Slashdot Mirror
Anatomy of a Moral Panic: Reports About Amazon Suggesting 'Bomb-Making Items' Were Highly Misleading (idlewords.com)
Maciej Ceglowski, a Polish-American web developer, has demolished a news story from earlier this week in which a British outlet Channel 4 suggested that Amazon's algorithm-driven suggestions were helping people find items that are required to make bombs. Multiple credible news outlets picked the story, including The New York Times, Reuters, BBC, and CNBC. We ran an excerpt from the New York Times' article, which included a newsworthy response from Amazon that it was reviewing its website, on Slashdot. In reality what was happening was, Ceglowski wrote, the items Amazon suggested would help high school chemistry students with their experiments. From his blog: The 'common chemical compound' in Channel 4's report is potassium nitrate, an ingredient used in curing meat. If you go to Amazon's page to order a half-kilo bag of the stuff, you'll see the suggested items include sulfur and charcoal, the other two ingredients of gunpowder. [...] The Channel 4 piece goes on to reveal that people searching for 'another widely available chemical' are being offered the ingredients for thermite, a mixture of metal powders that when ignited "creates a hazardous reaction used in incendiary bombs and for cutting through steel." In this case, the 'widely available chemical' is magnesium ribbon. If you search for this ribbon on Amazon, the site will offer to sell you iron oxide (rust) and aluminum powder, which you can mix together to create a spectacular bit of fireworks called the thermite reaction. The thermite reaction is performed in every high school chemistry classroom, as a fun reward for students who have had to suffer through a baffling unit on redox reactions. [...] When I contacted the author of one of these pieces to express my concerns, they explained that the piece had been written on short deadline that morning, and they were already working on an unrelated article. The author cited coverage in other mainstream outlets (including the New York Times) as justification for republishing and not correcting the assertions made in the original Channel 4 report. The real story in this mess is not the threat that algorithms pose to Amazon shoppers, but the threat that algorithms pose to journalism. By forcing reporters to optimize every story for clicks, not giving them time to check or contextualize their reporting, and requiring them to race to publish follow-on articles on every topic, the clickbait economics of online media encourage carelessness and drama. This is particularly true for technical topics outside the reporter's area of expertise. And reporters have no choice but to chase clicks.
So the real takeaway is it has uncovered a ring of terrorist training camps being run out of high school chemistry labs? Or am I supposed to fall into the giant vat of irony of this being a clickbait slashdot article? I'm so confused...
kudos to Maciej Ceglowski for chasing clickbait and drama media outlets!
It's hard to believe the internet would hyperbolize something just for fun.
-Styopa
hate speech. deadlineism or shortism or pieceism. ism ism, maybe.
Wait till the news finds out you can buy weapons (knives, baseball bats, crowbars, etc.) and pressure cookers from Amazon!
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Journalists do not have time to become experts. They are supposed to rely on experts to be experts. Here, it look like the local news checked with someone at Amazon and someone in government. It's unclear from the story whether they checked with any experts--either chemistry professors, antiterrorism experts, bomb squad trainers, explosives disposal people from the military, or anyone like that.
They should talk to those people and put a correction on the story, but this happens. It's not a reason to stop small and quick investigations overall, just a reason to identify experts better and maybe fire someone if they KEEP making this mistake.
It's not hard to spot, the hard part is not believing what you want to is false.
Maciej Ceglowski, a Polish-American web developer,
...better known as the owner of Pinboard (which recently bought Delicious!), and is somewhat well-known on Twitter for his snarky, witty commentary. He's not just some random guy with a blog.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
"journalists" at legacy media find real world mundane people, actions, and events unsettling.
what 's new?
You can still get "The Anarchist Cookbook" on Amazon, which is the number one bestseller in Anarchism.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The thermite reaction is performed in every high school chemistry classroom, as a fun reward for students who have had to suffer through a baffling unit on redox reactions.
The hell you say, you presumptuous privileged asshole. I went to school in the inner city urban ghetto, where the only memorable thing that happened was that one time the chemistry teacher broke a thermometer and spilled mercury on his hands and had a panic attack. I've never seen thermite in my life.
Fuck you, slashdot techscum turdbros. Fuck. You.
Many years ago when I was at school, the Chemistry Head ran an after school chemistry club. Virtually everyone who went was there to make explosives. Of course, we had to pretend to be doing some sort of worthy science experiment, but as soon as the teacher's back was turned we "liberated" all the interesting chemicals. He must have known, since he would have been re-ordering the ones in high demand, but he probably took the view that any chemistry is better than none. Unfortunately there was a crackdown after there was a small explosion caused by someone making nitroglycerine, and they got nitric acid in their eyes. These days we would probably all get arrested under "anti-terror" laws.
This is why I have a love of science, chemistry, physics, and math to this day. 30yrs after H.S.
The real news here is that the original author learned that the story was Fake News (tm) but kept it up unedited anyway because the big media outlets were reposting it and driving users to his site, which generated money for him.
His reaction when he found out the article was wrong was not, "Oh, oops, I should let people know about that," it was "Oh wow, look at all the money I'm getting for writing lies about Amazon."
To be fair, while Thermite is a common high school chemistry lab specimen, it IS also an explosive and can be used for purposes other than science...just like that pernicious household chemical, dihydrogen monoxide.
- These days we would probably all get arrested under "anti-terror" laws.
Only if you or your family is from a predominately Muslim country.
And the only way to find work in science, chemistry, physics, and math is to teach them in high school. They are perfect examples of worthless self-perpetuating subjects that are taught by teachers to the next generation of teachers.
I was buying a couple kilos of plutonium 239 on Amazon this weekend and Amazon helpfully suggested the right explosive lenses to go with my neutron initiator I got last month. Its like Amazon knows what I want before I want it. A real timesaver.
Bullshit.
High school chem labs don't have strong enough acids to make nitroglycerine.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
TL:DR - The news media are lazy. stupid fuckwits...
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
Multiple credible credulous news outlets picked the story
FTFY
I think most journalists would like to think they're doing good, but they know they're just bought and paid for hacks. I don't trust a goddamn thing in the "news" anymore.
From glass coffee pots to the hydrogen peroxide in your bathroom medical kit.
Pretty shitty terrorists if they're going through the trouble to make gun powder when all they would need to do is look in their garage for the chemicals to make something far more devastating.
Hell, years ago some dude on the old RogueSci forums used orange tang powder (for the citric acid) as a catalyst to make an organic peroxide based explosive just to prove a hilarious point.
You can train small rodents to pull cords thru conduit or internet tubes.
This wasn't a US High School, and it was ~35 years ago. I think the rules were maybe more relexed then.
Or even relaxed!
Doubt it. I think the dude dripped pure water into something like 1 molar acid and got splattered by the instaboil.
Perhaps he was playing with nitroglycerin ingredients and didn't realize what he actually did and that he didn't actually make any. Nobody told him the truth because it would only make him more dangerous.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
you're saying that high school kids are making Bombs. My God, it's worse than we thought! Think of the (bomb making) children!
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
If one ordered potassium nitrate and Amazon's algorithm "suggested items include sulfur and charcoal", how is that not bomb-making ingredients?
Bullshit.
High school chem labs don't have strong enough acids to make nitroglycerine.
Depends on when. Back when I was taking high school chemistry (1970 or so) the chemistry lab absolutely had nitric and sulfuric acids strong enough to nitrate organics, and the glycerine there on the shelf just waiting to be triply nitrated.
Other fun stuff: Sodium and potassium metal. White phosphorous.
Really scary stuff: Hydrofluoric acid. (Not sure about Derek Lowe, but that one is on my list of Things I Won't Work With.)
I can't say about now; I haven't been in a high school chemistry lab chemical storeroom in 47-ish years.
Stupidly insane alarmist articles by the media. :facepalm:
Have thugs, gangsters and drug dealers using firearms? Increase restrictions on Joe and Sally Sixpack. "facepalm:
Have jihadists setting off bombs? Increase restrictions on Joe and Sally Sixpack?
You can go to your local hardware store and/or walmart and pick up all of that stuff, stump destroyer, acetone paint remover, 3% hydrogen peroxide, Ammonium Nitrate, Sulfuric Acid, HCL, etc..., under various brand names. Boil down 8 bottles of Hydrogen Peroxide in a pyrex pot to one bottle and you'll have 25% Hydrogen Peroxide. Collect Urine and oxidize it to Nitrates. That's all chemistry info I learned in HS chemistry class 60 years ago, and govs can't bottle that info up.
Enforce the laws for criminal use of firearms and sentence offenders to longer terms without parole.
Ditto for Muslim "warriors" who think blowing up women and children is a brave act.
Restore the death penalty for crimes which result in multiple deaths. The perp won't be able to repeat his actions if he is dead.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
And people with your qualifications can become Chief Security Officers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
White fuming nitric acid in your HS lab? Alternatively fuming sulphuric acid mixed with azeotropic nitric acid?
HS chem labs _don't_ have acids strong enough to make nitroglycerin. If they ever did, your teachers were fucking crazy.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I remember those experiments in chemistry lab. Only the teacher did that experiment. Glass jar, water in a perspex box, with the sodium/potassium on a long spoon, dropped in while he was wearing safety goggles.
One of the most interesting experiment was when I was in a computer lab at college, they had just installed a new extractor fan wrongly, and so it actually extracted the waste fumes from the chemistry lab isolation boxes from the floor below right into the chemistry lab. People were turning interesting shades of red and green.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
I don't think many people here actually purchase or use dangerous chemicals on a regular basis. Certainly, this web developer blogger is not a chemical expert and is not the kind of person the journalist should have turned to for an expert opinion. I might be.
Generally speaking, chemical companies will not deliver dangerous chemicals to your home. Yes, you can get sulphur, nitrates, and charcoal at a nursery, and other chemicals at the hardware store and drug store, but these are usually in smaller bottles or lower concentration than research or industrial grade chemicals.
Your high school chemistry teacher had easy access to high quality chemicals because he was at a school. Essentially: private residence - no chemical deliveries; warehouse, school, hair salon, dentist's office, etc. - yes chemical deliveries. I'm not sure this was a legal issue, but it is definitely a "thing" that I've experienced. I'm met several other people around the US who have started companies out of their home that required research grade chemicals who had the same experience. Everyone I've met who has been in this situation did the same thing: we all worked with a local school, hospital, or specialized startup incubator for shipping and storage of our chemicals. That kind of makes sense.
Amazon has stocked high grade chemicals in large amounts and will ship to your house. Obviously, people had access to these chemicals in the past, but Amazon does make it a lot easier to get these things. It is reasonable to be concerned about that. A quick search on Amazon of some chemicals I've ordered (and been surprised to find there - hey, it IS convenient) shows that Amazon has taken this attention seriously and removed some of the research grade material they used to stock.
This black powder stuff may not be a big deal, but there has been some material on Amazon that was certainly eyebrow raising. I don't think it's there anymore.
The smart ne'er-do-wells of your school didn't refine the acids available? It's easy. Getting common acids to 80% or better from common stock is an exciting (and taxing to the vent hood) achievement.
Maybe you just didn't know any of the kids that did.
I was in high school, in the US, in the 70s, and we most certainly had all the usual concentrated acids - nitric, sulfuric, and hydrocholoric. You'd dilute them down to make 1M solutions for labs. Perhaps today, they don't have it, but I don't see any particular reason why not. (other than the horrible trend of "labs on computer simulation")
Don't confuse industrial processes with those used in smaller home/school labs. The wikipedia article is talking about industrial production. Off the shelf concentrated sulfuric and nitric acids work just fine for nitrating stuff. Yeah, not as pure a product (plenty of dinitro mixed in), nor as stable, etc.,etc.etc. But presumably you're not making kilogram quantities to make dynamite. You're looking to make a couple of cc as a novelty, and if it's only 50% NG, that's still better than nothing.
They might not now, where you are.
They did when - and where - I went to school. And it wasn't the only dangerous thing. We were taught evolution too.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
What happened to those vaunted "layers and layers" of fact-checkers and editors hard at work?
Our chemistry teacher was smarter. When she found, that our club team is at the brink of getting batch of nitroglycerine she said "OK, stop this right now. We will do this together, in very small batch and only once!" ...
Then we switched to rocket fuels in cooperation with physics teacher
Today I am grateful - I have all fingers and eyes. ....
Still playing with chemistry over weekends - mostly to keep my eyes over kids
Fortunately they prefer ammo reloading over big bang theories.