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Can Riots Be Predicted By Social Media?
sciencehabit writes: The broken glass and burned wreckage are still being cleared in the wake of the riots that convulsed Baltimore's streets on 27 April. The final trigger of the unrest was the funeral of a 25-year-old African-American man who had died in police custody, but observers point to many other root causes, from income inequality to racial discrimination. But for a few researchers who are studying Baltimore's unrest, the question is not the ultimate causes of the riot but its mechanism: How do such riots self-organize and spread? One of those researchers, Dan Braha, a social scientist at the New England Complex Systems Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has been collecting data from Twitter that spans the riot from buildup to aftermath, part of a larger study of social media and social unrest around the world. He spoke to Science about how researchers are helping to predict the riots of the future.
Is to ban Twitter and Facebook?
Is it really a prediction when someone tells you where and when they are going to riot ahead of time?
Updated with link
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
They don't really need to monitor though, riots can easily be predicted by how bad the fuckup was that provokes them.
The final trigger of the unrest was the funeral of a 25-year-old African-American man who had died in police custody, but observers point to many other root causes, from income inequality to racial discrimination.
I think some "triggers/root causes" are (deliberately) left out from this "/." summary...
Antisthenes: "Wisdom begins by examining the words/names." - excuse my English, i am (slightly...) better with my Greek!
Seriously, the unrest is brewing in our towns. The powder keg is filled to the brim, all it takes is a spark, and any kind will do, to blow it up. You're getting close to a critical mass of people who are severely unhappy with how things are going, the only thing missing is a focal point for this anger. As soon as a justification is found to vent that anger, you have a riot.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
This riot started with a press release from the Baltimore Police Department:
According to the Baltimore Sun, a call to "purge"—a reference to the 2013 dystopian film in which all crime is made legal for one night—circulated on social media among school-aged Baltimoreans that morning. The rumored plan—which was not traced to any specific person or group—was to assemble at the Mondawmin Mall at 3 p.m. and proceed down Pennsylvania Avenue toward downtown Baltimore. The Baltimore Police Department, which was aware of the "purge" call, prepared for the worst. Shortly before noon, the department issued a statement saying it had "received credible information that members of various gangshave entered into a partnership to 'take-out' law enforcement officers." ...
Meghann Harris, a teacher at a nearby school, described on Facebook what happened:
Police were forcing busses to stop and unload all their passengers. Then, [Frederick Douglass High School] students, in huge herds, were trying to leave on various busses but couldn't catch any because they were all shut down. No kids were yet around except about 20, who looked like they were waiting for police to do something. The cops, on the other hand, were in full riot gear, marching toward any small social clique of studentsIt looked as if there were hundreds of cops.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/04/how-baltimore-riots-began-mondawmin-purge
The Michael Brown case is a great example of what's wrong with this whole jumping to conclusions thing. While there ARE clear cases of cops illegally killing suspects (like in the recent cases in Charleston and Arizona), the physical evidence in the Michael Brown case conclusively showed that the cop's story was, in fact, accurate. The bullets and blood trail made it clear that Brown fought the officer for his gun, started to walk away, then turned around and charged him again--just as the cop claimed. Considering Brown's history of violence and hot-headed behavior, this wasn't even surprising. And yet the cop still had to quit his job, move to another city, and hide--all because the SJW's and blacks automatically assume that the white cop is ALWAYS lying.
The proper quote is "you can't FALSELY yell fire in a crowded theatre".
Pay close attention to that extra word - it's important....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
The problem is people - government goons and ordinary internet users - who can't tell the difference between blowing off steam and real incitement.
The standard in meatspace is that you can advocate violence, but you can't advocate specific violent right now. You so can say "we should overthrow the government," you can't say "Let's go burn the FBI building down right now."
Making that distinction online is impossible for most people, because most of the internet is text only, without context or body language, and because most people are hysterical idiots. So the teenage boy who says in some online game "go rape yourself" to some teenage girl, because that's how teenage boys always talk to each other is suddenly under investigation for making terrorist threats. And then the outrage starts from both sides, and the police have no clue what any of it means, or how to respond. They only know that voters are harassing their political bosses to do something, anything, even if it's wrong.
Add in a few Joker types, "who just want to watch the world burn," who are deliberately inciting violence, mixed with the usual retarded morons who gobble down whatever propaganda they're spoon fed, so long as it agrees with what they want to be true, and, well, welcome to 2015.
What's the point of predicting riots if all we're going to do is stand around and give people "space to destroy" when they do riot?
These aren't thunderstorms...
Flash mobs are organized on social media... if you do a riot the same way then... sure, if you monitor the whole fucking internet like skynet or something then you might be able to predict a riot.
However, here is a better idea... when a riot starts... How about you actually send the actual police to the actual disturbance and stop it before it gets completely out of control.
It is really not that hard. You get the police out there with a megaphone and you say "you have a right to peacefully protest so long as you do not obstruct traffic or businesses. Be peaceful and respectful of the community and you are welcome here. If however there is vandalism, intimidation, or other illegal activity, the police will break the up the crowd by any means. You have been warned."
Then have the police there with tear gas and gas masks and a meat wagon. If the protest is peaceful like an MLK protest, then leave them alone because they're not hurting anyone. If however they pull a Rodney King, Katrina, Frugison, Baltimore type riot... then you say over the megaphone "We are not dispursing the crowd as members of the crowd have begun vandalizing property etc. Leave the area if you do not live here and if you do live here then go home. You have five minutes to dispurse"
Anyone that doesn't want to choke on tear gas is going to leave right then and there. Those that remain get to eat tear gas. And while they're on all fours vomiting up their breakfast, the police can come in with gas masks, zip tie everyone that decided to stay, and cart them all away in the meat wagons.
No one gets hurt. Property damage is kept to a minimum. Everyone is warned of what is going to happen before it happens. No one is subjected to the tear gas without being given an option to not be hit with tear gas. And the riot is stopped cold.
The looting and lawlessness that is typical of riots happens because there is a break down in order. You do not solve that problem by backing off and letting the whole area turn into Mad Max. You stop it by going in there and laying down the law.
I am NOT advocating brutality or infringing anyone's rights. You do not have a right to riot any more then one person all by himself doesn't have the right to walk around throwing bricks through windows. You don't inherent rights in a mob that you don't have by yourself. If you don't have the right to tip cars over whenever you feel like it then you don't have the right to do it in a mob simply because a lot of people are doing it with you.
The gas is largely harmless. We subject our own soldiers to tear gas in basic training. If it actually caused any lasting harm to anyone then we wouldn't do that. The gas will also break up all but the most die hard members of the riot. Ideally you want as many people to leave the area on their own without requiring the police to deal with each individual person.
That leaves the core of the riot. And those people tend to have long criminal records, be mostly interested in exploiting the chaos to steal, and are generally people that society rarely suffers from having in jail.
I was in Los Angeles during the King riots. And the same stupid thing happened in LA that happened in Baltimore. You do NOT give the riot space or assume that it will just burn itself out if you leave it alone. It is as likely to turn into the Lord of the Flies in there as anything else. They're more likely to eat each other than they are to calm down on their own.
What is so sad is that modern police in the 21st century are failing to do something that the average city guard throughout history had no trouble handling.
It isn't rocket science. Let the police do their jobs and the riot will be over before it starts.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Watching from the outside, it sure seems so. I wonder why, though? It couldn't possibly be because the country refused to give up racism when offered the carrot of a dream, so now it gets the stick of fire and brimstone, now could it?
Humanity seems utterly unable to learn tgat injustices are weaknesses that lead to destruction yet the universe seems just as unable to stop hammering the lesson home. Unmovable object of human stubborn evil meets the unstoppable force of obvious consequences. We haven't met any aliens because they're addicted to, mesmerized by and terrified of the epic farce that's human history. Assuming they're even alive anymore - not helping when able inserts them right back into the same pattern, after all, most likely by opening old scars.
We should really make ethics a branch of national defence, since most problems and threats originate from someone racking up bad karma in the name of short-term benefit.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
I would agree that our so-called "News" blows some things out of proportion. At the same time I lived most of my life near Detroit and more recently in CA (SF Area). I have friends and family in most Southern states. There are absolutely pockets where the economy is bad enough that I'd agree with GP about the powder keg waiting for a spark. Even in the SF Bay area, I wonder how much it would take to see riots. Here there are the people with money, and those those without.
Measurements on just about everything prove that the Middle Class is becoming an endangered species. The lack of a middle class will lead to revolts at some point, history is pretty clear on that. The Lords with money are generally given plenty of room to be Lords as long as the subjects have a trajectory upward. When all avenues are closed and your option is to be a peasant, Lords tend to lose their heads.
You are claiming that media plays up incidents of protest, which I agree with. We also know that they downplay incidents of protest, distort protests, and in some cases just ignore the best informed protests. It happens to work both ways, depending on who benefits. Racial tensions keep the peasants bickering with each other. Political corruption does not. Guess which gets air time?
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Well I grew up rich, and I think people have a social responsibility to each other.
Is my story any more relevant than yours? Did growing up poor provide you with special insights?
I mean aside from how to cook Kraft dinner.
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Comment removed based on user account deletion
The article is not about *stopping* riots.... it's about *predicting* them, so you know where to set up the news vans, and you know where to go to be on camera so you can demonstrate that you are a "community leader".
If you actually *stopped* the riots, it'd be a hell of a slow news day, and you'd have to run human interest stories about the baby ducks who've infested some guys swimming pool, or stories about cats.