably discuss banning handguns because they
| are only used to commit violence. You can't reasonably
| discussing the ban of all knives, telling people who ask
| "how am I supposed to cook?" that they just need to bite
| their food into little pieces.
| brummm wrote:
| It's probably also rooted in the fact that the owner/CEO
| of facebook is much richer and better connected.
| compiler-guy wrote:
| Apple has a long history of willingness to kneecap
| Facebook. So reluctance to take on Zuck is not likely the
| reason.
|
| https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/12/16/t
| ech...
| ttt0 wrote:
| Are you implying that Parler was created specifically to
| organize violence? If that's what you're saying then
| please provide a clear evidence that proves this is the
| case. Saying something like that just seems really
| dishonest in most, if not all, contexts.
| spoonjim wrote:
| I can tell you that the content on Parler was, on a
| percentage basis, far closer to incitement of violence
| than, say, Reddit. I saw this for myself. I cannot tell
| you the motivations of the founders since I'm not a mind
| reader.
| ttt0 wrote:
| I think that's plausible, but I just have to question the
| framing that Parler served no other purpose than
| organizing violence. As an aside, Reddit is pretty tame
| in general, a more fair comparison would be against
| Facebook or Twitter.
| spoonjim wrote:
| Hard for me to say what Facebook "is" because everyone's
| is different. Mine has a lot more folk music on it than
| politics, for example. That's one of the problems with
| it, no watchdog group (like the media) can evaluate it
| objectively and say "this is what it is."
| jnwatson wrote:
| In reality, it is because Facebook hosts its own
| infrastructure and doesn't have to answer to anyone.
|
| There were no government edicts behind Parler going down.
| It was just individual decisions made by other
| corporations.
| ttt0 wrote:
| The infrastructure is one thing, but they still have to
| work with other companies to put their applications on
| Apple store, Google Play etc.
| kodah wrote:
| I'm sure backbone providers can be pressured in the same
| way a cloud provider can.
| kube-system wrote:
| I think people treat Facebook differently than Parler
| because Facebook is a mainstream communications platform
| and Parler was founded specifically to host content that
| other platforms found objectionable.
| usefulcat wrote:
| > If it was months in the making on Facebook, why did Facebook
| not do more to stop it?
|
| Two things:
|
| 1) If FB is seen to lean too far either left or right, it will
| create an opportunity for a competitor to emerge on the other
| side. FB is huge, so they have a lot to lose in that scenario.
|
| 2) They _literally_ profit from the circulation of the very
| stuff that some would have them sensor.
|
| I don't see what is even slightly surprising about they way
| they've handled this.
|
| Edit: side note - I personally think #1 is likely at some point
| in the future. People have already gone a fair way towards
| segregating themselves into various social/political bubbles;
| why not even more self-segregation? If enough people want that,
| then either FB will enable it or a competitor will emerge to
| enable it.
| mikem170 wrote:
| >2) They literally profit from the circulation of the very
| stuff that some would have them sensor.
|
| And as far as we know they may have been promoting
| inflammatory posts to drive engagement. They keep the
| algorithm they use to do that secret. I think they should
| show posts from friends in chronological order and let users
| filter them, or loose their common carrier status.
| gnusty_gnurc wrote:
| Yep, Facebook, Twitter and friends are trying conveniently blame
| their only competition that's already predisposed to vilification
| on account of the political prejudices of liberals.
|
| Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!
| trident5000 wrote:
| Still in the app stores I see.
| ardy42 wrote:
| > Still in the app stores I see.
|
| That's because this stuff was a tiny fraction of the activity
| on Facebook (it's HUGE, and still mostly for baby pictures),
| but a substantial fraction of the content on Parler and Gab
| (they're _tiny_ , and mostly for the stuff that Facebook and
| Twitter ban).
|
| A lot of people who object to Parler's treatment want this
| conceived as a simple binary, but it's more of a matter of
| degree an proportion.
| trident5000 wrote:
| Sounds like some serious mental gymnastics to me. And also
| not provable with any specific metrics.
| seattle_spring wrote:
| It really doesn't, but ok.
|
| Facebook has a huge moderation team. Just because some
| things get through that cause damage doesn't put it in the
| same category as a platform specifically built to enable
| terrorism.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Let me paint a hypothetical.
|
| I create a new social network startup. Early on, most of
| the people it attracts are those banned from Twitter and
| Facebook - since they don't have a lot of other options.
| In addition to normal social network things, they post
| some questionable and inciting content. Since I'm a
| startup, I have a small moderation team and no fancy AI
| moderation so most of it slips through the cracks. Is my
| social network "built to enable terrorism"?
|
| The political situation we find ourselves in, _even
| though it was allowed to fester for years on established
| social media platforms_ , seems ideal for securing a
| monopoly for those same platforms. How could a competitor
| get a foot in the door without being accused of catering
| to extremists?
| jfengel wrote:
| I'd say yes, in fact.
|
| The notion that you'd need moderation should not come as
| a surprise to you. It's not 1997, so it's not like you
| don't know that this kind of thing happens. If you want
| to build a social network, handling the moderation load
| is part of your job, not an afterthought.
|
| We absolutely allowed large social media platforms to get
| away with it for far too long. It's not the only thing
| making them a monopoly -- the network effect of having
| all of your friends in one place is also a significant
| barrier to entry for any new social media site.
|
| Fixing that after the fact isn't easy. But it doesn't
| mean that you can act as though you're not very, very,
| very late to the party in trying to establish a new
| social media site. In 2021 it's part of any new site to
| make sure you're not being used for crime -- or at least
| making enough of an attempt that authorities don't see
| you as being implicated.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| Let me paint a hypothetical. [...]
| Since I'm a startup, I have a small moderation team
| and no fancy AI moderation so most of it slips through
| the cracks. Is my social network "built to enable
| terrorism"?
|
| Not hypothetical to me!
|
| I once ran an for-profit online community. It was a
| startup, with strictly volunteer moderators. It was an
| early "social networking" thing; honestly more like "a
| BBS with some primordial social features". But hey,
| sounds like your hypothetical to an extent.
|
| This doesn't mean I know anything.
|
| Just means I'm sympathetic to the plight of folks trying
| to make that sort of thing a reality. For the record, I'd
| sure like to give it another try at some point myself.
|
| Anyway, intent matters here, to an extent. Parler
| advertised itself as a more or less moderation-free
| space.
|
| That's quite different thing from Twitter and FB, with
| their codes of conduct and actual moderation teams. I
| mean, the line may be fuzzy, but it's there. I'll be the
| first person to say that Twitter and FB _suck_ , and
| moderation efforts for advertising-driven user content
| mills are probably eternally doomed because their very
| business model dictates that their user-to-moderator
| ratio is always going to be laughably huge; far too large
| to enable effective moderation barring some kind of
| generational leap in AI moderation tools.
|
| But there is at least the semblance of a good-faith
| effort there from those two, as much as I dislike them.
| trident5000 wrote:
| "a platform specifically built to enable terrorism" this
| is hyperbole. We shouldnt have 2 companies arbitrarily
| determining what the thresholds are for a service/app to
| exist.
| lawnchair_larry wrote:
| Parler is in the same category as facebook and twitter.
| It's amazing that people have been gaslit to believe that
| Parler was intended for or mostly used by extremists.
| More amazing that people keep repeating this
| authoritatively when they clearly had no exposure to the
| service.
| high_derivative wrote:
| It's certainly been interesting to see this narrative be
| manufactured and adopted within a very short amount of
| time and now accepted as truth widely.
| ookblah wrote:
| Yeah, it's the same category in the way a truck and sedan
| have 4 wheels. It's amazing that people have been gaslit
| to alternatively believe it was this was some secure,
| free speech alternative to Facebook when it's quite
| evident w/ the data pulls that they had no intention of
| doing so and were at best, incompetent.
|
| They were trying to growth hack using an extremist
| leaning, marginalized audience and got burned for it.
| Roll the dice, accept the outcome.
| jnwatson wrote:
| That Facebook gave it the ol' college try to avoid
| enabling terrorism is sufficient?
| californical wrote:
| I'm sorry but this isn't Reddit, you can't just claim a
| platform was specifically built for terrorism because
| you're upset.
|
| It has definitely attracted an alt-right crowd, but
| "specifically built to enable terrorism" is some
| ridiculous cable-news-level propaganda.
|
| I'd much rather this conversation be about free speech
| and where lines can be drawn -- and it bothers me that
| platforms can be taken down everywhere because of an
| unrelated group that happened to use them for something
| horrible. What about Signal? It's been getting lots of
| popularity recently -- what if it comes out that the
| terrorists are on Signal now, and there's nothing they
| can do to be moderated because of the encryption. Will
| Signal be taken down for refusing to add a backdoor?
| narraturgy wrote:
| If you build a platform specifically to house/attract
| people who were banned from typical platforms because
| they had a tendency towards promoting violence, then I
| would argue that you are very much enabling (possibly
| even encouraging) their behavior. I believe that is a
| pretty logical sequence, and a clear line to draw.
|
| There are very few people who earnestly want an
| unmoderated place of discourse, because those serve very
| little functional purpoae. Eventually most people will
| find something either irrelevant to their interests or
| personally repugnant presented to them and will go back
| to a place where there is some degree of moderation in
| place so that they can consistently find thing that
| interest and engage them. Why are you on HN and not one
| of these wholly unmoderated forums? Even curation of
| topics is a form of moderation, not to mention HN's
| strict approach to actually thoughtful commentary. The
| people who earnestly want a wholly unmoderated space are
| increasingly likely, depending on their desire for it, to
| be one of those people engaging in something so boorish
| that it got them removed from moderated spaces.
|
| Furthermore, there is no small amount of irony in you
| saying you'd rather talk about free speech right after
| telling someone what they can or cannot claim.
| yonaguska wrote:
| > there is no small amount of irony in you saying you'd
| rather talk about free speech right after telling someone
| what they can or cannot claim.
|
| You can't make those claims and expect people to take you
| seriously without backing them up.
|
| > There are very few people who earnestly want an
| unmoderated place of discourse, because those serve very
| little functional purpoae.
|
| Do you mean unmoderated or simply moderated to your
| specific standards? Parler was never unmoderated. You are
| defending deplatforming, while simultaneously telling
| people to go to different platforms if they want
| different standards of moderation. Do you see how this
| doesn't work?
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| Legal classification is very often qualitative (see:
| obscenity laws). Not everything in life can be boiled down
| to metrics.
| trident5000 wrote:
| Where does legal classification even enter this
| conversation?
| giantg2 wrote:
| It still has to be supported with logic and precedent.
| You could compare the action to the action of others like
| Facebook using metrics. If something is entirely
| subjective, then you would violate equal protection when
| one person is guilty and another is not, just based on
| the judge who heard it.
| ardy42 wrote:
| > Sounds like some serious mental gymnastics to me. And
| also not provable with any specific metrics.
|
| It's not really, it just takes the concept of collateral
| damage into account. Should a _billion_ Grandmas be denied
| their baby picture fix on account of a moderation team
| missing a few thousand users ' insurrectionist and para-
| insurrectionist posts? Obviously not, since that action is
| high on collateral damage.
|
| That said, Facebook obviously needs to do a better job
| here, and this is one more example of their foot-dragging
| causing problems.
| chmod600 wrote:
| Moral of story: FB and Twitter can do whatever they want,
| because they have more baby pictures. Any new social
| network has fewer baby pictures, and therefore can be
| held to a higher standard, to the point that it will be
| obliterated before it has a real chance to compete.
| ardy42 wrote:
| > Moral of story: FB and Twitter can do whatever they
| want, because they have more baby pictures. Any new
| social network has fewer baby pictures, and therefore can
| be held to a higher standard, to the point that it will
| be obliterated before it has a real chance to compete.
|
| Eh, not really. You're forgetting the other half of the
| equation: Parler's niche was the stuff Facebook and
| Twitter had either banned or discouraged (like false
| claims of election fraud).
|
| The real moral of the story is: don't try build your
| social network from Facebook and Twitter's concentrated
| dross.
| chmod600 wrote:
| That doesn't seem to help your argument: it means that
| people deplatformed from FB/Twitter should also be
| deplatformed everywhere else, which doesn't sound like a
| great policy for freedom of speech or fostering a
| competitive marketplace.
|
| There was a very real chance that Parler could have
| attracted a lot of mainstream people. Maybe the 70M
| people who voted for Trump would have gone there, and
| started posting baby pictures, which would improve their
| ratio a lot.
| bananabreakfast wrote:
| People deplatformed from facebook and twitter were
| deplatformed for a good reason. So yes, they should be
| deplatformed everywhere else.
|
| And this policy works just fine with freedom of speech,
| seeing as hate speech, threats of violence and
| insurrection are not covered by the 1st amendment, which
| doesn't even govern these companies anyway.
| ardy42 wrote:
| > it means that people deplatformed from FB/Twitter
| should also be deplatformed everywhere else, which
| doesn't sound like a great policy for freedom of speech
| or fostering a competitive marketplace.
|
| That's actually a great policy, because FB/Twitter aren't
| super-eager to ban people for their speech, so the ones
| they systematically de-platform are usually doing
| something pretty bad. Note: I'm not saying they always
| make the right call 100% of the time.
|
| Freedom of speech is not freedom of reach. Society is not
| obligated to give bad ideas an audience. In fact, it's
| doing its job if it filters those ideas out.
| pageandrew wrote:
| At what content share threshold should an app be taken off of
| the App Stores for hosting objectionable content?
| 9wzYQbTYsAIc wrote:
| It's based on capacity to moderate, not on an arbitrary
| ratio.
| pageandrew wrote:
| The idea that a fledgling social media company needs a
| moderation effort akin to Facebook in order to be allowed
| to even exist seems very anti-competitive to me.
|
| Content still slips through the cracks on Facebook too.
| Parler had a moderation system in place, although it was
| jury-driven and not centralized.
| 9wzYQbTYsAIc wrote:
| Well, if there were legislation that enforced that high
| of a barrier to entry to be a social media company, then
| it would be a moot point.
| trident5000 wrote:
| Looks like they dont have the capacity.
| 9wzYQbTYsAIc wrote:
| Appearances can be deceiving.
|
| They may have the capacity to do so and just failed to do
| so. Or the public failed to inform Facebook of the
| violent messages.
| ryandrake wrote:
| That's a great question for these app stores. How much nazi
| content and calls to violently overthrow the government is
| too much to be allowed on the app store? Kind of like
| asking the FDA how much arsenic should be allowed in my
| Cheerios. I'd like to see what their idea of the right
| threshold is.
| pageandrew wrote:
| Is the implication that one instance of objectionable
| content is enough to warrant deplatforming of the site?
| That seems like a really easy way for one competitor to
| take out another.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Not trying to imply anything. The threshold could be non-
| zero. The FDA notably has a non-zero threshold for things
| like allowed rat droppings and hair, insect parts, etc.
| [1] in your food, since no scalable process is perfect.
| I'm curious to know exactly how many or what percentage
| Nazi posts are OK for an app in the App Store.
|
| 1: https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/04/health/insect-rodent-
| filth-in...
| 9wzYQbTYsAIc wrote:
| Apple's reasoning was their incapacity to moderate violent
| messages, not their ratio of violent messages.
| hackerbrother wrote:
| I know, but do we really expect Apple to start World War
| III by banning Facebook from the App Store? We have to
| think in terms of reasonable solutions.
| marcusverus wrote:
| >That's because this stuff was a tiny fraction of the
| activity on Facebook (it's HUGE, and still mostly for baby
| pictures), but a substantial fraction of the content on
| Parler and Gab (they're tiny, and mostly for the stuff that
| Facebook and Twitter ban).
|
| I would love to see a source for this claim.
| ardy42 wrote:
| > I would love to see a source for this claim.
|
| There's no source, but it stands to reason: Facebook has
| something like 2 billion daily active users and it its
| roots are in nonpolitical social networking (meaning baby
| pictures, etc.). Parler had something like 2-3 million
| daily active users at its peak [1], and most of them joined
| after the Twitter started putting warning labels on false
| claims of election fraud. Parler also billed itself as a
| "free speech" social network, which in practice means
| allowing things other social networks prohibit, which means
| its mainly gets users who want to post and read such stuff
| [2].
|
| [1] https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/10/tech/parler-
| downloads/index.h...
|
| [2] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/right-wing-users-
| flock-t...
| jnwatson wrote:
| The same argument was made for Backpage. Only a small
| percentage of overall transactions were related to
| prostitution. The founder ended up in jail regardless.
| jstarfish wrote:
| What torpedoed him was the money laundering.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| The "money laundering" was based on accepting
| prostitution ads I believe.
| mikem170 wrote:
| But what if far more wacked content is on facebook than on
| parler and gab, because it is so much bigger?
| JMTQp8lwXL wrote:
| I'm sure public support for removing Facebook from app stores
| wouldn't be too different than Parler. If we are principled
| people, and FB is failing to moderate, then any reasonable
| person who supported Parler's removal would support Facebook's.
| What would be different between the two decisions is the sheer
| magnitude of money on the line, in the case of Facebook's
| removal -- in capital markets, in employment, etc.
| standardUser wrote:
| "If we are principled people, and FB is failing to moderate,
| then any reasonable person who supported Parler's removal
| would support Facebook's."
|
| Is Facebook failing to moderate, or failing at moderation? If
| the standard is perfect moderation, there is no social media.
| If the standard is a good faith efforts at moderation,
| Facebook should be tolerated (if not compelled to do better)
| and Parler should be punished (unless they make good faith
| efforts to do better).
| uberduper wrote:
| I suspect the bar for acceptable moderation will always be
| just a hair below what facebook, twitter, and youtube can
| manage. Every time they fail again, they'll be hauled in
| front of congress and explain how they'll rub a little AI
| on it. It'll become just a little more expensive to
| compete.
| mikem170 wrote:
| My two cents: Facebook has an algorithm they use to decide
| what posts are presented to a user. They should therefore
| loose their section 230 common carrier status. They are the
| ones deciding to put toxic and divisive information in
| front of users to drive engagement, instead of simply
| sharing posts in chronological order and letting users
| control all the filtering.
| fifthace wrote:
| You've misunderstood Section 230 : https://www.techdirt.c
| om/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello...
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Is Facebook actually moderating in good faith though?
|
| Consider that divisive, offensive and false content is
| guaranteed to generate engagement and thus contribute to
| their bottom-line, while content that doesn't have these
| traits is less likely to do so. So they're already starting
| off the wrong way here, when their profits directly
| correlate with their negative impact on society.
|
| Consider that there is plenty of bad content that violates
| their community standards on Facebook and such content
| doesn't even try to hide itself and is thus trivially
| detectable with automation:
| https://krebsonsecurity.com/2019/04/a-year-later-
| cybercrime-...
|
| Consider that Instagram doesn't remove accounts with openly
| racist & anti-Semitic usernames _even when reported_ : http
| s://old.reddit.com/r/facepalm/comments/kz10nw/i_mean_if_...
|
| Is Facebook truly moderating in good faith, or are they
| only moderating when the potential PR backlash from the bad
| content getting media attention greater than the revenue
| from the engagement around said content? I strongly suspect
| the latter.
|
| Keep in mind that moderating a public forum is mostly a
| solved problem, people have done so (often benevolently)
| for decades. The social media companies' pleas about
| moderation being impossible at scale is bullshit - it's
| only impossible because they're trying to eat the cake and
| have it too. When the incentives are aligned, moderation is
| a solved problem.
| krona wrote:
| How many massacres and beheadings have been live streamed
| on FB at this point? And yet very few seem to think FB is
| the problem.
| markdown wrote:
| Brown people don't count, even when they lose their
| heads. Remember when a plane full of them crashed and
| there wasn't even a grounding?
|
| It's got to happen to white folk in the US before
| anything will change.
| rtkwe wrote:
| A decent distinction to make is Facebook on the face of it
| tries to moderate they're just bad at it and make decisions a
| lot of people aren't happy with where Parler's moderation
| system was almost entirely pro forma relying largely on
| showing reports to a panel of random users.
| giantg2 wrote:
| So democracy or trial by your peers fails?
| rtkwe wrote:
| In site moderation it's basically a guarantee that you'll
| wind up with an extreme echo chamber, people self select
| in or out the site based on the content of that site.
| Unless your user group is extremely broad based and
| siloing is good enough that people aren't driven off the
| site by extremists then the group of moderators you
| select from is inherently pretty ok with the content of
| the site. It has a chance to work in the real world where
| the same self selection effect is moderated by other
| factors.
| giantg2 wrote:
| How is it different than real life? Look at the county by
| county map of the past couple presidential elections.
| You'll see that there is very much a delineation between
| people with different ideals resulting in echo chambers.
| We see this in stereotypes of country folks or city folks
| by the other.
| rtkwe wrote:
| There's a whole trial to present the evidence and how the
| law is supposed to be interpreted in a court case you
| can't really replicate in Parler's attempted moderation
| system. Also the pomp and dressing of state and law do a
| lot to change how people act. One of the big questions
| any prosecutor will ask is will you judge solely on the
| law and they will very quickly strike you if you indicate
| no or that you know anything about jury nullification.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Everyone should know about jury nullification. I feel
| it's a violation of a right to a fair trial if the jury
| doesn't understand all the options, including that one.
|
| The questions don't really mean much. People could
| honestly answer that they will apply the law, but how can
| they if their understanding of it is flawed, especially
| since that question takes place before the judge educates
| the jury on the law?
| rtkwe wrote:
| > Everyone should know about jury nullification.
|
| Prosecutors would really rather you not because it has
| the chance to completely screw their case and they
| already put a lot of effort in maintaining conviction
| records. Also it's one of those things where it's not
| officially an option there's just no punishment available
| to prevent it.
|
| It does mean something you can say yes or no to 'will you
| rule based on the law and the evidence presented in the
| case' you don't have to know the law to agree to do that.
| It's not phrased exactly like that either it's a series.
| [0] #15 for example is basically a question directly
| about nullification. 13 and 14 are also around the
| subject as well.
|
| [0] https://www.njcourts.gov/attorneys/assets/attyresourc
| es/juro...
| nautilus12 wrote:
| As a bean farmer, your ability to herd cats at the absolute
| highest level determines whether or not you stay in
| business.
| ForHackernews wrote:
| I'm not sure how hard FB actually tries to moderate
| extremist political content.
|
| They're pretty damn good at quickly taking down child porn
| and copyrighted movies/music, because those are areas where
| big money & potential criminal liability are on the line.
|
| In contrast, nobody's forcing them to censor political
| extremism, and the usual "engagement" metrics that they and
| their advertisers track would likely reward that content.
|
| In the last few days, they've shut down thousands of groups
| and hundreds of thousands of accounts for sharing QAnon
| conspiracies, which strongly suggests to me that they've
| had the technical ability to do that for quite a while.
|
| They're not "bad at" moderation, they just choose to
| moderate certain things and not others.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Most people here could hack together some basic keyword
| searches for questionable content in a day at the
| outside. I think we can assume that Facebook already has
| the tools to run those searches at scale and act on the
| results.
|
| So I don't think there's any good reason to disagree with
| you.
|
| At best, Facebook has prioritised "engagement" - i.e. ad
| revenue - over unacceptable extremism. At worst Facebook
| is knowingly complicit in the politics and in the
| polarisation that is being generated.
|
| It would be impossible to know which of those is true
| without access to internal records. But there should at
| least be an investigation asking these questions.
|
| And not just of Facebook, but of all the social tech _and
| media_ giants.
| e40 wrote:
| A coworker has a lot of conservative friends. All of them
| were banned from FB until the 23rd. Even her daughter, who
| has never written any posts supporting DJT, but liked a few
| posts, was banned for the same time frame.
|
| I've read absolutely nothing about this in the news. She even
| shared a screenshot one of her friends shared with her. It
| said:
|
| "Your account is restricted right now.
|
| You're temporarily restricted from doing things like posting
| or commenting on groups, Pages or events until January 23 at
| 3:19 AM.
|
| Dismiss"
|
| I take this to mean they are afraid of a 2nd around of
| problems.
| JMTQp8lwXL wrote:
| A news report on this would be interesting to see to get
| all the facts. I am not familiar with this.
| markdown wrote:
| That's wonderful news. Better late then never.
| xanax wrote:
| Facebook is much bigger so the amount of upset users will be
| greater as well if it is removed. Plus all the big tech CEOs
| have their own little club so I doubt apple would mess with
| Facebook like that.
| betterunix2 wrote:
| Facebook is _not_ failing to moderate. Moderation is hard and
| everyone knows that, but Facebook has been _improving_ their
| moderation techniques and policies for years. Unlike Parler
| and Gab, Facebook is actually putting in the effort to
| moderate and was not created to be a safe haven for
| terrorists who were banned from other platforms.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| Parler explicitly advertises itself as a place of little or
| no moderation. Facebook has something like 15,000
| professional content moderators whose job is so terrible that
| they literally get PTSD, but Facebook still fails to catch a
| lot of it. Being not great at moderation and actively
| advertising yourself as an unmoderated forum are fairly
| different lines.
| mikem170 wrote:
| But facebook doesn't just moderate. They control algorithms
| that decide what posts are presented to users. I think they
| should loose their common carrier status because of that
| editorial control. It's like if the phone company
| prioritized evil phone calls and delayed non-evil phone
| calls, it is a horrible influence on the conversations they
| are supposedly not involved in.
| zarkov99 wrote:
| Can you substantiate that a little? Parler promoted itself
| as a champion of free speech which is not the same as
| saying "little to no moderation". They did have a
| moderation system in place.
|
| I do not know how many users they have per reviewer, do
| you?
| JMTQp8lwXL wrote:
| If the negative externalities are the same in both cases,
| then this isn't an excuse. Just because Facebook has
| proportionally fewer posts that violate its policies
| doesn't mean it should get a free pass. The fact that up to
| 15,000 people have PTSD is the societal cost we pay, even
| if the vast majority of FB users are using the platform as
| expected.
|
| Facebook gets a free pass because Facebook is an
| influential organization. Parler had no network of elites
| protecting it, because as you say, it had no other purpose
| beyond being 'volunteer' moderated.
|
| If at a minimum, the attack gets us to think about the type
| of questions posed by The Social Dilemma, we're trending
| towards a better place.
| bananabreakfast wrote:
| No one gets a free pass, that is disingenuous. These two
| things are not the same. Facebook makes a good faith
| effort to scale content moderation. Parler did not.
| dx87 wrote:
| "Oh well, at least you tried" sounds like the definition
| of FB getting a free pass.
| zarkov99 wrote:
| Really? And who exactly is qualified to divine the faith
| of Zuckerberg vs that of the Parler CEO?
| standardUser wrote:
| "Facebook gets a free pass..."
|
| No, Facebook devotes significant resources to moderation
| and makes good faith attempts to uphold their policies.
| Parler did not. _That_ is the difference.
|
| "If the negative externalities are the same in both
| cases, then this isn't an excuse."
|
| No one is trying to rid the world of all negative
| externalities, only to make reasonable efforts to
| mitigate them. There may never be a perfectly moderated
| social media platform, just as there may never be a
| perfectly safe highway, and that is fine.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| We can look to China at what effective moderation looks
| like and then learn that FB would need 2-3 orders more
| moderators to make it 'safe'
| JMTQp8lwXL wrote:
| You're right, Facebook won't get a free pass. Congress
| will drag Zuckerberg back into Congress, give him a
| scolding, and then largely things will remain the same.
| Whether or not they moderate _enough_ is certainly a gray
| question.
|
| All sorts of industries have negative externalities
| (e.g., fossil fuels). But are Facebook's worth it if they
| destabilize the democracy in which allowed Facebook to
| grow and exist?
| chmod600 wrote:
| "good faith attempts"
|
| If it's about intent, rather than results, then it's sure
| a big coincidence that Parler was deplatformed by Apple,
| Google, and AWS all within a few days.
| Griffinsauce wrote:
| > No, Facebook devotes significant resources to
| moderation and makes good faith attempts to uphold their
| policies.
|
| What's always missing here is that the outcome is still
| terrible and everyone is arguing from the premise that
| Facebook deserves to exist regardless.
|
| If I maintain my rollercoaster in good faith but I just
| can't hire enough maintenance crew to do it well and
| people keep dying on it... maybe the rollercoaster
| doesn't deserve to be open and should be shut down.
| trident5000 wrote:
| Why does Apple and Google as a duopoly get to determine
| what businesses must do and not do to exist? (from a
| practical perspective not a legal one) For me that's the
| real question.
| bdamm wrote:
| Because Apple and Google produced viable platforms that
| people want. Microsoft, Blackberry, and Palm all
| attempted to do something similar, and the market didn't
| coalesce around their offerings. Even Amazon tried with
| kindle/fire. Part of the reason this happens is that
| developers only have so much ability to diversify, so
| this is a natural marketplace where only a few big
| players can survive.
|
| The Internet of the 1990's is still alive by the way.
| Anyone can put up their message on a website provided by
| a host of their choice.
| trident5000 wrote:
| Do you think it had anything to do with buying up
| competitors and technology that propelled them to
| domination as well as using their web of other services
| as an advantage? Even if everything is fair do you think
| free market theory cares about how they arrived at a
| duopoly?
| bdamm wrote:
| I certainly didn't claim it was "fair". I stated that
| developers are going to coalesce around a small number of
| providers in a similar space.
|
| They clearly have a dominant position now. Their
| disruption won't come from phones, just like their rise
| didn't come from phones either.
| trident5000 wrote:
| This is a political thing above all else. Its indirect
| bribery to the new party in power. In return, anti-trust
| cases (they have already been formed internally) will likely
| be overlooked/a call from the top or new appointments will
| change the calculus. This is how Washington works.
| mc32 wrote:
| It's like when the feds go for the capos instead of the mob
| boss because it's easier.
| booleanbetrayal wrote:
| I think it is also fair to point out that FB does have a
| review process, policies, and despite not being able to keep
| up with the volume, has tried to keep the most incendiary
| behavior off its platform. Meanwhile, Parler has refused to
| do any of these things as a matter of principle. As much as I
| hate on FB, I think there is a clear distinction here.
| devwastaken wrote:
| 1. Refusal to moderate.
|
| 2. By far smaller user base, with that base overwhelmingly
| participating in fear mongering fake news. There are people I
| know convinced of entirely fabricated stories that contributed
| to the violence at the capitol.
|
| 3. It's clear the admins of parler explicitly allowed content
| that encouraged the riots and violence therein.
|
| Facebook does admin all of these things. They're also
| significantly larger. Don't be dishonest.
| [deleted]
| mplewis wrote:
| Parler refuses to moderate content. Facebook does not.
| cccc4all wrote:
| The unequal treatment is the primary issue with the Parler
| deplatforming.
|
| Facebook and Twitter and Google has hosted much more and much
| worse content, from all sides.
|
| Yet, they are protected by the central authorities and mainstream
| popular media.
|
| Facebook, Twitter and Google should all be deplatformed for equal
| treatment under mob rules.
| [deleted]
| betterunix2 wrote:
| Facebook, Twitter, and Google have not tried to take a stand
| against moderation; the worst you can say is that they still
| need to improve their moderation policies and techniques.
| Parler was created as a protest against the moderation that
| happens on other platforms, to be a place where the people who
| are too extreme for Facebook etc. can communicate, recruit, and
| so forth. Likewise with Gab, which was created in response to
| Twitter's own efforts at moderation.
|
| Nothing unequeal about the treatment, because Parler's efforts
| at moderation were never equal (in either commitment or scope)
| to the other platforms you mentioned.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| Parler had some moderation, but had far fewer rules than
| other platforms. They had rules against direct calls of
| violence for example. They also appear to have been slower at
| enforcing their rules, possibly due to the smaller team
| involved.
| bananabreakfast wrote:
| "All sides" is not a valid argument when we're talking about a
| specific group that specifically planned and tried to overthrow
| the government.
|
| This is not a "both sides are the same" world.
| cccc4all wrote:
| What is your world, where this is not a "both sides are the
| same"?
|
| Which side are you on? Which side are your family, friends,
| and neighbors on? What will you do when you find someone on
| the other side?
|
| Most importantly, what is making you to take one side or the
| other?
| bananabreakfast wrote:
| What?
| redisman wrote:
| I don't think that's enough or the right move for the 3 biggest
| companies by market cap. There are a plethora of issues with
| these companies and the perceived "anti-conservative bias" is
| not one of the more serious ones (just look at the most popular
| FB posts on any given day, it's all Shapiro and Bingino etc).
| Antitrust lawsuits should be the mechanism.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Facebook and pretty much all the advertising-supported
| platforms made billions while directly contributing to this
| incident by pitting people against each other and showing them
| divisive, offensive and often false/misleading content.
|
| Parler in comparison doesn't seem to be making any money off
| this yet.
| yonaguska wrote:
| Parler did have plans for generating revenue.
|
| I'm not sure what your point is. Facebook and Google were
| operating at a loss initially as well. It seems like you are
| arguing that deplatforming Parler is more ok, because they
| never got to the point of being entrenched tech hegemonies?
| Or are you arguing that Parler is somehow more quilty because
| they weren't making money yet, so their intentions are bad?
| Nextgrid wrote:
| My point is that Facebook, Google and plenty of tech
| companies _created_ this insurrection (damaging countless
| lives and relationships in the process), earned billions
| off it and are now claiming the moral high ground? Screw
| them.
|
| In this case, Parler doesn't sound _that_ bad. At least
| Parler doesn 't have billions of literal blood money and
| doesn't attempt to get into my life like Facebook does.
|
| If Parler should be held accountable for hosting and
| encouraging this type of content, then should all the other
| ones. And if the other ones are allowed to stay, then so
| should Parler.
| betterunix2 wrote:
| That is the equivalent of saying that someone with HIV
| _created_ HIV -- after all, it was their body that kept
| producing more virus particles! QAnon and other BS is a
| virus that exploits the way platforms determine
| recommendations and whatnot. The insurrection was not
| created by Facebook; at most you can only say that
| Facebook should have been more aggressively policing
| extremists on their platform (and in fact they have been
| improving their approach to moderation for years --
| unfortunately the problem has been getting worse faster
| than Facebook has improved their handling of it). Parler
| and Gab, on the other hand, were created as a protest
| against the moderation that happens on other platforms
| (even though that moderation is itself insufficient), and
| that is what they were held accountable for: explicitly
| and deliberately not conducting moderation.
|
| This "both sides" argument is getting tiresome. Parler
| was created to be a safe haven for the very extremists
| Facebook is being criticized for not aggressively
| banning. One side made the effort and came up short, the
| other side attacked the effort itself. There is really
| not much of a comparison here.
| cccc4all wrote:
| What makes you say "both sides" argument is getting
| tiresome. What will you do to the other side?
|
| What is making you to take one side and against the other
| side?
| betterunix2 wrote:
| One side is BS, that's why. That is the side which is
| whining about how an app that was created in order to
| provide a safe haven for people who are too extreme for
| other platforms is being treated different _from those
| other platforms_.
| cccc4all wrote:
| OK, one side is BS. What makes you think one side is BS?
| Who told you one side is BS?
|
| Are any of your family, friends, neighbors on the other
| side?
|
| What will you do to the people on the other side?
| Nextgrid wrote:
| To clarify, I'm not defending Parler nor wishing for it
| to stay online. I'm just calling for the root cause of
| this incident to be eliminated which is the unhealthy
| business model of pitting people against each other. This
| would include Parler but also Facebook and all these
| social media platforms.
|
| At the moment, Parler is used as a scapegoat to deflect
| the liability off the catalyst (if not the instigator
| itself) of the Capitol storming.
|
| Whether you still think my position is BS after this is
| up to you.
| mikem170 wrote:
| What about the fact that facebook has an algorithm they
| made deciding on what posts are presented each user,
| apparently tailored to drive engagement? They can feature
| all the controversial posts that stir people up for the
| clicks. Youtube is similar. One could make a case that
| these algorithms cause these problems, promoting
| conspiracies/etc for the clicks.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| This is exactly the argument that I'm making.
|
| Unfortunately, the whole concept of "growth and
| engagement" (and their biggest implementations -
| Facebook, YouTube, etc) supports so much of our society
| today that I don't expect neither mainstream media nor
| politicians to attack it.
|
| The reason we're attacking Parler and not the underlying
| evil is because Parler is an easy target while the other
| big implementation of said evil (Facebook) underpins the
| careers and livelihoods of many of the people who are in
| a position to ban it or reform our laws.
| betterunix2 wrote:
| Like I said, the conspiracy theories are a virus that
| exploits the algorithm, which is otherwise harmless and
| serves a very different purpose. Youtube recommends
| children's videos to me because sometimes I let my son
| watch children's videos, which is a pretty reasonable
| proposition. The problem is that the very same system can
| become harmful when it starts recommending more and more
| misinformation after a person watches one conspiracy
| theory video; Google has been trying to address this by
| displaying truthful information when certain topics are
| detected, but obviously there is work left to do.
|
| The real problem here is that we are focusing on the way
| that these algorithms can send people into rabbit holes
| of misinformation, without stopping to consider what the
| same algorithms do in general or the fact that people
| actually like recommendations (which are in most cases
| harmless to society). Again, the response to "HIV
| propagates via the immune system" should not be "we
| should get rid of the immune system to prevent the spread
| of HIV."
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > That is the equivalent of saying that someone with HIV
| created HIV -- after all, it was their body that kept
| producing more virus particles! QAnon and other BS is a
| virus that exploits the way platforms determine
| recommendations and whatnot
|
| And just like with HIV, we now understand its method of
| propagation, know how to curtail it, and actually hold
| people criminally liable if they knowingly spread it.
|
| Why are mainstream social media platforms given a pass
| here, considering not only do they knowingly operate a
| system where such content thrives and spreads, but also
| _profiting_ off its spread?
|
| > One side made the effort and came up short
|
| One side did not make the effort. They profited off not
| making the effort despite having ample warning of the
| upcoming crisis. This doesn't make the other side any
| better, but neither does it mean that the first side
| should somehow be treated more leniently than the first
| one.
|
| I'm not defending Parler, but if we're letting Facebook
| and others get away with this then so should Parler, so
| that it serves as a reminder to rethink our approach and
| eventually ban _both_ of them or force them both to
| reform (as in _actually_ reform, unlike Facebook which
| merely _claims_ to moderate but only does so when they
| 've been exposed).
| betterunix2 wrote:
| The problem with Parler was not _that_ terrorists were
| using its platform. The problem is that Parler refused to
| even try to ban terrorists from its platform, which
| should surprise nobody given that Parler was created for
| the benefit of such groups. Facebook has never gotten a
| pass on this, in fact they have been widely criticized
| for failing to be aggressive enough in their efforts to
| moderate extremist content, conspiracy theories, and
| misinformation.
|
| In a nutshell the difference is this: Parler was created
| as a safe haven for people and content that had been
| banned from mainstream platforms (and the majority of
| small, non-mainstream platforms).
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > Facebook has never gotten a pass on this, in fact they
| have been widely criticized for failing to be aggressive
| enough in their efforts to moderate extremist content,
| conspiracy theories, and misinformation.
|
| Well now we have an issue where Facebook's unwillingness
| to moderate has blown up into large-scale domestic
| terrorism, so big in fact that it created a market for
| Parler to cater to.
|
| So why are we still discussing Parler's ban (which I
| don't disagree with) but completely ignoring the core
| issue that Facebook initially caused this and should be
| banned too?
| yonaguska wrote:
| Gotcha, I misunderstood.
| Red_Tarsius wrote:
| >The Capitol Attack
|
| Where was this rhetoric when Antifa and BLM burned and looted for
| months with the blessings of all corporations and the mainstream
| media? Surely the Capitol Hill has an insurance policy? Or does
| that moronic point only apply to the common folk?
|
| Susan Rosenberg literally bombed the Capitol in 1983 and now
| serves as vice chair of the board of directors of Thousand
| Currents, a " _non-profit foundation that sponsors the
| fundraising and does administrative work for the Black Lives
| Matter global network, among other clients._ "
| [deleted]
| jjoonathan wrote:
| On one hand we have hooligans using a crowd as cover to get
| away with property damage.
|
| On the other we have hooligans organized for the express
| purpose of overturning the results of a democratic election.
|
| In the case of BLM, the crimes don't reflect on the movement's
| overall purpose. Nobody expects property damage to be a vehicle
| for police reform -- it's an argument for more police presence,
| if anything. In the case of the capitol riots, not only are the
| crimes worse (storming the capitol >> property damage), but the
| criminal acts absolutely do reflect on the movement's agenda.
| Intimidating congress is a plausible vehicle for obtaining the
| votes they needed that day to overturn the election. Trump's
| pre-riot speech emphasized that this was the goal. These
| factors increase the culpability of platforms and leadership in
| the capitol riots as compared to BLM.
| Pfhreak wrote:
| > Antifa and BLM burned and looted for months
|
| This sentence fragment appears deliberately vague and it
| assumes the conclusion. Compare, for example, "The Capitol
| Attack" vs "Right Wing Violence in America". One references a
| specific event with specific actors, the other is a vague non-
| specific description of a phenomena that may or may not exist.
|
| I'd encourage you to be more specific -- which instances of
| fires and looting do you feel were not adequately described as
| attacks? Who is failing to describe them, again, specifically.
|
| Right now, this does not read like you are interested in
| discussing this in good faith.
| loveistheanswer wrote:
| What about CHAZ/CHOP?
|
| -Armed protestors took over government buildings and city
| blocks
|
| -Promoted/condoned/excused by government officials
|
| -Lots of violence and murder
| Pfhreak wrote:
| Which government buildings? The police just left the east
| precinct... And who were the armed protestors, what were
| they armed with? In my experience it was umbrellas and loud
| voices.
|
| And keep in mind that the SPD did considerably more
| violence to a larger group over that time.
| loveistheanswer wrote:
| >Which government buildings? The police just left the
| east precinct
|
| Isn't the east precinct a government building?
|
| >And who were the armed protestors, what were they armed
| with?
|
| Raz the Warlord of CHAZ giving out assault rifles:
|
| https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/raz-simone-guns/
|
| >And keep in mind that the SPD did considerably more
| violence to a larger group over that time.
|
| How many people were shot within the protest zone by
| occupants of CHAZ versus police over that time? By my
| count, it seems 5:0
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Hill_Autonomous_Z
| one...
| Pfhreak wrote:
| > Isn't the east precinct a government building?
|
| Yes, but your framing isn't genuine. Some protestors did
| wander into an abandoned building. I'm not sure whether
| any of them were armed. That's a far cry from "Armed
| protestors took over a government building."
|
| > Raz the Warlord of CHAZ giving out assault rifles:
|
| Again, your framing is clearly flamebait. I obviously
| don't deny that Raz was there, and that there appears to
| be a video of him giving a long gun to someone.
| (Singular.)
|
| But calling Raz "the Warlord of CHAZ" is needlessly
| biased and inflammatory. Just say Raz Simone, or if you
| feel you need to clarify, add some factual clarification.
|
| > How many people were shot within the protest zone by
| occupants of CHAZ versus police over that time?
|
| Again, your framing lacks nuance.
|
| The first shooting in the protests was by someone
| _driving into a crowd_ who claimed to have a brother who
| worked in the east precinct.
|
| The second shooting does not have a clear connection to
| the protest occupants. The Police chose not to help the
| shooting victim (and the reason for the shooting is
| unknown). This may have been protest related violence. It
| may have been non-protest related violence. It's unclear
| if the victim would have survived if the Police had made
| any effort.
|
| The third shooting (which occurred outside of the zone)
| appears to be racially motivated, and according to the
| victim was allegedly at the hands of a white supremacist.
| It's unclear if this is related to the second shooting.
|
| The fourth and fifth shooting (which occurred outside of
| the zone) have no details beyond someone getting shot in
| the arm.
|
| The sixth and seventh shootings were of two teens who had
| reportedly driven an SUV through the crowds overnight,
| including through the park. Details are hazy, and it's
| not clear whether this was an act of self defense or
| something else.
|
| So, on my counting there were seven shootings:
|
| 2 appear to be against protestors or racially motivated.
|
| 3 have no clear details that link them to the protest,
| and 2 of which did not take place in the zone
|
| 2 are allegedly in self defense, though the veracity of
| those claims is TBD.
| throwaway_6142 wrote:
| > But calling Raz "the Warlord of CHAZ" is needlessly
| biased and inflammatory. Just say Raz Simone, or if you
| feel you need to clarify, add some factual clarification.
|
| Yeah, show some respect!
| throwawaygulf wrote:
| Stoo spreading fake news.
|
| >The first shooting in the protests was by someone
| driving into a crowd who claimed to have a brother who
| worked in the east precinct.
|
| Wrong. The first shooting came after an argument between
| leftists escalated. No vehicle involved.
|
| >The second shooting does not have a clear connection to
| the protest occupants. The Police chose not to help the
| shooting victim (and the reason for the shooting is
| unknown).
|
| Wrong again, it is directly linked because it happened
| when the protest occupants were marching back from a
| protest around city hall. Protestors blocked the police
| and firefighters from entering the area, and once the
| police made headway, the victim was already moved.
|
| >The third shooting (which occurred outside of the zone)
| appears to be racially motivated, and according to the
| victim was allegedly at the hands of a white supremacist.
| It's unclear if this is related to the second shooting.
|
| Wrong, it was a Black leftist/anarchist that shot
| himself.
|
| >The sixth and seventh shootings were of two teens who
| had reportedly driven an SUV through the crowds
| overnight, including through the park.
|
| Driving a vehicle that was a different make and model,
| but similar color, and they were killed for it. Two Black
| teens died because CHOP security extra-judicially shot
| and killed them because they were misidentified.
|
| Two teens, killed in a no-cop-zone, by "community
| security", during a protest that was started due to the
| extra-judicial killings of Blacks... May have been the
| most ironic moment of 2020.
|
| So, on my counting there were seven shootings:
|
| None of them were racially motivated.
|
| All have direct links to the protest.
| Pfhreak wrote:
| I went through the Wikipedia page the parent posted and
| summarized them. The first shooting that I saw was the
| man who drove a vehicle into a crowd. The crowd attempted
| to stop him, and he shot a protestor. Go read the wiki
| page and the sources it links yourself.
| dylan-m wrote:
| - The BLM movement is, while poorly framed and easily co-opted
| by other people, about genuine problems with policing in the
| United States. Problems that are backed up with verifiable
| facts rather than scummy used car salesmen and the Inventor of
| Email(tm).
|
| - The BLM movement, while the source of many large large scale
| protests (several of which turned into riots and outstayed
| their welcome) never, at any point, even pretended to stage a
| coup or murder a member of the Capitol Police.
| trident5000 wrote:
| What are the verifiable facts again? Do you have alternative
| statistics because they're actually on the FBI website and
| contradict everything you're saying. The riots were most
| likely political AstroTurf before an election via
| amplification of convenient (and unfortunate/terrible)
| imagery to turn out voters. I hate to be stone cold but
| that's my understanding of what unfolded. We witnessed
| something similar in 2015.
| me_me_me wrote:
| > they're actually on the FBI website and contradict
| everything you're saying
|
| You are actually on CIA website marked as terrorist. \s
|
| When you make a claim put some effort into it, instead of
| hearsay. And made up statements to support your point of
| view
| trident5000 wrote:
| "You are actually on CIA website marked as terrorist. \s"
| what is the context of this joke Im not following. I
| stated a fact (FBI statistics) and then an opinion. Are
| we allowed to do that on the internet?
| dylan-m wrote:
| I should add a caveat around "the BLM movement is about."
| One of its problems (like many progressive movements) is
| everyone has a different idea what it is about, and the
| mainstream media does not help with that in the slightest.
|
| So, the original idea there is police in the United States
| are killing black people for stupid reasons, which is
| _true_. There are no statistics to worry about for that one
| and there don 't need to be: just look at a handful of
| publicized cases and be angry.
|
| But of course, people do like statistics. You can't be
| angry without statistics. (Truly, you shouldn't. It's
| unhealthy). Also, that framework makes a terrible export.
| (Which is unfortunate because Canada loves importing
| protests from the States instead of making its own).
|
| So, various other progressive movements globbed on to the
| name, as they do, but fortunately it's a more visceral
| thing than, say, Occupy Wall Street, so they are at least
| mostly on topic. I think the real problem, which is the
| source of most of the recent anger (see the equally badly
| named and easily co-opted slogan "Defund the police"), is
| that police are killing _a lot of people_ for stupid
| reasons.
|
| It is still important to emphasize that black lives matter,
| because they do, and it's infuriating that that makes
| people uncomfortable. But the root cause is the United
| States has an unreasonable approach to policing in general,
| which creates as many problems as it solves. And I think if
| you talk to most BLM supporters, they aren't going to tell
| you about racial sensitivity training or hiring more black
| cops: they're going to tell you how the police in a
| developed country shouldn't act as if they're expecting a
| war.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| > The riots were most likely political AstroTurf before an
| election via amplification of convenient (and
| unfortunate/terrible) imagery to turn out voters.
|
| So, Trump was behind it, so he could run on a law and order
| platform? Because he certainly did take advantage of it.
|
| I'm afraid the boring truth was that ordinary people got
| angry during a time of high unemployment, with protests and
| rioting being a predictable result. It's not as though
| large protests over police shootings are new.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| A couple cops were killed by blm rioters. Sure they weren't
| capital police but they were still police. ACAB was all over
| Facebook and Twitter which at a minimum raised the
| temperature and hatred towards cops.
| felistoria wrote:
| Incitement some might call that.
| chillingeffect wrote:
| It's also easy to look at the summer's riots and forget
| that it was a mixture of peaceful protestors and violent
| antagonists. Until we have some convictions with evidence
| in court, we can't say BLM'ers killed cops.
|
| and to your 2nd point, I don't think it was ppl saying ACAB
| that raised the temperature and hatred towards cops. It was
| the cops killing innocent black people.
| g8oz wrote:
| Do you have links? I only heard about the Boogaloo right
| wing extremists using the cover of the protests to kill
| police in Oakland and Santa Cruz.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_boogaloo_killings
| [deleted]
| JMTQp8lwXL wrote:
| The magnitude of threatening the lives of national leadership
| is different from the property damage of the BLM movements. The
| implications of each are different, too. Both are bad things.
| loveistheanswer wrote:
| Do citizens lives matter less than politicians lives?
| Pfhreak wrote:
| Of course not. But institutions matter, and shutting down a
| governing body through threats of violence has consequences
| far beyond just the immediate politician's lives.
| j_walter wrote:
| Shutting down a judicial governing body through nightly
| attacks for month should also have consequences...but it
| didn't. I literally watched it happen for months on end
| with little repercussions by local law enforcement
| (because they were restricted by the mayor).
|
| What happens when you take over multiple city blocks for
| a few weeks and don't allow any government agencies to do
| their jobs? That should also have reprecussions...but it
| didn't.
| felistoria wrote:
| Don't forget trying to torch the justice building with
| people in it. Or throwing burning stuff into Ted
| Wheeler's apartment building where many other people
| lived.
| Pfhreak wrote:
| It sounds like you are talking about the federal
| judiciary in Portland? Being specific helps readers
| understand how to address your comments.
| tessierashpool wrote:
| _Where was this rhetoric when Antifa and BLM burned and looted
| for months with the blessings of all corporations and the
| mainstream media?_
|
| This is incendiary and false.
| tareqak wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Rosenberg
|
| > Rosenberg was sentenced to 58 years' imprisonment on the
| weapons and explosives charges. She spent 16 years in prison,
| during which she became a poet, author, and AIDS activist. Her
| sentence was commuted to time served by President Bill Clinton
| on January 20, 2001,[5] his final day in office.[6][7]
|
| She was charged, served some of her time (16 years of 58 years
| is 27.586%), and then a president pardoned her.
| mooseburger wrote:
| Doesn't appear to be a pardon, which involves the conviction
| being expunged. Commuting a sentence means more like "you
| have been punished enough, but we were right to punish you".
| A pardon is "we were wrong to punish you".
| julienchastang wrote:
| > Susan Rosenberg literally bombed the Capitol in 1983
|
| I am using Wikipedia as a source, but I do not think this is
| true. Planned perhaps, but never carried out on account of law
| enforcement intervention.
|
| It is somewhat dispiriting to see this comment at the top of HN
| and implies a false moral equivalence. Since you probably
| prefer right-wing news sources, see this editorial in the WSJ:
| "No Excuses for Trump and the Capitol Riot Yes, the left does
| bad things too. Conservatives are supposed to believe in
| objective moral truth." [1]
|
| [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/no-excuses-for-trump-and-the-
| ca...
| julienchastang wrote:
| OK, I stand corrected. Apparently, this did really happen
| [1], but my other comment still holds.
|
| [1] https://www.politico.com/story/2017/11/07/bomb-explodes-
| in-u...
| sevencolors wrote:
| Ah some classic "whataboutism".
|
| Nice way to detract from the point that people are directing
| violence towards politicians.
|
| But yes a Target got looted and some fires were set because
| people are fucking angry about the institutional violence
| directed towards their communities.
|
| Clearly the same thing, yeah?
| root_axis wrote:
| This is a disingenuous false equivalence. Local protests that
| turn violent based on political grievances regarding police
| violence are not the same as storming the nation's capitol with
| the goal of overturning a democratic election.
| entropea wrote:
| It's extremely dishonest to compare a QAnon fueled outright
| 'voter fraud' & child abduction conspiracy that lead to
| Congress being forcibly entered to legitimate & coherent
| concerns about policing, race, & the prison system in USA.
| prions wrote:
| Nice to see Trump/Russia talking points being copied almost
| word-for-word on hackernews.
| deepspace wrote:
| And getting up-voted too. I thought the BLM=Looters talking
| point was debunked a long time ago, given that BLM protests
| took place mainly in the daytime, while the looting was done
| by thugs, at night, after the protesters went home. So it is
| very strange to see that narrative being taken at face value
| here.
| refurb wrote:
| So you're able to clearly separate out the bad actors from
| BLM, but apparently not with Trump supporters?
| exmicrosoldier wrote:
| Thank you for the first legitimate critique of the Black Lives
| Matter organization that I've seen.
|
| I don't think it invalidates all of the points of the platform
| of BLM, but it does make me question the sanity and legitimacy
| of the organization's leadership.
| wutbrodo wrote:
| I don't mean this unkindly, but your information diet has
| incredibly serious problems if you haven't come across any
| legitimate criticisms of the BLM org in the past. As someone
| whose pet issue has been police and justice system violence
| for a really, really long time, I really wish BLM wasn't the
| organization/movement representing this particular
| struggle[1]. The 2020 iteration is a little more connected to
| reality and a little less hateful than the 2015 one, so I'd
| count myself as a supporter in a way that I didn't in 2015,
| but if you've not come across _any_ valid criticism of them
| before now, I suggest sitting down and taking a hard look at
| your media diet.
|
| By far the scariest facet of the modern moment to me is all
| the people sneering at Trumpists detachment from reality
| while happily wallowing in their own post-truth bubble. The
| average person has always been horribly un- and misinformed,
| but the shift in the last couple of years in my white-collar,
| coastal social group legitimately terrifies me.
|
| [1] Though I'm well-aware that getting attention and support
| is probably the most important part of driving social change,
| and they've obviously done very well there.
| 8fGTBjZxBcHq wrote:
| idk how to tell you this in a way you'll listen to but doing
| things for good reasons is good and doing them for bad reasons
| is bad.
| purec wrote:
| You can't use "good intentions" to justify horrific actions.
| 8fGTBjZxBcHq wrote:
| ya man what they did to that target was an atrocity lol
| someone call the hague
| mumblemumble wrote:
| The idea that you can do so is pretty fundamental in
| politics. It's how the federal government justified the US
| Civil War, for example, and how the Founding Fathers
| justified a lot of things that tend to get glossed over in
| grade school history books.
|
| The debate ultimately hinges on sympathies. For someone who
| wholeheartedly supports BLM, the riots might be regarded as
| something that was regrettable, but also understandable. In
| the words of Martin Luther King, "A riot is the language of
| the unheard." The observation also works in the direction
| of the Capitol insurrection. The rioters were there because
| they believed that their opinion on the election was not
| being heard.
|
| Deciding which group had more grounds to be angry is left
| as an exercise for the reader.
| a-posteriori wrote:
| Violence is categorically bad, regardless of what the
| intentions are. Referring to violence as "doing things"
| purposely avoids recognizing this.
| bananabreakfast wrote:
| The BLM protests were explicitly non-violent. The riots
| that broke out were swiftly condemned and not supported by
| any organizing group. At no point did any leader express
| any kind of approval of violence. And most importantly, no
| one told the rioters that they love them and that they are
| special.
| djrogers wrote:
| I'm sorry, but that's revisionist history.
|
| Ariel Atkins - Chicago BLM leader:
|
| "That is reparations," Ariel Atkins, an organizer, told
| NBC Chicago. "Anything they wanted to take, they can take
| it"
|
| She said that about a riot in which 13 police officers
| were injured, and at least one rioter fired at police.
|
| This is just one example of many where BLM leaders
| justified (or glorified) violence.
| Pfhreak wrote:
| Agreed. Additionally, it's important to recognize that
| "peaceful" does not mean the same thing as "non-violent".
| The protests were not necessarily peaceful -- they
| intended to be disruptive -- but they were explicitly
| non-violent.
| loveistheanswer wrote:
| >"peaceful" does not mean the same thing as "non-
| violent". The protests were not necessarily peaceful --
| they intended to be disruptive
|
| peaceful:
|
| 1. free from disturbance; tranquil.
|
| 2. not involving war or violence.
| Pfhreak wrote:
| Yes, thank you for agreeing. There are two different
| definitions, and the first (free from disturbance) is the
| one used in this context. The protests aimed to be non
| peaceful (eg, causing disturbance) and non violent.
| Pfhreak wrote:
| Violence is not categorically bad, I don't think. Rarely,
| violence is necessary in self defense. It might be the
| option of last resort, but sometimes violence can stop
| worse consequences.
|
| I'm not justifying any particular actions that anyone has
| taken in specific, just objecting to the categorization
| that it is always bad. (For example, someone suffering from
| domestic violence might strike back in an effort to
| escape.)
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| If we're saying all violence is categorically bad, I guess
| you'll want to abolish the military and the police, too,
| right?
| trident5000 wrote:
| You do realize that everyone has their own opinion on what is
| good and bad right? I cant believe how naive this statement
| is.
| root_axis wrote:
| Yes, that doesn't mean we have to respect all opinions
| equally. The lies about election fraud should not be
| tolerated even if some people are foolish enough to
| entertain them.
| klmadfejno wrote:
| Golly it's just so hard to know who to trust. The crowds
| protesting racial injustice and police brutality? Or the
| literal, self identifying nazis, white supremacists, and
| cultish conspiracy theorists trying to kill political
| leaders.
|
| Alas our moral non cognizance in a post modern perspective.
|
| edit: to the below, really, no. There's no hyperbole. If
| your group features nazis, and your group is not making
| every effort to expel associations with said nazis, your
| group is, at best, nazi adjacent. Nazis are the hyperbolic
| euphemism of peak historical immorality. It is preposterous
| that anyone feels they're making a good faith argument
| throwing whatabout comparisons when the starting point is
| nazis.
| trident5000 wrote:
| Another issue is how any individual frames either side
| and bases good and bad off of that, often using
| hyperbole, inaccuracies, wide brushes of their opposing
| views.
|
| Where are all these "nazis" you say that word a lot. "My
| group" I didnt know I was in a group. You certainly seem
| to assume a lot and form knee jerk conclusions. Actually
| proving my point quite well.
| multjoy wrote:
| The 'Camp Auschwitz' hoody and the "6MWE" (6 million Jews
| wasn't enough) not enough of a signpost for you?
| trident5000 wrote:
| Continuing to prove my point. "wide brushes of their
| opposing views" Thinking everyone who disagrees with you
| is a nazi because you saw a a guy with a t-shirt is
| something stupid people do.
| multjoy wrote:
| Someone who thinks that the holocaust didn't go far
| enough is, literally, a nazi.
|
| The fact that this is something you're in a state of
| active denial about is a 'you' problem, not a 'me'
| problem.
| trident5000 wrote:
| Talking about some remote person or group of people and
| pretending it represents a nonexistent large population
| is insanity. There have always been fringe groups on both
| sides. The issue at hand is you have no perspective after
| being gaslit and think everyone you disagree with is a
| "nazi".
| multjoy wrote:
| No, I don't believe everyone who disagrees with me is a
| nazi. However, if I see a group of people displaying
| actual nazi sentiments then I will assume that all the
| group are either actual nazis or cool with being
| associated with nazis.
|
| Remember, the OG antifa were on the beaches at Normandy.
| trident5000 wrote:
| Who, that little group or 70 million Americans? What are
| we talking about here.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Hacker news seems to really struggle with this, partly
| because there are still Trump supporters here somehow.
| RobRivera wrote:
| from my point of view, the jedi are evil
| oji0hub wrote:
| "Capitol Attack"? Seems like quite a bit of hyperbole eh?
| coldtea wrote:
| Or, in reality speak: "Some Trump supporters/goofs discussed this
| protest for months on Facebook".
|
| Makes it sound like it describes some huge conspiracy with dire
| results instead of the equivalent of partisan people dissatisfied
| with the results (and driven by polarization from both sides) to
| discuss and do the equivalent of "Let's go into the Capitol to
| protest, that'll show them".
| dr-detroit wrote:
| Thems good boahs dem din du nuffin wrong.
| iodiocracynow wrote:
| child porno is still there but I haven't seen so much aggressive
| measure on what was done by private ... only by public officers
| and law enforcement
| IfOnlyYouKnew wrote:
| Great example of other unwanted content that is more or less
| impossible to find on mainstream platforms, or even most seedy
| porn sites, or even the underbelly of the internet that was
| Parler.
| Triv888 wrote:
| It was apparently easy to find on Pornhub not long ago which
| is very mainstream? I usually go for the mature category to
| avoid it...
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/04/opinion/sunday/pornhub-
| ra...
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| If the point of the NSA was what they claimed it to be, there
| wouldn't have been a capitol attack.
| mikem170 wrote:
| I think you mean FBI. The NSA is supposed to only watch
| foreigners.
| abvdasker wrote:
| What is the purpose of the NSA and FBI if they can't prevent
| something this obvious? Wasn't the supposed bargain that nearly
| unlimited surveillance of Americans would prevent terrorism? What
| should be done with agencies incapable of fulfilling their most
| basic functions?
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