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... And before that, there was local news and newspapers. Some time before that it might be your boss, your parents, or the local clergy. This is no change, bu

... And before that, there was local news and newspapers. Some time before that it might be your boss, your parents, or the local clergy. This is no change, but business as normal. What has changed is that we actually have easy access to information outside of the keyholders. So when the government and some in society dismiss complaints about police brutality, we can have the retribution of actual video (an example with both historical and current examples), and it is so much harder to dismiss. Unfortunately, not everyone is willing to believe facts - but again, I'm not sure this is more true today either, since folks have been rejecting things like modern medicine and science and so on for generations if not centuries. We simply know about it more, thanks to - in part, for good and bad - facebook. And reddit and HN and every social place on the internet.

free_rms 6y ago
It is a change, because it's centralized and national in scope. No single partisan local newspaper editor had the kind of reach that facebook has.
dfxm12 6y ago
I do think there are at least two material differences today. One is that you no longer need "physical access" to someone to manipulate them. It is so much easier to get your message to someone today. You don't even need to buy a costly newspaper or TV network. You can be individually targeted from anywhere in the world relatively easily. The scale is completely different. Second is that attackers are able to target specific people in a specific way thanks to the data collected by us online (I mean, your clergy doesn't have access to your search history). Your local clergy has to put forth a message that both appeals to an entire congregation and also fits in roughly with what is expected to be heard from clergy. The congregation can then talk to each other and decide if the message makes sense. Attackers going after a specific person don't have to deal with either of these.
chrisco255 6y ago
There's quite a difference between social media interjecting its opinion into your private, personal conversations and whatever the clergy at your local church back in the 90s would have said. They would not have even had visibility into say, what you might be talking about at the local pub or hanging out with your neighbors. A local newspaper might pitch a story, but editorials were clearly labeled and there were often competing newspapers in most towns. Statistically, police brutality isn't a problem and far more people suffer from the effects of too little policing than not (see murder rate in Chicago or Juarez). In this era, we suffer from magnification and amplification of the marginal. A thing that does not occur very often, statistically, can get blown completely out of proportion. The power of social media is the power of propaganda. Propaganda has been used throughout history to start wars, revolutions, religious battles, etc. It has the ability to shape the perception of reality in a way that has heretofore been unthinkable. Facebook alone has an audience and reach that no TV channel or newspaper has ever had. Quantity has a quality all its own.
- pjc50 6y ago
  > A thing that does not occur very often, statistically, can get blown completely out of proportion. 9/11 only happened once, and killed far fewer Americans than American police have since then. Therefore terrorism isn't a problem. (This argument isn't false, but it's highly misleading!)
  - octaveguin 6y ago
    I don't want to go down this rabbit hole but a lot of people believe that terrorism isn't a large problem. The outsized response to it has been. Neither position is an absurd one to take.
    - perl4ever 6y ago
      Generally speaking, your attitude towards anything depends on your assessment of what will happen in the future if it is unchecked. If you see a crack in a dam, and a rivulet of water coming through, you base your actions on whether you think it's going to become larger. If a person is pretty certain that the dam is about to collapse, then talking about the water coming through right now seems palpably absurd, but reverse the assumptions and taking drastic action seems equally absurd. There's no neutral way based on facts and independent of opinions to decide what's absurd, extreme, or hysterical. But at the same time, different views are different, and some are going to be severely wrong about anything controversial and important. I don't know how you make a generic framework that tells you the right thing to do when people are talking about invading Iraq, and also tells you the right thing to do when people are talking about shutdowns for covid.
- Nasrudith 6y ago
  The assertion that too little policing being a problem at large can be used to dismiss police brutality is disgustingly stupid and wrong. Police brutality isn't "too much" policing poured upon a location like floodwater but inherent crime and abuse of power and always a source of problems. Throwing police brutality into Jurarez is how you make the situation even worse and is part of how it got so bad in the first place! No institutional trust in policing caused organized crime to form long before prohibition was an issue. Police brutality is a seed of crime. It isn't like trolling where attention creates the problem but a tumor where ignoring it makes it grow from manageable to insurmountable.
catalogia 6y ago
Even in cases of clear video of an event, two people may come to opposing conclusions about what the video actually depicts. An example I saw on HN recently was the video from Seattle of a car hitting and killing two protestors on a highway. One commenter believed the video depicted reckless but ultimately unintentional manslaughter, while another believed it depicted premeditated murder. I think they were both sincere in their opinions, but they both watched the same video and can't both be right. Another example are the videos of the collapse of the WTC7 building. Many people view those videos and perceive an intact building being intentionally demolished. I view those same videos and perceive a building gutted by debris and fire collapsing under it's own weight. We watch the same videos but come to opposite conclusions.
- dfxm12 6y ago
  In this context, an apt metaphor would involve one commenter believing that the people were not struck by a car, or that the building still stands...
  - catalogia 6y ago
    I don't mean these to be metaphors to some other situation. I mean them to be real examples of the shortcomings of video evidence in determining objective truth. Both are examples that doubtlessly cause heated arguments facebook moderators are expected to moderate.
    - dfxm12 6y ago
      If that's the case, the problem isn't with video evidence, the problem is people don't know how to make logical arguments. Facebook didn't say they would be moderating discussion in that way.
      - catalogia 6y ago
        I don't think it's just a matter of people being illogical, (although it's certainly the case that all people will be illogical at least some of the time.) How people interpret what they observe is fundamentally subjective. > "Facebook didn't say they would be moderating discussion in that way." Sure, I'm responding more to the notion of "Unfortunately, not everyone is willing to believe facts" My point is that video doesn't always make it clear what the facts are. It's not merely a matter of 'some people don't believe facts' because in many cases different people can view the same video and, with a large degree of confidence and in good faith, have different opinions on what the facts are.

free_rms 6y ago

It is a change, because it's centralized and national in scope. No single partisan local newspaper editor had the kind of reach that facebook has.

dfxm12 6y ago

I do think there are at least two material differences today. One is that you no longer need "physical access" to someone to manipulate them. It is so much easier to get your message to someone today. You don't even need to buy a costly newspaper or TV network. You can be individually targeted from anywhere in the world relatively easily. The scale is completely different. Second is that attackers are able to target specific people in a specific way thanks to the data collected by us online (I mean, your clergy doesn't have access to your search history). Your local clergy has to put forth a message that both appeals to an entire congregation and also fits in roughly with what is expected to be heard from clergy. The congregation can then talk to each other and decide if the message makes sense. Attackers going after a specific person don't have to deal with either of these.

chrisco255 6y ago

There's quite a difference between social media interjecting its opinion into your private, personal conversations and whatever the clergy at your local church back in the 90s would have said. They would not have even had visibility into say, what you might be talking about at the local pub or hanging out with your neighbors. A local newspaper might pitch a story, but editorials were clearly labeled and there were often competing newspapers in most towns. Statistically, police brutality isn't a problem and far more people suffer from the effects of too little policing than not (see murder rate in Chicago or Juarez). In this era, we suffer from magnification and amplification of the marginal. A thing that does not occur very often, statistically, can get blown completely out of proportion. The power of social media is the power of propaganda. Propaganda has been used throughout history to start wars, revolutions, religious battles, etc. It has the ability to shape the perception of reality in a way that has heretofore been unthinkable. Facebook alone has an audience and reach that no TV channel or newspaper has ever had. Quantity has a quality all its own.

pjc50 6y ago
> A thing that does not occur very often, statistically, can get blown completely out of proportion. 9/11 only happened once, and killed far fewer Americans than American police have since then. Therefore terrorism isn't a problem. (This argument isn't false, but it's highly misleading!)
- octaveguin 6y ago
  I don't want to go down this rabbit hole but a lot of people believe that terrorism isn't a large problem. The outsized response to it has been. Neither position is an absurd one to take.
  - perl4ever 6y ago
    Generally speaking, your attitude towards anything depends on your assessment of what will happen in the future if it is unchecked. If you see a crack in a dam, and a rivulet of water coming through, you base your actions on whether you think it's going to become larger. If a person is pretty certain that the dam is about to collapse, then talking about the water coming through right now seems palpably absurd, but reverse the assumptions and taking drastic action seems equally absurd. There's no neutral way based on facts and independent of opinions to decide what's absurd, extreme, or hysterical. But at the same time, different views are different, and some are going to be severely wrong about anything controversial and important. I don't know how you make a generic framework that tells you the right thing to do when people are talking about invading Iraq, and also tells you the right thing to do when people are talking about shutdowns for covid.
Nasrudith 6y ago
The assertion that too little policing being a problem at large can be used to dismiss police brutality is disgustingly stupid and wrong. Police brutality isn't "too much" policing poured upon a location like floodwater but inherent crime and abuse of power and always a source of problems. Throwing police brutality into Jurarez is how you make the situation even worse and is part of how it got so bad in the first place! No institutional trust in policing caused organized crime to form long before prohibition was an issue. Police brutality is a seed of crime. It isn't like trolling where attention creates the problem but a tumor where ignoring it makes it grow from manageable to insurmountable.

catalogia 6y ago

Even in cases of clear video of an event, two people may come to opposing conclusions about what the video actually depicts. An example I saw on HN recently was the video from Seattle of a car hitting and killing two protestors on a highway. One commenter believed the video depicted reckless but ultimately unintentional manslaughter, while another believed it depicted premeditated murder. I think they were both sincere in their opinions, but they both watched the same video and can't both be right. Another example are the videos of the collapse of the WTC7 building. Many people view those videos and perceive an intact building being intentionally demolished. I view those same videos and perceive a building gutted by debris and fire collapsing under it's own weight. We watch the same videos but come to opposite conclusions.

dfxm12 6y ago
In this context, an apt metaphor would involve one commenter believing that the people were not struck by a car, or that the building still stands...
- catalogia 6y ago
  I don't mean these to be metaphors to some other situation. I mean them to be real examples of the shortcomings of video evidence in determining objective truth. Both are examples that doubtlessly cause heated arguments facebook moderators are expected to moderate.
  - dfxm12 6y ago
    If that's the case, the problem isn't with video evidence, the problem is people don't know how to make logical arguments. Facebook didn't say they would be moderating discussion in that way.
    - catalogia 6y ago
      I don't think it's just a matter of people being illogical, (although it's certainly the case that all people will be illogical at least some of the time.) How people interpret what they observe is fundamentally subjective. > "Facebook didn't say they would be moderating discussion in that way." Sure, I'm responding more to the notion of "Unfortunately, not everyone is willing to believe facts" My point is that video doesn't always make it clear what the facts are. It's not merely a matter of 'some people don't believe facts' because in many cases different people can view the same video and, with a large degree of confidence and in good faith, have different opinions on what the facts are.