4 ms·

If by "Death of Us" he meant the newspapers then he is probably correct. Otherwise I am not sure what he is trying to say, violence is as low as ever: https://

If by "Death of Us" he meant the newspapers then he is probably correct. Otherwise I am not sure what he is trying to say, violence is as low as ever: https://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=95379&page=1 https://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=95379&page=1 It is possible that the Internet has increased politically motivated killings, but articles making broad judgement on all of society based on a couple of anecdotes without proper data is just sensationalist nonsense.

wiz21c 8y ago
yup : "Robert Bowers, accused of murdering 11 Jewish Americans in Pittsburgh the morning after Sayoc’s arrest, stoked his madness and nurtured his bloody fantasies in that same online vortex." as if there were no other, much older, much more efficient, way to become a killer. Such as : education (think about special forces training), brainwashing (think about suicide attacks), political activism (think about political terrorism in the 60's/70's in europe), etc. problem with that kind of articles is that it makes it more acceptable to track everything on the web.
- matt4077 8y ago
  There having been equivalent evils before the internet does nothing to disprove the thesis of it causing harm. Even if you could show that the internet, is net positive (pun intended), I don't see how that would be an argument against possible further improvements. Analogy: People being killed in accidents with horses is not an argument for disregarding traffic deaths. Nor can that fact be used to argue against seat belts or airbags. Only if someone were proposing to go back to horse & carriage would it make sense to reference total effects. If "the internet" wants to avoid the fate of more regulation, it is most sensible to take its critics' worries serious, and to try to find ways to be a positive force in the world without inviting the sort heavy-handed regulations that will otherwise follow. As but one example, see spam, or child pornography: in those areas, tech companies, users, and governments found ways to effectively work together mostly without resorting to draconian measures. For an example of such a process failing, look at the EU's recent "link tax": Because the tech community has been so adamantly opposed to taking journalism's existential fears into account, this rather unwieldy regulation will become law. This could have been avoided if, for example, ad blockers had settled for blocking only dangerous and/or the most annoying ads, an approach that could have easily reduced annoyances by 80%+ while costing publishers far less. Or micropayments that actually work, and users to use them. Etc.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - dabbledash 8y ago
    The ads that aren’t “annoying” still violate your privacy. I don’t want to load any of them.
- kumarvvr 8y ago
  When you are in an echo chamber created by social media, the dehumanization required to make you a killer is mich more subtle, more easy and more covert. All the methods you have mentioned, are, to some extent in the public eye. Imagine the uproar if anti-semitic articles occured in any of the daily news papers. It is a matter of public record, even if some of the methods come out later. Now imagine how many such articles are published and propagandized in online media, away from the gaze of critics, away from serious action by concerned authorities. The power is in the hands of big data companies and they are driven by greed and stock market performance. Once the papers die, people will start dying too.
matt4077 8y ago
You seem to be coming from a literal reading of the headline. The absurdity of that should be pretty clear. After all, it can be disproven by a single death of one of "us" that isn't caused by or related to the internet. Because of its absurdity, that interpretation of the headline can't be correct. So instead of cheap shots (without evidence) about the NYT, you should maybe try to find a valid interpretation, of which there are several. Personally, I'd focus on the "Us". In this reading, it laments the metaphorical death of community, and society's disintegration into autistic strangers.
- username90 8y ago
  But the country was full of sects long before the Internet was even a thing. The Oklahoma City bombers are a good example of terrorists which were radicalized by offline cults. The only difference is that now anyone can see it online while before it was hidden unless you looked for it. Like your racist uncle, before people just heard him rant at the thanksgiving table but now the whole world can read his rants on Facebook. The racism was always there, it is just harder to ignore today. So I'd like to see proof that the Internet actually helps radicalize people. It is true that it makes it easier to find radical groups, but it also makes it easier to find other views which would hinder radicalization. Before if you made a few radical friends they could easily become your whole world! So my naive assumption is that both forces roughly cancels each other out making an open Internet mostly neutral in terms of radicalization.
  - Grangar 8y ago
    ISIS does its recruitment over the internet for one... Local cults of hatred have become global now.
    - icebraining 8y ago
      "now" A hundred years ago, anarchists were shooting people from Milwaukee to St Petersburg. Marxism-Leninism literally took over multiple countries. As long as you have global movement and communications, you have global spread of ideology, you don't need the Internet.
twtw 8y ago
> It is possible that the Internet has increased politically motivated killings, but articles making broad judgement on all of society based on a couple of anecdotes without proper data is just sensationalist nonsense. I don't see where the author makes "broad judgement of all society." I see an opinion piece, which explicitly calls out in the text it's opinionness ("that's how I've come to feel about the Internet") in which the author claims that the Internet "creates terrorists." This is not an argument that needs statistics or data to back it up - if the Internet creates even one terrorist, then the author's statements hold. The author provides not one, but several examples to support the claim. It's like you are refuting the headline only, or some adversarial interpretation of the article.
- username90 8y ago
  The headline sets the tone so you can't just ignore it. If he starts off with an extremely strong headline like "The Internet Will Be the Death of Us" then the article should have strong enough arguments to warrant it, otherwise the headline is just the kind of misinformation that he himself is lamenting in this very article.
drb91 8y ago
War tends to increase violence. The anxieties that are reflected in elections recently as well as the people taking advantage of them to rise to power will make it easier to start one.

wiz21c 8y ago

yup : "Robert Bowers, accused of murdering 11 Jewish Americans in Pittsburgh the morning after Sayoc’s arrest, stoked his madness and nurtured his bloody fantasies in that same online vortex." as if there were no other, much older, much more efficient, way to become a killer. Such as : education (think about special forces training), brainwashing (think about suicide attacks), political activism (think about political terrorism in the 60's/70's in europe), etc. problem with that kind of articles is that it makes it more acceptable to track everything on the web.

matt4077 8y ago
There having been equivalent evils before the internet does nothing to disprove the thesis of it causing harm. Even if you could show that the internet, is net positive (pun intended), I don't see how that would be an argument against possible further improvements. Analogy: People being killed in accidents with horses is not an argument for disregarding traffic deaths. Nor can that fact be used to argue against seat belts or airbags. Only if someone were proposing to go back to horse & carriage would it make sense to reference total effects. If "the internet" wants to avoid the fate of more regulation, it is most sensible to take its critics' worries serious, and to try to find ways to be a positive force in the world without inviting the sort heavy-handed regulations that will otherwise follow. As but one example, see spam, or child pornography: in those areas, tech companies, users, and governments found ways to effectively work together mostly without resorting to draconian measures. For an example of such a process failing, look at the EU's recent "link tax": Because the tech community has been so adamantly opposed to taking journalism's existential fears into account, this rather unwieldy regulation will become law. This could have been avoided if, for example, ad blockers had settled for blocking only dangerous and/or the most annoying ads, an approach that could have easily reduced annoyances by 80%+ while costing publishers far less. Or micropayments that actually work, and users to use them. Etc.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- dabbledash 8y ago
  The ads that aren’t “annoying” still violate your privacy. I don’t want to load any of them.
kumarvvr 8y ago
When you are in an echo chamber created by social media, the dehumanization required to make you a killer is mich more subtle, more easy and more covert. All the methods you have mentioned, are, to some extent in the public eye. Imagine the uproar if anti-semitic articles occured in any of the daily news papers. It is a matter of public record, even if some of the methods come out later. Now imagine how many such articles are published and propagandized in online media, away from the gaze of critics, away from serious action by concerned authorities. The power is in the hands of big data companies and they are driven by greed and stock market performance. Once the papers die, people will start dying too.

matt4077 8y ago

You seem to be coming from a literal reading of the headline. The absurdity of that should be pretty clear. After all, it can be disproven by a single death of one of "us" that isn't caused by or related to the internet. Because of its absurdity, that interpretation of the headline can't be correct. So instead of cheap shots (without evidence) about the NYT, you should maybe try to find a valid interpretation, of which there are several. Personally, I'd focus on the "Us". In this reading, it laments the metaphorical death of community, and society's disintegration into autistic strangers.

username90 8y ago
But the country was full of sects long before the Internet was even a thing. The Oklahoma City bombers are a good example of terrorists which were radicalized by offline cults. The only difference is that now anyone can see it online while before it was hidden unless you looked for it. Like your racist uncle, before people just heard him rant at the thanksgiving table but now the whole world can read his rants on Facebook. The racism was always there, it is just harder to ignore today. So I'd like to see proof that the Internet actually helps radicalize people. It is true that it makes it easier to find radical groups, but it also makes it easier to find other views which would hinder radicalization. Before if you made a few radical friends they could easily become your whole world! So my naive assumption is that both forces roughly cancels each other out making an open Internet mostly neutral in terms of radicalization.
- Grangar 8y ago
  ISIS does its recruitment over the internet for one... Local cults of hatred have become global now.
  - icebraining 8y ago
    "now" A hundred years ago, anarchists were shooting people from Milwaukee to St Petersburg. Marxism-Leninism literally took over multiple countries. As long as you have global movement and communications, you have global spread of ideology, you don't need the Internet.

twtw 8y ago

> It is possible that the Internet has increased politically motivated killings, but articles making broad judgement on all of society based on a couple of anecdotes without proper data is just sensationalist nonsense. I don't see where the author makes "broad judgement of all society." I see an opinion piece, which explicitly calls out in the text it's opinionness ("that's how I've come to feel about the Internet") in which the author claims that the Internet "creates terrorists." This is not an argument that needs statistics or data to back it up - if the Internet creates even one terrorist, then the author's statements hold. The author provides not one, but several examples to support the claim. It's like you are refuting the headline only, or some adversarial interpretation of the article.

username90 8y ago
The headline sets the tone so you can't just ignore it. If he starts off with an extremely strong headline like "The Internet Will Be the Death of Us" then the article should have strong enough arguments to warrant it, otherwise the headline is just the kind of misinformation that he himself is lamenting in this very article.

drb91 8y ago

War tends to increase violence. The anxieties that are reflected in elections recently as well as the people taking advantage of them to rise to power will make it easier to start one.