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I'm really sorry for being a Debbie downer here but I find the lack of such initiatives for Turkish (or similar) blasts in past week appalling. Were the lives o
by Dharmakirti 11y ago
I'm really sorry for being a Debbie downer here but I find the lack of such initiatives for Turkish (or similar) blasts in past week appalling. Were the lives of the non-European victims not worth FaceBook/HNs attention?
Is this selective outrage really suits a rational platform like HackerNews?
- tobltobs 11y agoMaybe the lack lack of such initiatives for Turkish was caused by Facebook being banned in the Turkey.
- yuvadam 11y agoSounds like a pretty lame excuse for a board filled with so-called 'Hackers'.
- miguelrochefort 11y agoTruth is that most first-world citizens, including myself, can only relate to other first-world citizens. If a tragic event hits Nigeria, Pakistan or even Turkey, I will probably ignore it. Hypocrisy? Yes. Surprising? Not really.
- 21 11y agoAnd it's not only Facebook. These Brussels attacks have wall-to-wall coverage on all news stations, including local ones, unlike the Turkish blasts which were covered much less and only by the major outlets.
- miguelrochefort 11y ago> And it's not only Facebook. It goes without saying. My statement was meant to be general.
- tobltobs 11y agoMaybe it is because such blasts are more common in country which wages a civil war against a part of his inhabitants.
- m00dy 11y agobeyin.dll not found
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- guard-of-terra 11y agoBelgium can be looked at this way too. Belgium wages war against ISIS as a part of NATO, and ISIS includes some Belgian citizens, so they wage war against them. It's just they are further away than Kurds. But as we can see, explosion-wise, this makes small difference.
- arien 11y agoWe're most likely to care about what is/feels closer to us, what we can relate to, what we know. You'd feel more if your neighbour whom you greet every day on the foyer died in a car crash that if it were a random person you didn't know at all, right? It's the same principle. I also think that there is not just empathy at play, but fear. Because the closer an event is to us or the people we know/relate to, the more we realise it could also happen to us.
- oneeyedpigeon 11y agoSad that you get downvoted for telling the truth, even if it's an uncomfortable truth. Upvoted to compensate.
- icebraining 11y agoMaybe it just needs to be said with some humour https://youtu.be/QKboodmEHTQ?t=4m24s https://youtu.be/QKboodmEHTQ?t=4m24s
- jbmorgado 11y agoSo what? FB also exists in non 1st world countries in case you didn't noticed. You may ignore it since you don't know anyone there, but people from there would appreciate knowing their friends and relatives are safe. Still, like it was already told, FB did activate the feature also in the Ankara bombings and other occasions for Turkey, there is nothing racist here going on.
- return0 11y agoSurprising how first-world people don't even know who s in the first world (this includes the majority of your responders, sadly).
- jcromartie 11y agoPeople in third world nations don't have any empathy super powers for people who are ethnically, religiously, or socio-economically from themselves either.
- gokhan 11y agoFacebook did the same for the last Ankara bombing (and for the other two in the last 5 months, if you're interested). When you have bombs blast in your capital each month it's quite hard to expect same amount of interest from these people, even us living in Turkey are getting (sadly) used to it.
- staticelf 11y agoDon't know, I read a lot about the Turkish bombings. Also a lot of complaints that people don't take it as seriously like you do. But I would say people take it seriously and the people complaining just makes everything worse. But for me that lives in EU, a bomb in EU feels much closer than a bomb in Turkey. It is not strange at all?
- jMyles 11y ago> Don't know, I read a lot about the Turkish bombings What point are you making here? If they were covered a lot, why no safety check?
- cr1895 11y agoYou mean like this: https://www.facebook.com/safetycheck/ankaraturkey-explosion-mar13-2016/ https://www.facebook.com/safetycheck/ankaraturkey-explosion-...
- aorth 11y agoSomething about this bothers me too. I am trying to formulate a way to look at this that gives Facebook the benefit of the doubt, like "anyone you can help is good, even if you can't help them all"... but there's a pessimism in me that says Facebook is being opportunist.
- mjolk 11y agoFor a site this ubiquitous, they don't need to scrape the bottom of the barrel to get a few more page views -- I think this is earnestly meant as a service to others. I don't have a Facebook account, so I can't verify, but at least on that landing page, they're not serving up advertisements.
- mineshaftgap 11y agoWait until people start saying it is not a big deal because more people die from choking on baguettes than terrorism.
- aub3bhat 11y agoFB has enabled safety check several other times, such as floods, earthquakes etc. in India & Nepal. There is nothing about selective outrage.
- mjolk 11y agoIt's not a contest.
- Kiro 11y agoI find the lack of research appalling. You are just presuming this wasn't activated for the Turkish blasts which it was.
- jMyles 11y agoOn some level, it betrays a judgement from facebook about what constitutes "terrorism." I don't think there has ever been a safety check after a hellfire missile from a US drone.
- Numberwang 11y agoWhy are we not showing proportionally even more outrage of drunk driving deaths?
- oneeyedpigeon 11y agoa) intent b) number of casualties
- cmdrfred 11y agoIntent is valid point, number of casualties is not. Terrorism is nearly statistically insignificant in the scheme of things. If you are truly concerned about human life buying mosquito nets will offer you much greater ROI compared to any anti-terrorism measures you can envision.
- oneeyedpigeon 11y agoYou're right, I should have been way more specific. I mean number of casualties in the one specific incident. Terrorist acts often involve tens, if not hundreds, of people, both killed and injured. In the vast majority of cases, a drink-driving accident will affect a handful of people. Nothing about any of this is very rational, but there's something in our collective nature that draws more attention to a single incident involving X casualties than X/Y unrelated incidents each involving Y casualties.
- IkmoIkmo 11y ago> Terrorist acts often involve tens, if not hundreds, of people, both killed and injured. Actually terror attacks that harm more than 10 or 100 people, as opposed to less than 10, are a small minority. [0] [0] http://www.state.gov/j/ct/rls/crt/2013/224831.htm http://www.state.gov/j/ct/rls/crt/2013/224831.htm
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- arjie 11y agoEh? It looks like they turned it on for the Ankara blasts[0]. Anyway, the whole thing reminds me of the NPR bit about "The Cost of Free"[1]. People's expectations rapidly change once you offer some of them something. While the main lesson in that story is about charging after offering something for free for many years, there's the second lesson: the reason it was made free was that the Brits were upset that the Americans got free doughnuts. Afterwards, no one got free doughnuts. It's funny. Something that seems clearly like a Pareto improvement ends up not being one because of people's opinions of perceived privilege. 0: https://www.facebook.com/sheryl/posts/10156585333855177 https://www.facebook.com/sheryl/posts/10156585333855177 1: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/07/13/156737801/the-cost-of-free-doughnuts-70-years-of-regret http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/07/13/156737801/the-c...
- IkmoIkmo 11y agoThere's a very popular experiment that goes a bit like this. You and another person must share $100. You get to pick the distribution, the other gets to accept or reject. You get one choice. If you pick say $50 each, the other person tends to always accept. If you give him more, he'll accept too. But what if you give yourself $75, and the other $25? If he rejects it, you both get nothing. Turns out, at certain levels (cant remember where), people tend to reject. Which is interesting, because every non-0 figure is a benefit to you. If you get $5 and the other $95, why reject it? You'd get nothing. It's a one-time experiment, you're basically rejecting free money. It turns out that the other guy getting $95 and 'screwing you', is so bad, that you'd rather reject free money than for him to get more than he 'deserves'. Now if this was your enemy, or say someone close to you, sure. But this experiment holds with complete strangers you don't see and will never meet. The notion that someone gets more than you, when normal moral notions suppose you deserve an equal amount, incites people to be vengeful even at the cost of free money.
- jsprogrammer 11y agoThere is no such thing as free money.
- RobertoG 11y ago
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- tnuc 11y agoRational platform? Selective outrage? Glenn Greenwald (The guy who broke the Snowden story) sums it up quite nicely. https://theintercept.com/2016/03/08/nobody-knows-the-identity-of-the-150-people-killed-by-u-s-in-somalia-but-most-are-certain-they-deserved-it/ https://theintercept.com/2016/03/08/nobody-knows-the-identit...
- tnuc 11y agoCOUGH http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/when-paris-was-attacked-facebook-expanded-its-safety-check-feature-168154 http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/when-paris-was-attacke...
- dave2000 11y agoPossibly Europeans are more interested in European news, just like Arab/Asian countries are more interested in their culture's news. I admit when their culture/ethics/religion encroaches upon Europe's, such as with this week's outrage, things get mixed up little. I'm sure the Turkish equivalent of Facebook has its own system.
- TallGuyShort 11y agoCan't speak for Facebook, but as for HNs attention, you didn't submit a story about those blasts. How appalling. If you think something is important and relevant to HN's interests, submit it. It's not 100% everyone else's responsibility to submit things to get votes.