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If people had called one another to prepare this, would we say that the phone was responsible for the attack? And would we try to ban phones?
by efwfwef 6y ago
If people had called one another to prepare this, would we say that the phone was responsible for the attack? And would we try to ban phones?
- ardy42 6y ago> If people had called one another to prepare this, would we say that the phone was responsible for the attack? And would we try to ban phones? That's a moot point, because an attack like this can't realistically be organized via one-to-one communication. It needs a broadcast medium, which the phone network isn't.
- ruffrey 6y agoIt’s certainly easier with social media, but before that people used phones and in person meetings.
- beaner 6y agoIs CNN, a broadcast television network, considered a broadcast medium for attacks and terrorism for promoting and defending violent riots, and for giving reach to similar statements of support and justification from congress members such as AOC and Nancy Pelosi?
- andrewvc 6y agoThe idea that this summers riots were at all comparable to an attack on our nation's legislative body as it certified results of an election is repugnant and absurd. Its easier to point fingers at the other side than take any blame for your own. The insurrection at the nations capitol is a singular event, one that Republicans need to reckon with on its own terms. Some have done this, and I applaud them. They are proving to be the grown ups in the room.
- beaner 6y agoWhat makes you think I'm on a side? I see hypocrisy all around. I think the capitol protests should not have happened, and the people who participated in them should be held accountable. I agree with you that the capitol riots and the summer riots are incomparable. The summer riots were much worse, lasted longer, targeted innocents rather than political institutions, were widely excused and often promulgated by the newsmedia and politicians, are still talked about as if they were just, continually avoid criticism by cowardly saying that such points are a "distraction" in the face of things like the capitol riots, and use dishonest sleights of hand like the changing of language from "riot" to "attack" to gaslight.
- TheAceOfHearts 6y agoCould you give some concrete examples? I think the scale of events resulting from a statement are taken into consideration. Terrorists have sprung up after being radicalized by what they heard from one politician or another, but we typically won't consider the politician responsible for those actions. This probably starts going into whataboutism territory, but doesn't this stuff tend to go both ways? I'd postulate we can probably find a few damning quotes made on Fox as well. I'll note I'm very ignorant on this topic as I haven't actually watched television or any of these networks in years.
- beaner 6y agoExamples are everywhere, you just have to not be in a bubble and be open to seeing it. I could keep going but you tell me, do you need more? AOC: "The whole point of protesting is to make ppl uncomfortable." [-1] Slate: "Non-violence is an important tool for protests, but so is violence" [0] Vox: "Riots are destructive, dangerous, and scary — but can lead to serious social reforms" [1] Pelosi: "we welcome the presence of these activists" vs "our election was hijacked" [2] "CNN Promoted Charged Leftist Rioter Who Masqueraded As Reporter Despite No Credentials, Urged Assault On Capitol" [3] Chris Cuomo: "Show me where it says that protests are supposed to be polite and peaceful" [4] Supercut of news media justifying and excusing riots: [5] Daily beast and salon writer Arthur Chu calling for explicit murder of people he calls Nazis: [6] Difference in tone & presentation of NYT covering violent riots: [7] Sally Kohn, USA today writer: "I don't like violent protests but I understand them" [8] Kamala Harris: "Protests should not let up" Maxine Waters "If you see anybody from that cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store... You get out and you create a crowd and you push back on them." Nancy Pelosi: "I just don't know why there aren't uprisings all over the country. Maybe there will be soon." Ayanna Pressley: "There needs to be unrest in the streets" (I would agree that some of the politicians' quotes are a little weak, but in the name of consistency, these are at least worse than some types of language from Trump that would be called out as violence.) [-1] https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1334184644707758080 https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1334184644707758080 [0] https://twitter.com/slate/status/1268415955937513473?lang=en https://twitter.com/slate/status/1268415955937513473?lang=en [1] https://www.vox.com/2015/4/30/8518681/protests-riots-work https://www.vox.com/2015/4/30/8518681/protests-riots-work [2] https://twitter.com/ConceptualJames/status/1348439232415752192 https://twitter.com/ConceptualJames/status/13484392324157521... [3] https://thenationalpulse.com/breaking/cnn-promoted-capitol-rioter/ https://thenationalpulse.com/breaking/cnn-promoted-capitol-r... [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAe86my9r7A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAe86my9r7A [5] https://twitter.com/tomselliott/status/1347302588434284544 https://twitter.com/tomselliott/status/1347302588434284544 [6] https://twitter.com/Malcolm_fleX48/status/1347186287757959173 https://twitter.com/Malcolm_fleX48/status/134718628775795917... [7] https://twitter.com/ConceptualJames/status/1347055222980550657 https://twitter.com/ConceptualJames/status/13470552229805506... [8] https://twitter.com/DineshDSouza/status/1346927304073744388 https://twitter.com/DineshDSouza/status/1346927304073744388 More: https://thefederalist.com/2021/01/08/10-times-democrats-urged-violence-against-trump-and-his-supporters/ https://thefederalist.com/2021/01/08/10-times-democrats-urge...
- pokstad 6y agoReally? How did past revolutions and terrorist attacks get organized? You realize most of world history existed before the Internet, right?
- ardy42 6y ago> Really? How did past revolutions and terrorist attacks get organized? You realize most of world history existed before the Internet, right? Yeah, of course. Broadcasting means one-to-many communication. Before modern technology, those things were organized using other kinds of one-to-many communication, such as in-person meetings, rallies, and through newspapers and other kinds of publications. Movements aren't organized one-to-one like on a telephone, because that's a far slower way of spreading a message. It's also an unreliable medium, as the children's game "telephone" shows.
- imgabe 6y agoPhone trees are a well known and used method to broadcast information via the phone system.
- ardy42 6y ago> Phone trees are a well known and used method to broadcast information via the phone system. And pretty bad at doing it. It's actually pretty funny to imagine someone trying to organize a movement via a phone tree.
- philwelch 6y agoIn my home town, we had a local group of mostly old folks, largely right-wing, who would have monthly luncheons with local politicians, and the group was literally called the Phone Tree because that’s how they organized. Although in this case the “Phone Tree” was a primitive robodialer owned by the head of the organization and used to disseminate recorded announcements of when the next luncheon was and who would be the guest/s.
- earthscienceman 6y agoPhones don't pretend to be a moderated public platform. Also, the government has the legal right to monitor phones just as much as they do Facebook via the correct warrants.
- ryandrake 6y agoYea the difference in my mind is that the phone company does not moderate content or exercise editorial control over what gets sent over its lines, but Facebook does. So if Facebook decided that this kind of user generated content was acceptable to publish, they should be liable for the resulting problems.
- kevin_thibedeau 6y agoPhones don't allow complete strangers to discover each other and work themselves into a frenzy over their shared angst.
- bdamm 6y agoPhones do in fact allow this, the difference is that it doesn't scale up in a 1:many relationship, and the phone users are not incentivized to use the phone more for this purpose over, say, calling their mom.
- godelski 6y agoI'm not sure Facebook is acting like an editor here. Those approve every post. Facebook can't practically do they. I'm critical of this case because it's a large group and thus Facebook should have been aware, but it seems like it's a tall order to ask Facebook to migrate everything. Isn't this what section 230 is about? Before you either migrate all our not at all. 230 let's you at least try to moderate (because let's be real, you can't moderate a billion people)
- Nextgrid 6y agoFacebook does act like an editor by way of their algorithms. Facebook's (and other social media's) timelines are no longer limited to the people you explicitly follow. Whether they have the ability to moderate or not is irrelevant. If you can't afford the obligations of a publisher, don't be a publisher.
- drewg123 6y agoWhen telephones were a new technology, say in the 1890s, then yes, they probably would have.
- chmod600 6y agoWe (collectively) said that about Parler.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- burke 6y agoPhones provide communication over distances unlike what was previously available. This is something that society has kind of settled into at this point. Social media is new, and it provides communication fan-out unlike anything we've dealt with before except from people that are powerful enough to be given a platform on major TV networks. Guns don't kill people, but...
- kgog 6y agoSo Facebook is a public utility?
- lhorie 6y agoAren't phone lines also technically managed by private companies? AFAIK, postal service is a public service, but not phones.
- monocasa 6y agoI think the parent is referring to how phones are Title II common carriers.
- osgovernment 6y agoBased on the centralization of hosting and cloud services, it is about time that we re-evaluate ISPs and cloud providers.
- dr-detroit 6y agoIts backed by the CIA according to ABC news they wouldn't exist without a ton of taxpayer subsidies and special treatment.
- ghostbrainalpha 6y agoA better analog for a specific Facebook Group might be a hotline, like "1-900-Do-Terrorism". I would have no problem banning certain phone numbers that only exist to incite violence.
- kgwxd 6y agoNo, but no one seems to be trying to blame ISPs either. If there was a domestic terrorist 900 number, it would be a target.
- IfOnlyYouKnew 6y agoPeople didn't, because phones are not useful for this purpose. And, yes, if they were, we would be asking ourselves how to prevent their use for this purpose. The phone network is useful for other uses society deems to be net-negative, such as spammy calls. As a result, technical and legal barriers were erected to curtail such abuses.
- vb6sp6 6y agowe did declare that phones were dangerous and we did take steps to mitigate their ability to carry out attacks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MYSTIC_(surveillance_program) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MYSTIC_(surveillance_program)
- lqet 6y agoPhones don't broadcast. A small group of agitators could have used a pirate radio station to call for an attack on the capitol 50 years ago and reach millions of people, which is exactly why pirate radio stations are illegal.
- pokstad 6y agoPhones don't broadcast, but the two human callers can.
- entropea 6y agoPirate Radio stations & new LPFM are primarily illegal because Clear Channel/iHeartRadio cannot profit & control the flow of information as well as they do when they have competition. The things Clear Channel hosts, especially on AM, are not even very much different from calling for an attack on the Capitol, having listened to 20+ years (unfortunately) of Rush Limbaugh my grandfather was listening to. You can contact a lot of people on Amateur Radio or CB radio, but it's not illegal because it doesn't compete with big business.
- AlotOfReading 6y agoWhy would clear channel have anything to do with making pirate radio illegal, which it was for decades before the former ever existed?
- entropea 6y agoThe same reason, just replace with that generations Clear Channel lobbyists. FM/AM Radio is extremely anti-competitive.
- jpollock 6y agoPirate Radio stations are illegal because when it was more of a free-for-all, people would transmit at megawatt power. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_R._Brinkley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_R._Brinkley
- efwfwef 6y ago