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Facebook party invite sparks riot in Haren, Netherlands
- _of 14y agoMainstream news...
- tisme 14y agoNegative real world impact of social media. Seems like very much on topic for HN given that quite a few of us make a living and/or are creating new social media sites.
- oracuk 14y agoAgreed, it may be my age but I think as IT professionals we have a responsibility for the real world impacts of the systems we build and/or run. I see this as a similar to an engineer seeing a mainstream news report of an unintended side effect of large scale engineering project.
- norswap 14y agoThe sheer absurdity of the whole thing made me laugh.
- danieldk 14y agoIt's completely surreal. I live about four kilometers from Haren, it's a relatively quiet suburban area, inhabited by mostly wealthier people. Pretty much the last place you'd expect a riot. It was mostly white trash that look for any occasion to wreak havoc. Fortunately, the place was also packed with local and national media, so lots of the people who trashed the place are captured on video. One can only hope that they'll send them the cleaning and repair bills. Also, this will increase the interest in automatically monitoring of social media to identify threats.
- rheide 14y agoI would've laughed too, were it not that these people completely wrecked a small village, caused considerable damage, rioted against the police and injured the residents. I am appalled at my own country for letting this happen.
- smoyer 14y agoAbsurd may be correct and it might have been laughable had no one been injured. At some point you'll want to learn when laughing is appropriate (it's a social skill).
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- alx 14y agoCan someone remember this presentation about a social network event going horribly wrong?
- muriithi 14y agoI had to check whether today is April 1.
- Roelven 14y agoI moved out of the Netherlands a couple of years ago, this makes me feel ashamed. The authorities handled this so poorly that it just had to explode into riots. Two years ago similar problems where arising in France, called Apéro géant. The crowds intended to organize the biggest party at the Eiffel Tower, everyone feared problems. Authorities sealed the surroundings, but let everyone pass through as long as they handed in their alcohol. Once arrived at the location there was not much of a party so nothing happened. It's going to be interesting to see what happens to social media monitoring, also interested to see what happens with the damages and the people on tape (youtube, fb et all)
- danieldk 14y agoOr they could just have directed people to a soccer field outside the village (since most people have probably arrived via public transit) and put on a stage with some music. Even if some rioting would've started, there would be no houses or shops to demolish, and it would be far easier to isolate the rioting core group from other people. The mayor refuted such plans with claims that that made the authorities responsible on the occasion something happened. As if that is worse than the current outcome.
- andreasvc 14y agoI don't think this idea is really feasible. There wasn't time to prepare an event of such scale adequately (especially its security), and the argument about responsibility is true I think (not that the current outcome is much better). Also I tend to believe the claim that there were hooligans among them who only came to wreak havoc. In hindsight they should've blocked all access ways to the village (train and roads). I say in hindsight because people simply didn't expect this to go so wrong. The lesson to me is that mobs are a scary thing. They can turn angry very suddenly as people start to copy the behavior of the first person to throw a stone.
- Freestyler_3 14y ago3 days before the event it was mentioned in the media, enough time to put at least something there. I heard a rumor that they changed some street signs to confuse the people, now that is wasting time. They knew a lot of people were going to really show up, but they took it lightly. Non the less the people destroying stuff are way out of line, all the errors of the authorities don't justify that.
- tisme 14y agoAn 84 year old resident had his head bashed in with a street tile by one of the visitors. Small towns like this are not very well equipped to deal with flash mobs of this kind, especially not when a substantial portion of those arriving has bad intentions from the start. An interesting twist to this story is that those very same social media are now being used to identify the perpetrators with amazing speed. Names and pictures as well as movies have been made available to the authorities and 10's of people have already been arrested and/or have given themselves up at police stations.
- ginko 14y agoI don't know how party invitations work in Facebook, because I don't use it. But considering that party flashmobs like these appear to be happening regularly and often cause considerable damage and bad PR, shouldn't Facebook think about changing the way party invitations work? For instance by asking if the user REALLY wants to make the invitation public?
- andreasvc 14y agoWell in this case the person accidentally made the invitation public. I don't know whether your idea really helps much, because other times people intentionally make flash mobs, and they can be problematic. It seems to be difficult to address without totalitarian measures.
- Zirro 14y ago"Well in this case the person accidentally made the invitation public." Doesn't Facebook make it possible to change the status or remove it, once she realized her mistake?
- rabidsnail 14y agoBy the time you realized the mistake the invitation could have been copied elsewhere.
- michh 14y agoIt does. In fact, she deleted the entire event. But by that time it had gained enough momentum for somebody to just make a new event and it was then totally out of her hands.
- arrrg 14y agoI think the problem here isn't Facebook, it's the incompetent and hysterical reaction of the police to those parties.
- kitsune_ 14y ago
- kmfrk 14y agoWhen I get old, I am going to tell children that "back when I was young, we didn't call those things 'invites', but 'invitations'".
- Freestyler_3 14y agoOf course the event was handled wrong by regulators, but I don't think that means you can riot. What were they expecting? Police waiting with pie and drink and music? Of course not, if you go there you should expect the risk of there being not much to do.
- DanBC 14y agoThe guerilla party is one thing, and they've happened before. Having t-shirts printed is a new touch. But I'm more interested in this: > A new Facebook page has since been created called "Project Clean-X Haren" to clear up after Friday night's disturbances. It had more than 17,000 "likes" as of Saturday morning. I'd be fascinated to see a guerilla clean-up crew cleaning the trash, removing graffiti, fixing damage, doing a bit of gardening.
- tatsuke95 14y ago>"It had more than 17,000 "likes" as of Saturday morning." I'm sure like most Facebook initiatives, people "Like" the idea, but probably won't be taking any real action on their own. That's for other people.
- datr 14y agoNot always the case. The clean up efforts after the london riots last year were quite successful. This photo [1] is from during the riots but helped to restore my faith in people too. [1] http://www.flickr.com/photos/pixel-eight/6024429000/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/pixel-eight/6024429000/
- kitsune_ 14y agoThis Project X shit happened some months ago here in Switzerland where I live. In fact the invites were mostly sent out with WhatsApp and not Facebook, so that the authorities could not track it as easily. It ended with glass bottles being thrown around and riot police answering with tear gas.
- Freestyler_3 14y agoWe have all read about whatsapp security, it is traceable especially with government resources.
- waxjar 14y agoI blame the traditional media for this one. The dutch media have been reporting on it for days before the event was supposed to happen. One media outlet even went as far as setting up a live stream for the "event". The traditional media hyped this up so bad, they essentially created a self-fulfilling prophecy.
- andreasvc 14y agoI agree, but of course they are quick to disavow any responsibility, saying only the people who decide to throw stones are to blame. Even worse than the live stream was the radio DJ who was encouraging people to go to the 'party' (he has since apologized). This relates a bit to the problem of copycat crimes and the reporting of suicides causing an increase in suicides. Publicity increases the problem, but it's hard to get all the media to agree voluntarily on not giving it too much attention. I wonder how this problem should be solved. In an ideal world you could have a system as in science with independent peer review, to do fact checking and preventing hypes. But of course such a system would be much too slow and you would have lots of people complaining it's not free press.
- rmc 14y agoThis relates a bit to the problem of copycat crimes and the reporting of suicides causing an increase in suicides. Publicity increases the problem, but it's hard to get all the media to agree voluntarily on not giving it too much attention. It can work in reverse aswell. If car fatalities are reported more, people might become aware that cars are dangerous, and drive safer, hence reducing fatalities & injuries.
- andreasvc 14y agoBut does it, actually? I think there's a much stronger effect in the opposite case when it's about an idea being or not being in people's consciousness. Warning people about risks is in many cases not very effective, e.g., drunk driving, smoking, unhealthy diets.