Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Citizen’s dangerous effort to cash in on vigilantism

vice.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–237 of 237 posts

Re: Citizen’s dangerous effort to cash in on vigilantism

#231

Post by leetcrew »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #200
leetcrew wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

police are also known to intentionally downgrade or even discourage crime reports to improve statistics. this can either be overt ("do you really want to file a report for that?) or the result of no one giving a fuck the last time you bothered to report a crime. I'm sure there are a lot of misunderstandings or flat-out fabrications that make it onto citizen. I'm also quite certain there are a lot of crimes that are o…

Police is meant to use reasonable discresion, or our crime statistics will drown in jaywalking and antisocial behaviour

I don't agree. police should use discretion when deciding whether to make an arrest or write a ticket, and prosecutors should use discretion when deciding which cases to prosecute. we don't need to aggressively seek penalties for jaywalkers. but the crime statistics should represent, as accurately as possible, the actual amount of crime that occurs. otherwise, what is the point?

Re: Citizen’s dangerous effort to cash in on vigilantism

#232

Post by ctdonath »

getcrunk wrote: post #181
ctdonath wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m old enough to gave seen many such juggernauts collapse when enough individuals decided to change themselves.

Such as?

Smith-Corona was the #1 worldwide most recognized brand. I was contracting there when they shut down, as typewriter purchases practically ended (in favor of personal computers).

Kodak was the name in photography, with few viable competitors. When I heard (internally) their 5-year plan to address the onset of digital photography, I knew they were doomed. Individual purchases of film cameras plummeted, favoring digital cameras, and thus individual choices ended chemical photography within months.

Likewise hundreds of other corporate examples. Market-dominating businesses falter and fail, time and again, because individuals choose another option - LOTS of individuals. Every purchase & interaction is an individual choice. Comes a point when the juggernauts are no longer chosen by enough.

I've been on social media since the days of dial-up BBSes. I watched AOL and CompuServe rise, seemingly steamrolling the digital world to dominance; then ... they vanished almost overnight. Likewise other media juggernauts (usenet, MySpace, Second Life, etc), unstoppable until individual users cumulatively decided to go elsewhere. "But Facebook/Twitter/etc are different!" No they're not. They're showing the same life cycle others did, albeit with a couple more digits in user count. They're showing the same cracks (over-moderation, boredom, "nobody goes there 'cuz it's too packed") as others have done. We're due for a new platform populated by mass migration of cumulative individuals.

Ultimately, it's your choice. What life do you want to live? Sure it's easy to go with the crowd, and deviation may be difficult ... but the choice is yours. And theirs. Live the life you want, be true to yourself - and you may be surprised how many make the same choice, in part because you did.

Re: Citizen’s dangerous effort to cash in on vigilantism

#233

Post by vmception »

kelnos wrote: post #167
sbagel wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Users getting so offended by this comment are hilarious. He didn't create this system, if you were in a similar position tasked to get attention for a client or business you could take the high road of not using proven social media tactics and fail miserably. The sanctimonious take that he's a 'manipulative asshole' for playing the system is laughable. Don't hate the player hate the game.

I would honestly rather my business fail than participate in that sort of manipulation. "Unethical" doesn't even begin to describe it. The game is supported by the players willing to play. If you play, you're culpable.

There are a lot of people inspired by representation and wouldn’t know of it if the headline didn’t say so

It is the other people that don’t understand that and are also triggered by it that boost the engagement by orders of magnitude

Publicists do more representation posts because of the engagement

Publicists are aware why the engagement is so high

Is it unethical manipulation if the publicists aren’t aware?

Is it unethical manipulation if people weren’t triggered by representation posts?

Is it unethical manipulation if the platforms themselves didn’t rely on and enable commenter controversy?

But go ahead, gnaw at the messenger who hired a publicist and is telling you how the whole network of publicists operate right now

Re: Citizen’s dangerous effort to cash in on vigilantism

#235

Post by jareklupinski »

vmception wrote: post #21

> Citizen does moderate comments, but "two people having an argument about whether or not someone’s comment is racist drives engagement," LOL, my publicist does this on linkedin and other places for us because people are gullible. Source article: Executive of does a thing 0 engagement, nobody knows Social Media version: [First] Executive of does a thing 15,000 comments, 2 million reach, supporters and detractors argu…

thank you for inoculating all of us to your mental viruses

your "publicist" would probably not like that :^)

Re: Citizen’s dangerous effort to cash in on vigilantism

#236

Post by joe_the_user »

leetcrew wrote: post #231
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Police is meant to use reasonable discresion, or our crime statistics will drown in jaywalking and antisocial behaviour

I don't agree. police should use discretion when deciding whether to make an arrest or write a ticket, and prosecutors should use discretion when deciding which cases to prosecute. we don't need to aggressively seek penalties for jaywalkers. but the crime statistics should represent, as accurately as possible, the actual amount of crime that occurs. otherwise, what is the point?

but the crime statistics should represent, as accurately as possible, the actual amount of crime that occurs.otherwise, what is the point?

Crime statistics are somewhat arbitrary and pointless. A large amount of things considered crimes, including things that are sometimes prosecuted, are "in the eye of the beholder". A significant portion of prosecutions involve interpersonal conflicts that slowly escalated. It's very to say when the threshold of crime starts given that American laws are quite flexible. The crime of "riot" is a group of people wandering around in a fashion that makes other people feel unsafe. Disorderly conduct includes being at a place of business without intending to make a purpose. People sometimes good to jail for such.

But given you also have, in this fine nation, a population of people ready to scream and call the cops about just about anything, if you record every single thing that these people report, you'll have a certified stream of garbage.

The thing is, while crime statistics are indeed somewhat arbitrary, they are sort of intended to be "how unsafe does the average person actually feel" which is different than "how unsafe does the occasional angry wingnut feel?"

Moreover, this nation counts among it's citizen

Re: Citizen’s dangerous effort to cash in on vigilantism

#237

Post by jb775 »

drewbug01 wrote: post #171
ArkanExplorer wrote: post #154

Why is George Soros funding DAs who refuse to prosecute crimes? https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/aug/20/george-soro... "Soros-backed DAs in Philadelphia, St. Louis, San Francisco and other cities have fired scores of experienced prosecutors and, as promised, stopped prosecuting low-level quality-of-life crimes such as disorderly conduct, vagrancy and loitering." "Mr. Soros’ New York Safety and Public Justice…

> Why is George Soros funding DAs who refuse to prosecute crimes? Smells like a conspiracy theory to me. And citing the Washington Times (a paper notable for having a Wikipedia section devoted to its documented history of publishing things sympathetic to white nationalism) is not a reasonable source to cite. Don't bring racist conspiracy theories here; that's not appropriate for conversation.

How is this in any way a "racist conspiracy theory"? Literally all the facts are there for this to be a relevant question, you are just apparently to ignorant to look at them.

Simply follow the political donations for the DAs, and look at the corresponding prosecution rates (and overall crime statistics).

Post reply on HN