5 ms·

A tech NGO got sucked into a Covid-19 conspiracy theory

31 points by DanBC 7y ago

lihaciudaniel 7y ago
>Some of the “alt-right” commentary focuses on a “UN plan” Can't tell what is more tragic that finding solutions is considered a conspiracy, or that COVID-19 causes more conspiracy by isolating people.
- tasogare 7y ago
  > In a matter of weeks, ID2020 – which advocates for digital ID for the billion undocumented people worldwide Even that article that is 100% endorsing the initiative can’t formulate in a non-creepy way what it is supposed to do.
  - DanBC 7y ago
    In the Universal Declaration of Human Rights there's a bunch of stuff which is possible, but hard, to provide if people don't have ID. Giving people ID makes providing a lot of those human rights much easier. For example, access to democracy is important, and ID is part of that.
    - pjc50 7y ago
      ID is not a requirement for democracy. ID requirements are a convenience for the state, and it's possible to run a society without them without being overrun by fraud. It's useful for people to be able to present ID to receive entitlements, but it's only there because the state has imposed a requirement.
      - JetSetWilly 7y ago
        Nobody asks for an ID when you vote in the UK. You show up, tell them your address and name, they look up up in the book and give you the ballot. There's no check that you are who you say you are at all - you could be anyone. Yet the UK is a functioning democracy. So ID certainly is not a requirement for democracy.
        DanBC 7y ago
        > You show up, tell them your address and name, they look up up in the book and give you the ballot. When they talk about ID they don't mean a document you carry around with you. They mean the processes that allow someone in England to register to vote, and then walk into a polling booth and give their name and address and get a ballot paper in return. Using your example: you can't vote twice. You walking into your local station, and use your vote. If you return later in the day your identity is known to have already voted. If you walk to a different polling station your identity is not known there (even if you take your passport), so you can't vote there.
        JetSetWilly 7y ago
        That is a good point, I hadn't thought about it like that. However the requirements to register to vote in the UK are pretty lax as well - to go on the electoral roll you tell the government your name and address, and you pinky promise that you're telling the truth. They then mail you polling cards for any election, which you don't need to use. You don't need to give them any national insurance numbers or other ID to do this. It literally amounts to "I'm Joe Bloggs and I live at 20 Smith Street". That seems like the bare minimum required to have a voting system to me.
        outworlder 7y ago
        > "I'm Joe Bloggs and I live at 20 Smith Street". Also known as, an ID.
scottlocklin 7y ago
Creepy UN propaganda arm indignantly declares creepy "tech NGO" not guilty of anything untoward, tries to blame humble water filter merchant for their misfortunes, despite his obviously not being involved at all beyond having mentioned them once a half a year ago. I feel a little bad for Gates who probably means well, but then I see crap like this and don't blame the tinfoil helmet crew for mistrusting these creepazoids. Their every action seems designed to engender mistrust. Can't they afford a real PR firm? Maybe they should hire Wolfram's; they're doing something right.
- detaro 7y ago
  > tries to blame humble water filter merchant for their misfortunes ?
  - FriendlyNormie 7y ago
    “Humble water filter merchant” is a term that some people use to describe Alex Jones.
    - outworlder 7y ago
      Wow. How did the 'humble' adjective can ever stick to that person? Is this used tongue in cheek?
      - FriendlyNormie 7y ago
        The whole phrase is a multilayered meme. It’s generally used by alt-right neo nazis with conflicted emotions who believe Alex Jones works for the Jews but also find his tantrums endearing. “Humble merchant” is a phrase often used by modern antisemites when they parody the speech of an imaginary Jew describing himself in a disarming way. Use of the meme also reveals how long a person has been immersed in alt-right neo nazi internet culture, because it likely originated when Alex Jones’ primary product was water filters rather than supplements, so anyone using the meme has probably been an alt-right neo nazi for 4+ years, or at least reads what such people say fairly often.
catalogia 7y ago
> In Bangladesh, it announced that the government would create a database of children’s immunisations linked to their parents’ biometric information – most likely a digital fingerprint. What is meant by "[biometric] digital fingerprint"? Do they just mean a literal fingerprint, but digitized? When I think of "digital fingerprints" I think of things like canvas fingerprinting or maybe perceptual hashing, not anything to do with biometrics. If they just mean taking prints of fingers and digitizing them, maybe just say "fingerprint" and drop the "digital" from the description. That's easier to understand. If people understand something, they'll fear it less.
- detaro 7y ago
  Matching of fingerprints and other biometrics is typically not done by storing an actual image, but by storing feature information hash-like. "digital fingerprint" is a pretty good term for that.
  - catalogia 7y ago
    I'm aware that comparison of fingerprints is done by extracting/storing/comparing features. But in 2020 the digitization of fingerprints can/should go without saying and the details of how fingerprints are compared are just a distraction at best for most of the general public. As for 'digital fingerprint' being a good term for that, I disagree. I think that's a term that's very likely to confuse the layperson. If you search that term on wikipedia you'll find a disambiguation page that lists six options, none of which have anything to do with fingers: Message digest, Device fingerprint, Digital video fingerprinting, Acoustic fingerprint, Canvas fingerprinting, Content ID (algorithm) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_fingerprint https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_fingerprint If you search the same on google in a private window, the first two or three pages of results are all about the same computer-related topics as that wikipedia page (the first result is that wikipedia page, and the second is a blog post from Mozilla about browser fingerprinting.) After a few pages I started to find pages about digitized prints of fingers, so I don't doubt that people in the fingerprinting industry use this terminology. Nevertheless I can easily see laypeople being mislead.
- 7y ago
addHocker 7y ago
The WHO beeing subverted by chinese soft-power, guided the world into this disaster. All nations burned by the first SARS (Taiwan, South Korea, HK) who had there own independent organizations and reaction plans did very well in this crisis. The west, guided by inexperienced, foolish leadership, listening to bad advice from a corrupted institution, ran into this completely unprepared. Meanwhile nearly all western media still puts that sovjet era-propaganda out there, and having the west called out by a hyper-racist government(ccp), does not much to disuade the crack pots. After all, they see a very shallow conspiracy play out live on newscasts.
zionic 7y ago
Wow, the ratio of [dead] to non-[dead] comments in this thread is the highest I've ever seen
mywittyname 7y ago
Does anyone know where Alex Jones gets his ideas? Part of me thinks his team just makes shit up, but sometimes he seems to be part of a coordinated effort.
- ErikAugust 7y ago
  The web is overflowing with conspiracy theories. In a couple hours on some forums, he'd have years worth of material...
  - outworlder 7y ago
    They are even conveniently aggregated. Look no further than r/conspiracy
- ardy42 7y ago
  > Does anyone know where Alex Jones gets his ideas? Part of me thinks his team just makes shit up, but sometimes he seems to be part of a coordinated effort. IIRC, a former InfoWars employee goes into that a bit in this article: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/05/magazine/alex-jones-infowars.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/05/magazine/alex-jones-infow...: > I Worked for Alex Jones. I Regret It. > I dropped out of film school to edit video for the conspiracy theorist because I believed in his worldview. Then I saw what it did to people. > ... > Shortly after Jones began selling the supplements, someone posted a video on YouTube holding a Geiger counter displaying high radiation readings on a beach in Half Moon Bay, Calif. The video went viral, stoking fears that radiation from Fukushima was drifting across the Pacific Ocean. Jones saw an opportunity and sent me, along with a reporter, a writer and another cameraman, to California. We had multiple Geiger counters shipped overnight, unaware of how to read or work them, and drove up the West Coast, frequently stopping to check radiation levels. Other than a small spike in Half Moon Bay — which the California Department of Public Health said was from naturally occurring radioactive materials, not Fukushima — we found nothing. > Jones was furious. We started getting calls from the radio-show producers in the office, warning us to stop posting videos to YouTube stating we weren’t finding elevated levels of radiation. We couldn’t just stop, though; Jones demanded constant real-time content. On some of these calls, I could hear Jones screaming in the background. One of the producers told me they had never seen him so angry.

31 points by DanBC 7y ago

>Some of the “alt-right” commentary focuses on a “UN plan” Can't tell what is more tragic that finding solutions is considered a conspiracy, or that COVID-19 causes more conspiracy by isolating people.

tasogare 7y ago
> In a matter of weeks, ID2020 – which advocates for digital ID for the billion undocumented people worldwide Even that article that is 100% endorsing the initiative can’t formulate in a non-creepy way what it is supposed to do.
- DanBC 7y ago
  In the Universal Declaration of Human Rights there's a bunch of stuff which is possible, but hard, to provide if people don't have ID. Giving people ID makes providing a lot of those human rights much easier. For example, access to democracy is important, and ID is part of that.
  - pjc50 7y ago
    ID is not a requirement for democracy. ID requirements are a convenience for the state, and it's possible to run a society without them without being overrun by fraud. It's useful for people to be able to present ID to receive entitlements, but it's only there because the state has imposed a requirement.
    - JetSetWilly 7y ago
      Nobody asks for an ID when you vote in the UK. You show up, tell them your address and name, they look up up in the book and give you the ballot. There's no check that you are who you say you are at all - you could be anyone. Yet the UK is a functioning democracy. So ID certainly is not a requirement for democracy.
      - DanBC 7y ago
        > You show up, tell them your address and name, they look up up in the book and give you the ballot. When they talk about ID they don't mean a document you carry around with you. They mean the processes that allow someone in England to register to vote, and then walk into a polling booth and give their name and address and get a ballot paper in return. Using your example: you can't vote twice. You walking into your local station, and use your vote. If you return later in the day your identity is known to have already voted. If you walk to a different polling station your identity is not known there (even if you take your passport), so you can't vote there.
        JetSetWilly 7y ago
        That is a good point, I hadn't thought about it like that. However the requirements to register to vote in the UK are pretty lax as well - to go on the electoral roll you tell the government your name and address, and you pinky promise that you're telling the truth. They then mail you polling cards for any election, which you don't need to use. You don't need to give them any national insurance numbers or other ID to do this. It literally amounts to "I'm Joe Bloggs and I live at 20 Smith Street". That seems like the bare minimum required to have a voting system to me.
        outworlder 7y ago
        > "I'm Joe Bloggs and I live at 20 Smith Street". Also known as, an ID.

scottlocklin 7y ago

Creepy UN propaganda arm indignantly declares creepy "tech NGO" not guilty of anything untoward, tries to blame humble water filter merchant for their misfortunes, despite his obviously not being involved at all beyond having mentioned them once a half a year ago. I feel a little bad for Gates who probably means well, but then I see crap like this and don't blame the tinfoil helmet crew for mistrusting these creepazoids. Their every action seems designed to engender mistrust. Can't they afford a real PR firm? Maybe they should hire Wolfram's; they're doing something right.

detaro 7y ago
> tries to blame humble water filter merchant for their misfortunes ?
- FriendlyNormie 7y ago
  “Humble water filter merchant” is a term that some people use to describe Alex Jones.
  - outworlder 7y ago
    Wow. How did the 'humble' adjective can ever stick to that person? Is this used tongue in cheek?
    - FriendlyNormie 7y ago
      The whole phrase is a multilayered meme. It’s generally used by alt-right neo nazis with conflicted emotions who believe Alex Jones works for the Jews but also find his tantrums endearing. “Humble merchant” is a phrase often used by modern antisemites when they parody the speech of an imaginary Jew describing himself in a disarming way. Use of the meme also reveals how long a person has been immersed in alt-right neo nazi internet culture, because it likely originated when Alex Jones’ primary product was water filters rather than supplements, so anyone using the meme has probably been an alt-right neo nazi for 4+ years, or at least reads what such people say fairly often.

catalogia 7y ago

> In Bangladesh, it announced that the government would create a database of children’s immunisations linked to their parents’ biometric information – most likely a digital fingerprint. What is meant by "[biometric] digital fingerprint"? Do they just mean a literal fingerprint, but digitized? When I think of "digital fingerprints" I think of things like canvas fingerprinting or maybe perceptual hashing, not anything to do with biometrics. If they just mean taking prints of fingers and digitizing them, maybe just say "fingerprint" and drop the "digital" from the description. That's easier to understand. If people understand something, they'll fear it less.

detaro 7y ago
Matching of fingerprints and other biometrics is typically not done by storing an actual image, but by storing feature information hash-like. "digital fingerprint" is a pretty good term for that.
- catalogia 7y ago
  I'm aware that comparison of fingerprints is done by extracting/storing/comparing features. But in 2020 the digitization of fingerprints can/should go without saying and the details of how fingerprints are compared are just a distraction at best for most of the general public. As for 'digital fingerprint' being a good term for that, I disagree. I think that's a term that's very likely to confuse the layperson. If you search that term on wikipedia you'll find a disambiguation page that lists six options, none of which have anything to do with fingers: Message digest, Device fingerprint, Digital video fingerprinting, Acoustic fingerprint, Canvas fingerprinting, Content ID (algorithm) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_fingerprint https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_fingerprint If you search the same on google in a private window, the first two or three pages of results are all about the same computer-related topics as that wikipedia page (the first result is that wikipedia page, and the second is a blog post from Mozilla about browser fingerprinting.) After a few pages I started to find pages about digitized prints of fingers, so I don't doubt that people in the fingerprinting industry use this terminology. Nevertheless I can easily see laypeople being mislead.
7y ago

addHocker 7y ago

The WHO beeing subverted by chinese soft-power, guided the world into this disaster. All nations burned by the first SARS (Taiwan, South Korea, HK) who had there own independent organizations and reaction plans did very well in this crisis. The west, guided by inexperienced, foolish leadership, listening to bad advice from a corrupted institution, ran into this completely unprepared. Meanwhile nearly all western media still puts that sovjet era-propaganda out there, and having the west called out by a hyper-racist government(ccp), does not much to disuade the crack pots. After all, they see a very shallow conspiracy play out live on newscasts.

zionic 7y ago

Wow, the ratio of [dead] to non-[dead] comments in this thread is the highest I've ever seen

mywittyname 7y ago

Does anyone know where Alex Jones gets his ideas? Part of me thinks his team just makes shit up, but sometimes he seems to be part of a coordinated effort.

ErikAugust 7y ago
The web is overflowing with conspiracy theories. In a couple hours on some forums, he'd have years worth of material...
- outworlder 7y ago
  They are even conveniently aggregated. Look no further than r/conspiracy
ardy42 7y ago
> Does anyone know where Alex Jones gets his ideas? Part of me thinks his team just makes shit up, but sometimes he seems to be part of a coordinated effort. IIRC, a former InfoWars employee goes into that a bit in this article: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/05/magazine/alex-jones-infowars.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/05/magazine/alex-jones-infow...: > I Worked for Alex Jones. I Regret It. > I dropped out of film school to edit video for the conspiracy theorist because I believed in his worldview. Then I saw what it did to people. > ... > Shortly after Jones began selling the supplements, someone posted a video on YouTube holding a Geiger counter displaying high radiation readings on a beach in Half Moon Bay, Calif. The video went viral, stoking fears that radiation from Fukushima was drifting across the Pacific Ocean. Jones saw an opportunity and sent me, along with a reporter, a writer and another cameraman, to California. We had multiple Geiger counters shipped overnight, unaware of how to read or work them, and drove up the West Coast, frequently stopping to check radiation levels. Other than a small spike in Half Moon Bay — which the California Department of Public Health said was from naturally occurring radioactive materials, not Fukushima — we found nothing. > Jones was furious. We started getting calls from the radio-show producers in the office, warning us to stop posting videos to YouTube stating we weren’t finding elevated levels of radiation. We couldn’t just stop, though; Jones demanded constant real-time content. On some of these calls, I could hear Jones screaming in the background. One of the producers told me they had never seen him so angry.