[HN Gopher] OnlyFans bribed Meta to put porn stars on terror wat... ___________________________________________________________________ OnlyFans bribed Meta to put porn stars on terror watchlist: lawsuits Author : wishfish Score : 237 points Date : 2022-08-10 18:27 UTC (4 hours ago) (HTM) web link (nypost.com) (TXT) w3m dump (nypost.com) | thepasswordis wrote: | Human traffickers engage in shitty behavior. Shocking. | ajsnigrutin wrote: | Meta obliged... that's more interesting. | demarq wrote: | This is some next level of evil | twawaaay wrote: | Nah, it is just regular greed combined with lack of scrupules | and slightly larger than average budget. | tomuli38 wrote: | This kind of implies you do not find greed and a lack of | scruples to be evil. | twawaaay wrote: | No, it does not. I just don't find it to be "next level" of | evil. | tomuli38 wrote: | Getting people put on terror watch lists is not | introductory level evil. We are talking about destroying | lives, not ruining someone's day. | [deleted] | twawaaay wrote: | So we have Facebook destroying lives on a massive scale | by knowingly wasting people away glued to the screen. | They also knowingly exploit base emotions of literally | billions of people to antagonise them just to keep them | "engaged" and sell some ad space. | | I call this "next level" evil. | | Regular evil is, where I live, a small developer | (housing) went bankrupt and wasted life savings of | hundreds of people. They did a lot of absolutely mind | boggling stupid stuff and they knew they are running out | of cash and still accepted payments from more people. | Given history of these cases here, they are unlikely to | ever spend even a day in jail and the most it ever gets | is couple of mentions in local news. | skinnymuch wrote: | Whoa what? Wasting away life savings of hundreds of | people is way worse than regular evil. Why is that on a | different level than Facebook or any major corp who are | worse because of more power and scope, but still?? | zimpenfish wrote: | > So we have Facebook destroying lives on a massive scale | by knowingly wasting people away glued to the screen | | If you want a proper "Facebook is evil" point, there's | always the Rohingya genocide[1] -- "Facebook has admitted | that it played a role in inciting violence during the | genocidal campaign against the Rohingya Muslim minority | in Myanmar" | | [1] https://www.globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/digital- | threats/r... | tomuli38 wrote: | I feel like I am taking crazy pills having this | conversation. Regular evil is letting the air out of | someone's tires or lying to your spouse, not wasting away | the life savings of hundreds of people. | heavyset_go wrote: | Banality of evil and all that. | bhaney wrote: | > greed combined with lack of scrupules and slightly larger | than average budget | | Sounds like evil to me | twawaaay wrote: | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0NgUhEs1R4 | phkahler wrote: | This seems like a surprisingly specific allegation: | | >> They claim the bribes were routed from OnlyFans' parent | company, Fenix International, through a secret Hong Kong | subsidiary into offshore Philippines bank accounts set up by the | crooked Meta employees, potentially including at least one | unnamed senior executive. | | If that's true, how would they know? And if not, why would they | think they know it? | [deleted] | yieldcrv wrote: | a secret Hong Kong subsidiary would have a non-secret name, do | any of the court filings name it? if so, why not the | journalist? | | kickbacks to big tech employees isn't new or novel, just | curious about why the omission of details | AtNightWeCode wrote: | And this is in an essence why demoting content is difficult. | aquanext wrote: | Well this sounds incredibly horrible in every conceivable way. | mccorrinall wrote: | And there is no evidence to prove this as the article shows. | The headline is clickbait. | sophacles wrote: | If only there existed some sort of legal tool to determine | the evidence. We could use it to get real evidence based on | the claims of the lawsuit. That tool could be used to | discover the validity or not of such claims. I call this idea | "discovery" and think we should implement it a couple hundred | years ago. | commandlinefan wrote: | The only way to avoid having censorship lists be abused is to | stop having censorship lists. | cmeacham98 wrote: | Unless you're a fan of spam/scams/etc running rampant on every | platform we're going to need "censorship lists". So inject some | nuance and talk about what types are ok and what types aren't. | sneak wrote: | The only way to stop having society-wide censorship lists is to | stop using centralized media and centralized social networks. | | So long as there is only one chokepoint for widespread | automated censorship, the state will illegally censor things it | doesn't like. | azinman2 wrote: | Yes having ISIS propaganda decentralized for sure makes for a | better world. /s | | There are bad people who do bad things, and to say let's just | ignore this because things I don't want to happen are is | ignoring the realities and difficulties of the world. It's | not black and white, and bad things will be done in the name | of action. | maltalex wrote: | Right, throw the baby out with the bathwater. "The only to | avoid having laws be abused is to stop having laws". | | Listen, I don't like censorship as much as the next guy. But in | the real world, lists and platforms without some sort of | moderation become of cesspool of the worst that society has to | offer. | mjfl wrote: | How is this a civil matter and not criminal? | ElonsNightmare wrote: | shut that psyop down yesterday. | [deleted] | marcinzm wrote: | For anyone interested, this seems to be the lawsuit in questions | and it has all the details people are asking for but the | journalists don't include: | https://digitalcommons.law.scu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?artic... | alchemyromcom wrote: | This must be one of the most awful sentences I've ever read. | There is so much stink crammed into so few words, that I'm | actually slightly in awe of how terrible it is. There are so many | ways its bad that it feels like a rich knot of bad actions that | you could unravel for a whole day and never be bored. At the same | time, one of the biggest headlines today is about how Zuckerberg | thinks WFH is wrong. I'll tell you something: this is is what's | wrong. The people involved in whatever this was should be the | ones to be fired most of all. | dang wrote: | Ok, but please don't fulminate on HN. We're trying for | something else here. | | https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html | rootsudo wrote: | Once again, the NYpost posts about this first and it will be | attacked again. | | Makes you wonder, what sort of world we live in when all the | "big" companies will not announce a story like this. Or the | hunter biden laptop, or the initial corona virus stuff with | trump. | nr2x wrote: | You've read the ny post before? | ryneandal wrote: | First? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32417448 | rmatt2000 wrote: | If a private individual can do this, imagine how easy it is for | the U.S. government to suppress content that it doesn't like on | social media. | sneak wrote: | * on _centralized_ censorship-based social media | | It is important to self-publish and not be a sharecropper for | billionaires by donating your content for free to their walled | gardens. | worik wrote: | Harder for the state, in the USA. The constitution has | something to say about that (IANAL) | throwaway0a5e wrote: | Are you implying that the TLAs follow the law? | | Because their track record says otherwise. | cestith wrote: | Harder does not mean impossible. There's more scrutiny and | more recourse when the government does it, but you're right | it doesn't always stop them. | throwaway0a5e wrote: | On paper, sure. In practice government doesn't really | have to worry about government trying to make an example | out of them though and has access to the kind of violence | and benefit of the doubt evil corporations could only | dream of. | | Frankly I think it's a bit naive to imply that big | government organizations aren't just as evil and terrible | and self serving as big corporate ones. Their error bars | of evil overlap a lot. | [deleted] | madrox wrote: | I'm curious how they know bribery happened. According to the | lawsuit details another commenter linked, it outlines a | suspicious chain of events but no evidence of actual bribery from | what I skimmed through. Maybe that's just how it works and they | hope to learn more in discovery though. | michaelt wrote: | Presumably you don't bribe the sysadmins in the US making six- | figure salaries. Instead you bribe the outsourced moderators in | Kenya who get paid $2/hour to wade through beheading videos to | just _occasionally_ misclick. | | And presumably you don't pay the bribes directly - you hire a | 'reputation management consultant' who takes care of all the | dirty work. Then if the news comes out, you can claim you | thought they were improving your reputation by sponsoring | orphanages or something. | gzer0 wrote: | This is quite concerning, from the lawsuit itself [1]: | | _The blacklisting process was accomplished first internally at | Instagram /Facebook by automated classifiers or filters, which | were then submitted to a shared industry database of "hashes," or | unique digital fingerprints. | | This database was and is intended to flag and remove content | produced by terrorists and related "Dangerous Individuals and | Organizations" to curtail the spread of terrorism and violent | extremism online._ | | Where can one learn more about this database? Who decides what | goes into this database? Is there a governance process? How about | incorrectly identified items? | | We are headed back into the times of "guilty, until proven | innocent" versus how it should be, "innocent until proven | guilty". If the scenario was the following: letting 10 criminals | go free, or having 1 innocent person imprisoned, I would always | choose the latter. | | [1] | https://digitalcommons.law.scu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?artic... | sneak wrote: | The governance process is that content producers (ie you and me | and our circles) need to stop donating free content to | centralized automated censorship platforms run by billionaires, | because they fail-deadly for our society once they become the | planet default. | simanyay wrote: | I believe its managed by the GIFCT: https://gifct.org/ | pessimizer wrote: | You know that there's a US terrorist watch list with a million | names on it, no due process necessary to be added to it, and no | discernible process to be removed from it? That's aside from | local gang membership lists, which have the same complete lack | of safeguards. | | We're not heading back into anything. We love blacklists. | leaflets2 wrote: | Always choose 1 innocent person imprisoned? I guess you meant | the "former" not the "latter" :-) | | Interesting with the hashes. Seems impossible to detect such | "poisoning of the hashes" i wonder if anyone with access could | ... Submit a hash of a profile photo of someone, to cause | him/hey troubles? | ncmncm wrote: | Seems like the right response to these blacklists, if they can't | be curtailed, is to put literally everyone on them. After, the | lists can't be used for anything. | gmiller123456 wrote: | Important to note this is a "terror watchlist" run by a private | entity, not a government. It's largely just used by social media | to flag groups and account sharing copies of images flagged by | them. If the allegations are true, still not a good thing, but | "terror watchlist" makes it sound a lot worse than it is. | upupandup wrote: | Your argument is akin to telling someone who was falsely | reported to the bank, a private entity, which is then required | to share it to authorities. All these apologists suddenly | coming out of the woodwork from inactive accounts is just a | series of pattern I'm noticing more and more not only on HN but | in all public discourse platforms. | | It's highly likely that corporations and high networth | individuals have realized the power of astroturfing to skew | public opinions, especially when most of those audiences do not | read past the sensationalized titles. | tailspin2019 wrote: | "watchlist" seems to be an altogether incorrect term for this | in the first place. | | I guess they probably didn't want to use the term "blacklist" | but I'm not sure what the correct term should now be. | | Watchlist evokes the meaning "this person is being watched by | [authorities]" | | Edit: The BBC article (linked here in comments) did in fact use | the term "blacklist". GIFCT calls it a "hash-sharing database". | The use of "terror watchlist" by NY Post seems to be more | clickbait rather than accuracy driven. (Not that this issue | isn't pretty terrible). | [deleted] | Tyndale wrote: | They're porn peddlers. Do you expect them to act like boy scouts? | oliveshell wrote: | Two things: | | 1) Even if I buy into your premise, does it being somehow | expected make it totally fine and dandy? | | 2) The Boy Scouts of America are preparing to spend nearly $3 | billion to settle suits related to almost 100,000 individual | claims of sexual abuse. | | So, y'know, the phrase "act like Boy Scouts" might not carry | the same connotations as it used to. | stuaxo wrote: | Wow, just when you think you've heard the worst thing an internet | company can do, something like this happens. | _trampeltier wrote: | As always. What could go wrong with a such setup. | | > The GIFCT was formed by Meta, Microsoft, Twitter, and Google's | YouTube in 2017 in a joint effort to stop the spread of mass | shooting videos and other terrorist material online. When a | member of the group flags a photo, video or post as terrorist- | related, a digital fingerprint called a "hash" is shared across | all its members | | In effect, that means a bikini pic wrongly flagged as jihadist | propaganda on Instagram can also be quickly censored on Twitter | or YouTube, all without the poster or public knowing that it was | placed on the list -- much less how or why | riedel wrote: | We didn't read enough dystopian novels yet to that describe the | privatisation of law enforcement. We wanted the real thing. | 93po wrote: | Law enforcement started out privatized, and has basically | always existed mainly for the benefit of the privileged | private class. | jjoonathan wrote: | "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor | alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to | steal loaves of bread" -Anatole France | netsharc wrote: | There's some nice beach city where people are not allowed | to have a nice walk on the beach at night because they | made some law to prevent homeless people sleeping | there... if only Google was still a proper search engine | I could post the link.. | [deleted] | contingencies wrote: | +1 insightful. Also, _Ancient Egyptian Police Had Trained | Monkeys_ https://www.ranker.com/list/police-in-ancient- | societies/mike... | 93po wrote: | Having a trained monkey try to chase you down (presumably | with a weapon) sounds terrifying, yet somehow I'm not | convinced it would be all together worse than what we | have now | m-p-3 wrote: | Law and order: | | Laws are made and signed by the ruling class (not saying | all laws are bad, we need them), and they (hopefully) | reflect which values the people wants their justice system | to protect. | | Order can be interpreted in two ways; keeping society | stable, but also keeping the order (the status quo) of the | social classes as they are. | ars wrote: | I've always felt that "large" providers should not be able to | ban someone except for something that is illegal in the real | world. | | Every time I post it people hate the idea "it's a private | service you can't tell them what to do". | | And the alternative is what exactly? | | (And yes, I know there are some details to work out, what is | "large", what about Spam, what about offtopic messages. But | those are details, my post is about the main idea of banning | someone. Hate speech and harassment are already illegal.) | ineptech wrote: | Imagine a restaurant that followed your rules (customers | are never kicked out unless they do something illegal). | Would you eat there? How long do you think it would stay in | business? | anotherman554 wrote: | Hate speech isn't necessarily illegal nor do I know what | you have in mind when you say "harassment" is illegal, | there are 50 states in the U.S. with 50 sets of laws. | kube-system wrote: | The alternative is designation as a public utility. | [deleted] | mrtranscendence wrote: | Let's say I've got a website called Jay's Cool Community | for Elementary School Kids and their Parents. Steve comes | in and starts posting nazi symbology, and as soon as I | delete his content he just posts more. Nazi symbols aren't | illegal in the country where Steve and I reside, so under | your regime I can't boot him from my website. Do I, as Jay, | have no recourse now? | skissane wrote: | It is like the difference between a private club and the | telephone company. | | Should your private club be able to expel neo-Nazis? | Absolutely. | | Should the telephone company be allowed to disconnect | neo-Nazis? That's more iffy. What if they are a monopoly? | What if there is an oligopoly, and all the oligopoly | firms make the same decision? Neo-Nazis are terrible | people, but if we set the precedent that one is allowed | to deny them telephone services, will less obviously | terrible groups be next? | | Maybe we should also let the telephone company disconnect | the Islamist violent jihad sympathisers, they are | obviously terrible people too. But what happens when some | Islamophobe starts stretching the definition of "Islamist | violent jihad sympathiser" so that Muslims who have zero | sympathy for that get labelled with it anyway? (Yes, the | classic "slippery slope argument" - but some slopes | really are slippery.) | | Some websites, such as "Jay's Cool Community for | Elementary School Kids and their Parents", are like a | private club. But facebook.com, google.com, etc, they are | like the telephone company, not like a private club. | Different rules should apply to different kinds of | websites. | FireBeyond wrote: | > But facebook.com, google.com, etc, they are like the | telephone company, not like a private club. | | At what point did they become utilities? How do we define | such? | skissane wrote: | It is a matter of scale, of market share, of user counts. | | Obviously, a website with a few hundred or few thousand | regular users is more like a private club. A website with | tens or hundreds of millions of users is more like the | telephone company. | | There is no clearcut boundary, but there doesn't need to | be. Competition regulators frequently impose limits on | market-dominant firms which they don't impose on small | players - yet there is no clearcut boundary between a | market-dominant firm and a small player. In practice, | many individual cases will be obvious, and in the non- | obvious cases, all we need is someone with the authority | to make a decision-and if someone else thinks they've | made the wrong call, there are the usual judicial and | political processes to address that. | michaelgrafl wrote: | You should be able to ban him from your website. But not | all other websites on the Internet. | matheusmoreira wrote: | Agree but the fact is "all other websites on the | Internet" turned into just Google, Facebook, Amazon, | Instagram and so on. The web is quite centralized | nowadays, getting banned from one of these sites can | significantly harm a person. | pc86 wrote: | Can't they also say "Steve is a Nazi" and let other site | owners ban him as well? That's the same thing happening | here (albeit with extra steps). | JumpCrisscross wrote: | > _GIFCT was formed by Meta, Microsoft, Twitter, and Google's | YouTube in 2017 in a joint effort to stop the spread of mass | shooting videos and other terrorist material online_ | | This information sharing should be investigated as a potential | breach of competition law. For example, are Snap or TikTok | disadvantaged because Facebook, Microsoft and Google are | sharing information [1]? | | [1] https://gifct.org/membership/# | EricE wrote: | >are Snap or TikTok disadvantaged because Facebook, Microsoft | and Google are sharing information | | While I think it's ridiculous entities like Meta have taken | it up on themselves to have their own "watch lists", in this | instant I'd say absolutely not. Indeed I would argue one of | the significant reasons Tik Tok is continuing to explode in | popularity is they aren't participating in the overt | censorship going on in the rest of big tech. | abeppu wrote: | TikTok has had some serious issues with censorship, and is | way more directly political than some of the other | companies you've named. Like, if you care about this stuff, | please be careful of who you try to hold up as a good | example. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_on_TikTok#Politica | l... | [deleted] | koheripbal wrote: | While some would argue that private companies have the right to | censor users without exception - when private companies form a | near-monopoly on artistic expression online, they should | ethically inherit the government's ethical responsibility to | protect freedom of expression. | | In this case this isn't only a violation of the users' freedom | of expression - it is also a clear anti-trust violation as they | are abusing their monopoly position for illegal anti- | competitive tactics. | ryandrake wrote: | What companies have a "near-monopoly on artistic expression | online?" I can have a web site up and running in an hour | publishing any art I have the right to publish, with just an | IP from my ISP and optionally a domain name. I don't need to | ask any company's permission. | charcircuit wrote: | If they didn't work together people would instead complain | about there being more extremist content. None of these | companies want the bad PR from "news" articles saying that | they aren't stopping extremist content from their platform. | | >it is also a clear anti-trust violation as they are abusing | their monopoly position for illegal anti-competitive tactics. | | It doesn't look anticompetitive to me considering you can ask | to join the group. | humanistbot wrote: | This is from February, when the BBC reported it [1]. This recent | article from The NY Post doesn't seem to add much more, other | than that the judge set the trial for September. | | [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-60029508 | seydor wrote: | Little by little , social media companies are replacing the | functions of the state. When will the beatings begin | Aunche wrote: | This isn't a position that social media companies wanted to be | in. Blame the people who demand that the social media companies | act as censors. This all started when people stirred outrage at | a Coca Cola ad appeared before an ISIS video on Youtube and | demanded that companies boycott Youtube ads. | upupandup wrote: | So what I'm hearing is that billionaires who are no longer | simply satiated by consumption, are not actively trying to | undermine social order to gain power? | orwin wrote: | I'm really sorry about that, but how do you want people to | act? That's why I don't get the whining on 'cancel culture'. | Half the baby boomers generation (the middle/upper class | part) keep telling their kids and others to 'vote but don't | protest' and then, when told their generation controlled | every vote target, 'vote with your wallets. | | Unless you've never used this phrase or equivalent, you don't | get to complain about cancel culture. My generation (well, | the one following mine rather) is just applying the advice. | | I grind my teeth everytime I hear middle/upper class people | complaining at boycotts and 'cancel '. What do you want from | them? They can't protest, because of violences against | statues and McDonald's, They can't strike without getting | teared down by most MSM(and because they need to live and | nobody's donating to them anymore, except me and a couple | people who remember where they came from), and they don't | have representative who look like them and actually did the | same job. And always, the patronizing 'haha, they can vote | with their wallets'. | | Well, now they do, do you want to prevent that too? | Aunche wrote: | > I'm really sorry about that, but how do you want people | to act? | | I want people to think more critically about cause and | effect rather than spend all their effort on "raising | awareness", which encompasses several behaviors, but the | worst of which is spreading exaggerated anger. | | > told their generation controlled every vote target, | | Boomers control the vote because they're the ones that | bother to show up, especially for elections that don't | appear on people's social media feed. Seniors are 15x more | likely to vote for mayors than those between 18-35 [1]. | Fewer than 20% of people know the names of their state | legislatures [2]. Meanwhile, there is no shortage of | outrage on social media on issues that state legislatures | vote for like gerrymandering and now abortion. Rather than | research which state representatives are pro-choice, | activists would rather yell loudly at the Supreme Court to | resign and whine about being disenfranchised when that | doesn't work. | | > vote with your wallets | | Voting with your wallet in this context would be to stop | watching Youtube videos. However, they don't want to do | that, and instead would rather making exaggerated claims of | Youtube supporting ISIS. So social media companies reacted | with their half-assed solutions that lead to situations | like what is described in the article. Now, you're seeing | people making exaggerated claims about Facebook wanting to | be censors. I seriously doubt that people actually give a | damn about ISIS videos with a few dozen views or the well- | being of pornstars. Rather, they really just trying to | raise awareness about evil corporations, which is the case | with most of the comments here. However, none of this | actually contributes to our collective intelligence of how | to actually regulate tech or enact anti-trusts. At best, | this anger may cause Facebook to do a little more due | diligence about adding people to their terrorist watchlist, | but the real problem people care about isn't solved. | | [1] http://whovotesformayor.org/ [2] | https://hub.jhu.edu/2018/12/14/americans-dont-understand- | sta... | [deleted] | teakettle42 wrote: | > I'm really sorry about that, but how do you want people | to act? | | Like the resilient adults they should be. | | > I grind my teeth everytime I hear middle/upper class | people complaining at boycotts and 'cancel '. What do you | want from them? | | I want them to present their views, and attempt to convince | others of the merits of those views. | | I don't want them to use bullying, intimidation, | authoritarianism, or violence to force others to adopt (or | pretend to adopt) their viewpoint. | | > They can't protest, because of violences against statues | and McDonald's | | Why do you treat "protest" and "riot" as synonyms? They're | not. | | > They can't strike without getting teared down by most MSM | | So what? You're not owed agreement from anyone. | | If they want their strikes to be supported by others, they | first need to convince others that they _should_ be | supported. | sophacles wrote: | >> I grind my teeth everytime I hear middle/upper class | people complaining at boycotts and 'cancel '. What do you | want from them? | | > I want them to present their views, and attempt to | convince others of the merits of those views. | | > I don't want them to use bullying, intimidation, | authoritarianism, or violence to force others to adopt | (or pretend to adopt) their viewpoint. | | Are you really equating "not choosing to buy stuff" and | "not choosing to watch/attend stuff" with violence? | Listen, I get it - you think you're entitled to a revenue | stream, that whatever nonsense you build deserves money. | Here's the deal though, the free market is also about the | spender getting to choose what they spend money and time | on. If you don't like it, too bad - no one owes you | agreement nor money just because. | seydor wrote: | Of course they wanted to , they could have denied such | requests and let matters go to courts of law, where such | matters should be resolved anyway. But it would put a slight | dent on quarterly profits so , in the words of Sheryl | Sandberg , "I am fine with this"[1] | | 1. https://www.propublica.org/article/sheryl-sandberg-and- | top-f... | Aunche wrote: | Not sure how you're disagreeing with me. Your article is | another example of Facebook not caring about censoring | except to make more profits. | sneak wrote: | Already have. | | https://www.aseantoday.com/2021/01/facebooks-complicity-in-v... | ben_w wrote: | 1892, if not before: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_strike | makerofthings wrote: | Well that wiki page was a wild ride. I don't completely see | how it relates, but it was worth reading. I will think about | this next time I see complaining on slack about perks being | removed :) | skybrian wrote: | Because people insist that Something Must Be Done and the | state's not doing it. Even EU regulators don't want to do | things, they want to push big tech firms to do it. | | Beatings are unlikely though. It's not something you can do | with a datacenter. | cwillu wrote: | Meanwhile, in Meta's robotics division... | thesuitonym wrote: | Show HN: My Gaoler as a Service (GaaS) company scaled to $1MM | revenue overnight. | jollybean wrote: | I suggest OF is the bigger bad actor here, this is not really a | META story. | [deleted] | m00x wrote: | Selling sex content is also disallowed under Meta's platforms. | This could possibly just be a manual error of the person banning | the accounts and entering the wrong reason. | | Reminder that the suit _alleges_ , and does not prove that | OnlyFans did this. Wait until the result of the suit to throw | down criticism of the system. | tqkxzugoaupvwqr wrote: | Manual error thousands of times? | lizardactivist wrote: | Very peculiar accusations, and it makes no sense that these third | parties, not directly involved in the alleged payment scheme, | would have come upon all this information. | | False accusations, possibly also made-up charges. | buscoquadnary wrote: | It seems like for all the effort we've put into stopping | terrorism it's primarily being used against our own citizens | rather than to stop any actual terrorism. | 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: | Do you have a source to back up that claim? | ajsnigrutin wrote: | If this story spreads, they'll be using "children" ("protect | the", "-porn",...) to act against normal people for some time, | then back to terrorism. | dewclin wrote: | A feature, not a bug. | jandrese wrote: | The majority of the time the terrorists are our own citizens. | | This story is obviously an abuse of the system, but if this | stopped natural born citizens who were planning to lock the | doors of a busy nightclub and set it on fire it would be doing | its job. | | But even the system is only partially to blame here. It's | really the corrupt employee and lack of oversight that is to | blame. The system did allow the corruption to spread to other | companies, but even if it was confined to Meta that would still | be a lot of damage. | chaps wrote: | So the issue here is that anybody can contribute without | oversight. Sounds a lot like the issue with that Tay bot, | whose contributions led to it being anti-Semitic and all | that. I'd argue that it's lack of oversight to prevent that | sort of abuse is a fundamental problem with the system and | not a partial point of fault. | pessimizer wrote: | > lock the doors of a busy nightclub and set it on fire | | Has it ever? Is there a terrorist watchlist at the doors of | nightclubs now? It would also be great if it cured cancer or | replaced crumbling infrastructure, but why talk about | nonsense? | [deleted] | [deleted] | throwaway0a5e wrote: | There is no incentive to stop terrorists beyond doing the bare | minimum to cover one's ass. It's not like anything bad happens | for the government. They just get more power every time. | nickff wrote: | The most extreme examples of this are countries like | Pakistan, which derive a great deal of foreign aid from their | ongoing 'conflicts' with terror-related groups in outlying | territory. Pakistan has very little incentive to ever 'win'. | bhaney wrote: | It's such a shame that nobody predicted exactly that | slfnflctd wrote: | Russ Feingold will always have major points for this in my | book. Only senator to vote against the 'Patriot Act'. | dmitrygr wrote: | That is working as intended. Terrorism and "think of the | children" fearmongering were never intended to do anything | about terrorism or child abuse. They simply aren't designed for | that. | mbesto wrote: | I think I agree with you sentiment, but let me ask this: | | If terrorism was being stopped, would you even know it? Said | differently, maybe it _is_ working. If it was, what would be | the way that you would know that it _is_ working? | a_techwriter_00 wrote: | At least in America, the relevant organization would be | shouting their successes from the rooftops to get more | budget, get more goodwill, and make careers on the back of | that casework. | Karellen wrote: | The number of successful prosecutions, with guilty verdicts | and jail time, on offences under whichever anti-terror | statutes you're measuring for effectiveness. | | If individual acts of terror are being prevented, but none of | the people planning them are put in prison, and are free to | walk the streets and try another plot, would you say those | laws are effective? I wouldn't. | kodah wrote: | The Heritage Foundation tracks this: | https://www.heritage.org/terrorism/report/40-terror-plots- | fo... | | As of 2011, the number was 40. | klyrs wrote: | > If terrorism was being stopped, would you even know it? | | Yes, because the feds brag about it nonstop on the rare | occasions they actually nab somebody. | phpisthebest wrote: | Even when they were the ones that Planned, and started the | process only to "swoop" in to save the day like an arsonist | firefighter | pessimizer wrote: | No, so the fact that we see those over and over again is | evidence that they have nothing to brag about. | feet wrote: | Exactly. Somehow we know how they use these systems for | parallel construction yet we don't hear a peep about actual | terrorists being stopped. | bhaney wrote: | > what would be the way that you would know that it _is_ | working? | | Probably a decrease in successful terrorism attempts or an | increase in thwarted terrorism attempts (with neither being | attributed to something else instead). I don't think there's | any value to this question though, since it can be used to | justify literally anything. If a policy needs to prove its | own value, then it should be constructed in a way that allows | its value to be tracked. | ars wrote: | And used against Trump, and similar. There's a reason people | were very upset he was kicked off of Twitter - not because they | care in the slightest about Trump, but because it's starting us | down a path with a very bad ending. | otikik wrote: | He broke the TOS repeatedly, and since the beginning. Twitter | was in the wrong because he should have been kicked out _way_ | sooner. | kube-system wrote: | Trump was not kicked off of Twitter for any reasons remotely | related to terrorism. | dalmo3 wrote: | "Hate speech", "misinformation", "defending democracy" are | other meaningless umbrella terms just as much as | "terrorism", weaponised for the same ends. | FireBeyond wrote: | Trump has made many concrete incitements to violence. | Telling his supporters to "rough someone up", "someone | should punch that person, I'll pay your legal bills", | "maybe some of you second amendment folk can do something | about Hillary". | kube-system wrote: | That doesn't make them related. | rubatuga wrote: | I believe he was kicked off for inciting violence? | kube-system wrote: | Yeah, he was. Violence isn't some terrorism related | construct invented in 2001. | Nextgrid wrote: | It wasn't the first time he was breaking the rules | though. He was kicked not because of that particular | event but because the virtue-signalling potential of | kicking him outweighed the benefits of keeping him around | once he lost the election. The Capitol attack was just a | convenient excuse for kicking a troublemaker that | according to their own rules should've been gone long | ago. | | If Twitter truly cared about their rules and acted with | integrity they would've kicked him way sooner, but they | didn't because he generated them tons of "growth & | engagement" while he was President. | idontpost wrote: | Pretty sure I watched a terrorist attack that he ordered on | live television. | sneak wrote: | I think this might be the first modern event described as | a "terrorist attack" conducted almost entirely without | meaningful weapons or explosives or incendiary devices. | | Either that or calling a rioting mob a "terrorist attack" | is hyperbole. | kube-system wrote: | You watched a group of idiots who thought they knew | something they didn't, cosplaying as characters from | their 5th grade social studies textbooks. Just plain ol' | mob violence. There isn't anything about that day that | would have been viewed differently by Twitter in a | pre-2001 mindset. | | Yes, some things changed after 2001 -- a media company | declining to publish statements they don't want on their | platform isn't one of them. | jjoonathan wrote: | > plain ol' mob violence | | Alternative slates of electors, contingent elections, | principled opposition from within the party -- you know, | just plain ol' everyday mob violence things. | jdhendrickson wrote: | This is misinformation. Security systems were removed. | The secret service was deeply compromised. Pipe bombs | were deployed and fortunately didn't explode. The | response that should have swept these people out the door | easily was held back at the highest levels. | | This was not a group of yokels. Yes dumb people were | there, and they were committing mob violence, but that | was not the only thing happening. | | Continue to downplay it if you like but don't expect | others to be silent while you do so. | idontpost wrote: | Terrorism has been around a lot longer than 2001. | | It was a terrorist attack, the same as this | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palace_of_Justice_siege | a_techwriter_00 wrote: | I must have missed the part where the Jan 6th | insurrectionists had machine guns and bombs and took | hostages. Pretty alarming, if true. Do you have sources | for how these two events are at all similar beyond that | both involved unlawful entry into a government building? | telchar wrote: | There were bombs: | https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/29/politics/washington-pipe- | bomb... | PenguinCoder wrote: | Terrorism is not defined by having machine guns, bombs or | taking hostages. | | Terrorism: | | > the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, | especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political | aims. | | Seems pretty damn clear cut that Jan 6th insurrectionists | are Terrorists by that understanding. | phpisthebest wrote: | So under that definition there was a ton of Terrorism in | the summer of 2020 right? | a_techwriter_00 wrote: | Do you think that it does justice to the victims of Jan | 6th and the victims of the siege of the Colombian Palace | of Justice to say that both of those events are the same | crime? They're both deserving of the same punishment? | kevin_thibedeau wrote: | The idiots were a distraction so those plotting with T's | cronies could move freely in the Capitol with the | disruptive cover of an unruly crowd. | EricE wrote: | pdntspa wrote: | Tostino wrote: | https://january6th.house.gov/ | | Sorry, this isn't new info at this point. | okwubodu wrote: | Americans across the political spectrum are generally very okay | with invasions of privacy, excessive force, rights violations, | etc. as long as they're targeted at the "right" people | (criminals that deserve it). They're incredibly difficult | issues to advocate for because most people either a) thinks the | victim deserved it for being a criminal, or b) would eventually | think the same given a wide enough selection of victims. | jimbob45 wrote: | We're okay with it when we see exceptional results. | | When, instead, you see a school shooter's search history | includes "I'm going to shoot up X school" and the FBI claims | that they couldn't have foreseen it happening, then it starts | to seem as if the results aren't as exceptional as they | claim. | cabirum wrote: | Is that the same database Apple uses to scan image hashes on | iPhones without user consent? | wmf wrote: | No, terrorism and child porn are separate databases. | cabirum wrote: | one always follows another | akimball wrote: | Don't forget the money laundering | JumpCrisscross wrote: | Apple isn't listed as a member. | | https://gifct.org/membership/ | jeffwask wrote: | There was a story that came out of a podcast with a couple adult | entertainers in the LA/SF area that I think made the rounds here | as well that connects nicely to this. | | She alleged that her account kept getting shadow banned and she | couldn't get it resolved so she started stalking Facebook/Insta | mods and sleeping with them to get unbanned. | | Good stuff... monopolies are bad. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-08-10 23:00 UTC)