Capitol Attack Was Months in the Making on Facebook • Hacker News Board

Re: Capitol Attack Was Months in the Making on Facebook

#581

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jan 20, 2021, 2:06 AM UTC

titzer wrote: post #564

zionic wrote: post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you call CHAZ? Wasn’t it fully supported by BLM and a literal sedition zone against the democratically elected government?

You mean that thing[1] > The zone was a self-organized space, without official leadership. Protesters united behind three main demands: > 1. cut Seattle's $409 million police budget by 50 percent, > 2. shift funding to community programs and services in historically black communities, and > 3. ensure that protesters would not be charged with crimes. Is that what you meant? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Hi…

[deleted]

Re: Capitol Attack Was Months in the Making on Facebook

#582

Post by Amezarak » Wed, Jan 20, 2021, 2:08 AM UTC

selimthegrim wrote: post #547

Amezarak wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the biggest downer of our time to me. The media/elite control of the narrative is astounding and nearly ironclad - and as best I can tell social media is just being used to reinforce it. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that if white supremacists performed those same actions, it would be described as a violent terroristic insurrection.

None of that was linked to transfer of power or an election

You don’t think attacking the elected head of state is related to a transfer of power? At least 11 Secret Service agents had to be hospitalized after they defended the WH and President from angry rioters...how on earth is that materially different from January 6? Suppose they had succeeded in breaking through the line?

What exactly is so sacrosanct about elections that disputing them is an insurrection, but not storming Senate chambers to stop a Supreme Court confirmation, trying to storm the WH, or literally declaring an autonomous zone not subject to the US government?

It’s hard for me to understand how this is not simply nit picking some insubstantial detail and using it to put the things we like on one side and the things we don’t like on another. Never mind that the election nor the integrity thereof were ever remotely threatened by these riots.

Re: Capitol Attack Was Months in the Making on Facebook

#583

Post by tw04 » Wed, Jan 20, 2021, 2:08 AM UTC

nostromo wrote: post #440

eganist wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Firstly, nobody was terrorized. I can count six DC-area thousand+ employee firms that provided grief counseling in response. And as a reminder, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism - even if a subset of people implemented violence with political ends in mind (breaking in, beating innocent people, attempting to take hostages, all in the name of overturning a legitimate election), at the very least, that subset me…

If you expand the definition of terrorism to such an absurd degree (anybody who may need grief counseling) you're diluting actual terrorism. The Pulse nightclub is what real terrorism looks like. And the Christchurch shootings. And 9/11. The storming of the capitol was not at all similar.

So what was the goal of storming the Capitol? You keep saying it wasn't terrorism, so what was the purpose?

It seems pretty obvious to me the purpose was to intimidate elected officials in some misguided attempt to prevent them from completing their constitutional duties. That is literally terrorism.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/terrorism

>Terrorism, the calculated use of violence to create a general climate of fear in a population and thereby to bring about a particular political objective.

Re: Capitol Attack Was Months in the Making on Facebook

#584

Post by archagon » Wed, Jan 20, 2021, 2:08 AM UTC

wutbrodo wrote: post #191

exmicrosoldier wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

> while happily wallowing in their own post-truth bubble

Explain? I have not seen any conspiracy theories on the left that are remotely close to the Qanon/plandemic/stop-the-steal clusterfuck of recent years.

Re: Capitol Attack Was Months in the Making on Facebook

#585

Post by notacoward » Wed, Jan 20, 2021, 2:08 AM UTC

downandout wrote: post #489

asdfk-12 wrote: post #438

Half of a billion in lobbying dollars well spent by FAANG[1] - business as usual continues for facebook despite their decreasing popularity and repeated scandal and failure, from Cambridge Analytica to Libra. Those in my immediate circle have mothballed or closed their accounts, although Instagram seems to have more holding power. 1: https://www.forbes.com/sites/ajdellinger/2019/04/30/how-the-...

What’s interesting about this to me is that Facebook, where most of the planning took place, is still online, while Parler has been, for all intents and purposes, killed. I wonder why AANG isn’t colluding to kill F like they did with Parler - by tomorrow morning - now that this has come to light. It seems only fair given that we now have an established standard of user behavior that dictates whether or not companies…

There are two really simple reasons. One is that any such collusion would itself be a breach of anti-trust. The other is that they can't. Facebook has its own servers in its own data centers, its own fiber lines, etc. They could remove the apps from the iOS and Android app stores, but that wouldn't affect the billions who already have the app or get it preinstalled by carriers. And that's all beside the question of whether Facebook deserves such special treatment, either compared to the others or at all.

Re: Capitol Attack Was Months in the Making on Facebook

#586

Post by wccrawford » Wed, Jan 20, 2021, 2:11 AM UTC

unanswered wrote: post #448

wccrawford wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> it's used by an extremist group. If you have a legitimate source for this (i.e., not probably citogenesis https://xkcd.com/978/ ) I'd be very interested. As far as I can tell this was essentially made-up and has been spread via the citogenesis cycle ever since.

I don't. I was seriously told by someone not to use it. I did enough research to make sure they weren't totally delusional, and then said whatever I had to in order to get them to shut up and go away.

Re: Capitol Attack Was Months in the Making on Facebook

#587

Post by epakai » Wed, Jan 20, 2021, 2:12 AM UTC

refurb wrote: post #308

deepspace wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So you’re able to clearly separate out the bad actors from BLM, but apparently not with Trump supporters?

I find them harder to separate in the capitol incident. The event they were attending was named "Stop the Steal". At some level people there were invested in a tenuous narrative about how functional our elections are.

It's obvious they did not all commit crimes, but they somewhat tacitly encouraged what brought it about. I generally don't feel the same way about BLM activists. There were situations in BLM events where the boundary was overstepped, and inexcusable mob behavior took over. Perhaps I give a big pass because I am sympathetic to the overall aims of the movement, and for the "Stop the Steal" event I see a lot of malice in the lies that caused people to deny (not just question) the outcome of the election.

Re: Capitol Attack Was Months in the Making on Facebook

#588

Post by selectodude » Wed, Jan 20, 2021, 2:12 AM UTC

abduhl wrote: post #562

hooande wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Millions of Americans watched the Capitol insurrection play out live on tv. That has an impact on the national psyche that's very similar to a terrorist attack. People aren't going to forget about it because we all witnessed it together. It's going to be the defining event of trump's presidency, whether you think that's fair or not

You honestly think that THE defining event of Trump's presidency is going to be the Capitol riot? You don't think it's the bungled response to coronavirus that landed us all locked up in our houses for over a year, the assassination of an Iranian leader on another sovereign's soil, the trade war with China, the tax reform bill he pushed through, the Mueller probe, the BLM protests, the "stolen" SCOTUS seats, or any n…

Those are slow burns. The attack on the capital was a severe jolt to our national psyche. You may not want them to be different, but they are.

Re: Capitol Attack Was Months in the Making on Facebook

#589

Post by dragonwriter » Wed, Jan 20, 2021, 2:15 AM UTC

downandout wrote: post #489

asdfk-12 wrote: post #438

Half of a billion in lobbying dollars well spent by FAANG[1] - business as usual continues for facebook despite their decreasing popularity and repeated scandal and failure, from Cambridge Analytica to Libra. Those in my immediate circle have mothballed or closed their accounts, although Instagram seems to have more holding power. 1: https://www.forbes.com/sites/ajdellinger/2019/04/30/how-the-...

What’s interesting about this to me is that Facebook, where most of the planning took place, is still online, while Parler has been, for all intents and purposes, killed. I wonder why AANG isn’t colluding to kill F like they did with Parler - by tomorrow morning - now that this has come to light. It seems only fair given that we now have an established standard of user behavior that dictates whether or not companies…

> Parler has been, for all intents and purposes, killed.

Parler wasn't “killed” because planning took place there, but because they were openly at least unable if not actually unwilling to take action against a huge backlog of specific problem identified to them; the problem was current and forward, not retrospective.

Re: Capitol Attack Was Months in the Making on Facebook

#590

Post by filoeleven » Wed, Jan 20, 2021, 2:16 AM UTC

abduhl wrote: post #562

hooande wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Millions of Americans watched the Capitol insurrection play out live on tv. That has an impact on the national psyche that's very similar to a terrorist attack. People aren't going to forget about it because we all witnessed it together. It's going to be the defining event of trump's presidency, whether you think that's fair or not

You honestly think that THE defining event of Trump's presidency is going to be the Capitol riot? You don't think it's the bungled response to coronavirus that landed us all locked up in our houses for over a year, the assassination of an Iranian leader on another sovereign's soil, the trade war with China, the tax reform bill he pushed through, the Mueller probe, the BLM protests, the "stolen" SCOTUS seats, or any n…

Wait a month or so: more arrests are coming, and it’s quite possible that members of Congress will be prosecuted for sedition.

The Capitol insurrection was a culmination of 4 years of POTUS cultivating a rebellion. You’re right that those other events had broader effects on the world, and Americans in particular. I’d add leaving the Paris agreement to your list. But people respond to symbols, and the last capitol building breach was two centuries ago in 1814.

The historians will take everything you mentioned into account—though Khashoggi’s murder and probably the tax cuts will get short shrift—and they’ll frame it all as pointing to an inevitable coup attempt.

Though honestly, Jan 6 is probably only the beginning, given how many Americans are so invested in Trumpism. I expect more violence to come, so while his part is ending (he will likely be in prison soon) the fractures in the citizenry that he exposed and deepened are going to be with us for a while.