If law enforcement is anywhere close to how interested they were in digging through posted photos/video as they were at other times recently, a lot of them will probably wish they'd been censored before the evidence got archived.
The difference is during the BLM/ANTIFA riots, people were doing much more serious stuff. One kid got bagged because he threw a pipe bomb over the fence at federal agents (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dm_lZxmPxUU) and another one where a guy hit federal agents with a hammer (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7vlKbR3Gcs). There was another situation where some lawyers (not kidding) threw a Molotov cocktail into a police car that had police actually in it.
I think this is a functional side effect of their communities. I’ve watched it happen on a smaller scale numerous times where people evict critical folk from their community. What you end up with is a snowballing monoculture which believes it is right because there is nothing to test ideas against.
This usually decays into a right mess as is outlined.
This is nothing to do with tech. It’s closer to burning witches who are undesirable in your community. It makes your community broken.
It happens in the left-wing as well. Reddit used to be a place where left-wing and right-wing could discuss stuff but then the left-wing got so hostile at "right-wingers" that they started banning them. So the right-wing people left and simply made their own communities off reddit. Well guess what happens next? Rampant conspiracy theories, more violent rhetoric and so on. So the right wing becomes more radicalized.
For this Jan 6th march, I saw many people on right wing websites saying they wanted to fight BLM/ANTIFA people and give them the beat down basically.
It’s not related to political wings at all and is self polarising. There are isolated factions of railway modellers, hairdressers, runners, cyclists and school mums as well!
We’re a tribal species. This just allows us to execute our base instincts quicker.
It’s stupid really.
On politics I refuse to align with any ideology, only policies. There’s no us and them argument then, just the merit of the policy to consider.
I think tech has its responsibilities, specifically social media companies that took sides and banned people for allegedly promoting violence.
Sometimes letting people vent is a good idea. They tend not to torch neighborhoods.
If you think there is a mass that will get influenced and radicalized, it is probably only due to legislators and companies trying to police people into a narrow corridor of opinions.
To a degree. I think citizens have their responsibility as well. Back in the 90s I had a regular spot in Cambridge UK verbally attacking the lunatics promoting their fringe nonsense in the city centre.
The issue here again isn’t technology but taking ideas as verbatim and lack of critical reasoning. This ultimately leads to people seeking kinship with idiots and frauds rather than dismantling their ideas carefully and ridiculing them.
The issue is as always: education. Education is certainly promoted by the tech sector.
I’m not defending them here for reference, merely suggesting that the issues are human and transcend the platform.
White nationalists tend to delete their own videos when they think it will become evidence. Luckily people saved a lot of footage from Charlottesville and hopefully it will be the same for the videos from the Capitol.
Well its both sides of the political spectrum; not just limited to one side.
Actually, it's more like those who are guilty like deleting their own recordings, messages and pictures off of social media after the event is broadcasted all over the world, including the Proud Boys, BLM, Antifa and Patriot Prayer.
Yes, that time Antifa stormed the US capitol, they erased their tracks so thoroughly that virtually all Americans are still unaware that it ever happened!
Nobody above equivocated antifa to today’s rioters in any way except to the shared human tendency to delete self-incriminating evidence. Please don’t do this here.
Apologies, you must have seen my comment in the 90 seconds - 3 minutes between my post and my edit. I replied to another user to explain in, hopefully adequate enough detail, that I did not in any means attempt to equivocate yesterday's rioters to antifa, BLM protestors, or the participants of the George Floyd protests. My only intention was to maybe prevent a flamewar from erupting in these comments.
I absolutely reject the 'both sides' characterization of American politics and so I will post the same reply I made to another user to attempt to clarify what I meant above. Because I absolutely, 100%, do not intend to equivocate the rioters with the George Floyd protestors and I am easy enough to dox that should be real-life verifiable (one reason I feel obliged to clarify my point here, so I remain on the right side of history).
A user noted there is a 'similar archive' for both events. Another user noted both groups delete self-incriminating evidence. The user I replied to fired off a response I thought would have been appropriate if someone in the thread had said something like "antifa rioters are just as bad" or "just as much incriminating evidence was probably deleted after the George Floyd protests." I think a key thing is I didn't read "similar archive" to mean "an archive of illegal activity by non-police", I took it to mean "an archive of all the stuff that happened that people would want to delete." In the case of the George Floyd protests, often police brutality deleted by PDs, their supporters, etc.
I'm not intending some 'both sides' equivocation here. I'm saying I didn't see the people I replied to further up the thread as making that equivocation, I saw them as saying: People who record themselves doing something incriminating will probably delete it after, both groups contain people. My goal was to say: hey, take a beat. We don't need a flamewar over this yet. Reading now, I can see how someone could read that to mean I am sympathetic to the notion that the BLM protests or George Floyd protests included groups of criminals or people behaving criminally in a way that is comparable to yesterday's events, so let me make it clear in bold point type that I do NOT.
It is possible those users did intend to draw that equivocation, which I think would be completely wrong of them. I am not remotely attempting to defend the actions of the rioters yesterday or to in any way characterize the George Floyd protests or BLM protests at large as remotely comparable or equivocal to the riots yesterday. I am not parroting a 'both sides' talking point.
I am reiterating this a lot, because I got a lot of hatemail for this comment. The only thing I am saying is: Most human beings who record themselves doing something they afterwards find dumb or incriminating will be likely to delete it. A user pointing out that two different political factions contain human beings subject to common human behaviors does not necessarily justify a political flamewar. I understand why that was read differently by some users, so in hindsight I should have just downvoted the flamebait and moved on as usual.
Top comment (“above”) currently reads “ Similar archive of clips + streams from the George Floyd protests”.
That was posted 40 minutes before your comment, as the very first comment. Yeah, it’s a different thread. Still hard to miss as context for a good-faith interpretation of the comment you’re replying to. Which I believe we do do here.
I was responding with that context. A user noted there is a 'similar archive' for both events. Another user noted both groups delete self-incriminating evidence. The user I replied to fired off a response I thought would have been appropriate if someone in the thread had actually said anything remotely like "antifa rioters are just as bad" or "just as much incriminating evidence was probably deleted after the George Floyd protests." I think a key thing is I didn't read "similar archive" to mean "an archive of illegal activity by non-police", I took it to mean "an archive of all the stuff that happened that people would want to delete." In the case of the George Floyd protests, often police brutality deleted by PDs, their supporters, etc.
I'm not intending some 'both sides' equivocation here. I'm saying I didn't see the people I replied to further up the thread as making that equivocation, I saw them as saying: People who record themselves doing something incriminating will probably delete it after. My goal was to say: hey, take a beat. We don't need a flamewar over this yet. Reading now, I can see how someone could read that to mean I am sympathetic to the notion that the BLM protests or George Floyd protests included groups of criminals or people behaving criminally in a way that is comparable to yesterday's events, so let me make it clear in bold point type that I do NOT.
It is possible those users did intend to draw that equivocation, which I think would be completely wrong of them. I am not remotely attempting to defend the actions of the rioters yesterday or to in any way characterize the George Floyd protests or BLM protests at large as remotely comparable or equivocal to the riots yesterday. I am not parroting a 'both sides' talking point.
I am reiterating this a lot, because I got a lot of hatemail for this comment. The only thing I am saying is: Most human beings who record themselves doing something they afterwards find dumb or incriminating will be likely to delete it. A user pointing out that two different political factions contain human beings subject to common human behaviors does not necessarily justify a political flamewar. I understand why that was read differently by some users, so in hindsight I should have just downvoted the flamebait and moved on as usual.
They got pretty close to doing exactly that at the White House. It was clear that was their aim, the White House just has better security.
Of course our wise political leaders in congress took that as an opportunity to dunk on Trump as a weak leader who is hiding in a bunker. Many of the same politicians that fled the Capitol today.
I’m so tired of folks excusing their preferred rioting marauders while condemning their counterpart’s. They both suck. This is happening because our cities have let it happen - violent political tantrums have been normalized.
This. Our media spends years affirming that rioting is an acceptable reaction to feeling disenfranchised and here we are. I condemn it (all rioters) but can’t say I’m surprised.
Shoot, there's a big Antifa monument right behind the executive compound! It is a monument to the 1st Division of the United States Army, whose service in North Africa and Sicily contributed to the fall of the original fascist regime.
Are you referring to the clearing of Lafayette Square? That was a peaceful demonstration and no one was trying to force their way into the White House. Just watch the footage: you will see the police forces move in on the crowd completely unprovoked. There's really no need to equate the two sides here.
Let's not make light of terrorists who have killed people.
Many remain unaware that four city blocks of Seattle were occupied for a month by gunmen with assault rifles [0][1][2], or that those self-identified antifa gunmen shot and killed an unarmed black kid [3], or that antifa Twitter celebrated the killing and their shooter's "beautiful shot placement" [4] until it turned out they'd murdered a black kid instead of imaginary white supremacists. Note the now-deleted tweet's many likes and retweets.
The murdered kid's name was Antonio Mays Jr., and despite or perhaps because of [5] the many antifa eyewitnesses to the shooting, his killer remains at large.
That's just CHAZ/CHOP. I haven't even mentioned Michael Reinoehl, Matthew Dolloff, Jesse Taggart, and others. For some reason these incidents rapidly slipped from public view, or were never a focus at all. Fortunately the relevant livestreams, tweets, and video clips have all been archived.
Many of the original sources for the CHAZ/CHOP shootings are now unavailable. I encourage everyone to use tools like youtube-dl and archive-dot-is. Even if a clip, tweet, or stream doesn't seem to embarrass its owner or violate a platform's TOS, it may always get deleted for some other reason. If you want to refer to it later, always archive.
People might be a lot more sympathetic to factual criticism of left wing political violence if mainstream Republican politicians didn't frequently lie about it, up to and including politicians today who are claiming that Antifa was responsible for the attack on the US Capitol.
When so many loud (and often elected) voices say Antifa or BLM have "burned cities down" or other such outright fabrications, it's hard to take the genuine criticism seriously.
Objectivity is a difficult thing. When you see posts like this it's usually people who don't belong to the Republican or Democratic party who get to observe both in a light which they have limited or no biases because their own political wants are never met. Anybody who participates in a riot deserves accountability, anybody who takes over/storms/whatever verb of the day you prefer any government institution is participating in insurrection/domestic terrorism and deserves to be held to account.
If you make excuses for these people, engage in hyperbole/exaggeration/dismissal, parrot narratives mindlessly, or gossip on twitter then you are contributing to a system which helps these people, groups, and institutions avoid accountability and makes us all worse off for it. We will never have a stable nation as long as any of these people do not understand the error of their ways. Immediately after this storming of the Capitol I watched liberals parrot narratives saying the "Capitol Police let them in!" and yet [0] we now have stories of how a Capitol Police officer died after trying to defend the Capitol. I watched conservatives make up all kind of rosy views about the storming of the capitol and yet ignored they were prompted by Donald Trump and his obsession with maintaining power. You're all wrong.
I've said it before on this website (about a multitude of political and cultural topics) and I'll say it again: immediately arriving at maximalist conclusions is rarely beneficial or even truthy. Let the investigations play out and the dust settle before you go making wide statements about a force of ~2,000 people who were most likely devastated at the symbology of this event and the fact that one of their colleagues is dead.
I couldn't agree more. I vastly prefer reading either analyses of last month's news–or forecasts of next month's–much more than I do what we call coverage of developing events.
That said, with due respect I would note that I was responding to your apparently 'immediately arriving at a conclusion before the dust had settled' by calling her assessment a parroted narrative, likely before having seen that video.
We can all do better.
Hence my framing it in a very specific way to address that portion of your comment.
In the first paragraph I was responding to the poster, the second paragraph is really just directed at political and political culture people in general. It was meant to be a metaphorical 'you'. I'll try to find better ways to phrase it so my point isn't lost in the future. That said, I've seen that video. While it's significant it doesn't mean much until federal authorities investigate it. What various people on here and abroad used it to do was to craft narratives favorable to their own stances.
Yeah, I have no idea what the narrative on that event will be, or what it should be, or whether those two will be the same. Facts will continue to come out and be amalgamated into various narratives to suit the various factions.
I guess what I really mean to say is that someone seeing that video and thinking, "some of those people were let inside by the Capitol Police" is not the most reckless interpretation of a video clip I've seen in the last twelve months, much less in my lifetime.
Now, "I saw that video and therefore it was staged by [Trump/Pelosi/etc.]," is where it becomes reckless and unjustifiable parroting of trending narratives. Let's wait for the investigation, and hope (however naively) that it is thorough and impartial, and that the public receives the full report.
Edited to add: I have never seen an American public so ready to be deceived and weaponized against each other as what we've seen with this last, long cycle of increasing tension (which appears to be far from over). And it's anyone's guess as to who will weaponize that more destructively.
So I think your ultimate point is both timely and important. Thank you for making it.
> Edited to add: I have never seen an American public so ready to be deceived and weaponized against each other as what we've seen with this last, long cycle of increasing tension (which appears to be far from over). And it's anyone's guess as to who will weaponize that more destructively.
Same. These times are very worrisome. I don't really know what to do anymore.
> So I think your ultimate point is both timely and important. Thank you for making it.
Same to you. I appreciate that there's still a place on the internet I can go where I can have discourse with people and not be shouted out of a room. I refuse to believe this is just the status quo going forward and meeting like-minded folks gives me hope.
Thank you. On the one hand, I'd like to think the world is still mostly full of reasonable people.
On the other hand, I'm also (lamentably) aware of how few griefers it takes to turn a great multiplayer environment into something nearly worthless for that large majority of reasonable people.
You're telling me people are more concerned with an attempt to interrupt the peaceful transfer of power in the United States of America lead by the "leader of the free world" than some sideshow in Seattle?
Because Chaz or whatever it was called was certainly in the news. It's just, unsurprisingly, this is probably going to last for more news cycles than that did
I'm curious: who wouldn't delete their own videos if they thought they'd become evidence? Is that not a common strategy? Not sure how many people would like to end up in court just for the headlines.
Parler. Looking again at their terms I think you may be able to access parts of the platform without it, but to "Get Verified" for Parler Citizen status you need to submit a selfie with a form of government ID.
Not really against facial recognition, also the cats out of the bag really, but more want there to be effective rules around it's use and for there to be some evidentiary standard used with it.
Identifying criminals after the crime with FR is totally fine. using fuzzy facial matches for strict liability infringement policing / revenue raising is not ok.
It's a space that's due for some sensible legislation.
But why spend money on it when it doesn't solve problems with crime? Don't come back crying when crime statistics don't match your ideals and please pay for it yourself. There will be millions getting sunk in infrastructure for something politicians try to sell their voters for years: the perception of safety.
To me, this seems just dumb. Install a camera in your home, it will probably scare burglars, but I wouldn't expect much for broad deployment in public spaces. For violent crime it will do nothing, analogous to stronger sentences not working.
There will be countless security firms that will sell you the gadgets. But at that point you already became a victim in my opinion.
Maybe. People don't go out much anyway and who cares about money.
I am not from the US, but I believe your country could solve its issues with equality if you just make the whole thing a giant prison. That is innovative and the future and a blessing AI will grant us.
Interesting position to take that because it doesn't solve all the problems of crime it won't be a useful tool in e.g. analysing thousands of hours of footage that no person every would (fine, I'll grant that'll require it to be much better than it actually is currently). Why wouldn't you expect much in the longer term? I can imagine many ways it could be used to reduce crime (as well as many horrifying ways it will be used against everyone else).
Agreed, but, so far these videos seem to be of the opposite intent (i.e. "evidence" that the protests were "peaceful" before media "misrepresents" them).
They are archiving the "wrong" thing. There have been similar "archive this!" movements this year, generally focussed on online communities targetting their political opponents.
In 50 years what is going to be "hard to find" and unarchived? The things that NOBODY is talking about now! You need to be coldly unemotional and consider what your community DOES NOT CARE ABOUT. This will often be things that are politically awkward for you and your community. There will be 1000s of people archiving this event and NONE archiving events which do not suit the political narrative. Accepting this is difficult!
What is happening here is the equivalent of your parents keeping a newspaper of man first landing on the moon, which is now the most common vintage newspaper that exists.
The fear is that that these events will end up falling down the memory hole, so it's best to ensure as much remains as possible. They want to ensure the actual moon landing newspaper is not replaced by the millions of replicas sold each year.
Beyond that, let people archive what they want. If you think there are more important targets, archive it yourself or politely ask their community for assistance.
If we use this logic then we are saying what people aren’t talking about will be the “right” thing to archive.
Is this a true statement?
Is it not that popular things are the things that people remember? The Beatles were popular. But that’s not why they are remembered. There were other popular bands completely forgotten.
Things become popular for various reasons.
Sometimes it is because it reflects a truth of the time, or it was simply good, or beautiful. Other times it is because it’s something that feeds a craving. Mass produced food isn’t necessarily good, but it is popular.
I think the things that are good beautiful and true, can be the popular things, but they often aren’t.
However the things that last are often good beautiful and true and the things that don’t aren’t.
Then again our memory of Hitler lasts, and he wasn’t good, but he did reveal what good was, because it shone so bright against the dark evil of his way of thinking that permeated that culture so well.
If you think of Hitler’s murder of Jews, then think of the stories told about those unknowns who risked their lives hiding Jews. The stories show that an utterly unknown person is a vastly better person than Hitler, and his name will never be celebrated the way that unknown person is.
We’d do better as a society if we told less stories about Hitler, and more stories of the unknown, courageous, good sacrificial man, who saved the lives of many Jews.
It doesn't matter if video "evidence" is archived. The reality is after the BLM/ANTIFA riots, penalties for 1A activates are basically a slap on the hand. In the vast majority of situations, there is no penalty at all. You need to be doing extremely serious stuff to get bagged. The vast majority of stuff being done would not even warrant a charge. It is just the reality and the stuff that was serious was most likely not even recorded or did not get enough evidence to justify a successful prosecution. The feds only go after people when they have a slam dunk case on them.
Well except they actually broke a law. This wasn't simply an 1A activity.
18 U.S. Code § 1752 - Restricted building or grounds
(a) Whoever—
(2) knowingly, and with intent to impede or disrupt the orderly conduct of Government business or official functions, engages in disorderly or disruptive conduct in, or within such proximity to, any restricted building or grounds when, or so that, such conduct, in fact, impedes or disrupts the orderly conduct of Government business or official functions;
Breaking a law and being prosecuted for it does not always happen. Look at how many cases the feds actually prosecute. Small amount. They simply do not have enough resources to handle all the potential leads coming in, so the weakest are simply not pursued.
Imagine a government that treated the law with such respect, that every single law was always enforced to a “T”.
Our government haphazardly enforces the law and so disrespects it.
However with the number of laws we have I’d probably be scared to see them all enforced to a “T”.
Though it could be argued our disrespect for the law caused us to write so many laws.
Trump is a power hungry man it seems. He’d even break the highest constitutional law of the land if he could get away with it, and not relinquish power.
However good thing we’ve respected and kept the 2nd amendment law of the land, so there is a force who will not allow him to break that law of the land.
Weirdly enough though Trump is taking a play from the “who cares if we don’t follow the constitution” crowd.
Will the constitution lovers prove to be hypocrites, and be fine with breaking it here?
Will those who have argued for unconstitutional laws to be passed via the Supreme Court be annoyed, when his newly elected scota judges reinterpret the constitution to let him remain president?
Let’s hope that he elected judges who take the constitution written as is so he is firmly booted out of his office without the government to back him Or else it smells like a civil war. Not the North and South this time, but probably rural vs city, across all states.
That is a scary thought.
I think this is part of a larger, important dynamic in society which isn't all that new.
The commoditization of digital technology has made on the spot video recording and streaming ubiquitous for better or worst. As a result, it has democratized citizen journalism. I use "journalism" here in the absolute broadest sense of the phrase as freedom of the press, through the 1st amendment, allows anyone to record and share events freely.
This isn't new since, historically, capturing and reporting on events has always happened organically through individuals and larger collectives. Whether that's through letters and missives, pamphlets, telegrams, diairies, manifests and so on. In modern times, photography and videography have added to that. And in contemporary times, blogposts, microblogging, and so on have amended that.
The big issue has always been this: authority.
When the efforts of private archivists are dismissed, it is always on the grounds of authority. What is their expertise that allows them making curatioral decisions? What are their motives and incentives to hoard online content? These are questions that can't easily be answered. Whereas the authority of public archives and libraries tends to be derived from their mission to serve the wider public: to record civic governance and to give the public the ability to hold policy makers accountable, but also to support the public debate and to allow reflection on civil society, past, present and future.
The same is true when we oppose citizen journalism against professional journalism. Where the latter has been perceived as authoritative on account of doing their due diligence, journalistic expertise and espoused core values. Whereas the same questions regarding citizen journalists are raised as well: credibility, authority, expertise, incentives and motives.
And yet...
The reality is that neither perceived as authoritive institutions nor intrepid individuals are exclusive to holding an absolute truth when it comes to creating, keeping and disseminating historical sources.
Regardless of how this gets spun, historical records always - always! - give a limited, keyhole look on an event. The historic perspective and the interpretation we give to sources is always limited by what got recorded, and what sources present to us.
It is only by combining sources, cross referencing them and an ongoing process of contextualizing that we can inch closer to a nuanced perspective of the past such as it was.
For instance, while the archival records of the city archives of Amsterdam may provides administrative details of the persecution and deportation of Jewish families during World War II, it is the private diary of Anne Frank that gives insight in the personal experience of hiding underground.
While the events around the assassination of JFK have been recorded in great detail by professional journalists and officials, the event itself was only captured by 32 on-lookers who had their film and photograph equipment. This included Abraham Zapruder. [1]
As far as contemporaries were concerned, as events unfolded, the former was just the private musings of a little girl and the latter was a home video of an amateur who accidentally was in the right spot at the right time. Neither of which were seen as source of huge historic importance. That only happened later on.
All of this to say that the speed at which, today, mere minutes into the event, individuals felt the need to record events as they unfolded shows how the exponentially increased complexity of our digital world has made all of this even more fraught.
This complexity has spawned massive amounts of digital data which will be very hard to assess and curate. And which will make it, undoubtedly, even harder to combine sources an...
"This folder/file was reported to contain objectionable content, such as Child Exploitation Material, Violent Extremism, or Beastiality. The link creator's account has been closed and their full details, including IP address, has been provided to the authorities."
It's a shame that it is so easy to abuse reporting and censor things you do not like.
Looks like the archivers fell back to BitTorrent. Great use case for the protocol; easy and reliable way to self-host with automatic load distribution.
84 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 163 ms ] threadhttps://twitter.com/unrealdeveloper/status/13157928647023943...
This usually decays into a right mess as is outlined.
This is nothing to do with tech. It’s closer to burning witches who are undesirable in your community. It makes your community broken.
For this Jan 6th march, I saw many people on right wing websites saying they wanted to fight BLM/ANTIFA people and give them the beat down basically.
We’re a tribal species. This just allows us to execute our base instincts quicker.
It’s stupid really.
On politics I refuse to align with any ideology, only policies. There’s no us and them argument then, just the merit of the policy to consider.
Sometimes letting people vent is a good idea. They tend not to torch neighborhoods.
If you think there is a mass that will get influenced and radicalized, it is probably only due to legislators and companies trying to police people into a narrow corridor of opinions.
The issue here again isn’t technology but taking ideas as verbatim and lack of critical reasoning. This ultimately leads to people seeking kinship with idiots and frauds rather than dismantling their ideas carefully and ridiculing them.
The issue is as always: education. Education is certainly promoted by the tech sector.
I’m not defending them here for reference, merely suggesting that the issues are human and transcend the platform.
Actually, it's more like those who are guilty like deleting their own recordings, messages and pictures off of social media after the event is broadcasted all over the world, including the Proud Boys, BLM, Antifa and Patriot Prayer.
A user noted there is a 'similar archive' for both events. Another user noted both groups delete self-incriminating evidence. The user I replied to fired off a response I thought would have been appropriate if someone in the thread had said something like "antifa rioters are just as bad" or "just as much incriminating evidence was probably deleted after the George Floyd protests." I think a key thing is I didn't read "similar archive" to mean "an archive of illegal activity by non-police", I took it to mean "an archive of all the stuff that happened that people would want to delete." In the case of the George Floyd protests, often police brutality deleted by PDs, their supporters, etc.
I'm not intending some 'both sides' equivocation here. I'm saying I didn't see the people I replied to further up the thread as making that equivocation, I saw them as saying: People who record themselves doing something incriminating will probably delete it after, both groups contain people. My goal was to say: hey, take a beat. We don't need a flamewar over this yet. Reading now, I can see how someone could read that to mean I am sympathetic to the notion that the BLM protests or George Floyd protests included groups of criminals or people behaving criminally in a way that is comparable to yesterday's events, so let me make it clear in bold point type that I do NOT.
It is possible those users did intend to draw that equivocation, which I think would be completely wrong of them. I am not remotely attempting to defend the actions of the rioters yesterday or to in any way characterize the George Floyd protests or BLM protests at large as remotely comparable or equivocal to the riots yesterday. I am not parroting a 'both sides' talking point.
I am reiterating this a lot, because I got a lot of hatemail for this comment. The only thing I am saying is: Most human beings who record themselves doing something they afterwards find dumb or incriminating will be likely to delete it. A user pointing out that two different political factions contain human beings subject to common human behaviors does not necessarily justify a political flamewar. I understand why that was read differently by some users, so in hindsight I should have just downvoted the flamebait and moved on as usual.
That was posted 40 minutes before your comment, as the very first comment. Yeah, it’s a different thread. Still hard to miss as context for a good-faith interpretation of the comment you’re replying to. Which I believe we do do here.
I'm not intending some 'both sides' equivocation here. I'm saying I didn't see the people I replied to further up the thread as making that equivocation, I saw them as saying: People who record themselves doing something incriminating will probably delete it after. My goal was to say: hey, take a beat. We don't need a flamewar over this yet. Reading now, I can see how someone could read that to mean I am sympathetic to the notion that the BLM protests or George Floyd protests included groups of criminals or people behaving criminally in a way that is comparable to yesterday's events, so let me make it clear in bold point type that I do NOT.
It is possible those users did intend to draw that equivocation, which I think would be completely wrong of them. I am not remotely attempting to defend the actions of the rioters yesterday or to in any way characterize the George Floyd protests or BLM protests at large as remotely comparable or equivocal to the riots yesterday. I am not parroting a 'both sides' talking point.
I am reiterating this a lot, because I got a lot of hatemail for this comment. The only thing I am saying is: Most human beings who record themselves doing something they afterwards find dumb or incriminating will be likely to delete it. A user pointing out that two different political factions contain human beings subject to common human behaviors does not necessarily justify a political flamewar. I understand why that was read differently by some users, so in hindsight I should have just downvoted the flamebait and moved on as usual.
Of course our wise political leaders in congress took that as an opportunity to dunk on Trump as a weak leader who is hiding in a bunker. Many of the same politicians that fled the Capitol today.
I’m so tired of folks excusing their preferred rioting marauders while condemning their counterpart’s. They both suck. This is happening because our cities have let it happen - violent political tantrums have been normalized.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Division_Monument
Many remain unaware that four city blocks of Seattle were occupied for a month by gunmen with assault rifles [0][1][2], or that those self-identified antifa gunmen shot and killed an unarmed black kid [3], or that antifa Twitter celebrated the killing and their shooter's "beautiful shot placement" [4] until it turned out they'd murdered a black kid instead of imaginary white supremacists. Note the now-deleted tweet's many likes and retweets.
The murdered kid's name was Antonio Mays Jr., and despite or perhaps because of [5] the many antifa eyewitnesses to the shooting, his killer remains at large.
That's just CHAZ/CHOP. I haven't even mentioned Michael Reinoehl, Matthew Dolloff, Jesse Taggart, and others. For some reason these incidents rapidly slipped from public view, or were never a focus at all. Fortunately the relevant livestreams, tweets, and video clips have all been archived.
Many of the original sources for the CHAZ/CHOP shootings are now unavailable. I encourage everyone to use tools like youtube-dl and archive-dot-is. Even if a clip, tweet, or stream doesn't seem to embarrass its owner or violate a platform's TOS, it may always get deleted for some other reason. If you want to refer to it later, always archive.
[0] https://www.foxbusiness.com/money/chop-shooting-seattle-defu...
[1] https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/after-early-mornin...
[2] https://www.the-sun.com/news/980814/heavily-armed-leftist-gu...
[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/29/us/seattle-protests-CHOP-...
[4] https://archive.is/D0fZs
[5] https://twitter.com/lporiginalg/status/1282703884721348609
When so many loud (and often elected) voices say Antifa or BLM have "burned cities down" or other such outright fabrications, it's hard to take the genuine criticism seriously.
If you make excuses for these people, engage in hyperbole/exaggeration/dismissal, parrot narratives mindlessly, or gossip on twitter then you are contributing to a system which helps these people, groups, and institutions avoid accountability and makes us all worse off for it. We will never have a stable nation as long as any of these people do not understand the error of their ways. Immediately after this storming of the Capitol I watched liberals parrot narratives saying the "Capitol Police let them in!" and yet [0] we now have stories of how a Capitol Police officer died after trying to defend the Capitol. I watched conservatives make up all kind of rosy views about the storming of the capitol and yet ignored they were prompted by Donald Trump and his obsession with maintaining power. You're all wrong.
[0] https://www.euronews.com/2021/01/08/us-capitol-riots-police-...
At at least one entry point, for whatever reason that narrative appears to have some justification:
https://mobile.twitter.com/disclosetv/status/134761599861091...
That said, with due respect I would note that I was responding to your apparently 'immediately arriving at a conclusion before the dust had settled' by calling her assessment a parroted narrative, likely before having seen that video.
We can all do better.
Hence my framing it in a very specific way to address that portion of your comment.
I guess what I really mean to say is that someone seeing that video and thinking, "some of those people were let inside by the Capitol Police" is not the most reckless interpretation of a video clip I've seen in the last twelve months, much less in my lifetime.
Now, "I saw that video and therefore it was staged by [Trump/Pelosi/etc.]," is where it becomes reckless and unjustifiable parroting of trending narratives. Let's wait for the investigation, and hope (however naively) that it is thorough and impartial, and that the public receives the full report.
Edited to add: I have never seen an American public so ready to be deceived and weaponized against each other as what we've seen with this last, long cycle of increasing tension (which appears to be far from over). And it's anyone's guess as to who will weaponize that more destructively.
So I think your ultimate point is both timely and important. Thank you for making it.
> Edited to add: I have never seen an American public so ready to be deceived and weaponized against each other as what we've seen with this last, long cycle of increasing tension (which appears to be far from over). And it's anyone's guess as to who will weaponize that more destructively.
Same. These times are very worrisome. I don't really know what to do anymore.
> So I think your ultimate point is both timely and important. Thank you for making it.
Same to you. I appreciate that there's still a place on the internet I can go where I can have discourse with people and not be shouted out of a room. I refuse to believe this is just the status quo going forward and meeting like-minded folks gives me hope.
On the other hand, I'm also (lamentably) aware of how few griefers it takes to turn a great multiplayer environment into something nearly worthless for that large majority of reasonable people.
Because Chaz or whatever it was called was certainly in the news. It's just, unsurprisingly, this is probably going to last for more news cycles than that did
If it's distributed some way through the internet the cat's already out of the bag.
Identifying criminals after the crime with FR is totally fine. using fuzzy facial matches for strict liability infringement policing / revenue raising is not ok.
It's a space that's due for some sensible legislation.
To me, this seems just dumb. Install a camera in your home, it will probably scare burglars, but I wouldn't expect much for broad deployment in public spaces. For violent crime it will do nothing, analogous to stronger sentences not working.
There will be countless security firms that will sell you the gadgets. But at that point you already became a victim in my opinion.
I am not from the US, but I believe your country could solve its issues with equality if you just make the whole thing a giant prison. That is innovative and the future and a blessing AI will grant us.
But no, still not in favor of its use. Democrats, or me at least, aren’t quite as quick to give up their principles.
In 50 years what is going to be "hard to find" and unarchived? The things that NOBODY is talking about now! You need to be coldly unemotional and consider what your community DOES NOT CARE ABOUT. This will often be things that are politically awkward for you and your community. There will be 1000s of people archiving this event and NONE archiving events which do not suit the political narrative. Accepting this is difficult!
What is happening here is the equivalent of your parents keeping a newspaper of man first landing on the moon, which is now the most common vintage newspaper that exists.
Beyond that, let people archive what they want. If you think there are more important targets, archive it yourself or politely ask their community for assistance.
Is this a true statement? Is it not that popular things are the things that people remember? The Beatles were popular. But that’s not why they are remembered. There were other popular bands completely forgotten.
Things become popular for various reasons. Sometimes it is because it reflects a truth of the time, or it was simply good, or beautiful. Other times it is because it’s something that feeds a craving. Mass produced food isn’t necessarily good, but it is popular. I think the things that are good beautiful and true, can be the popular things, but they often aren’t. However the things that last are often good beautiful and true and the things that don’t aren’t.
Then again our memory of Hitler lasts, and he wasn’t good, but he did reveal what good was, because it shone so bright against the dark evil of his way of thinking that permeated that culture so well. If you think of Hitler’s murder of Jews, then think of the stories told about those unknowns who risked their lives hiding Jews. The stories show that an utterly unknown person is a vastly better person than Hitler, and his name will never be celebrated the way that unknown person is.
We’d do better as a society if we told less stories about Hitler, and more stories of the unknown, courageous, good sacrificial man, who saved the lives of many Jews.
Trump is a power hungry man it seems. He’d even break the highest constitutional law of the land if he could get away with it, and not relinquish power. However good thing we’ve respected and kept the 2nd amendment law of the land, so there is a force who will not allow him to break that law of the land. Weirdly enough though Trump is taking a play from the “who cares if we don’t follow the constitution” crowd.
Will the constitution lovers prove to be hypocrites, and be fine with breaking it here? Will those who have argued for unconstitutional laws to be passed via the Supreme Court be annoyed, when his newly elected scota judges reinterpret the constitution to let him remain president?
Let’s hope that he elected judges who take the constitution written as is so he is firmly booted out of his office without the government to back him Or else it smells like a civil war. Not the North and South this time, but probably rural vs city, across all states. That is a scary thought.
The commoditization of digital technology has made on the spot video recording and streaming ubiquitous for better or worst. As a result, it has democratized citizen journalism. I use "journalism" here in the absolute broadest sense of the phrase as freedom of the press, through the 1st amendment, allows anyone to record and share events freely.
This isn't new since, historically, capturing and reporting on events has always happened organically through individuals and larger collectives. Whether that's through letters and missives, pamphlets, telegrams, diairies, manifests and so on. In modern times, photography and videography have added to that. And in contemporary times, blogposts, microblogging, and so on have amended that.
The big issue has always been this: authority.
When the efforts of private archivists are dismissed, it is always on the grounds of authority. What is their expertise that allows them making curatioral decisions? What are their motives and incentives to hoard online content? These are questions that can't easily be answered. Whereas the authority of public archives and libraries tends to be derived from their mission to serve the wider public: to record civic governance and to give the public the ability to hold policy makers accountable, but also to support the public debate and to allow reflection on civil society, past, present and future.
The same is true when we oppose citizen journalism against professional journalism. Where the latter has been perceived as authoritative on account of doing their due diligence, journalistic expertise and espoused core values. Whereas the same questions regarding citizen journalists are raised as well: credibility, authority, expertise, incentives and motives.
And yet...
The reality is that neither perceived as authoritive institutions nor intrepid individuals are exclusive to holding an absolute truth when it comes to creating, keeping and disseminating historical sources.
Regardless of how this gets spun, historical records always - always! - give a limited, keyhole look on an event. The historic perspective and the interpretation we give to sources is always limited by what got recorded, and what sources present to us.
It is only by combining sources, cross referencing them and an ongoing process of contextualizing that we can inch closer to a nuanced perspective of the past such as it was.
For instance, while the archival records of the city archives of Amsterdam may provides administrative details of the persecution and deportation of Jewish families during World War II, it is the private diary of Anne Frank that gives insight in the personal experience of hiding underground.
While the events around the assassination of JFK have been recorded in great detail by professional journalists and officials, the event itself was only captured by 32 on-lookers who had their film and photograph equipment. This included Abraham Zapruder. [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_John_F._Kenne...
As far as contemporaries were concerned, as events unfolded, the former was just the private musings of a little girl and the latter was a home video of an amateur who accidentally was in the right spot at the right time. Neither of which were seen as source of huge historic importance. That only happened later on.
All of this to say that the speed at which, today, mere minutes into the event, individuals felt the need to record events as they unfolded shows how the exponentially increased complexity of our digital world has made all of this even more fraught.
This complexity has spawned massive amounts of digital data which will be very hard to assess and curate. And which will make it, undoubtedly, even harder to combine sources an...
"This folder/file was reported to contain objectionable content, such as Child Exploitation Material, Violent Extremism, or Beastiality. The link creator's account has been closed and their full details, including IP address, has been provided to the authorities."
It's a shame that it is so easy to abuse reporting and censor things you do not like.