LiveLeak shuts down after 15 years online • Hacker News Board

Re: LiveLeak shuts down after 15 years online

#181

Post by kfprt » Thu, May 06, 2021, 4:19 AM UTC

throw37472 wrote: post #127

nickysielicki wrote: post #17

The world is a scary and violent place. Without Liveleak, you might never feel it. Until you see the actual violence and gore, it doesn't mean anything, it's just empty words. I didn't care at all about wars in the middle east until I saw the reality on Liveleak. Seeing dead children and people with their legs blown off made all the commentary on CNN and Fox seem so understated. A lot is said about desensitization as…

I personally believe gore videos involving children need to be banned, just like child pornography is. I also feel gore videos that involve non-consenting adults should be judged as "revenge porn." I understand there should be some leeway for journalists reporting the news and shedding light on atrocites. I'm just not sure where that line should be.

I'll never forget the video I saw on liveleak of a 5 year old who's hand was driven over by a car for stealing in Iran with the whole village watching. That minute of video did more to shape my views than anything else.

Re: LiveLeak shuts down after 15 years online

#182

Post by bartread » Thu, May 06, 2021, 4:23 AM UTC

PostOnce wrote: post #136

spoonjim wrote: post #55

Four LiveLeak videos will always stay in my head. WARNING: even in text this stuff is horrifying. Stop reading if you don’t want to have nightmares. 1) an ISIS video where a 7 year old kid or so goes through a building where a bunch of hostages are tied up. He shoots them dead in succession. He looks like he’s about to cry throughout the whole video — but he doesn’t. 2) a completely covered up woman(?) in Iran is exe…

Your first point, sad as it is, reminded me of this article I read, which gives clarity on how child soldiers are made in a way that I haven't read elsewhere, despite reading books on exactly that subject https://acoup.blog/2019/08/16/collections-this-isnt-sparta-p... Not related, but I'll just close by saying I didn't have the same respect that I now have for rotating shafts at industrial facilities until I saw some…

Some months back I saw footage of a lathe accident in a Russian factor (it was on Reddit but possibly the footage was linked from LiveLeak). Similar to you I have developed a much stronger respect for heavy machinery.

It's even made me more careful when I use obviously much smaller power tools at home. Tools like circular saws, mitre saws, and even angle grinders have the ability to irreversibly change your life (or worse) in the blink of an eye if not handled with care and respect.

Just thinking about that video again has made me feel slightly queasy, but there's no doubt seeing it has done me a huge favour.

Re: LiveLeak shuts down after 15 years online

#183

Post by lovelearning » Thu, May 06, 2021, 4:26 AM UTC

q_andrew wrote: post #16

Was any person or institution archiving liveleak videos? Even just for the sake of law enforcement or journalistic documentation, I hope there is a way of accessing this content. I'm sure there's a lot of unprocessed history in those shut down servers.

There are community efforts : https://tracker.archiveteam.org/liveleak/

Note : They are NOT the archive.org team. They are an independent decentralized archiving collective. IMO, that's the better approach.

Re: LiveLeak shuts down after 15 years online

#184

Post by kfprt » Thu, May 06, 2021, 4:27 AM UTC

Matticus_Rex wrote: post #108

baron_harkonnen wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m still surprised that Tor hidden services never filled that gap. As more and more stuff disappears from the clear web, I assumed more people would realize that .onion sites don’t have to be a wasteland of largely spooky scams. But if anything the quality of hidden services seems to have declined in recent years. I’m guessing it’s a mix of darknet FUD combined with less and less people knowing how to host a website…

Video over Tor is not likely to catch on.

Video over Tor is surprisingly usable in my experience. Captchas are a much bigger problem.

Re: LiveLeak shuts down after 15 years online

#185

Post by NL807 » Thu, May 06, 2021, 4:27 AM UTC

moralestapia wrote: post #80

acituan wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The world is a scary and violent place. Without Liveleak, you might never feel it. Counter-point; the world is mostly a neutral, even OK, place, with also violence in it. Our cognition is heavily biased towards saliencing and preserving the scary bits, and being exposed to a planet scale showcase of those bits does not necessarily make us wiser (e.g. better decision makers). At least for me personally it took a dec…

>Counter-point; the world is mostly a neutral, even OK, place It isn't, you are lucky to be in a privileged environment. And I don't even mean warzones. People who live paycheck-to-paycheck with family or medical issues wouldn't agree with you.

Individuals suffer in many ways, so the "OK" part is all relative. Living in environment where you can get a paycheck is still OK compared to the extreme violence and destruction depicted on Liveleak. In other words, looking through the lens of a platform that curates extreme content is hardly representative of what goes on in most people's day-to-day lives around the world.

Re: LiveLeak shuts down after 15 years online

#186

Post by ycombinete » Thu, May 06, 2021, 4:27 AM UTC

spoonjim wrote: post #55

Four LiveLeak videos will always stay in my head. WARNING: even in text this stuff is horrifying. Stop reading if you don’t want to have nightmares. 1) an ISIS video where a 7 year old kid or so goes through a building where a bunch of hostages are tied up. He shoots them dead in succession. He looks like he’s about to cry throughout the whole video — but he doesn’t. 2) a completely covered up woman(?) in Iran is exe…

I suppose we’ll just have to download our favourite facets-of-the-world gore, to show to our children as they come of age.

Re: LiveLeak shuts down after 15 years online

#187

Post by arp242 » Thu, May 06, 2021, 4:27 AM UTC

syamilmj wrote: post #118

Probably a minority here - but I could not stomach the horrible comments on LiveLeak, especially because it almost seemed like they were all written by a bunch of really young audience.

I never read any of the comments on LiveLeak, but this sounds awfully similar to the comments on YouTube.

Re: LiveLeak shuts down after 15 years online

#188

Post by Bancakes » Thu, May 06, 2021, 4:35 AM UTC

nickysielicki wrote: post #17

The world is a scary and violent place. Without Liveleak, you might never feel it. Until you see the actual violence and gore, it doesn't mean anything, it's just empty words. I didn't care at all about wars in the middle east until I saw the reality on Liveleak. Seeing dead children and people with their legs blown off made all the commentary on CNN and Fox seem so understated. A lot is said about desensitization as…

True. Too many people protest police actions and recommend "shooting the legs" and such. That's just one example that is readily disproved with a few liveleak videos of police shootouts, yet takes paragraphs to describe in text.

These videos help people shape their own opinions instead of trusting authority.

Re: LiveLeak shuts down after 15 years online

#189

Post by jamestimmins » Thu, May 06, 2021, 4:40 AM UTC

buryat wrote: post #124

wyattpeak wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the very fact that reading those descriptions is confronting, if it is to you as it is to me, is evidence that you do need exposure to understand that horrible things happen in the world. I understand it academically, but every time I see or read something like this I realise that I don't really understand it.

it's just sick entertainment covered by explanation "I need to see how horrible the world is", and being the audience you create demand for future shock content at expense of human lives. There're better ways to educate yourself and make the world a better place.

After the photojournalist James Foley was beheaded by Isis, I read a thoughtful editorial arguing that we shouldn't watch it, in part because people were ultimately doing it not to become more informed, but to test their ability or willingness to stomach it. It also argued, that ultimately this was a form of entertainment.

To address the argument that we should "see how horrible the world is", I think it's worth asking why that's necessary? What will it change, beyond making it harder to sleep? Further, there's always something worse you can see, so should we go on trying to fund ever more horrible videos to watch? What is gained by watching something live that isn't gained simply by reading about it or reflecting on injustices without becoming voyeurs to people's horrors?

Re: LiveLeak shuts down after 15 years online

#190

Post by Bancakes » Thu, May 06, 2021, 4:45 AM UTC

spoonjim wrote: post #55

Four LiveLeak videos will always stay in my head. WARNING: even in text this stuff is horrifying. Stop reading if you don’t want to have nightmares. 1) an ISIS video where a 7 year old kid or so goes through a building where a bunch of hostages are tied up. He shoots them dead in succession. He looks like he’s about to cry throughout the whole video — but he doesn’t. 2) a completely covered up woman(?) in Iran is exe…

For me, it was a Kurdish soldier on the ground getting shot in the head with a AK from point blank. There were no bits and fragments flying around, his skull just broke apart and his head flattened uncannily like a squished rubber toy and his eyes popped out.

In another video, a ISIS (?) soldier gets shot in the head, and falls to the ground. We see him struggling to get up while a viscous red liquid pours out the side of his head. Just pours out. No pink mist or giblets. He didn't die instantly.

This broke the preconceptions I had from movies and videogames. I consider it an important milestone.