5 ms·

It's powerful, important content, but collecting and promoting it as shock entertainment, entirely out of context, doesn't strike me as the right way to do it.

It's powerful, important content, but collecting and promoting it as shock entertainment, entirely out of context, doesn't strike me as the right way to do it. Our media's lack of willingness to portray the human cost of our overseas exploits is clearly a huge problem, but I don't think this really addressed it. It's all impact without usable information. While incredibly violent things do happen in the world regularly— and we should not be ignoring them— the world is safer than it has ever been, and that should also be front-and-center in people's minds when considering this. People predominantly concerned with the scariness and violence in the world will be more likely to promote overly violent responses to relatively innocuous situations through war, policy, policing, etc. I wish there was a publicly accessible, nonprofit archive a la Wikileaks that focused on similar content including oversight for things like privacy issues. It would be nice to see citizen pundits paying attention to it for issues that matter to them and putting things in context as they're shared instead just blasting streams of violence at people. But wish in one hand and successfully monetize in the other and see which one fills up first...

junon 6y ago
WatchPeopleDie was supposed to do this. I wish the mods had been better about the garbage comments, but even then I think the reddit admins were hell-bent on shutting down any subs they didn't personally like. But I agree fullheartedly. Seeing such things really made me 'feel' how precious life is and how terrible the world can be. It helped me navigate moving to Europe a few times, even.
- badRNG 6y ago
  > but even then I think the reddit admins were hell-bent on shutting down any subs they didn't personally like. Or shutting down subs that might make the site advertiser unfriendly.
  - chefandy 6y ago
    I really think for something like a violent video archive to do as much good as possible, it needs to be entirely grant funded. Aside from the obviously problematic approach of monetizing violence, I don't think you can be too heavy-handed in protecting privacy with this sort of thing. Though I wonder how this might change with deepfake videos gaining momentum. I think the entire venture would be really expensive to do well.
    - freshair 6y ago
      Grant funded? So you'd have people paying taxes to their government so their government could publish graphic videos of their loved ones dying in awful ways? That's beyond adding insult to injury. If such videos must be published, I'd rather not be made to pay for it. Monetizing violence isn't great either, but at least I'm not forced by law to be involved in it myself.
      - junon 6y ago
        Uh... not sure where you live, but not all grants come from taxpayer dollars. Grants can come from companies or academic institutions, etc.
      - chefandy 5y ago
        Your response comes across as needlessly antagonistic. My work is entirely grant funded and to my knowledge, none of it comes from the government— at least not directly. I'm positive that some of those private non-profits receive government assistance to some extent for operating expenses and whatnot, but the funds themselves are not tax-sourced. Beyond that, governments fund libraries and archives at every level and they deliberately have all sorts of collections, from completely benign to completely odious. Funding a deliberately sensationalist aggregator and monger of violence would be plainly obnoxious, but appropriately managed archives are in the public's best interest. Probably even more so for controversial content. I'm not sure how this would be any different.
- chefandy 6y ago
  Ugh. Having the ability to comment really does add an entirely new dimension to a service, but a culture of bad comments can be so disheartening, and it seems like a tough cancer to treat.
  - junon 6y ago
    Yep. The comments consisted of both extremes: analytical, reflective or informative responses, paired with "haha he got OWNED!" type of comments. The latter made me really wonder if those commenters had ever experienced loss or hardship in their lives.
    - lazide 6y ago
      As a species, we need a pretty wide distribution of experience and approaches or we’re essentially a monoculture waiting for the right set of circumstances to catch us unprepared and fail completely. As terrible as folks are who would laugh at someone getting sucked into an industrial grinder, they’d be untroubled by anxiety or worry and associated mental issues in a Mad Max type post apocalyptic wasteland and hence more able to survive. At least that’s what I tell myself to help sleep at night.
      - chefandy 6y ago
        Seems like a Mad Max type post apocalyptic wasteland would be a Mad Max type post apocalyptic wasteland rather than a cooperative, if rocky and uncomfortable re-establishment of a productive society specifically because of those people.
- kordlessagain 6y ago
  Buddhist monks visualize gore for enlightenment purposes.
- rainbowzootsuit 6y ago
  Memes can really get into your perceptions of things. Nowadays I always pay particular attention when I see a video with someone wearing flipflops if it's real life camera footage. I'm always "waiting for the other shoe to drop," so-to-speak.
- jhedwards 6y ago
  For what it's worth there's still r/CombatFootage
dannyphantom 6y ago
How does one maintain a website that hosts graphic content while overcoming the significant challenges of doing so? Immediate thoughts being keeping the site apolitical, unbiased, moderation, suppression of content, and the list goes on and on from there. Did anyone hear about the lawsuit filed against borderland beat allegedly filed by a cartel founder? https://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2020/nov/09/ticker-borderland-beat-shut-down/ https://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2020/nov/09/ticker-borde... http://www.borderlandbeat.com/ http://www.borderlandbeat.com/ somewhat serves as proof of concept for the risks in hosting unpalatable content. Threats of lawsuits, reporter risks, and even downstream effects of these articles inspiring American vigilantism at the border. It's never been a great idea to have an entire nation living in a bubble of ignorance - yet - the challenge of popping that bubble while remaining unbiased has yet to be overcome imo. edit: at the risk of sounding silly; from nowhere else but the Watchmen: 'who watches the watchmen?'

junon 6y ago

WatchPeopleDie was supposed to do this. I wish the mods had been better about the garbage comments, but even then I think the reddit admins were hell-bent on shutting down any subs they didn't personally like. But I agree fullheartedly. Seeing such things really made me 'feel' how precious life is and how terrible the world can be. It helped me navigate moving to Europe a few times, even.

badRNG 6y ago
> but even then I think the reddit admins were hell-bent on shutting down any subs they didn't personally like. Or shutting down subs that might make the site advertiser unfriendly.
- chefandy 6y ago
  I really think for something like a violent video archive to do as much good as possible, it needs to be entirely grant funded. Aside from the obviously problematic approach of monetizing violence, I don't think you can be too heavy-handed in protecting privacy with this sort of thing. Though I wonder how this might change with deepfake videos gaining momentum. I think the entire venture would be really expensive to do well.
  - freshair 6y ago
    Grant funded? So you'd have people paying taxes to their government so their government could publish graphic videos of their loved ones dying in awful ways? That's beyond adding insult to injury. If such videos must be published, I'd rather not be made to pay for it. Monetizing violence isn't great either, but at least I'm not forced by law to be involved in it myself.
    - junon 6y ago
      Uh... not sure where you live, but not all grants come from taxpayer dollars. Grants can come from companies or academic institutions, etc.
    - chefandy 5y ago
      Your response comes across as needlessly antagonistic. My work is entirely grant funded and to my knowledge, none of it comes from the government— at least not directly. I'm positive that some of those private non-profits receive government assistance to some extent for operating expenses and whatnot, but the funds themselves are not tax-sourced. Beyond that, governments fund libraries and archives at every level and they deliberately have all sorts of collections, from completely benign to completely odious. Funding a deliberately sensationalist aggregator and monger of violence would be plainly obnoxious, but appropriately managed archives are in the public's best interest. Probably even more so for controversial content. I'm not sure how this would be any different.
chefandy 6y ago
Ugh. Having the ability to comment really does add an entirely new dimension to a service, but a culture of bad comments can be so disheartening, and it seems like a tough cancer to treat.
- junon 6y ago
  Yep. The comments consisted of both extremes: analytical, reflective or informative responses, paired with "haha he got OWNED!" type of comments. The latter made me really wonder if those commenters had ever experienced loss or hardship in their lives.
  - lazide 6y ago
    As a species, we need a pretty wide distribution of experience and approaches or we’re essentially a monoculture waiting for the right set of circumstances to catch us unprepared and fail completely. As terrible as folks are who would laugh at someone getting sucked into an industrial grinder, they’d be untroubled by anxiety or worry and associated mental issues in a Mad Max type post apocalyptic wasteland and hence more able to survive. At least that’s what I tell myself to help sleep at night.
    - chefandy 6y ago
      Seems like a Mad Max type post apocalyptic wasteland would be a Mad Max type post apocalyptic wasteland rather than a cooperative, if rocky and uncomfortable re-establishment of a productive society specifically because of those people.
kordlessagain 6y ago
Buddhist monks visualize gore for enlightenment purposes.
rainbowzootsuit 6y ago
Memes can really get into your perceptions of things. Nowadays I always pay particular attention when I see a video with someone wearing flipflops if it's real life camera footage. I'm always "waiting for the other shoe to drop," so-to-speak.
jhedwards 6y ago
For what it's worth there's still r/CombatFootage

dannyphantom 6y ago

How does one maintain a website that hosts graphic content while overcoming the significant challenges of doing so? Immediate thoughts being keeping the site apolitical, unbiased, moderation, suppression of content, and the list goes on and on from there. Did anyone hear about the lawsuit filed against borderland beat allegedly filed by a cartel founder? https://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2020/nov/09/ticker-borderland-beat-shut-down/ https://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2020/nov/09/ticker-borde... http://www.borderlandbeat.com/ http://www.borderlandbeat.com/ somewhat serves as proof of concept for the risks in hosting unpalatable content. Threats of lawsuits, reporter risks, and even downstream effects of these articles inspiring American vigilantism at the border. It's never been a great idea to have an entire nation living in a bubble of ignorance - yet - the challenge of popping that bubble while remaining unbiased has yet to be overcome imo. edit: at the risk of sounding silly; from nowhere else but the Watchmen: 'who watches the watchmen?'