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Dataminr tracked Gaza-related protests

theintercept.com

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Re: Dataminr tracked Gaza-related protests

#231

Post by octopoc »

dotancohen wrote: post #227
octopoc wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dude. Israel is committing genocide . Your persecution complex is making you blind. Put yourself in your neighbor’s shoes, please. Do this not just to be a descent human being—do this for the sake of your own survival. What will happen when Israel has made every nation hate it more than ever, and the US finally cuts the purse strings?

Israel is not committing genocide. Not by any reputable definition of genocide. Israel is waging war against an enemy who in fact clearly states their intention to genocide the Jews. You are correct to be angry about the amount of people dying in this war. But you should direct your anger to those responsible for both starting the war and for directly endangering those people.

“Look what you made me do” is what you’re saying, but Israel could stop attacking Gaza today and not suffer a single material attack from Gaza for a long time. Way, way more Palestinians have died since October than Jews. Israel has no need to keep on its current course. It has made its point and is now making a completely different point—that it is a cruel nation incapable of self restraint.

Nobody can force you to self reflect. Nobody can spare you the consequences if you refuse.

Re: Dataminr tracked Gaza-related protests

#232

Post by kristjansson »

j4coh wrote: post #222
kristjansson wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> whether rate of committing crimes is uniform The above linked data show self-reported cannabis use within +/- 10% over the relevant pre-legalization period (before 2012), if anything with a slight advantage to whites. Drug arrest and incarceration rates vary by much, much more ( factors of 2-6 between whites and blacks). Against that, use rates of 15 vs 13ish vs 12.5ish are as good as uniform , esp. on a survey wit…

The quibble was that > Every demographic commits petty crimes and code violations at about the same rate .. is not actually true, so better not to claim it as part of a strong argument.

They argument does not depend in the slightest on the equality of crime rates, its depends on the their similarity. The data linked show quite similar rates of reported use for cannabis. You can make all sorts of valid counterarguments at this point. Refuting the language used to express the argument ('uniform', 'equal') is meaningless-to-disingenuous nitpicking of its form with basically no consequences for its substance.

Re: Dataminr tracked Gaza-related protests

#233

Post by bawolff »

chakintosh wrote: post #221
bawolff wrote: post #193

Am i weird in that this feels kind of normal (im not american)? Protests should be protected, but i normally assume protestors get permits, and a reasonable police presence is around. Not to intimidate anyone, but just to make sure nobody gets too rowdy, keep protestors and counter-protestors away from each other (to prevent violence), provide aid if anyone gets hurt (big masses of people is always a trample risk). O…

> but i normally assume protestors get permits, Good luck obtaining a permit for a Gaza protest from people in Israel's payroll.

In most democracies there are rules about being fair in terms of issuing permits and a court system where you can sue if they aren't fair in issuing permits.

Re: Dataminr tracked Gaza-related protests

#234

Post by bawolff »

mmooss wrote: post #196
bawolff wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tech might change scale, but we still had surveilence, secret police, masacares, etc in olden times. If anything, in olden times many of these types of things were considered normal. As hard as it might feel like it is to see it, we have come a very long way when it comes to morals of wars & state violence. If nothing else at least we mostly feel like its "wrong" now.

I didn't claim otherwise and it's irrelevant to my point, regardless. The point is that you can't exclude technology from the issue - surveillance with modern tech and with pre-industrial tech are very different things. Now you can do almost complete surveillance of the population (just track phones and you know everywhere everyone goes). (Also, where and when specifically are you talking about? The 1950s US? State i…

I'm just saying these issues aren't new. One of the reasons the us had limited domestic intel services back in the day is that they were scared of this sort of thing.

As an example the surveilence practised by soviets or east germany was much more invasive despite not having phones.

Re: Dataminr tracked Gaza-related protests

#235

Post by kazinator »

mattigames wrote: post #217
kazinator wrote: post #211

So let's get this straight. People are tweeting that they're going to protest somewhere. But when cops see these tweets, that "surveillance".

That's an oversimplification, it's when cops start keeping track on people based on such data, plus analyzing their behavior as a group.

Peaceful protest sometimes attract a few bad apples. Things have ways of going wrong. If the police weren't on top of these activities, they would look massively incompetent in their job.

Re: Dataminr tracked Gaza-related protests

#236

Post by tempodox »

monkeyfun wrote: post #205
kristjansson wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there are lost keys everywhere you will actually find some looking under the streetlight. Honest statistical reports may even be written highlighting the frequency of lost-key-findings under streetlights. Credulous readers might begin to suggest that some innate factor of the pooling of their light causes keys to fall exactly within boundaries of their illumination. They might even prefer elected representatives t…

Beautifully written. I especially adore: > Honest statistical reports may even be written highlighting the frequency of lost-key-findings under streetlights. The fact you note them as honest is so rhetorically powerful that I'm dead certain to reference this concept/phrasing again in the future.

“Never trust a statistic you haven't faked yourself”. Of course “faked” is deliberately overblown, but just the way you collect your data could already amount to a “fake”, even if it wasn't deliberate. So those statistics mentioned by GP could be honest as far as intentions are concerned. It would merely be incompetence.

Re: Dataminr tracked Gaza-related protests

#237

Post by marcuskane2 »

forgotoldacc wrote: post #190
gottorf wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The comparison doesn't have to be with homicides. "Every demographic does X at about the same rate" is such a flat-out wrong assumption that you'd really have to cherry-pick X, with lots of caveats and conditions, for it to hold true. I think there's an ingrained sense of revulsion, in all of us that live in the cultural era that descended from Enlightenment ideals of equality for all, against the idea that there exi…

The statement was about petty crimes. Things like downloading a song without paying. If you think people of certain ethnic, racial, political, or religious demographics are more likely to download a song without permissions, I'd like to know what demographics you think are the most likely and least likely to do it. Because I don't know of a single person in my life who has a computer and hasn't done it.

> Things like downloading a song without paying.

That is not a crime.

Uploading/distributing/broadcasting a song without copyright permission to do so, might conditionally be a crime, if that usage does not fall within "Fair Use" such as for education, journalism or commentary.

Let's stop ceding more power and control to the copyright cartel, and be careful not to repeat their propaganda that misleads people into thinking sharing books or other media needs to always involve a payment to some publishing corporation.

Re: Dataminr tracked Gaza-related protests

#238

Post by alasdair_ »

coolspot wrote: post #98
whatshisface wrote: post #63

Here's an interesting thought about how preferential surveillance can lead to repression even when it's public and not itself acted on: 1. Every demographic commits petty crimes and code violations at about the same rate (things like parking violations and music piracy). 2. However, people who are being watched will be caught more often. 3. The end result is that people in the "wrong" crowd on average are punished mo…

> Every demographic commits petty crimes and code violations at about the same rate Do you have data backing this claim? For example, homicides (that are not a subject for reporting bias) don’t follow a uniform distribution, so I would expect other crimes to also be non-uniform.

homicide is not a "petty crime" or a "code violation" - that should be all the data you need.

Re: Dataminr tracked Gaza-related protests

#239

Post by alasdair_ »

coolspot wrote: post #132
Centigonal wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember, back when cannabis was illegal in most states, a common argument was that white and black people reported using cannabis at the same rate when surveyed. However, many, many more black people ended up in prison for it. Here is a survey of US youths that supports this premise: https://monitoringthefuture.org/data/panel/demographic-subgr...

> people reported using cannabis at the same rate when surveyed. However, many, many more black people ended up in prison for it. As I understand it, people went to prison mostly for selling or possessing amounts that are implying selling. Which might explain the difference. Would you go to prison for possessing a single joint back then?

>Would you go to prison for possessing a single joint back then?

Yes, Harvard Professor Timothy Leary was sentenced to 30 years in prison (!) for having a single partially-smoked joint in his car.

Re: Dataminr tracked Gaza-related protests

#240

Post by maest »

alasdair_ wrote: post #238
coolspot wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Every demographic commits petty crimes and code violations at about the same rate Do you have data backing this claim? For example, homicides (that are not a subject for reporting bias) don’t follow a uniform distribution, so I would expect other crimes to also be non-uniform.

homicide is not a "petty crime" or a "code violation" - that should be all the data you need.

This conversation is basically:

"All zebras are red"

"Actually, if you look at studies, you can see that horses come in all types of colours. So I would expect zebras to be the same"

"Horses are not zebras, that should be all the proof you need to accept that all zebras are red."

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