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Tomorrow's Wars Will Be Livestreamed (vice.com)

Posted by msmash on from the war-is-boring dept.

Something unique and (in some way) unprecedented happened earlier today. The start of the invasion of Mosul, a city held by ISIS in Iraq, was live-streamed on Facebook and YouTube, and thousands of people around the world watched it. There were several streams that got popular, but one shared by Kurdish outlet Rudaw was getting the most traction -- it was re-posted by major outlets like the Washington Post and Channel 4 in the United Kingdom. Motherboard adds: While some viewers commented on the merits of the offensive, for others, the livestream itself was the most startling thing. As angry cartoon faces and "Wow!" emoticons floated over top of live images of war, viewers noted that it all seemed like a bit too much like a sci-fi fever dream about a war-obsessed culture. For most English-language viewers watching these streams, there was no explanation, no given context, no subtitles or translation -- merely images of a mostly-barren foreign landscape peppered with men and trucks, idling and standing around, sparsely punctuated by violence. But in 2016, decades after Lessons of Darkness was completed and on social media instead of in a darkened arthouse theatre, the void spits out something other than deep, metaphysical understanding about human nature. Instead, in the comments, people ask for money. They talk about porn. They quote Green Day lyrics. They call people "cucks." To be fair, however, not everyone reacted this way. But a lot of people did. "There's journalistic value in the livestream,"

75 comments

  1. First post by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    But a lot of people did. "There's journalistic value in the livestream,"

    Meanwhile, journalistic value on Slashdot is harder to find, which is especially apparent when the editors can't even finish writing an article summary.

  2. The 21st Century Equivalent of... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ...The Battle of Bull Run.

  3. It worked for ancient Rome by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    NT

    1. Re:It worked for ancient Rome by postbigbang · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The First Gulf War was "livestreamed" on TV. Nothing new to see here.....

      --
      ---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
    2. Re:It worked for ancient Rome by XparXnoiaX · · Score: 1

      Livestreaming on TV is so much different than having it go over Twitch. It's a whole magnitude level up.

      --
      Irresponsible disclosure is responsible
    3. Re:It worked for ancient Rome by postbigbang · · Score: 1

      It's freaking video. One is over the air or cable, the other one is in packets. Not a big deal. What's important is the information, and how the information was put together (sources, bias, etc.).

      --
      ---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
    4. Re:It worked for ancient Rome by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      It's kind of different though, right? When the Gulf War was livestreamed, it was heavily censored, an act of pure propaganda. It wasn't really live, it was filtered. Now we have the capability to see the action through the eyes of many more people, from all sides, if we want to.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    5. Re:It worked for ancient Rome by AHuxley · · Score: 1

      Most of the press was part of embedded journalism and had to keep the good news flowing if they wanted to stay embedded.
      Risk not been invited back to the best locations for the next war was a big issues for the media brands.
      Objective, free reporting like the US got out of Vietnem is now contained by access and the fine print that comes with been embedded.

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
    6. Re:It worked for ancient Rome by postbigbang · · Score: 1

      While there's some truth to what you say, I have yet to see a medium where there can be a considerable amount of dust-- read that lack of trust-- in sources, coverage, attribution, and significance.

      Part of the problem of media is that the public's ability to discern what's controlled media vs what's real and live and truly happening is weak at best, viz the current situation. "Follow The Money" isn't quite the best method to judge the content, although it's a good way to understand bias.

      Yet there are really good journalists out there, and differing covering entities that sometimes do a really good job, only to be knee-capped by proximity to truly evil, spoon-fed lackeys of moneyed sponsors. It's not the fine print I'm really worried about, rather the capacity to present facts in a way where the chain-of-authorities for those facts can be referenced in a way that allows context. Context is key to trust.

      --
      ---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
    7. Re:It worked for ancient Rome by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, there were uncensored livestreams if you knew where to look, as TV stations were using unencrypted streams to get footage back home. We'd often watch them at work (we were not a media company, just had some smart folk with time on their hands) and we'd often see heavily censored footage with a quite different focus on the news that night.

      I recall when that statue of Saddam was toppled - the news made it look like a spontaneous action of an angry population, but that days livestreams at wide angle showed the square to be almost entirely empty with a long period of boring preperation to get ready for the "dramatic moment" of what was 30 locals at most. No idea how they fired them up as they were sitting around for hours waiting to be told it was time to go nuts.

    8. Re:It worked for ancient Rome by postbigbang · · Score: 1

      And from this, we can conclude exactly what?

      --
      ---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
    9. Re:It worked for ancient Rome by AHuxley · · Score: 1

      The press that was allowed to sail out/with/invited to the Falklands in 1982 was really a fun test after Vietnam.
      The friendship and camaraderie just gets built on for every war. Training, early access, deployment as part of a team soon allows for troops suggestions and questions to reshape good journalists.
      "Looking for failure? Why the ADF hates the Australian media" (August 13, 2013)
      http://theconversation.com/loo...
      has some good insights and links into the thinking in Australian and New Zealand that results in "favourable messages".

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
    10. Re:It worked for ancient Rome by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      it made cnn (and numerous on-screen personalities) a household name, and made on-screen logo 'bugs' a permanent annoyance.. but it was not the raw footage you can get from habib streaming on the internets in realtime.

    11. Re:It worked for ancient Rome by Shane_Optima · · Score: 1

      Except for the fact that we don't necessarily have to rely on the courage, tenacity or honesty of mainstream media reporters (and their military babysitters) to see what's actually happening.

      So, uh, I'd say almost everything of importance is new here.

    12. Re:It worked for ancient Rome by Accountibilibuddy · · Score: 1

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    13. Re:It worked for ancient Rome by ArmoredDragon · · Score: 1

      I recall when that statue of Saddam was toppled - the news made it look like a spontaneous action of an angry population

      It actually was -- in a sense. A marine commander was looking for a psy-ops opportunity, and found a few people beating on the statue with sledgehammers, so he capitalized on the moment. So yeah, it was both spontaneous by the locals and made to look like a bigger deal than it really was.

      But you can't fault the military for that. Battles -- and especially wars -- are rarely won with weapons alone. That's just the military doing its job like it's supposed to do. And, that particular event was one of the things the military executed correctly in my opinion. Was it propaganda? Yeah, but not all propaganda is bad, and I don't believe any war has ever been won without propaganda, including popular wars like World War II.

      The problems with Gulf War II mostly came from disbanding the Iraqi military and failing to secure the Iraqi borders, and those are areas where the military royally screwed up, making the war last much longer than it needed to and eventually permitting the ISIS aftermath.

    14. Re:It worked for ancient Rome by rikkards · · Score: 1

      Just to clarify, it wasn't the US Military that disbanded the Iraqi military, they actually had plans on how to hand over security to the existing Iraqis and were just starting to implement it.
      It was the State department that decided to imitate what happened in post war Germany, the difference here is by disbanding the military and forcing all Baathist members out of their jobs they upset a lot of people (a lot were part of the party only because it gave them more money in their jobs not because they had any true political affiliation).

    15. Re:It worked for ancient Rome by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The difference i that one has a studio and a much larger budget than the other to "make" news.

    16. Re:It worked for ancient Rome by postbigbang · · Score: 1

      There's NOTHING wrong with editing. Slickness is in the eye of the beholder, sometimes taking away the raw nuanced value of journalism. Other times, it takes a disjointed bunch of stuff and molds it into something discernible.

      --
      ---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
    17. Re:It worked for ancient Rome by Comrade+Ogilvy · · Score: 1

      Kudos to you for offering a broader view of propaganda.

      As for securing the borders, that was a monumental failure of our political leadership. Iraq is bordered by Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, Turkey, Iran. Every one of those nations had strong factions within the gov't that had reasons to want to see a US occupation of Iraq fail. The Bush administration seemed to believe that awe and fear would keep them all in line. Rather than offer even a token olive branch, the administration preferred to imply that Damascus and Tehran could be next. Well, that kind of threat only sort of works, under the best circumstances. Once the occupation hit a rough patch, the threat has the opposite of the intended incentive -- making Iraq hell for US forces was a very practical means of keeping America distracted from further adventures.

    18. Re:It worked for ancient Rome by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Context is at least as important as content. The social aspect of this particular context is enough to change the content completely. In other words: you never got memes in your First Gulf War coverage, Grandpa. And 24 hour live unfiltered footage didn't exist.

  4. Bread and circuses at the end of the empire. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Huddle your tourettes-raddled brain around the warm glow of the cellphone with a bag of popcorn and a few Aderols to get you in the right headspace. People are going to die.

    1. Re:Bread and circuses at the end of the empire. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      i like how you went out of your way to capitalize Aderol, like you care about proper capitalization.

      but no concern for spelling i guess?

      ADDERALL

    2. Re:Bread and circuses at the end of the empire. by turbidostato · · Score: 2

      ADDERALL

      "I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened."

    3. Re:Bread and circuses at the end of the empire. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      i like how you went out of your way to capitalize Aderol, like you care about proper capitalization.

      but no concern for spelling i guess?

      ADDERALL

      Sorry, obviously I haven't taken to learning how to spell all the names of mediciations other people take. I am truly ignanimous in my expression of heartfelt remorse at my grevious error. I will don my hair shirt before flagellating myself with a cat 'o ninetails at the end of which completly exhausted and tattered I will fall into a coarse bed of stinging nettles. There will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth. Sorry.

      But no mention of the people and the dying? Just spelling.

    4. Re:Bread and circuses at the end of the empire. by Maritz · · Score: 1

      It's riddled, not raddled. And your point might have been great if it only it wasn't incoherent.

      --
      I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
  5. What do you mean 'tomorrow'? by roman_mir · · Score: 2

    I saw live stream of the Iraq invasion, it has been done, I only expect it to be livestreamed now with drone feeds, body cams and all.

    --
    You can't handle the truth.
    1. Re:What do you mean 'tomorrow'? by XparXnoiaX · · Score: 1

      We must gamify it.

      --
      Irresponsible disclosure is responsible
    2. Re:What do you mean 'tomorrow'? by roman_mir · · Score: 1

      I thought maybe we must autotune it as well?

      --
      You can't handle the truth.
    3. Re:What do you mean 'tomorrow'? by decep · · Score: 1

      You mean a body count?

    4. Re:What do you mean 'tomorrow'? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They will try to use aim-bots. Hope the anti cheat program will be better than the one used in 2003.
      CAPTCHA Treason ? NSA at it's best.

    5. Re:What do you mean 'tomorrow'? by afgam28 · · Score: 1

      Live comments are the problem, not live streaming. This time the live feed is being mixed in with live comments like "WHY THERE IS NO SHOOTING, EXPLOSION. I WANT TO WATCH A WAR” and emoticons.

    6. Re:What do you mean 'tomorrow'? by currently_awake · · Score: 1

      Only fools livestreem a firefight they are in, as it lets the enemy know where they are and what they are doing. You want your combat video and pics to be uploaded after the action is over.

    7. Re: What do you mean 'tomorrow'? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Geniuses put fake footage on loops for tricky ambushes.

    8. Re:What do you mean 'tomorrow'? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      the livestreamed pretty much the Kuwaiti liberation/invasion.

      how can they be saying that it's any different? because it's not CNN ? because it's not western journalists that it's different? da fuq.

    9. Re:What do you mean 'tomorrow'? by geekmux · · Score: 1

      We must gamify it.

      Joking or not, the irony of this statement is you're talking about the same society who would welcome the next livestream warfare pay-per-view event with open wallets, but becomes seriously offended when someone says the word "Christmas" in public.

      It's fucking amazing to me that society places far more value on being politically correct than they do with morals or ethics. One would have thought that after the 2008 financial crisis we would have learned something about the importance of prioritizing the latter, and demand more of it from our leaders.

    10. Re:What do you mean 'tomorrow'? by XxtraLarGe · · Score: 1

      One would have thought that after the 2008 financial crisis we would have learned something about the importance of prioritizing the latter, and demand more of it from our leaders.

      Yeah, that's why we ended up with Tweedle Lecher & Tweedle Liar as the main choices this year...

      --
      Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
    11. Re:What do you mean 'tomorrow'? by tlhIngan · · Score: 1

      Only fools livestreem a firefight they are in, as it lets the enemy know where they are and what they are doing. You want your combat video and pics to be uploaded after the action is over.

      That's one reason. Another would be to creatively edit it - cut out the bad-for-our-side stuff, and put in tons of good-for-our-side stuff, complete with slo-mo replays, highlights and other things.

      Livestreaming won't be done - it's too easy to create opposition to what you're doing at home, plus exposing everyone to the realities of war make it much harder to engage in it. You want it to be a propaganda thing.

    12. Re:What do you mean 'tomorrow'? by Maritz · · Score: 1

      We must gamify it.

      Joking or not, the irony of this statement is you're talking about the same society who would welcome the next livestream warfare pay-per-view event with open wallets, but becomes seriously offended when someone says the word "Christmas" in public.

      It's fucking amazing to me that society places far more value on being politically correct than they do with morals or ethics. One would have thought that after the 2008 financial crisis we would have learned something about the importance of prioritizing the latter, and demand more of it from our leaders.

      You're quite sure you're not exaggerating? Never saw anybody get "seriously offended" by the word "Christmas" in public.

      --
      I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
  6. Re by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Tomorrow's Wars Will Be Livestreamed"

    Is there a war tomorrow?

    1. Re:Re by youngone · · Score: 1

      There is always a war tomorrow. The US will ensure that.

    2. Re:Re by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Who is more foolish, the fool or the fool who follows the fool?

    3. Re:Re by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Tomorrow's Wars Will Be Livestreamed"

      Is there a war tomorrow?

      Yes, and it already began.

    4. Re: Re by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Who cares. Just don't be either.

  7. Paging Heinlein by Jimbob+The+Mighty · · Score: 2

    I would like to know more...

  8. No They Wont by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The NSA and compliant Tech companies will select which streams will be allowed to stay live.
    As they did today.

    1. Re:No They Wont by AHuxley · · Score: 1

      The real tick for the mil is to create fake army units packed with their own media experts. Pretending to be everyday very low ranking troops as to get friendly with the press.
      Some real effort goes into getting the camera team to become a part of the squad of troops they live with for months.
      What a lens can then see is then natural, helpful and suggested. Any hints seem friendly and helpful. Limitations are local protections.
      Support for a "freedom fighter" is like an informant and cannot be broadcast.
      The "tell" is usually in the body language that hints at an unexpected university level media education around a camera or location for a camera by troops kept at a very low rank after mil testing. Charming, simple conversations cannot cover for a level of study and a hint of jargon.

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
  9. If it could actually change public policy by rsilvergun · · Score: 1

    it'll be shut down (and fast). We're starting to see this with Black Lives Matter where the major streaming sites are setting up systems to exercise editorial control. This is why the Iraq war has lasted so long. Our media turned a blind eye to the carnage...

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
    1. Re: If it could actually change public policy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You missed the part where Obama and Hillary ended the Iraq war.

  10. Wait... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Wait... You mean Gil Scott-Heron was wrong, and the revolution really WILL be televised?!?

    1. Re:Wait... by ZenShadow · · Score: 1

      No, he was right.

      It's going to be streamed instead.

      --
      -- sigs cause cancer.
  11. a war is not a tv show by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Real people are dying. Those are real guns. Real blood. This should not be something that is a source of entertainment, no matter who the enemy is. We can't have ourselves treating wars like some gladiatorial fight. Peoples' lives, their country, their homeland, and their blood is at stake. It's real. And it hurts. It hurts to see your homeland torn apart by sectarian conflict and foreign powers. It hurts that you can no longer be safe in your own home. It hurts that children and the innocent die everyday because of the war games of those in power. What can we do about it? We realize that war is not something to toy around with or watch for fun. We realize that a country is more than just a location for a new army base. We realize that we the people are powerful. We realize that the war games of politicians hurt real people. We realize that, if enough of us fight with our 'blood, sweat, and tears', even the mightiest army cannot defeat a united and angry populace against it. We the people shall show our power with our voices, and if these voices are not being heard, we will speak with actions!

  12. Re:The Bravery of Being Out of Range by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Ooooooohhhh, Western Woman...

    Rog knows how it all works man.

  13. Oh good by waspleg · · Score: 2

    all we need is an alien bug invasion to make "Starship Troopers" a reality. What's doogie howser up to these days anyway? Psychic warfare research?

  14. Please no. by Narcocide · · Score: 1

    War as a spectator sport? And here I thought "Reality TV" couldn't get any worse after Survivor.

    1. Re:Please no. by rikkards · · Score: 1

      This isn't new. At Waterloo and the Battle of Fort Sumter there were bystanders safely standing off to the sides watching. It was even remarked at both how it was an outing for the civvies nearby.

  15. Turkey coup by TheSync · · Score: 1

    I spent some time watching the coup in Turkey on Periscope. In one feed, a bunch of pro-government forces were outside of the army barracks in Ankara, they were moving in, and one guy got shot and had to be pulled to safety (not sure if he made it). In another feed, tanks were guarding the bridges over the Bosphorus Bridge, and a tank fired a round into a armored personnel carrier. Scary stuff!

  16. Re:The Bravery of Being Out of Range by SvnLyrBrto · · Score: 2

    Oh please... Does the Battle of Agincourt ring a bell? Clever people have been figuring ways to strike at the enemy from longer range pretty much since the beginning of warfare. And the losers have whined about the "unfairness" and questioned the "bravery of being out of range"... right up until the point that they invented new weapons and were themselves the ones fighting from out of range.

    It's nothing new, and it's not going to stop.

    --
    Imagine all the people...
  17. Livestream? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What will live streaming in the future mean? I could pipe in a virtual Humphrey Bogart to share a smoke with in the battlefield trenches. That while I play a godsaken ultimate version of Pokémon? Freedom of the press BECAUSE of technology? No. Call me a dystopian. What is freedom of information for "live-streaming".

    "Big bad government can't stop me because it's live and by the time they try to develop the technology to do realtime interruption and interdiction it will be too late for them to do anything about it." Have you seen TV or Facebook, or Google lately? The question is not if but when and I say now, it is just that most of our content does not matter in the slightest. If your content is irrelevant than you will always have unfettered live-streaming. Enjoy.

  18. Prior Art by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    American Marines arriving in Somalia under full lighting and cameras, 1992?

          "The first Marines of UNITAF landed on the beaches of Somalia on 9 December 1992 amid a media circus. The press "seemed to know the exact time and place of the Marines' arrival" and waited on the airport runway and beaches to capture the moment." (wikipedia)

  19. Roger Waters ... by ContextSwitch · · Score: 1

    ... Amused to Death

  20. Same old... by Laxator2 · · Score: 1

    The overthrowing of the communism in Romania (the "revolution") was live-streamed on TV back in 1989. Made quite an impression at the time.

  21. Only the wars that... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    .... white people care about. The vast majority of wars won't/don't get any cover at all.

  22. Re:The Bravery of Being Out of Range by guises · · Score: 1

    Are you saying that our downward spiral is inexorable and so shouldn't even be discussed? I don't buy that. Even if we are doomed to a state of ever-increasing atrocities being committed in front of an audience with ever-increasing apathy, acknowledging this could perhaps slow that descent. But more than that: recognizing empathy and recognizing where it's missing in one scenario can have broader effects in how we think about it in other scenarios.

    In other words: while fighting at extreme distance may divorce us from the suffering that we cause, acknowledging that problem and its consequences can help you appreciate the people that you have nearby. And this can be true even if, as you say, war will continue to become more and more divorced from our personal experiences.

  23. Palestine by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    We need to setup cameras in Palestine and livestream Israel's brutality and terrorism against the Palestinian people for all the world to see.

    I think that most people would be outraged seeing the deplorable actions of the IDF first hand.

    The "Israel has a right to defend itself" excuse would be even more ridiculous to most people than it already is.

  24. Unless... by jrumney · · Score: 1

    Future wars will be livestreamed...unless the war is in Ethiopia, in which case see the next post.

  25. Gil Scott Heron Was Sooooo Wrong! by 0xG · · Score: 1

    "The revolution will not be televised" - LOL
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

    --
    A pox on web designers who feel that window.innerWidth == screen.availWidth
    1. Re:Gil Scott Heron Was Sooooo Wrong! by scarboni888 · · Score: 1

      Uh.. not so much. War is business as usual. The revolution is absolutely NOT being televised here.

    2. Re:Gil Scott Heron Was Sooooo Wrong! by jrumney · · Score: 1

      The revolution Gil Scott Heron was talking about was more like the revolution in Ethiopia, or in North Dakota right now, where the people revolting are not the ones with the power to feed you a one-sided propaganda view of what is going on, or at least block your view of the other side's one-sided propaganda.

  26. It's only Human by scarboni888 · · Score: 1

    "We are a war-like people" - Saint Carlin

  27. Re:The Bravery of Being Out of Range by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's stuff like this that makes it clear why Pink Floyd broke up with him. All he wanted to do was sing mopey sad-sack songs about people dying in wars and starving because they're poor.

  28. As TOOL says... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "I want to watch things die / from a good safe distance."

  29. No they won't. by StikyPad · · Score: 1

    Both sides in a conflict have a vested interest in preventing live coverage of their operations, and at least one of those sides usually has control of the local infrastructure, with the other side usually trying to destroy it. Satellite is the only viable option, and even that can be spotty and jammable, and is exceedingly expensive in any event. Sneakernet will always work, but not for live streams.

    --
    https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere