Live data from Hacker News

LiveLeak shuts down after 15 years online

techstartups.com

291–300 of 717 posts

Re: LiveLeak shuts down after 15 years online

#291
post #124

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.

>create demand for future shock content at expense of human lives

Unfortunately those humans are going to die and be maimed anyway. If those videos are out there, there's a chance of educating people on the danger of not paying attention crossing the road, or using a lathe, or throwing a firework into a sewer, or any of the million other mundane things that people do that don't seem super dangerous on first thought but actually are?

Re: LiveLeak shuts down after 15 years online

#292

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…

Thank you for sharing that article on child soldiers. The parts I did read were both enlightening and disturbing.

I’m tempted to search for industrial lathe accidents next but I think that will have to wait till tomorrow.

Re: LiveLeak shuts down after 15 years online

#293
post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Liveleak doesn't portray the reality of war because it shows you some beheading. Voyeurism and gore are not the same as genuine insight into what scary and violent places are actually like. It's worth reading Baudrillard's ' The Gulf War Did Not Take Place ' on how media representation, and stylized, selective footage is used to distort. You didn't get to know the 'reality' of war, but the hyper-reality of it. If you…

> what you'd see most of the time is actually soldiers doing nothing True, but that part of the reality of war is hardly relevant. I don’t need to emphasize with the bored soldiers. That’s part of life for me too. I emphathize with the bored soldiers that suddenly had a massive bomb land in their midst.

Isn’t it actually an issue that soldiers are so bored in completely remote places for months and months?

People engaging in the army to get some hot action sure would have liked to know more about that aspect, and for better or worse the general public’s perception would also be different when accurately imagining x thousands of trained people stuck in the desert doing nothing 99% of the time.

Re: LiveLeak shuts down after 15 years online

#294

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…

LiveLeak definitely had the ability to change you. There was a video from a dashcam where a couple is driving down a road, and a brick or rock falls off a truck driving the opposite way. It bounces on the road before slamming through the windshield and instantly killing the wife sitting in the passenger seat. Whenever I feel like a member of my family has gotten on my last nerve, pushed me to my limit, I think of the…

I know that video and I think it’s his mother.

Re: LiveLeak shuts down after 15 years online

#295
post #89

Serious question: how can we ensure stable and long lasting access to this kind of content, no matter how offensive, to journalists and researchers?

Libya 2011 and arab spring in general spawned a lot of violent videos that were important for documenting what happened. They must have been archived or stored somewhere too - I know they were on youtube at the time, quickly taken down, and some were trying to archive/stow them.

Re: LiveLeak shuts down after 15 years online

#296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Table saws will remove fingers instantly. And will also throw things at you if you drop them on the blade.

Re: LiveLeak shuts down after 15 years online

#297
post #96

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…

read your depicts and > I think the world has lost a valuable resource. nothing of the value has been lost. You don't need to see this to understand that horrible things happen in the world.

[deleted]

Re: LiveLeak shuts down after 15 years online

#298
post #216

Why is there so much fetishization of violent content in the comments? Sure maybe liveleak provided some footage you couldn't get on youtube and that is indeed a loss, but to think that the violence you see represents the truth is just as bad as denying that any bad happens in the world. The world is far larger than any one mind can handle. I wouldn't judge it from a few videos taken out of context. The world can be…

> fetishization of violent content [...] few videos taken out of context

it's literally the opposite, it's not for the of violence, it's the unadulterated content: every other outlet either filter or worse, "narrates" hevaily cut snippets out of source material.

and we already live in a bubble as it is. having some amount of "ground truth" was certainly better than none.

and I said as one that steered clear from the site itself most of the time.

Re: LiveLeak shuts down after 15 years online

#299
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.

You are right and things can revert backward very fast.

Re: LiveLeak shuts down after 15 years online

#300
post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

1000s of children die everyday due to diarrhoea caused by unclean water. About a 1 000 000 die every year from malaria mostly children. Just to name a few things.

The world is a hard unforgiving place for millions, we should never forget that.

Post reply on HN