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NYT's "The Daily" podcast discussed this a little over a year ago in response to the Parkland shooting, and I found it to be quite insightful. I believe it was

NYT's "The Daily" podcast discussed this a little over a year ago in response to the Parkland shooting, and I found it to be quite insightful. I believe it was this episode, but I could be wrong[0]. A major factor impeding law enforcement is the sheer number of people posting violent threats on social media. I can't remember the statistic, but they mentioned that the US justice system basically wouldn't be able to effectively process everyone in a timely manner that posted indications of violent activity on social media, it's just too frequent. It's easy to look back after a shooting and ask why law enforcement failed to see the warnings, but it's much harder to predict looking into the future. Simply posting angry threats on social media doesn't meet the threshold of committing a crime, but perception around that could be changing. Another major issue is that this isn't a mental health issue, despite how it's characterized by politicians and the media. Deeply angry young men aren't mentally ill by any classical definition of mental illness; they're just really angry. They don't necessarily exhibit traits of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder; they're driven by hatred and anger, and that's just not something mental health professionals are equipped to diffuse. 0: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/23/podcasts/the-daily/gun-access-mentally-ill.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/23/podcasts/the-daily/gun-ac...

chkaloon 7y ago
They don't need to process all of them, just a relatively small number of public examples.
- belorn 7y ago
  Sweden has a reality TV show whit that very premise and it is called trollhunters. They choose a hate comment and then proceed to locate and confront the author. When done they also sometimes help the target of the hate, by example helping them filling a police report. The show is followed with vigilantist justice as the people they locate usually end up receiving a lot of harassment from the public, and the benefit of making examples of people has not had any effect in decreasing hate messages online. An interesting side note is that when you actually go after hate messages online, the gender stereotype of young male start to melt and you get a new stereotype. It is people with a lot of free time and who feel ignored by society. A typical example is thus middle age women. However turning that hate towards going on a killing spree is unlikely for a middle age woman even if they say things like "someone should go down there and kill everyone", so there is a high rate of noise-to-massacre.
  - chkaloon 7y ago
    I don't approve of the vigilante model, it just increases the general animosity in society. I'd rather there be public prosecutions of violence-advocating speech through the legal process.
  - DoreenMichele 7y ago
    A lot of people who feel powerless use very strong language precisely because they feel like nothing they do matters. They often don't really mean it literally and wouldn't say it if they actually felt like anyone listened to anything they said. They basically exaggerate their real desire, hoping that if they express their feelings strongly enough, it might lead to some very small action because their experience is that they are mostly not taken seriously and what they say mostly makes no impact. This is probably true of a lot of middle aged women.
pingyong 7y ago
You could probably just make an example out of a couple of particularly bad threats every 3 months and reduce the number of threats significantly with that. The question is what does that actually achieve? A couple of people will simply turn to Tor or similar services, while others might post less but still kill people. It might rob law enforcement of the ability to develop some sort of system that can sort through the noise and prevent a few of these incidents in the future.
- save_ferris 7y ago
  I doubt that would change much. And law enforcement does thwart these kinds of attacks on a fairly regular basis, we just don’t hear about them as much. The same day that El Paso occurred, the FBI arrested a kid in Lubbock who was trying to obtain an assault weapon with the intent to perpetrate a mass shooting[0]. It’s not like the feds are totally incapable. Like it or not, relying on sigint from social media isn’t going to stop many of these attacks. 8chan is full of trolls who parrot off one another, there’s just no reliable way to determine who’s just trolling and who is serious. Our gun laws and the purchasing loopholes that exist desperately need to be addressed. 0: https://www.kwtx.com/content/news/Feds-Texas-man-planning-mass-shooting-hit-with-weapons-charge-516260081.html https://www.kwtx.com/content/news/Feds-Texas-man-planning-ma...

chkaloon 7y ago

They don't need to process all of them, just a relatively small number of public examples.

belorn 7y ago
Sweden has a reality TV show whit that very premise and it is called trollhunters. They choose a hate comment and then proceed to locate and confront the author. When done they also sometimes help the target of the hate, by example helping them filling a police report. The show is followed with vigilantist justice as the people they locate usually end up receiving a lot of harassment from the public, and the benefit of making examples of people has not had any effect in decreasing hate messages online. An interesting side note is that when you actually go after hate messages online, the gender stereotype of young male start to melt and you get a new stereotype. It is people with a lot of free time and who feel ignored by society. A typical example is thus middle age women. However turning that hate towards going on a killing spree is unlikely for a middle age woman even if they say things like "someone should go down there and kill everyone", so there is a high rate of noise-to-massacre.
- chkaloon 7y ago
  I don't approve of the vigilante model, it just increases the general animosity in society. I'd rather there be public prosecutions of violence-advocating speech through the legal process.
- DoreenMichele 7y ago
  A lot of people who feel powerless use very strong language precisely because they feel like nothing they do matters. They often don't really mean it literally and wouldn't say it if they actually felt like anyone listened to anything they said. They basically exaggerate their real desire, hoping that if they express their feelings strongly enough, it might lead to some very small action because their experience is that they are mostly not taken seriously and what they say mostly makes no impact. This is probably true of a lot of middle aged women.

pingyong 7y ago

You could probably just make an example out of a couple of particularly bad threats every 3 months and reduce the number of threats significantly with that. The question is what does that actually achieve? A couple of people will simply turn to Tor or similar services, while others might post less but still kill people. It might rob law enforcement of the ability to develop some sort of system that can sort through the noise and prevent a few of these incidents in the future.

save_ferris 7y ago
I doubt that would change much. And law enforcement does thwart these kinds of attacks on a fairly regular basis, we just don’t hear about them as much. The same day that El Paso occurred, the FBI arrested a kid in Lubbock who was trying to obtain an assault weapon with the intent to perpetrate a mass shooting[0]. It’s not like the feds are totally incapable. Like it or not, relying on sigint from social media isn’t going to stop many of these attacks. 8chan is full of trolls who parrot off one another, there’s just no reliable way to determine who’s just trolling and who is serious. Our gun laws and the purchasing loopholes that exist desperately need to be addressed. 0: https://www.kwtx.com/content/news/Feds-Texas-man-planning-mass-shooting-hit-with-weapons-charge-516260081.html https://www.kwtx.com/content/news/Feds-Texas-man-planning-ma...