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LiveLeak shuts down after 15 years online

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Re: LiveLeak shuts down after 15 years online

#281
post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was fake news and you fell for it. Look it up!

I have looked and never found anything, several times in fact. Do you have a source?

Took 30 seconds to find it on Snopes: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/bread-and-media-circuses/

Re: LiveLeak shuts down after 15 years online

#282
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You consider Reddit usable? I stopped using Reddit a few years ago, recently came back and tried both the website and (dark-pattern driven) mobile app. It's distinctly worse. Everything seems to have been re-engineered to drive "engagement" and/or mindless consumption.

The userbase is also becoming worse, because they're attracting the kind of idiots that respond to design like that.

The rot is also behind the scenes.

The "Anti Evil Ops" team are also full of braindead morons who do not distinguish between context and targeted harassment.

In a private sub (A PRIVATE SUB, FOR FUCK'S SAKE!), I quoted what a cop said to me when I went to report an assault and I got permanently suspended. (Cop said I was "probably being a [bundle of sticks].") The suspension reason? "Hateful speech."

Someone randomly posted a single word post ("N-hard-r!") in response to someone in a public sub. The post was still there one month later despite being reported by multiple people. Based on the user's posting activity, was not suspended for the slur, either.

There are people in trans subs who have been given suspensions for openly talking about the kind of harassment they've received and the things that have been said to them. Some of it instantaneous based on keywords. Some of the people I know who have appealed have had their appeals denied.

But apparently someone using a racial slur in a post all by itself with absolutely zero context for it is somehow acceptable in comparison.

Reddit had gone down some really questionable paths before, arguably tacitly allowing criminal behaviour on the site until it was noticed by the media... and then they draw the line at queer or trans people talking about their own experiences.

At this point I can only say "Everything." if someone were to ask me what is wrong with Reddit... and this is coming from someone who had a 14 year account on that site.

Re: LiveLeak shuts down after 15 years online

#283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably super easy to monetize. The world isn't just Google Ad{Word/Sense} and Facebook Ads

Absolutely not. So much of their content goes against the TOS of the major advertisers that no one wants to work with them.

Theres literally a million sketchy ad companies out there that would be happy to buy that traffic

Re: LiveLeak shuts down after 15 years online

#284

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 stopped visiting the site after viewing a video of cartel torture that was worse than anything I'd ever seen. I still see it in my head all the time. Although LL certainly helped meet the morbid curiosity a lot of us have, I am ultimately glad it's now harder to find this kind of content.

Funky town?

Re: LiveLeak shuts down after 15 years online

#285

Whenever something big happened in the news and I wanted to see the video or images directly, uncensored, real as they are, LiveLeak was The Place To Go. Outside the Big Tech bubble. Not sure what alternatives there are, if any.

It certainly was at one point, but near the end it definitely wasn't. Whether it was soft censorship, hard censorship, or a declining user base, I struggled to find videos I could sometimes even find on Twitter or Youtube. Videos whose place was obviously LiveLeak, based on their standards from 5 years ago.

As much as I lament the death of LiveLeak, it died well before today.

Re: LiveLeak shuts down after 15 years online

#288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

War and terrorism was definitely made “more real” on LiveLeak than what you’d experience via the media or YouTube. I also found a real appreciation for other things: driving safely, worker protections, fire safety. These “boring” things take on more importance when you can see what happens when you ignore them. I don't think people should dwell on these morbid things. But seeing just one or two videos of, for example…

I remember they used to show bad car crashes as part of the training you could take to reduce the number of penalty points (Polish road code, accumulate 24, lose your driving license). My colleague, who was a bit of a petrolhead, took it. It made him drive safe(r) at least for a few weeks.

Here as part of the process to regain your points they made you visit a hospital where car crash patients were treated.

Re: LiveLeak shuts down after 15 years online

#289
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 aski…

I don’t think it’s entertainment any more than reading the news is entertainment. I know that LiveLeak for example changed my view on capital punishment. You can sit in a coffee shop and debate things but once you see a guy cut out another guy’s beating heart in front of his son (before doing the same to the son) you think, “they really ought to execute that guy.”

Re: LiveLeak shuts down after 15 years online

#290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, there is no circular argument. If someone thinks the world is an OK place, either they're speaking from a position of privilege or they are lying. Assuming privilege is in this case the kindest interpretation of their words.

> either they're speaking from a position of privilege or they are lying I am not bothered that this is a false dichotomy as much as the fact that, intentional or not, it forbids taking a positive view of the world to anyone who also happens to be materially underprivileged. > Men are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they take of them. -Epictetus, Greek-born slave

> Epictetus, Greek-born slave

Just to clarify:

> He spent his youth as a slave in Rome to Epaphroditos, a wealthy freedman and secretary to Nero.

> Epictetus obtained his freedom sometime after the death of Nero in AD 68

He was a slave to people of wealth and power, that permitted him to study philosophy, and was freed around 18 years of age. So it would be disingenuous to imply Epictetus had the perspective of an impoverished slave when he founded his own school of philosophy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epictetus

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