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Facebook Exec Admits 'No Real Understanding' for the Scope of Fake News (mercurynews.com)
Three executives from Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube appeared at Stanford to discuss free speech in the social media age, with one law professor raising concerns about how the online giants are curating their services.
All three tech executives talked about increasing transparency and authenticity. But all acknowledge that nothing is foolproof and political speech in particular is most difficult to regulate, if it should be at all. "That puts a lot of control in the hands of the companies sitting here in term of what kind of speech is allowed to have the global reach," said Juniper Downs, YouTube's global head of public policy and government relations. "That is a responsibility we take very seriously and something we owe to the public and a civil society...."
Facebook is making information available on its platform to researchers to help understand the effect of Facebook usage on elections. Still, Facebook's Vice President of Public Policy Elliot Schrage urged caution. "There is no agreement whatsoever on the prevalence of false news and fake propaganda on our platform," he said. "We have no real understanding of what the scope of misinformation is." He suggested that despite these chaotic times, "I do think we should be pretty modest and circumspect in the approaches we take." Social media companies need to find creative ways to improve the spread of information, Schrage said. But it won't be easy. "No one company," he said, "is going to solve this problem."
Facebook is making information available on its platform to researchers to help understand the effect of Facebook usage on elections. Still, Facebook's Vice President of Public Policy Elliot Schrage urged caution. "There is no agreement whatsoever on the prevalence of false news and fake propaganda on our platform," he said. "We have no real understanding of what the scope of misinformation is." He suggested that despite these chaotic times, "I do think we should be pretty modest and circumspect in the approaches we take." Social media companies need to find creative ways to improve the spread of information, Schrage said. But it won't be easy. "No one company," he said, "is going to solve this problem."
With the near-zero journalistic integrity of all basically all MSM in America, the obvious problem for Facebook is whatever objective criteria you set for labelling "Fake News", you would include basically all MSM, and also including a lot of (if not all) advertising.
The day FB successfully combat Fake News is the day FB lost all its ad revenue. Of course they aren't going to solve this.
Translation: Democrats still refuse to admit that they have a problem getting their own party members to give a shit about them, insist that fake news is the only possible explanation for Trump. (Despite numbers clearly showing that it was a lack of turnout among Ds that screwed Hillary, not a surge in the Pizzagate swing vote.)
Oh yes, and I'm still interested in knowing what Facebook plans to do the next time the New York Times, The Guardian, and others do something like fraudulently insert the words "without consent" in their paraphrase of the contents of the Pussygate tape while excluding the words "and they let you do it." If the answer is 'nothing', where exactly is the line going to be drawn?
(Blah blah blah, anti-Trump disclaimer, Republicans are worse in almost all respects than Democrats, etc.)
And foolish people will recommend fake or stupid news. I'm much less concerned about the sincere fanatics as the paid propagandists and professional trolls. As it exists now, Facebook is their perfect tool. Not just for propagating the BS but for dividing and conquering the opposition.
Solution time? I feel like I'm wasting the keystrokes since the same solution applied to a recent story and elicited no detectable interest. (ACs don't count and I don't see their comments.) However I think EPR (Earned Public Reputation) would be a strong solution approach. You can think of it as karma on steroids, but the basic insight is that positive interactions (in various dimensions) should earn reputation that is then (among other uses) reflected in the news sources you choose to recommend. In a contrasting example, if you tell (or propagate) a lie and someone is willing to take a bit of time to prove it, then your reputation should go down and your further comments should be seen in that light.
Actually, mostly not seen. The real reason I want EPR is to focus my time on reading comments from people who are demonstrably nicer or better informed or even funnier than I am. The other people would be invisible for me, if'n I had my druthers.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
You can say "well, the stuff that isn't true"... well, how do you know what is and isn't true?
Its going to basically boil down to "because X told me it was true and they wouldn't lie." Or "X, Y, and Z all agree so it can't be a lie."
problem is that X will sometimes be wrong whether they're intentionally wrong or not. And thus "X says its true" does not equal truth.
X, Y, and Z agreeing doesn't help either because often information will only have one or two sources. And if you eliminated all news that didn't have lots of sources the news would basically say almost nothing every day. And that would simply cause any news feed that did that to be ignored in favor of more responsive and topical news. What is more, like the first problem... whilst it might be unlikely that X, Y, and Z could be wrong... they can be still. Sometimes lots of people are wrong. And strictly speaking when someone is wrong... if "untrue = fake news"... then "wrong = untrue = fake news"...
Boiling it all down, the fake news argument is a consequence of increasingly politicized and biased press on ALL sides. Coverage is biased. And it is frequently overtly biased. Given publications will sell themselves to readers in fact on being "the most progressive" or "the most conservative" or whatever.
That doesn't mean that partisan press is real or unreal or true or untrue. But it does speak to an increasing intolerance for media other than what you are consuming. And it is totally understandable that when someone is exposed to media that is 180 degrees off their political echo chamber... whatever that is... they woudl see that as "fake news." They'd see it as biased and not trust it.
Totally understandable... at first glance. However, here is where some basic integrity comes to the rescue. "IF" you hear something that you think is fake news... just check it out. It may or may not be fake. And don't just go to your political echo chamber to find out if THEY think it is right or wrong. Play devil's advocate with the position. Honestly vet it.
Typically when there are disagreements on these issues people are just reacting badly to opposition media that isn't saying anything that isn't verified by a lot of sources. And in the few cases otherwise it is often still true but not widely reported. In a very small number of cases, you're dealing with real crap. But by and large its just hostile presentation or obscure information.
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you know, we've had some polite conversations on here, APK.
Maybe you remember my screen name? Maybe not.
Anyway, the video I posted speaks for itself on this issue.
peace.
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Actually, while I have a moral problem with that, I do not have an intellectual one. Incest does not make one unqualified to work on or solve a problem.
The issue with Trump is that a lot of things make him unqualified to work on or solve a problem.
I would really rather that we cease focus on issues of a persons morality in politics, all it does it force them to camouflage their true selves so we get an empty sock puppet stitched together with everything they believe we want (family, marriage, little dog, approved religion, approved sex, approved skin tone etc).
It does not really matter if the president is a gay inuit woman who eats michelin star chef prepared dog meat dishes while being a very public member of the church of Satan, what matters is if they can come up with a realistic and workable legal plan to assist the country. We need a solid problem solver, we do not need an ideologue made flesh for our own masturbatory ego fantasies where we superimpose ourselves in that position and imagine that only someone like us could possibly solve anything.
we're all quite familiar with the concept of a monoculture, from biology. once a population gets dominant it is vulnerable to viruses that take down the *entire* population in one fell swoop. when microsoft was dominant we saw the same concept being analogously applied: computer viruses propagate because of a *monoculture* operating system, the great joke being when Wine was "good enough" to run windows viruses it was actually celebrated - i'm sure there was a story before this one, i remember seeing one on /. involving a word macro-virus https://linux.slashdot.org/sto... ... so with that concept established, let's look at facebook (except from a *psychological* perspective rather than a technical one). it's dominant... it's a mono-culture... and it has the ability to... spread memes. it's therefore perfect for spreading "sickness".
question. is facebook going to *stop* spreading "sickness"? no, of course not, because its *entire business model* revolves around spreading information^sickness.
question. can facebook discern which information is "sick" and which is "well"? clearly they can't.
question. *should* facebook be the one that "determines" which information is "sick" and which is "well"? honestly no they should not, because that's *our* responsibility, as *individuals*, not theirs.
question. if facebook cannot serve us, and we are not being served by facebook, what is the next logical step to stop the "illness" from spreading?
answer: don't have a monoculture. that means terminating facebook as it stands, forcefully (by law) or voluntarily (#DeleteFacebook) or by creating an alternative and communications interoperability standards.
bottom line: an internet-connected world culture is great... until you get internet-connected world cultural "disease". one way or another this is going to get "solved". i'd like it to be the case that people take advantage of that funding that's being made available: https://tech.slashdot.org/stor...
They're lying.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Wow, you should probably get a tank or an F-15 before trying to take on that pig. Not sure why it's trying to attack you or how you got into that situation just blow it up with explosives.
p.s. America isn't the only place with gangs, and the rest of the world is doing just fine without guns to deal with them. Mainly because the gangs can't access them so easily.
Demonetization is likely the only way you're going to get any traction to curb the fake news problem. You sure as hell aren't going to fix stupid. In fact, it would seem the masses are actually becoming more gullible these days, evidenced by how often fake news goes viral.
When we stop financially rewarding bullshit peddlers, the justification to peddle bullshit tends to go away.
I personally would like to see a capability to allow me to block all politically oriented content (ads and posts from friends). There was a lot of conflict between individuals on Facebook during and after the 2016 election. I also say this spilling over and impacting friendships outside of the Facebook platform. Facebook needs to deliver more options to allow users to filter out certain types of content.
Why should they give up fake news? It makes a lot of money and brings them a lot of free publicity and political attention. That's just what rich and powerful people love.
Google's and Facebook's policies have effectively turned most online news into clickbait. Media outlets have to do this to compete with each other and gain advertising revenue in the environment created by them.
Facebook runs on the same principle: If you can incite/provoke enough indignant moral outrage, you can get your messages out there and make some money.
In an environment like that, do you really think that anyone who's in it to make money is worried about journalistic integrity or the truth?
Inciting/provoking indignant moral outrage has always been a problem in news, i.e. there's always competition for people's attention, which is in short supply. What companies like Google and Facebook have done is to magnify this problem to the point where it overwhelms everything else.
Debate is a form of harassment. Do not question my truth.
The "perfect being the enemy of the good" fallacy writ large. You admit that you can only approximate the effects of a bump stock with a belt, yet you imply that because we could not ban belts that it won't matter that we ban bump stocks.
Bullshit. The purpose-built device performs better and is easier to use than the jerry-rigged, belt-based alternative. Making it more difficult to rig a bump-stock-like device is a net win - especially since there is essentially no legitimate reason to use a bump-stock. Shooters using bump-stocks are less accurate and have less control over their weapons -- the exact opposite of the goals of a hunter, a target shooter, and frankly those engaged in self-defense.
Could be lower. No need for a "spray and pray" device outside of a military context, and even then doctrine highly discourages that sort of use in most situations.
Sorry, rhetoric does not substitute for evidence, especially when your video shows someone firing a five round burst from the hip in a random direction -- it's epitome of the one-handed 'gangsta style' pistol grip transposed to an AR-15. "Approximate" does not equal "buy off-the-shelf add-on that allows Joe Bloe to essentially create a "shoulder-fired machine gun." We all see it, a majority of us tired of it, and the final rule banning these devices is coming.
Lifelong gun owner, never an NRA member, and yes, "deaf" to this sort of bullshit.
They made money by encouraging neo-nazis and rohinga ethnic cleansing.
Why would ANYONE believe their bullshit now?
Your arguments are based on a fundamental misunderstanding.
We do not have to justify our rights. "Why do you need to speak?" is as vulgar and offensive a question as the one you asked.
These rights are not granted by the government. They do not exist because of the Constitution or the Supreme Court. They exist regardless, and they are yours irrespective of a piece of paper or guy in a robe.
You have a right to self defense. You have a right to kill when you or your family is threatened, and in such an unfortunate situation, you do not want to be holding a butcher's knife... Even if the other guy also has a butcher's knife. The idea that fights must be fair when it comes to your life is an artificial and deadly mental construct.
I know you've heard this argument before, but consider it now with a fresh and unencumbered mind: If they cannot stop a guy from getting heroine, then they probably can't stop him from getting a gun. When he invades your home, you are a good and law abiding person who gave up his guns with the rest of us, whose family is now watching you kneel in the living room with an illegal gun to his head. There is no reset button or do-over. You're totally defenseless, and sadly by your own choice.
Yes, you need to COMPENSATE FOR YOUR HEAD-UP-YOUR-ASS-MISTAKES in picking an astonishingly underpowered round, failing to choose the proper ground and/or cover, and blowing your advantage so badly that you're at close-range with a charging animal.
The M-16/AR-15 standard cailber was expressly selected to favor wounding, not killing, a human-sized animal (shocker, since the principal target was a human being). And you want to use it for boar shooting. SMMFH.
Use a large game round rather than leftover birdshot and you just might learn something.
In his defense, she is fucking hot...
Also, he did qualify it with, "if she wasn't my daughter", so your statement isn't true.
> Let me ask you a question: why do you need semi-automatic weapons that fire high-powered rounds? This isn't a rhetorical question.
You are deeply confused and highly ignorant about guns.
The AR-15 doesn't fire a particularly high powered round. It's a varmint rifle. It's not even powerful enough to be considered legal for hunting in some places because of this.
Lay off the media narrative.
The AR-15 has the advantage of being less random and destructive than a shotgun and much easier to handle than some pea shooter like a 38 special. A 9mm round actually has more penetrating power when it comes to human bodies.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Facebook and Google could stop a lot of this. They don't want to identify some content as misinformation/fake because they would lose users that way. All about the bottom line.
Oh shut-up and grow the fuck up. You right-wing retards really get on my nerves. Aren't you all supposed to be about individual liberty, personal responsability and all that ? But when a private corporation does exactly what you all claim every individual and corporation should have the God-given right to do, i.e. run their business however the fuck they want to run it, then you get all pissed off !
You don't like Youtube and its policies ? Well this is a free country, and you're totallty free to start your own video sharing site, where you and all right wingers like you will be totally free to post all the pro-gun, pro-violence, pro-incest, anti-immigration, anti-black, anti-women videos, and all that other right-wing filth that you like so much.
Political debate in the west has been pushed into a war between the supposedly right and left. The casualty is information because the right led by billionaire funded think tanks discovered that winning a propaganda war was a paychological question as illustrated initially by cancer and tobacco. It is no longer a debate between opposing political philosophies it has become a propaganda war fueled by lies and hatred. There is no place left for rational debate about the consequences of political choice. Effectively society is run by whoever pumps out the most frightening lies. Democracy has failed, the United States is becoming just as repressive a regime as China.
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
We are all APK.
You are welcome on my lawn.
You very obviously know JACK SHIT about re-feralized pigs.
So keep on with your idiocy. Meanwhile, those of us that lived on farms and have dealt with this problem for decades can just look at you, laugh, and pretty much take you for a complete fucking moron.
And I was raised by a USMC grandfather. I played with more guns and explosives than you've ever laid eyes upon, child.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I'm old now, but when when I was a lad my high school taught critical thinking. The term "fake news" wasn't in vogue at the time; schools used words like "fallocies" and "evidence". I feel like the principles were the same.
Anyway, the idea was that you can't stop people from spewing crap, so let's teach students how separate bullshit from cogent thinking.
All-in-all, I think it worked well.
As to public perception, that is obviously more a factor of the media.
If the public peace is your objective, then you would probably do better to attack the First Amendment rather than the Second.
Naturally, the "first" is not as rhetorically vulnerable so I suspect you won't do that.
Regardless, if you look at the statistics, you'll see that the gun deaths in the US from these mass shootings is LOWER than the same statistic in Canada and about the same as Germany.
I can go through the numbers with you but it basically boils down to this... The US has a very large national population and these deaths are relatively rare.
They're so rare that in the last 60 years it would take FIVE... that is "5" Irish students in Ireland getting killed to hit the US statistic. I've got an excel spread sheet on this and everything. When the Florida mass shootings happened I did some research for "fun" and crunched all the numbers. I have graphs and everything.
As to judicial this and that, let us keep in mind we're talking about a constitutional amendment here. Its not like just "any" law. It is obliged to the same protections that the First Amendment has for example or the third or the fourth etc. So be careful erroding the foundations of that protection because you erode them all.
That said, if you want to change it, we do have a process for that. We have changed the US constitution many times over the years and we can still do it. We most recently changed it in 1992... 27th amendment I believe.
So why not do that?
I would suspect because the issue is actually controversial and you may not have the votes. That being the case, what is your "moral" or "ethical" authority in a democratic republic if you don't have the votes?
Just saying. If you want to change it... then change it. Get the votes. If you don't have the votes... then the issue is that you don't have the votes. Simple as that.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
since 1959, the US has had 242 deaths due to mass killings at schools.
US population is about about 325 million
School fatalities per million is about .745... per million per year you have about .0126 people.
I can examine canada or germany... by the same metric taking population into account... Canada is about 0.0267 dead children per million per year. You can see that is a much higher number than the US number.
Germany clocks in at .0149 for west germany and .0122 for post unification germany.
Again, this is the mass shootings and not the street thugs killing each other over places to sell drugs. Often there is a dishonest conflation and change in what is being discussed to increase the power of a rhetorical argument. But it has no integrity and is generally ignorant of the deeper facts of the matter.
I have spreadsheets... I've crunched the numbers. If you think I made an error then show you have crunched the numbers yourself unlike that guy that just chimed in and said that people are lying but didn't offer any sources of calculations.
Its very easy to say "X is wrong". I'm doing quite a bit more than that. I'm offering up where I got my information from, I explained my methodology, and I offered my conclusions.
If you do not rise to the level of even this rudimentary effort, then please have the humility to concede you didn't look into it as deeply as myself. It is very annoying to have people that spent no time or attention on something contradicting things that are actually pretty well grounded.
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Look, ban the bump stocks. I really don't care.
But look at them banning knives in London. You're on a slippery slope here, bub. Where does it stop? Because it clearly and demonstrably and provably does not stop at knives.
So where to next? When is it enough?
Set a principle you're following so I can follow it to its logical conclusion. I really doubt you can offer one you'd be comfortable standing behind. And absent a principle you don't have a principle which means this is an unprincipled position. It is a serious serious problem if you don't have a principle.
So... work one out... throw it out there... and we'll see if it stands up.
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US crime stats are actually very low EXCLUDING "urban drug and gang violence"... which is a problem.
However, bump stocks are not really an issue in drive bys etc. What is more, criminal gangs frequently use illegal guns in any case... so I wonder if your concern is urban drug and gang violence, why don't you suggest a law that will impact that issue?
Hammering law abiding citizens with more regulations that criminals will just ignore is not helpful.
If you can't ban heroin because clearly heroin addicts still get high every day... explain how you're going to keep criminals from getting guns?
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Oh no, some random called me child. Well, that trumps years of hunting experience but myself and other hunters throughout the US.
Ban civilian possession of actual and de facto automatic firearms, all devices intentionally designed to covert firearms to actual or de facto automatic weapons, and magazines of >10 round capacity.
There's your principle. And I'm fine with it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
242 school shootings in the US since 1959 with a population of 325 million... our numbers are lower than canada and germany.
I can crunch the numbers different ways.
If you go to FBI and DoJ statistics then you see that US crime stats are actually very low EXCLUDING what the DoJ calls "Urban drug and gang violence"...
Outside of the big cities US crime stats are very low... in US suburbs the crime rate is very low... in urban areas where there are no gangs the crime rate is very low.
It isn't helpful to just get a national number that removes all the detail and then presume to know you have answers to complex questions.
You deleted the complexity when you averaged the numbers and washed out all the complexity from the stats.
I live in a city that has about 600 murders per year. In my part of town which has roughly 30~40 thousand people in it, we have had zero murders in the last 10 years. Not one.
Now you go to the bad part of town and there's a murder there practically every day. The city collectively ignores it because its street thugs killing other street thugs... like... 90 percent of it. The murders mostly go unsolved... the police are not especially welcome or obliged any cooperation in that part of town... and so what are you going to do?
Do you honestly think that a bump stock ban is going to do anything to that situation? Of course not. Most of the people using guns over there don't even buy their guns from registered gun dealers. they don't get their guns registered... they're already illegal guns.
What is more, a lot of the people that commit mass shootings with guns were supposed to have their gun buying privs pulled because of psychological or criminal behavior. A lot of the reason why that doesn't happen is due to various government organizations not filing paper work, not doing a proper background check, or deciding they don't want to cause someone trouble.
So the laws were already passed that pertain to the mass shootings... the mass shootings are statistically pretty rare and not higher than other first world countries.... and the only issue the US has is with the street gangs in urban areas selling drugs.
If your solution doesn't pertain directly to that context then you're wasting everyone's time.
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As to drugs, I agree. You can't ban a product that people want. This also pertains to guns as well as most of the criminals as I pointed out get their guns the same way they get the drugs. If you can't stop the drugs then you can't stop the guns.
What is more the rise of 3d printed metal parts is going to render the concept of controlling goods by controlling licensing and manufacture irrelevant. Anti gun laws are going to not only start collapsing in the US but they're going to also collapse in China, Europe, etc. You can't stop it. Doubtless you'll disagree... I'm happy to let time and tide settle that argument.
As to no gang violence in europe... sure, which is why knives aren't banned in London, eh?
Bro... work on your lines of bullshit. This sort of thing only fools the fools.
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That's not a principle but is rather a specific regulation.
What is the underlying reason you're doing that.
I'm going to post a link here to help you... this is not intended with any condescension but rather to clarify what I meant by "principle":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
""As a juridic law
Main article: Principle of legality
It represents a set of values that inspire the written norms that organize the life of a society submitting to the powers of an authority, generally the State. The law establishes a legal obligation, in a coercive way; it therefore acts as principle conditioning of the action that limits the liberty of the individuals. See, for examples, the territorial principle, homestead principle, and precautionary principle.""
I'm not looking for the number of bullets. I'm looking for the principle that informs and inspires that regulation.
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Says you. I know what you were asking for, and that's not the way that we govern society. We govern society based upon balancing competing interests, benefits and harms, utility and philosophy.
"...for while the Constitution protects against invasions of individual rights, it is not a suicide pact." Kennedy v. Mendoza-Martinez, 372 U.S. 144 (1963).
You want a general principle that you can spin out into "regulations" so that you can assert that the principle is harmful. Well I've spun out the "regulations" for you. Argue against them, or do not... we do not legislate principles -- we legislate regulatory limits, such as these.
No, can't be! Big Brother Facebook loves us all.
Self-described "leftists" sure do love corporate oligarchy.
Because ALL news is fake
With the near-zero journalistic integrity of all basically all MSM in America, the obvious problem for Facebook is whatever objective criteria you set for labelling "Fake News", you would include basically all MSM, and also including a lot of (if not all) advertising.
Seriously, the first step should always be to start by considering ANY NEWS as fake
Then you should be doing your due diligence :
- What is the source ?
- Is the source even actually stated or is a completely unsourced post ?
- If you follow the source trail, do can you go back to a primary source ? Or are you stuck in an endless loop of clickbait/internet meme/etc. cheap websites citing each other ?
Further, regarding sources :
- is the image actually relevant to the article, or is some old or unrelated photo that the article attempts to use to excite an emotion and google image search reveals that it has nothing to do with the subject (e.g.: illustration use to make you thing that people are "behaving like animals and opportunistic thieves" during a natural disaster, actually doesn't date back from the disaster and wasn't even taken in the area).
- Is the primary source actually contactable (e.g.: the initial article sites some officials. Are they named, can you reach them out for a comment)
Also you could consider some heuristics :
- Is the title giving out some information "Study find that 10% of population does bla" ? or is it the usual 100% emotion and 0% data click bait "10 things that will save your life, you won't believe when your see number 7 !"
(Warning it's a heurisitc, but a very good one to eliminate ton of crap from your feed)
- Is the information coming from a reputable newspaper
(Again, it's just a heuristic. Even big newspaper make mistakes, and even serious people can be wrong. So don't trust them blindly, it's only a heuristic when you're in a hurry - But at least the more serious newspaper will usually put some effort to publish retractions, corrections, etc.)
- Prefer offline media (newspapers) which have time to do some more in-depth analysis, or written on-line media that doesn't rely on ads for survival (They don't have such a high incentive to attract clicks to survive). Be really wary of TV (their business model is trying to attract your attention to have more eyeballs to sell to the advertising network. Being fast and catchy is more important to them than being right. Avoid heavily ad-sponsored websites at all costs.
(It's just a heuristic, but some people have no strong incentive in telling you the truth)
- And last but no least : If you heard about it in the news, don't panic. It's just something new, they are called "news" for a reason after all. It's probably more a freak accident that gets overblown than an actual menace.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
As I suspected, you don't actually have a principle.
It should bother you that you don't have one and it should bother you more that I knew it immediately the instant you said anything.
Here you'll be tempted to show bravado... save it... its childish. Your position is shallow and based on nothing.
I won't ask for a principle again from you... I don't think you're able.
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Knives about a certain size are banned all over the place.
On the other hand a guy with a knife can only kill so many ... with a gun he can kill plenty more.
And no: there is no noticeable "gang violence" in Europe, and that includes UK.
And then again: how would one get a gun in Germany or UK or France? It is literally impossible, the only way is having connections into countries where you can acquire them and smuggle them into central EU.
If you would come here and would try to buy a gun: good luck! I even have no clue were to start to get one.
Gun control works, all over the world, just not in the US, because you never tried it.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
"balancing competing interests, benefits and harms, utility and philosophy" is not a principle? Or merely not a principle subject to your plan of attack?
Let's try this, you propound a principle, since you cannot even come with with a coherent argument against the proposed policy, and we'll test that.
No, because it isn't YOUR principle. You're really just saying that there are forces out there that RESTRAIN your interests and the ultimate law is the product of your will countered by others.
Look, you have a legit slippery slope here, chum. A slippery slope is when you propose something that doesn't have a limit. It can just go on and on and on and on. A principle would possibly limit it and give everyone some peace of mind that after you get X you won't immediately go asking for X+1, then X+2, and so on.
And again, your balancing concept would be accepted by no one that knew anything about philosophy or law as a principle. Absolutely pathetic.
I'm only being a little strong with you because you attempted to high hat. You're not due that. You're some some smuck like everyone else... me in included in case you're confused and think I'm condescending to you here.
You have basically no argument. You're saying you want something because you want it. You're not saying why. You're not offering a guiding principle that directs your position. You're not limiting your scope.
Its an awful argument. Really really bad.
If you want to actually fix your shit so we can have a discussion, cool... if not then we're done.
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Brah, if you want to pretend that the knife ban in London isn't a reflection of a concept that won't admit failure, then fine. You won't admit failure. Contradiction of the obvious is not however a strong rebuttal.
As to guys killing people with guns, heroin exists in London... it was brought into the country illegally. There exists a black market where in people can buy and sell heroin. Naturally guns are in that mix as well.
So you didn't stop black market guns.
In the US, most of the inner city street murder is committed with black market guns.
We have very different types of murder that exist in very different conditions.
The mass murders you see in the US that are in the media are statistically average for a country of our size. Canada and germany either have very similiar numbers or their numbers are higher.
For Ireland to have the same statistics as the US FIVE "5" Irish children would have be killed over the last 60 years to reach US statistics. The numbers are statistically very low but you think they're high because you've been duped by sensationalist media. We can go over the math. I know you don't like citations or math or evidence. I've seen that from our previous discussions where "I" cite evidence and you just cling to a narrative you can't support.
As to US murders EXCLUDING inner city gang and drug violence, the US is actually very peaceful and is comparable to pretty much any first world country on that basis. Our homocide figures in the US are UNCHANGED "MINUS" inner city drug and gang violence from the 1950s. We're fucking mayberry outside of the urban blight zones.
And you say "but the urban blight is part of the US"... Fine, then offer a policy to address that context. Because bump stocks are fucking irrelevant to gang bangers.
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You don't get to disqualify a principle or say that it isn't mine when you cannot even propound your own principle. The rhetorical trap that you're attempting to lay is obvious, all the more so due to the fact that you keep running away from espousing any sort of countervailing principle or proposing any different "regulation" (or even a lack thereof).
There is no such thing as a 'legit' slippery slope. There are only those who fallaciously assert that competing interests cannot be balanced so that a thing inevitably must become purely (and illogically) one thing or its opposite. Pure capitalism or pure communism. Every human being possessing a nuclear weapon or every human being having been defanged, declawed, and deprived of moveable objects. It's bullshit -- and it's the argument that you've been telegraphing since you've demanded that I hand you a "principle."
I expressly made an argument in the initial post, and I expressly limited my scope. Oddly, you feel free to throw all that away because I will not willingly feed you a singular principle (as if there could be a singular principle) that you may fallaciously shove down your slippery slope as an unproductive tangent to the discussion.
Counter the argument, and counter the "regulation" that was the express product of that argument, or walk away. I need not care either. Bump stock bans aren't going to be reversed because of your fixation upon principle. Magazine limits aren't going to be reversed because of your fixation upon principle. The populace is pissed and D.C. v. Heller set a limit upon scope within which much can be done without fallaciously slipping down your metaphorical slope:
"It may be objected that if weapons that are most useful
in military service -- M-16 rifles and the like -- may be
banned, then the Second Amendment right is completely
detached from the prefatory clause. But as we have said,
the conception of the militia at the time of the Second
Amendment's ratification was the body of all citizens
capable of military service, who would bring the sorts of
lawful weapons that they possessed at home to militia
duty. It may well be true today that a militia, to be as
effective as militias in the 18th century, would require
sophisticated arms that are highly unusual in society at
large. Indeed, it may be true that no amount of small
arms could be useful against modern-day bombers and
tanks. But the fact that modern developments have limited
the degree of fit between the prefatory clause and the
protected right cannot change our interpretation of the
right."
My shit is on point. I can't force you to engage, but I continue to make you look the poorer for refusing to do so. "It just won't matter" is just so much bullshit. Devices that only serve to magnify the damage that one human being can wreak upon others are routinely banned from civilian possession, with the entirely reasonable expectation that such bans reduce the risk of like incidents in the future (where "reduce" != eliminate) and reduce the potential damage rate of other such incidents in the future (where again "reduce" != eliminate).
And so it shall continue to be... whether you like it or not.
Brah, if you want to pretend that the knife ban in London isn't a reflection of a concept that won't admit failure, then fine. You won't admit failure. Contradiction of the obvious is not however a strong rebuttal.
I have no idea about the knife ban in London, as I don't live in London. Actually: never heard about it.
Well, regarding gun violence you are obviously misinformed. Except for a few countries like Jamaika or some war zones, US has the highest death toll off all 2nd world countries, and note: I refuse to call it a 1st world country. Except for the armed forces they are third world.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Thought you were English. If you are, and I know about it... in Los Angeles... and you don't know about it in England... perhaps consider not lecturing people about how things work... on planet Earth... tell me more about Mars. Maybe you know something about that. Because if I know about the knife thing in London and you don't... and you're English... and I'm not... and you're telling me how things work elsewhere... You just might not have any credibility there.
https://twitter.com/MayorofLon...
What do you want on this... You are english, yes? If not, tell me where you're from and I'll find relevant links for there. Its not like its hard.
You will kneel before the awesome power of google.
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Slippery slope is always fallacious, eh?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Not true. As you can see there, it can be a valid argument.
I qualified what makes something slipper slope versus not... that there is some kind of limit. You haven't set a principle that would limit your position.
In fact, you're very clearly aware that you either can't or that actually admitting what it is would be rhetorical suicide. I can't think of any other reason why you would refuse to cite your principle.
You either don't have one or you do have one and are ashamed to cite it.
Either way, you just got BTFO on this issue. You came in here with your pretensions and instantly I saw through you bullshit. Look, have your opinions. It is a free country and you're entitled to believe what you like. But you're not entitled to my respect or to be given intellectual and moral credibility you don't deserve.
You've got an opinion. It is a dumb opinion that you can't support. I have righteously mocked it. You can't defend it.
Good Game.
Unless you want to cite that principle you either don't have or are afraid to cite?
Probably not... in which case... again, you have no argument.
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"slippery slope arguments can be good ones if the slope is real -- that is, if there is good evidence that the consequences of the initial action are highly likely to occur." Yes, if we ban bump stocks, before you know it humanity will highly likely be reduced to eating finger foods because knife bans...
You committed the fallacy in your first post. You no longer get to hide behind "can be a valid argument."
Since you appear incapable of assembling the pieces that are expressly handed to you. I'll put them together in one post in a vain attempt to get you to respond.
Argument:
There is essentially no legitimate reason to use a bump-stock. Shooters using bump-stocks are less accurate and have less control over their weapons -- the exact opposite of the goals of a hunter, a target shooter, and frankly those engaged in self-defense. No need for a "spray and pray" device outside of a military context, and even then doctrine highly discourages that sort of use in most situations.
Principle:
Homicide is bad. Reducing mass homicides is good. "balancing competing interests, benefits and harms, utility and philosophy" is inherent in evaluating whether allowing the possession of tools enabling mass homicide is socially beneficial or not. Feel free to argue against that principle.
Limits:
Ban civilian possession of actual and de facto automatic firearms, all devices intentionally designed to covert firearms to actual or de facto automatic weapons, and magazines of >10 round capacity.
What's truly sad here is the amount of time that you've spent attacking the form of the message instead of offering any argument concerning the issue. And I fully expect you to carry on doing so, because you simply cannot offer anything beyond tangents, fallacies, and ad hominems.
But you haven't shown that it is. You simply bleated "But look at them banning knives in London." As if (1) they banned all knives in London (nobody eats with those things, anyway) and (2) that was a highly likely result of a bump stock ban.
Funny how a London ban on carrying >3 inch blades down a public street is crazy but an American ban on carrying 2.4 inch blades in commercial airplanes is totally rational. Almost as if balancing competing interests, benefits and harms, utility and philosophy in context matters.
Defined a limit and a guiding principle, so it is not. However, since you cannot read, your posts continue to be a dumpster fire of fallacious reasoning.
Wait - you claimed that I explicitly avoided setting a limit. How did mag capacity come into this? Oh, because I did set a limit, and you've now admitted it.
And yes, I am. How 'bout me now?
But if so, and since I am not conceding the point, you've got a problem.
Still waiting for you to say anything of substance on the topic...
So if the mag capacity were set you'd oppose any further gun control.
Good to know.
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I'm German.
No idea what you want with the twitter link. Yes, there is no excuse to carry a knife into a city. Why would you?
And why would I need to know random laws about random weapons when I live in a country that has banned guns since centuries and other weapons since millennia?
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
no english link, but perhaps you speak french, there is a link on the left side to the french version.
If not, tell me where you're from and I'll find relevant links for there. Its not like its hard. :D
Relevant links for what? Mass murder with guns every week? Good luck
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Your screen name implied to me you were english " angel'o'sphere"... a play I presumed on the Anglosphere.
Regardless:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Your link is available in the English Wikipedia.
As to your citation-less arguments about US gun violence. I've already shown your position to be baseless in previous posts. Refusing to read or respond to arguments is literally your argumentative strategy at this point.
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I lost track about your point.
In the US you have a mass shooting with more than 3 dead once a week, usually much more often, and with much more dead.
In Europe you have a shooting once a year ... usually once every 10 years.
So ... what exactly is your pint?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
There only was one single school shooting in german history.
By a kid where the father did not lock away the guns and ammunition as it is expected and demanded by law.
So no, there is nothing to process. And we did not talk about "school shootings" but about all shootings.
Regarding gun violence Germany is one of the safest countries of the world after Japan and Switzerland. Easy to google, btw.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
YOU DIDN"T READ MY LINK... this is not the "angry caps" this is the "yelling at a thick mother fucker caps"...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I have to assume at this point you don't read anything because you're terrified to figure out you're wrong. Christ... Fucking read it.
Bremen school shooting
4 dead 1913
Cologne school massacre
10 dead 1964
Erlangen school massacre
2 dead 1972
Eppstein school shooting
5 dead 1983
Erfurt school massacre
16 dead 2002
Adam Labus
3 dead 2002
Winnenden school shooting
15 dead 2009
And that isn't even a comprehensive list... that includes pre war school shootings, west germany, and post unification germany. It has no data on east german actions during that time. Maybe there was nothing, but lets be real... there are mass school shootings in CHINA "RIGHT NOW"... so that's unlikely.
What we're running into again here, is that you're profoundly ignorant. This is not an insult. It is a statement of FACT.
I have posted that link at least three times in this discussion. You've read it ZERO times.
You say "There only was one single school shooting in german history." when theirs been AT LEAST three since 2000. Now you can say "but less than the US"... I'm sure you're thinking that because it would be a very stupid thing for you to do.
The US has roughly 4 times the population of Germany. So look at that list and imagine it being 4 times larger. Because just factoring for population... it would have to be.
You listened to NOTHING. In the last 60 years, it would take "FIVE" dead kids in Ireland to match US statistics. 5. Actually take your brain damaged head out of your ass and look at the data. Factor for population. Apperciate the statistics are very thin.
In the US since 1959 we've had something like 242 kids get killed in a country of 325 million. So... 242/325 million people/59 years = 0.0126205997392438 dead kids per million per year.
Your narrative is just that. It's a story. It is dragons and unicorns.
You said: "There only was one single school shooting in german history."... You're wrong.
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