Slashdot Mirror
Reddit Bans Subreddit Dedicated To Finding Navy Yard Shooters
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Reddit became a gathering place for amateur sleuthing in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing earlier this year, fueling what some reports called 'online witch hunts' that resulted in some people being falsely identified as the bomber. Now Andrea Peterson reports at the Washington Post that a section on the popular online community for finding the Navy Yard shooters has been banned. 'We banned it because it violated site rules by encouraging the posting of personal information,' says Erik Martin from reddit. The shooting at the Washington Navy Yard on Monday morning left at least 12, including a gunman dead. But police say there may be another suspect at large, and they 'have reason to believe' this individual was involved in shootings."
This is a story about reddit, l predict the usual anti-gun nuts will come out of the woodwork with their gun control agenda.
This is plainly offtopic and should be discouraged by modding all threads down.
Keep it ontopic folks, otherwise you are hijacking the conversation and violating slashdot policy.
Since 4chan will just get it wrong for them.
Just tell me who to beat senseless with mob justice and I'm there
...went really well for Reddit. They probably banned it just for the potential deluge of bad publicity.
Is it this site perpetually overloaded because it runs on a pooper scooper in the clouds ?
When I checked it, all the Redditors were pointing out how bad Reddit fucked things up last time around and most of the posts in the subreddit were just jokes or trolling comments.
For example, the thread called "First security cam stills are out" linked to this:
http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/183ob861iy0ckjpg/ku-bigpic.jpg
And right after they'd managed to finger Lee Harvey Oswald.
Coincidence? Follow the money, sheeple!
It can't possibly be a terrorist attack since we are constantly told on Slashdot that there are no terrorists, and deviation from that view is punished.
As I recall and TFS states these Sherlocks managed to wrongly identify at least one person in the Boston bombings and correctly identify none, so good riddance to any further efforts in that direction.
by incorrectly naming suspect. http://www.dailydot.com/news/aaron-alexis-navy-yard-linkedin-reddit/
work in progress
Having been on the receiving end of one such "investigation", I can say, I'm glad, the justice is not as swift these days.
But you can't ban this — not without abolishing the First Amendment...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
As long as it on your property or public property. If you start talking crap about the occupation of palestine at Starbucks, they tell you to get out.
http://vigilantcitizen.com/hidden-knowledge/origins-and-techniques-of-monarch-mind-control/
Monarch Programming is a method of mind control used by numerous organizations for covert purposes. It is a continuation of project MK-ULTRA, a mind-control program developed by the CIA, and tested on the military and civilians. The methods are astonishingly sadistic (its entire purpose is to traumatize the victim) and the expected results are horrifying: [...]
In America, you have freedom of speech... but it's the 18th-century definition of "speech", which is more accurately described by today's use of the word "expression", because you have the freedom to claim any idea you want, rather than being required to pretend you like whatever the government likes. Speaking of government, that's the only entity offering you that freedom. The government promises you free expression, but others are equally free to express displeasure at your expression, to the extent of their other rights. Businesses can refuse to serve you, newspapers can reject your letters to the editor, and other people can even burn you in effigy... because those are all protected speech/expression as well.
Of course, in the past 237 years, people have abused that freedom of expression to curtail others' rights. The Supreme Court has determined that the right to free expression is not as important as someone else's right to life, and it doesn't override rule of law, either. Speech that incites "imminent lawless action" is not protected, even from the government.
Americans have the freedom of expression. You can post your ideas on a billboard and display them (in a lawful manner), and you are completely safe from government prosecution and persecution for holding those views. You are not safe, however, from the consequences of pissing people off.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
"Police are now looking for shooters car in and around Navy Yard. Its described as Black Nissan with Texas tag BJH-7396.
Paul Wagner
Fox5Wagner
via Twitter about 1h ago"
Unequivocally the realest of the realz...
preliminary research indicate the shooter was registered Democrat, Obama supporter, muslim and gay. Obama's teleprompter is going to drill a hole in the ground with the spin job.
The NSA most likely has more than enough information to secretly try and convict this person. Notice to arm chair vigilantes, the government is already more than likely to have all these peoples internet search histories, all their acquaintances and all their phone calls. And that presumes that normal everyday monitoring hadn't already flagged them for extra scrutinity!
Rest assured citizen, you are in good hands! Just don't band together informally, remember, that's what the terrerists do!
-
Im a reddit member and the way they all acted during the boston bombing was disgraceful. They were all jumping on bandwagons, calling out people, making false accusations and pretending like they were FBI agents hunting down criminals when in reality they were all pretentious douches that wanted to feel tough and special.
Id seen pictures posted of people, claims made and in the end they were all wrong. I just hope they didn't damage anyone's reputation with that pitiful excuse for amateur hour.
I hope they all suffer from sexual dysfunction for the rest of their lives.
The Supreme Court has determined that the right to free expression is not as important as someone else's right to life, and it doesn't override rule of law, either. Speech that incites "imminent lawless action" is not protected, even from the government.
They have no power to insert things into the constitution that weren't there before, which is exactly what they did.
That "fire in a crowded theater" case? Used to arrest war protestors.
well said
it is unfortunate so many people out there think freedom means "i can do whatever the hell i want without consequence" like an immature child
and don't understand what freedom really is: something that goes hand in hand with responsibility, as any true adult understands
please note:
where there is no responsibility, there is no freedom
if you don't understand or agree with that statement, you don't even know what freedom really is
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I must have missed when Reddit and all other businesses had to adhere to the US Constitution, the Ten Commandments, and the Code of Hammurabi. Oh, wait, that's because I don't live in some kind of deluded libertarian bubble where everyone needs to bend to the whims of uninformed idiots.
You are not safe, however, from the consequences of pissing people off.
Like advocating for the freedom of slaves...
Social media is great for a lot of things such as getting different points of view on a news topic. Social media is not good for witch hunts. Anyone who's used reddit knows how easily the hivemind is swayed to hate or love someone. All it takes is a cleverly worded article romanticizing about how great or how awful someone is. People who know the formula can almost flip a switch to the entire community.
Witch hunts are bad enough when it is just a corporation behaving badly. Thread people talk about passing out pitch forks and so forth and so on. There definitely is a witch hunt mentality sometimes on reddit. And normally it is mostly harmless. Dumb, but harmless. Social media is good for a lot of things, but crime solving is not one of these things.
Real media is threatened by social media. So anything that is bad in social media, real media will highlight hard. They'll try everything they can to discourage people from using social media and outright close it down if they can. So it is better that social media witch hunts get shut down prematurely, before someone determines themselves to be a vigilante or otherwise act dumb out in public.
To conclude social media should be used for it strengths such as bringing attention to intelligent conversations, humor, and different points of view. This is refreshing compared to main stream media which every channel is corrupted by political agendas so there is no such thing as different points of view that are correct. Social media has weaknesses, and maybe we should really act to make sure these weaknesses don't go out of control.
God spoke to me
Just what DO you think freedom means? Do you think freedom means "I can do whatever the hell I want, right up until the point the state decides what I'm doing is irresponsible and sends goons to beat the shit out of me, throw me in a cage, and/or kill me?" Because that's an awfully funny definition of "freedom"; it's rather similar to "despotism".
The usual way that statement works is "the large print giveth, the small print taketh away". For example, "citizens have the right to free speech / citizens have the responsibility not to speak in a way Authority doesn't like".
They have no power to insert things into the constitution that weren't there before...
...but the SCOTUS does have the power (and the duty) to interpret the law according to the circumstances at hand, reconciling the traditional written law with the current societal views. Ideally, the judicial branch is what determines whether something that is law is also right.
That "fire in a crowded theater" case? Used to arrest war [protesters].
Or, from the perspective of American citizens in 1919, the accused (Schenck) was weakening the American war effort, indirectly threatening the lives of every American. That infringes on their inherent and inalienable right to life, which as noted earlier, generally takes precedence over freedom of expression. The key detail in the ruling, of which "falsely shouting fire in a theatre" was an illustration, was that speech intended to create a "clear and present danger" should not be protected.
However, the SCOTUS was eventually swayed by later societal focus on the right of free expression. In 1969, another case reached the court (involving a man indirectly threatening the President), but the opinion had changed. The SCOTUS opined that even though the speech was advocating violence and literally even promoting treason, it was not directly inciting "imminent lawless action", so it should indeed be protected. That test remains the standard to this day, overriding the earlier "clear and present danger" concept.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Reddit has terms of service and rules that you adhere to when posting or otherwise participating in the community. They don't have an obligation to accommodate those rules to your liking.
That doesn't destroy your freedom of speech. You're free to email or use some other service which allows you to communicate that information. You can try Slashdot, if you want.
"Science can amuse and fascinate us all, but it is engineering that changes the world. " - Asimov.
more like "your freedom to swing your fists ends at my nose"
i can't play my music at 3 am, i impinge on my neighbor's right to sleep
i can't speed 120 mph on the highway, i impinge on other driver's right to live
i can't smoke in the office, i impinge on my fellow worker's right to breathe
and when the boss/ police/ landlord comes by and complains, there will be some, like yourself, who in their immaturity, will see it as the state taking away their rights, when the only person infringing on other people's rights is you
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Except the purpose of this banned subreddit wasn't actually to find the shooter. It was satirical. All the posters were making fun of how bad they fucked things up during the Boston bombings.
And you know that:
1. Some posters will miss the /sarcasm tag, take it seriously and post personal information of real life people. /sarcasm tag and flog stories about how Reddit is screwing the lives of innocent people. Again.
2. Some posters will take the opportunity to post personal information of their ex's, their enemies, their bosses...
3. Some media company will miss the
Reddit did the right thing by shutting it down.
Dude, seriously...
If I WAS safe from the consequences of pissing people off then what would be the point of having free speech to begin with?
All that happens on such a subreddit is wild speculation. Last time they did it, innocent people wrongly identified got harrassed IRL. They're not detectives. Just send any real tips direct to the FBI.
Actually, they are not supposed to reconcile anything "with the current societal views." That is what causes all the problems. When current societal views say that "freedom of the press" only means printing or speaking viewpoints approved by the government and the government says that believing in the FOSS ideals is no longer allowed are we still okay with SCOTUS reconciling "with current societal views" or would we prefer that SCOTUS focus solely on the original intent of the framers (or authors of more recent amendments)?
Your example actually shows where SCOTUS fell for the current societal views trap and a later court had to correct the course back to be more in alignment with the original intent. That is, we are free to express ideas that are not popular; even ideas that are against the government. So far, nobody has been able to show that the framers were advocates of lawlessness or outright lying so the current interpretation is that free speech was never intended to allow such speech.
Another good example to see why adherents to all sides of the political spectrum should want the original interpretation model is the privacy of email and other cloud-storage. Why should personal communications via email or text message be viewed differently than snail mail. The court views Fedex and UPS the same as USPS, so why not email and text messages? I've seen it argued that because cloud-stored documents are in the hands of a third-party that the 4th amendment no longer applies to them. Really? The 4th amendment applies to my safe deposit box at the bank and to my storage unit I might rent and my property in them is being held by a third party. Are the things I type and store in the cloud any less my personal effects than the things I type on paper and store in that safe deposit box? No. But because "original intent" was getting in the way of the liberal agenda for so many years, society through it out as a concept and treats the phrase about the same way that the word Voldemort is treated in the Harry Potter universe.
While you may not be physically safe you are legally and philosophically safe. That is why the US allows many modes of self-defense. People may be upset by your words but that does not give them the "right" to harm you over it.
I like the definition I heard a Black man on TV use once a few years ago.
"Freedom does not mean doing what you can get away with, doing what you please. It means, instead, having the opportunity to do what you ought to do--for family and for community and for humanity as a whole."
Oh, the beauty of silence... or fools (idiots) not remaining silent.
Pot, meet kettle.
A libertarian would whole-heartedly agree that the US Constitution absolutely does not require a business to accommodate anyone's needs or desires. For instance, libertarians are absolutely against such things as the EEOC penalizing employers for not hiring based on race or political viewpoints and such. Libertarians view the constitution as allowing people to assemble with other like-minded people and this inherently means that they can choose to not associate with not-like-minded people.
I would say it's better with a thousand innocent people being checked out by law enforcement than one guilty going free because nobody shared their knowledge.
In particular in situations like this where terror is a possible angle all resources must be utilized in order to maximize the chance for getting the guilty ones and minimizing the time before that happens. Terrorists have no rights, not as citizens, not as human beings - and should be treated accordingly.
"You can't print ammunition"
Apparently you're a bit slow on the uptake of a 3D Printers capabilities.
To whit: Forget guns, here comes 3D printed ammunition
This has been reddit's policy for a while. It's fairly open and free, but there are explicit limits. Reddit doesn't claim to be a totally free and pen forum.
Businesses can refuse to serve you
Me, yes. Me and my friends, yes. Me and everyone that has the same skin color as me, no.
"left at least 12, including a gunman dead"
I think they meant "left at least 12 dead, including a gunman"
Ah, yes. The freedom to do what Authority decides you ought to do. Bottom line is that in free societies, people will on occasion do things that aren't good for themselves or for society. Freedom means the freedom to do wrong things - thought not freedom to do them without consequence.
Maybe you could make a movie about irresposible zombies. That would be great.
where there is no responsibility, there is no freedom
if you don't understand or agree with that statement, you don't even know what freedom really is
All right, I'm intrigued. To me, freedom in the legal sense is about immunity from consequences, i.e. that you can do something without being punished. Freedom is different from legal rights in that it's the default -- if nobody threatens you with violence, you are free. If the government grants you (or recognises your right to) freedom of speech , you can say anything without being persecuted by the government. The fact that others can ostrichise you or condemn you for the speech is orthogonal to the question of freedom. Even the government can disagree, but they can't use their special powers. Then the famous example of yelling "fire" in a theatre, to cause danger and panic. This is illegal, but that is a restriction of the freedom of speech. Less freedom. The lawmakers maintain that some limitations of the freedom of speech are necessary for a functioning society. There is no mandate of personal responsibility, it's all "you do X and I track you down and lock you up". (I'm not saying this is wrong, I don't have a coherent opinion on it)
So, how does responsibility factor in? Is your statement a practical one, that society cannot function unless people take responsibility? If so , that seems like a question of ethics, whether this is truly responsibility or instead compassion, "goodness" or maximisation of utility. The concept of freedom is also only indirectly involved.
So I think I finally got it (I should probably edit the post now, but I won't, sorry if I bored you to death [i.e. I abused my freedom of speech to infringe on your right to live]). Having ultimate freedom means having the ability to infringe on others' freedoms, so such a system is not only impractical, it is fundamentally inconsistent. I still don't think that responsibility is the solution, though it would be nice if we could not restrict people's freedom to punch wherever they damn well pleased, and rely on their human decency to not have them beat each other up. In practice, I think responsibility enters, but the granting of freedoms seems carefully measured so that an irresponsible person can't do too much harm (with multiple exceptions, of course, but only at the level of ppb).
How dare you try to censor people?
It's the "authorities" that have proved to be incompetent with countless investigations, and violate suspects due process of law, and if they wouldn't do things like that, then people would not be conducting independent investigations.
You have a choice. Either end your little ban, or close your doors and get the hell out of our country.
There are repercussions on those that censor freedom.
We are Anonymous.
We do not forgive. We do not forget.
Expect us.
Yes, SCOTUS exists to reconcile laws with the current views. Laws are slow to change, whereas technology and morality can change overnight.
When current societal views say [bad things] are we still okay with SCOTUS...
Just stop right there. "We" are society. If current views are in favor of censoring speech, that means that Americans generally consider such censorship to be right. Since this is a democracy, ruled by the people, it is ultimately the people's opinions that matter most, even more than the original wording of the law.
There are many good reasons to reject the morality of 1776 to suit modern tastes. Eliminating the three-fifths compromise is a glaring example, along with expanding voting rights, abolishing slavery, implementing term limits, and federating infrastructure. When the Constitution was written, society generally assumed that such changes would be unnecessary. After all, it was really only white male landowners who did anything politically anyway, so naturally they were the only ones who needed to be able to vote.
Privacy, as you so blindly pointed out, is another reason to diverge from the Constitution's original intent. In the decades leading up to the Constitution's writing, the British military had used searches as a means to deny service to colonists. If someone had annoyed the local commander, they could expect their shop to be shut down for the next week while soldiers searched/destroyed it for no particular reason, with no oversight. The Fourth Amendment was included not to ensure secrecy, but to protect only against harassment. Note that it's placed in context with the right to not quarter troops, and the right to not incriminate yourself. That's why the Fourth Amendment's applicability to third-party storage is in question, because a search that doesn't interrupt your daily business is much less likely to be harassment.
More recently, though, the expectation for a "reasonable" search has grown to include respect for secrecy as well. Society's idea of "reasonable" has now shifted enough that a SCOTUS ruling in accordance with the original intent would be outrageously wrong. Remember that in 1776, walls weren't insulated, glass windows were expensive, and gossip was the primary local news source. The only expectation of privacy happened outside the town - and somebody probably would see you leaving.
By the same principle, consider that the morality of today may not apply in the future. One opinion currently changing is how free speech applies to corporate entities. Currently, corporations are allowed to choose how they conduct business as a matter of expression. This is how companies can choose not to do business with a group they find offensive or otherwise don't like. It's also how a company can make political donations to further their own goals. There's growing controversy surrounding both of these issues, so I expect that within the next few decades, we'll see a SCOTUS ruling clarifying how much free speech corporations (along with store managers, employees, and other representatives) can actually have while operating.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Freedom means the freedom to do wrong things - thought not freedom to do them without consequence.
Thing is, those consequences don't necessarily correct the wrong behavior.
In fact, one of the wrong things people are free to do is to prevent and cover up consequences from applying to people who do wrong things. Now, there are consequences to obstructing justice, but then you are free to do another wrong thing to cover that up, and the wrong doing just piles up instead decreasing.
You know, maybe first you cook meth to cover your cancer expenses and leave enough money for your family after you're gone, but then you had to kill a guy, and make deals with thugs and drug lords, and a whole bunch of other stuff happen, and you go deeper and deeper, turning from humble chemistry teacher to feared drug lord who makes the best blue meth...
when the consequence hurts me as well, i have a right to have a say in that behavior
because i love freedom crushing authority?
no, because i love MY freedom
and i don't want my freedom oppressed by that from which a lot of freedom oppression in this world actually comes from: not the stereotypical government goon, but from my fellow citizen who is an irresponsible moron
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
that's a very interesting example
it sounds like a premise for a book or movie or tv show
i bet it would be quite successful
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
in a society where people always do whatever the hell they want with no regard for responsibility, you get absolute authoritarianism, because somebody has to make the assholes pay
in a society where people always acts responsibly, you have the utopian libertarian ideal society of 100% freedom
of course, neither extreme actually happens, but the point is, the more people behave responsibly, the more true freedom everyone has, and the less people beahve responsibly, the more people have to depend upon the state to make society function
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
maybe first you cook meth
If meth cooking were legal, none of the rest would follow.
when the consequence hurts me as well
In a society with free speech, you get a say even when that behavior is none of your business.
Sure why not. Somebody earlier did the wrong thing in making meth cooking illegal. Instead of correcting that wrong, people did more wrongs, leading to the gangs and drug lords and violence. The point still stands
The point still stands
As does my point. Society of the US is unable to accept the freedom of allowing people to use harmful recreational drugs on themselves. This loss of freedom leads to other harms as your morality play demonstrates.
It is not the loss of freedom that led to other harms. It is people's own choices that lead to other harms. Somebody choose to make meth illegal. Did somebody force them to make that choice? Government didn't point a gun to their head, since it was government themselves who made the choice (what, government pointed a gun at itself?)
People had the freedom to choose. Losing their freedom was a consequence of their choice. Going back to my first point, people continue to make more wrong choices instead of actually facing the consequences or doing something to reverse the wrong doing.
People had the freedom to choose. Losing their freedom was a consequence of their choice.
But it didn't have to be a consequence.
Going back to my first point, people continue to make more wrong choices instead of actually facing the consequences or doing something to reverse the wrong doing.
Or make wrong doing not wrong doing. There's a considerable parsimony of power to making something not illegal.
I suppose that's why we have economics as a theory.
Which school of economic theory you believe in is also a choice, one which many people choose to believe the wrong one (wrong in the sense the theory doesn't actually work and might even harm people in the end), and even keep believing in it after repeated failures
Sure, people can make choices willy nilly. But it turns out that they tend to make choices that favor interests, theirs or others that they support.
Sure they can favor their interests. But it turns out those interests are often not based on reason, but petty morals and irrational emotions. Supporting those interests often end up being wrong doings. Many losses of freedom are a result (consequence) of people supporting their (emotional) interests
But it didn't have to be a consequence.
And people didn't have to make the wrong choices, or do wrong things, or base their interests on emotion rather than logic. But... they did. So the consequences (loss of freedom) happened. How you gonna react? That's another choice, and people continue to choose the way the choose.
Or make wrong doing not wrong doing. There's a considerable parsimony of power to making something not illegal.
Whatever. People did not choose to do that either.
Well, you've posted a bunch and I just don't get the point. I apologize, but maybe I'll figure it out some other time.