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Tech Companies Are Deleting Evidence of War Crimes

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Re: Tech Companies Are Deleting Evidence of War Crimes

#231

Post by hutzlibu »

logicprog wrote: post #225
hutzlibu wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way I understand empire is a state which tries to expand its influence and dominate wherever it can. And yes, for people being dominated by it, it has a negative connotation. Different from a democracy and federation. Because a democracy fighting for freedom and ... well democracy, would not do this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in... "During the Cold War in particular, the U.S. gover…

Okay that does make sense. I think that there are good and bad sides to the US' actions though, and the good actions are not limited to WW2. It's important to note that, at some size any nation becomes an "empire" by that definition-- it really isn't possible to not do that, and survive. Beyond a certain amount influence, there will be constant threats to security and prosperity and people trying to harm you, and rig…

"So to say that the US's government is uniquely terrible is not really true."

I never said that. What is unique with the US is just that you are the biggest power today. That's why so much of the negativity is focused on your empire. If china would be dominating, it would be them. (and I know their human right standards are much lower)

But with this I disagree very much:

"It's important to note that, at some size any nation becomes an "empire" by that definition-- it really isn't possible to not do that, and survive"

If you are powerful, because your people work hard and efficient, why do you have to invade other countries?

"Beyond a certain amount influence, there will be constant threats to security and prosperity"

Because they are a threat to your prosperity, because they don't sell you their ressources at a price you want?

Note that many people think, that terrorism is the answer because their land was exploited.

Re: Tech Companies Are Deleting Evidence of War Crimes

#232

Post by ngold »

subjoriented wrote: post #32

The article centers around activity in Syria, but the problem is much more endemic. In the United States, Apple has consistently taken down apps providing information about US government airstrikes - including those that strike wedding processions, children, bystanders, etc. Recent efforts to identify and scrub foreign propagandists in the United States have silenced legitimate voices of domestic dissent, as foreign…

The internet was founded on a military backbone, then grew to an information is everywhere backbone, now the fences of the garden have been contracting to a walled garden again.

There is a scene in firefly where the dr. character gets a box. It was implied as a openish internet. Pretty sure that's where were headed.

Information is free until the folks in the back of the courtroom make sure it's not.

Re: Tech Companies Are Deleting Evidence of War Crimes

#233

Post by ben_w »

gdy wrote: post #215
v_lisivka wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Major trade partners of Ukraine in 2018 are: EU(import ~55%/export 45,1%), RF(import 14.3%, export: 7,3%), China(import 12.2%, export 4.3%), USA(import 5.4%/export 2.2%), and so on. > It clearly contradicts your statement that Russia and the Ukraine are at war. No, it displays inertia of two big and complex systems. > I quoted the sentence that needs factual proofs. You got them. The whole site is created by EU and d…

EU is not a country. "it displays inertia of two big and complex systems" Yeah, right, I can imagine the US trading with Japan during the whole war. Oh, wait, no, actually, I cannot. "You got them" That is a lie. Even the link you gave doesn't have to do much with your statement.

> EU is not a country.

EU is a weird special case, as it’s more tightly integrated than anything else that isn’t a country, despite not being a country. This was one of the points used by both sides in Brexit.

As for the general argument the two of you are having, I no longer think “war” is a useful boolean state, just a political decoration sometimes associated with the use of force against the political interests of another nation (“nation” being another surprisingly fuzzy concept the closer I look).

Re: Tech Companies Are Deleting Evidence of War Crimes

#234

Post by jerf »

52-6F-62 wrote: post #205
jerf wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The original implication was that a group behind the scenes of large organizations was coordinating them—not that journalists might communicate and share ideas." When complaining this is impossible or unlikely, you might want to google the term "Journo-list". It is a thing that is known to have happened, and the idea that one exists again today does not require too much suspension of disbelief, especially since much…

I did look it up because I hadn't heard of that group. Thanks for the reference. It sounds like there is a larger story to tell about that than "see here is a secret hidden cabal of forces pulling the strings of journalists." The very Wikipedia article on the subject outlines the active stories outing the list for some of their less-scrupulous conversations in publications like the Atlantic [0]. That sort of goes alo…

"These weren't professionals having their pockets lined to break ethical standards or push pre-decided stories."

I don't think you have the evidence to come to that conclusion. If they were, how would you know?

Once you find out someone has lied to you in real life about something serious, generally the right answer isn't to slightly adjust down your estimation of the truthfulness. You should generally drop it like a rock, and require a lot of evidence to bring it back up again. I don't mean that politically; I mean that in "real life", as a general life rule. Lies are highly correlated, and it is rational to do this, and indeed, actively irrational not to. (Though many people who are naturally inclined to thinking the best of people have to learn this the hard way, over and over, before getting to this point.)

Similarly, though not identically, you now have strong evidence that what you considered the ethical firewall was breached. You have good reason to suspect that the breach wasn't contained there; what may have started out as putting a toe over the line almost certainly escalated to totally ignoring the line, because in a group that large, that's always how it goes. (Again, general life rule; in groups dedicated to breaking the rules, there's always someone pushing the line just a little bit more than yesterday. Not always the same person, but always someone.)

No, I don't have absolute proof of this... my point is more that you don't have anywhere near proof of your belief that the transgression is limited to just what you know about, and that you have a lot of rational reasons to very strongly suspect that to not be the case. Or, at the very least, I have a lot of rational reason to strongly suspect that is not the case, since I don't consider these people my team or my tribe. Additionally, as I cited earlier, I think that for the same reason people suspected the "journo-list" existed in the first place by watching news stories that something like it exists again today. If this is true, not only has the ethics firewall been breached once again, it means it's been done completely knowingly, at which point any arguments about meaning well go out the window.

(This is all in addition to the general argument that control of the media narrative is literally one of the most valuable things on Earth and I find the idea that literally nobody with any power has ever successfully found a way to manipulate it and it's all just innocent people naively doing their job without a thought as to how it might affect society and that nobody anywhere would even dream of pressuring such people to be such an extraordinary claim as to be absurd. The degree of ethicality on the part of human beings necessary to pull that off strikes me as almost inexpressibly higher than the degree of ethicality that I observe.)

Re: Tech Companies Are Deleting Evidence of War Crimes

#235

Post by 52-6F-62 »

jerf wrote: post #234
52-6F-62 wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did look it up because I hadn't heard of that group. Thanks for the reference. It sounds like there is a larger story to tell about that than "see here is a secret hidden cabal of forces pulling the strings of journalists." The very Wikipedia article on the subject outlines the active stories outing the list for some of their less-scrupulous conversations in publications like the Atlantic [0]. That sort of goes alo…

"These weren't professionals having their pockets lined to break ethical standards or push pre-decided stories." I don't think you have the evidence to come to that conclusion. If they were, how would you know? Once you find out someone has lied to you in real life about something serious, generally the right answer isn't to slightly adjust down your estimation of the truthfulness. You should generally drop it like a…

At most I have anecdotal evidence of my work with such people.

As well, if you want to be wealthy that badly you’re better off leaving journalism and doing something else.

I think this rabid kind of speculation is unhealthy. You’re basing your rational on further assumptions.

At the core you seem to assume everyone is so vulnerable that such a situation is more than just plausible, but the most likely reality.

I disagree. So I guess it just boils down to philosophical differences.

For what it’s worth, again, my work has shown me the greatest extent of coordinated government/powers “interference” has been the request for XML copies of published articles. The greatest extent of corporate/financial powers interference has been to cut the legs out from under journalists to maintain margins.

I have no evidence those journalists were coerced into the actions they took outside of the effect of a social media echo chamber. They’re not the only ones.

Add that together and I feel I can make the assumption there is no grand conspiracy otherwise I likely would have seen some traces by now.

This isn’t directly related, but I see far worse coming from corporate executive business management. And they don’t give a damn about the stories.

And you know, I led off with “the press is not perfect”. But it is supposed to be free. Freedom often comes with the tag line that you have take the crunch with the smooth and work through problems.

But coordinated grand conspiracies—no.

Re: Tech Companies Are Deleting Evidence of War Crimes

#236

Post by Digit-Al »

jeandejean wrote: post #109
Digit-Al wrote: post #87

So, here's an idea. Let's take the case of YouTube, instead of its algorithm deleting this content, how about it is marked with a flag. Normal users are completely unable to view, or even know of the existence of content marked with this flag. It doesn't come up in searches and even a direct link will just show some "content unavailable" message. Human rights groups and the like can request permission for a designate…

Why would Human rights groups be entitled to have this censorship privilege? So they'd decide now what's good or bad to display on Youtube? If anyone needs evidence, it is Justice prosecutors and it is likely already possible. Deleted from user-facing Youtube and Facebook and the like doesn't mean it's deleted from their storage... Plus the title is misleading: they're not deleting evidence of war crimes, they're del…

I fear I may not have explained myself properly as you appear to have misunderstood. I was not proposing that these groups be able to decide what does and does not get shown on YouTube. I was proposing that they have the facility to allow selected people to view content that has been flagged so those people can review that content for evidence of war crimes, etc... The content would still be unavailable to the general public.

The idea is that the platform providers can comply with their legal obligation to remove such content from the general public but it can still be made available to lawmakers and armchair detectives.

Re: Tech Companies Are Deleting Evidence of War Crimes

#237

Post by Digit-Al »

naasking wrote: post #137
jeandejean wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would Human rights groups be entitled to have this censorship privilege? So they'd decide now what's good or bad to display on Youtube? If anyone needs evidence, it is Justice prosecutors and it is likely already possible. Deleted from user-facing Youtube and Facebook and the like doesn't mean it's deleted from their storage... Plus the title is misleading: they're not deleting evidence of war crimes, they're del…

> Why would Human rights groups be entitled to have this censorship privilege? Indeed, who watches the watchmen? The SPLC was recently embroiled in sexist and racist controversies. No human organization is exempt from corruption. We all have to watch each other while simultaneously be charitable and willing to forgive. > Plus the title is misleading: they're not deleting evidence of war crimes, they're deleting upset…

I am in absolute agreement with you that whether or not such material should be removed is subject to debate. There are good arguments on both sides. I am generally against censorship but I can recognise some merit in protecting children from videos of people being shot, hanged, beheaded, etc.. Not that I particularly want to go down the "think of the children" route.

However, all the debate aside, the simple truth is that governments are ordering that content be removed so until we can have the debates it would probably be a good idea to have some way to allow the content be viewed by some people. Arguments that it's probably already available to law enforcement are all very well but law enforcement has limited resources and it's impossible for them to review all the flagged content so if there are people who are willing to volunteer their time to review it looking for evidence of crimes then we should probably have a way to enable that.

As for their being some bad actors in these organisations - that's pretty much unavoidable, even law enforcement has some bad apples.

It's about compromising and making the best of what we have.

Re: Tech Companies Are Deleting Evidence of War Crimes

#238

Post by dang »

v_lisivka wrote: post #89

Number looks very little, if compared to Russia backing. Russia has whole TV channels backed by FSB, whole troll fabrics, and their own agents even in major Western media. Why few orders of magnitude greater effort cannot help Russia, while much smaller effort helps USA a lot?

You have a long history of using HN for political and nationalistic battle, and we've asked you before to stop. This sort of flamewar is not welcome here.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19866310 and marked it off-topic.

Re: Tech Companies Are Deleting Evidence of War Crimes

#239

Post by dang »

refurb wrote: post #185
ionised wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Seems to me that when the US supported a dictatorship, the alternative wasn’t a thriving democracy but just another dictatorship aligned to a different power. You're free to think that if it helps you sleep at night. You would be mistaken though. Some may have been just as bad as those they were replacing, but considering many of them were democratically elected governments that the US chose to overthrow in favour…

You've proven my point exactly. Your standard for America is perfection - a country that has never done anything wrong or made mistakes. Under your standard, every country is evil. It's a silly way to look at things. And, I see you've swallowed the Mossadegh narrative hook line and sinker. Iran was in chaos prior to the coup. Mossadegh was not uniformly popular, there were riots on the street. He was on his way out r…

Please don't do political or nationalistic flamewar on HN. The conversation fell way below the acceptability line by this point.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Tech Companies Are Deleting Evidence of War Crimes

#240

Post by dang »

ionised wrote: post #157
refurb wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On balance has done more damage? Do you believe that in the countries where the US has intervened that without US involvement things would be that much better? Seems to me that when the US supported a dictatorship, the alternative wasn’t a thriving democracy but just another dictatorship aligned to a different power.

> Seems to me that when the US supported a dictatorship, the alternative wasn’t a thriving democracy but just another dictatorship aligned to a different power. You're free to think that if it helps you sleep at night. You would be mistaken though. Some may have been just as bad as those they were replacing, but considering many of them were democratically elected governments that the US chose to overthrow in favour…

Please don't do political or nationalistic flamewar on HN. The conversation fell way below the acceptability line by this point.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

p.s. We've had to warn you repeatedly about using HN for political or ideological battle. At some point we ban accounts that keep doing that—regardless of what they're arguing for or against—because it's highly destructive of the intellectual curiosity this site exists for. Would you please fix that?

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