Live data from Hacker News

Capitol Attack Was Months in the Making on Facebook

techtransparencyproject.org

501–510 of 969 posts

Re: Capitol Attack Was Months in the Making on Facebook

#501
post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fact there were two shootings within a week in “CHAZ”, and one of the victims died.

Neither of which were the goals of CHAZ, both were related to gangs that happened to be there. Context matters. One group had specific goals, none of which involved killing. The other group specifically was calling out to kill someone.

So it’s OK that someone died, because your political framework is aligned with some ethereal goal of CHOP. Based on the definitions stated in this thread, you support terrorism.

Re: Capitol Attack Was Months in the Making on Facebook

#503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Terrorism is committing violent acts targeting non-combatants for political goals

That’s a bit loose. Terrorism aims to inspire terror, those violent acts have to be extreme and indiscriminate to do so.

Re: Capitol Attack Was Months in the Making on Facebook

#504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Do you honestly believe that Antifa is not real?

I honestly believe that antifa is not an organized entity. Antifa exists as a vaguely defined concept around the idea of counterprotesting right-wing groups. Its the same thing as the alt-right, an ill-defined idea that can be whatever bogeyman you want it to be to whoever you want to scare.

This is the problem. You asked if people really don't believe that antifa is real. Obviously it is real in some sense since we are talking about something called antifa, but we have no idea if you are thinking of the bogeyman organization that doesn't exist, and I am thinking of a philosophy of counterprotest.

When people talk about 'getting rid of antifa' there's a reason that so many people on the left laugh. It's because there is a false conception on the right that it is some sort of unified organization like the ACLU or NRA where you can literally be a card carrying member. People on the left understand that there is no such thing, it is just an ill-defined idea.

Re: Capitol Attack Was Months in the Making on Facebook

#505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t need the guns if you have people on the inside. And a good number of the rioters seemed really quite surprised when law enforcement fought back against them. After all, they were carrying Blue Lives Matter flags, surely the cops are on their side! (and besides, there were a good number of people with guns at the protest. And some others brought pipe bombs. Thankfully neither ended up being a factor but no o…

Doesn’t add up. How are you going to hold the Capitol or any hostages without weapons?

As I said, they did have weapons. Not an overwhelming amount of them certainly, but more than enough to pose a threat if they managed to capture Nancy Pelosi.

And again: if you have the support of the police (and potentially also the armed forces) it’s all pretty moot anyway.

Re: Capitol Attack Was Months in the Making on Facebook

#506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

It can be both. Police racism is a real problem. But saying ACAB ("All Cops Are Bastards") is both untrue and hardly improves the situation. That said, I don't believe the majority of the BLM movement is that extreme.

Re: Capitol Attack Was Months in the Making on Facebook

#507
post #45

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.

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 nobod…

Honest question, what are you referring to when in regards to published/public content?

All of these topics you've mentioned are and always have been far away from trending ('amplified', 'normalized') pages. You can't go anywhere on these sites and see these topics without searching for them, and when you do the hashtags are either immediately taken over by the rest of the users on the site or taken off of trending deliberately by administrators, often both. Can you provide one example of these topics consistently being 'amplified' or 'normalized' by one of the major tech platforms? I'm talking public content, not private groups. Posts that are 'amplified', not just present. You can find posts from anyone about anything online, so I don't really see what separates these private facebook groups from something like a mailing list. It doesn't seem "normalized" at all.

Re: Capitol Attack Was Months in the Making on Facebook

#508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, and Antifa and BLM have caused fear in Portland for political reasons as well. They lit the mayor's apartment building on fire, but were not called out as terrorists. The media is not even handed here.

Yes, there is credence to the old saying: "One mans terrorist is another mans freedom fighter". But I really don't think we need to devolve to whataboutism here. We're talking about the actions of people storming the capitol building, to try and say 'yes well X group of people are also terrorists' is a completely moot point and an intentional deflection.

This thread started with you saddened at folks downplaying the events at the Capitol.

I'm much more concerned with the media being complicit in downplaying what we both agree is domestic terrorism elsewhere.

I suppose that's a "what about", but I fear the current structures of power colluding to form narratives more than angry trumpers.

Re: Capitol Attack Was Months in the Making on Facebook

#509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 watc…

I grant that it's nice to have relevant content presented. But I'm not in favor of profit-driven companies controlling social discourse with their secret algorithms.

Couldn't there be a way where users have more control over this? Perhaps recommendations to friends, user ratings, stuff like web-rings, etc.

Even the fact that these algorithms are secret gives me the creeps. The political problems we're seen have been accidental, what happens when someone is using these to manipulate everyone on purpose?

Re: Capitol Attack Was Months in the Making on Facebook

#510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Cynical view: Because way too much of law enforcement is totally in on it, from upper management right the way down to beat cops. Compare their (collective) preparations and actions on the 6th to their preparation and actions at many many black lives matter protests. Like the song says: "Some of those who join forces, are the same who burn crosses."

Or they paid exactly the right amount of attention to it and it's only the media that's blown it out of proportion. Had this been a BLM protest it would have been one of the 'mostly peaceful' ones with questions about why a rent a cop killed her when the professionals in front of him didn't think it was a situation to use deadly force in.

The hypocrisy from both sides is astonishing and the reason why cops can kill whoever they feel like: half the country will cheer them on because that {anarchist,nazi} deserved it. I find it sickening that I share a citizenship with blood thirsty savages with no concept of empathy.

Post reply on HN