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How Facebook's WhatsApp Destroyed A Village (buzzfeednews.com)
The proliferation of affordable smartphones, dwindling data prices, and apps and services that are designed to work swiftly on such patchy infrastructure have changed how people in developing markets marred with poor literacy level such as India communicate, do business, and get their education. But it has also come at a cost. In the recent months we have learned about Facebook's struggle to contain violence in Myanmar, BuzzFeed News has a chilling story on how rumors circulated through WhatsApp, which is also owned by Facebook, are causing real violence in India, the world's second largest internet market. From the report: WhatsApp, a Facebook-owned messaging service, is used by more than 200 million people in India, its largest market. It's become an inextricable part of the country's culture and social fabric, widely used by younger and older generations alike. It's one of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's crown jewels, an app he acquired for $19 billion in 2014 that began as a messaging platform but is now evolving into something more, with a new payments feature already being tested in India.
Lately, however, WhatsApp has been getting Indians killed. In June, rumors about child kidnappers shared on the service inspired a mob of hundreds to lynch a 29-year-old man and his friend who were passing through a village in Karbi Anglong, a district in the eastern part of the country. In July, two weeks after the Rainpada incident, hundreds of people hurled stones at an IT worker who was visiting the South Indian village of Murki, killing him. Since May, there have been at least 16 lynchings leading to 29 deaths in India where public officials say mobs were incited by misinformation on WhatsApp. As Facebook wrangles an ongoing crisis of public confidence over its role in spreading misinformation throughout the 2016 US presidential election, the company is grappling with a different kind of problem in places like Rainpada, where its products have abetted flesh-and-blood harm. In attempting to fulfill Facebook's current mission -- to "give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together" -- Zuckerberg and his team of Silicon Valley-based executives failed to foresee its malignant applications: misinformation, propaganda, rumor, hate.
Lately, however, WhatsApp has been getting Indians killed. In June, rumors about child kidnappers shared on the service inspired a mob of hundreds to lynch a 29-year-old man and his friend who were passing through a village in Karbi Anglong, a district in the eastern part of the country. In July, two weeks after the Rainpada incident, hundreds of people hurled stones at an IT worker who was visiting the South Indian village of Murki, killing him. Since May, there have been at least 16 lynchings leading to 29 deaths in India where public officials say mobs were incited by misinformation on WhatsApp. As Facebook wrangles an ongoing crisis of public confidence over its role in spreading misinformation throughout the 2016 US presidential election, the company is grappling with a different kind of problem in places like Rainpada, where its products have abetted flesh-and-blood harm. In attempting to fulfill Facebook's current mission -- to "give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together" -- Zuckerberg and his team of Silicon Valley-based executives failed to foresee its malignant applications: misinformation, propaganda, rumor, hate.
Let face it. These people are doing this to themselves. Its not facebooks problem if they can't learn to not let themselves be trolled in to violence. In this case someone told them to walk off a cliff and they did. Sounds like this country has many deep seated problems that the tech is just shining a light on.
Zuckerberg and his team of Silicon Valley-based executives failed to foresee its malignant applications: misinformation, propaganda, rumor, hate.
That's the New York Times' job.
Have gnu, will travel.
Since May, there have been at least 16 lynchings leading to 29 deaths in India where public officials say mobs were incited by misinformation on WhatsApp. As Facebook wrangles an ongoing crisis of public confidence over its role in spreading misinformation throughout the 2016 US presidential election, the company is grappling with a different kind of problem in places like Rainpada, where its products have abetted flesh-and-blood harm.
I would rather have that such kind of reports be balanced with something positive WhatsApp & the like have been responsible for. I am sure there is something we call all be proud of.
Off my head, I can think of cheap phone calls apps like WhatsApp have enabled. This way, the big telecom companies' greed has been tamed.
not Facebook.
If only we had someone in charge of deciding what was true and harmonious. And of course, we'll need to soften all the encryption so they can read what we're saying and be sure...
I hate Facebook, and there are many problems being caused by it so I'm going to join the political lynch party on this one and call it their fault. The end will justify the means.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
The app didn't do any of the beating or lynching -- it just brought more people into the knitting circle. As an aside: who the fuck uses buzzfeed as a primary news source? Shame on you.
An internal system operation returned the error "The operation completed successfully.".
The Fake News, Twitter, etc, feeding the democrats' hate and causing violence in the streets.
Its not facebooks problem if they can't learn to not let themselves be trolled in to violence. In this case someone told them to walk off a cliff and they did.
More to the point, you can't blame Facebook for rumors being circulated on their service any more than you can blame the air for rumors being spread face to face.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
C'mon, the title is so obviously wrong. You don't even have to RTFA; the summary is enough to prove that the person who wrote the title wasn't even trying to be accurate.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
This is going to lead to the Indian government banning WhatApps, etc and prompting a solution it can control. Such as Tencent's WeChat which is being promoted in India. This is super good for me, I own shares of Tencent.
-- Note: These Comments are Generated by ME! Not You! ME!
When poorly educated, non tech-literate people encounter a technology like Whatsapp for the first time, the experience feels so "high tech" and "revolutionary" to them, that they are psychologically incapable of understanding that stuff that is messaged to them over said new technology to them may be "malicious, and completely untrue" in nature. They open WhatsApp, somebody on that glitzy high-tech service tells them "pedophiles and rapists are coming to your village - defend your women and children", and these people genuinely think that they need to act to "protect the village". Who is primarily at fault here, of course, is the fucking no-good troll-maniancs who are putting these hoaxes on WhatsApp in the first place. But mark my words as someone with experience of the developing world - not only can undereducated people rarely tell whether what is told to them is factually true or not, whether on TV, internet or in newspapers, but when they encounter fake-information or fake-news on high tech digital messaging services, they are even less able to discern what is true and what is not. Their instinct is to trust what they hear, see or read on digital communication platforms.
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
Poorer societies with lesser access to education are prone to violence and unrest. This has nothing to do with malfunctioning humans. You're making a very attractive and popular mistake of attributing behavior all humans are capable to to the intrinsic nature of .. a country? Something in the water? Surely you're not saying it's a racial thing, right?
Everyone on earth was happily doing stuff like this not so very long ago. Those "witches" weren't doing it to themselves anymore than the victims of social media fueled violence in India are doing it to themselves - and frankly it's stupid to expect everyone in the entire world to behave the way you do, to use technologies in the same ways you do, given the stark differences in the environment, resources, education, political and economic stability in which people grow up and live.
But damn you seem worried that Facebook is being accused of killing people. That's reductio ad absurdum - but engineers and makers of technology should be expected to have a social responsibility to try and limit the ways in which different societies may abuse their work. That's nothing new. Engineering programs the world over include social science courses teaching us Engineers as much, and those responsibilities are part of the values professional engineering organizations seek to uphold.
"Old man yells at systemd"
"How living in a society where people think it's okay to stone people based on rumour, and the police are unable to stop or prosecute them Destroyed A Village"
being the more accurate headline.
Whatsapp did nothing more than allow people to communicate, no different to a book, radio, post-it notes or anything else.
But if you live in a community where people will stone you to death without consequence, no amount - or absence - of technology can save you.
Lunatics lynching people based on rumor destroyed a village.
Except in this case, the tech being used was WhatsApp, a messaging app. People were sharing videos with one-another via a messaging app. Pretty sure that algorithms had little-to-nothing to do with this town's hysteria.
An internal system operation returned the error "The operation completed successfully.".
Zuckerberg and his team of Silicon Valley-based executives failed to foresee its malignant applications: misinformation, propaganda, rumor, hate.
I don't think that's particularly unique to Facebook executives. I'm not defending or attacking them in this case but am making a separate point. Silicon Valley companies historically have had something of a blind spot for the negative ways in which technology ends up being used sometimes. Entrepreneurs tend to be optimistic sorts of people because they kind of have to be to take the financial risks they do. They also tend to be engineers and engineers (I are one) as a general proposition tend to think about how to solve problems, not how to cause problems. So they create this great technology without really ever fully considering the unintentional negative consequences. We are trying to make the world a better place and it often never occurs to us until later that some people are asshats.
Wasn't WhatsApp end-to-end encrypted? That means FB has no idea what people are talking about. So it has no responsibility here.
So what's the alternative?
Basically, the OP is saying "these darn stupid people, WhatsApp is guilty of letting them talk to each other".
Should we then manage our communication channels to prevent stupid people* from communicating? Isn't this what Twitter/Youtube/FB/etc are trying to do?
*according to our very-personal definition of stupid
You may agree with what Twitter et al are doing because you hate Trump and Alex Jones etc...but if you can't see the pernicious and corrosive effect of that slippery slope, think about what life would be like if that principle becomes universalized and someone like Trump or Alex Jones is RUNNING the Twitter/FB/Youtube company?
The Founding Fathers are rolling in their graves.
-Styopa
Now the interesting thing with WhatsApp, if they have the encryption done the way they say it's done (with messages encrypted before they leave your phone, only to be decrypted by the recipient), the company staff can not read the messages in any way. Not being able to read the messages Facebook doesn't know what's being communicated on their WhatsApp platform, so even if they wanted to control this kind of rumours/misinformation there's nothing they can do. At all.
Except maybe WhatsApp groups. I don't know if those messages are also encrypted to the same extent.
As stanky as Facebook is, it's not responsible for third worlders rioting, killing people based on rumors, etc.
As I kept saying about the stupid Russian ads, if you believe random crap that you see on facebook, YOU are the problem, not Facebook.
It's Facebook. It's just a freaking multi-user blog site. It has no magical powers over you that you don't choose to give it.
A similar case happened two weeks or so in Mexico, two people were killed at Puebla because rumors began spreading in WhatsApp that they were kids kidnappers. Both were burnt alive.
But damn you seem worried that Facebook is being accused of killing people. That's reductio ad absurdum - but engineers and makers of technology should be expected to have a social responsibility to try and limit the ways in which different societies may abuse their work.
No, most of the time this is insanity brought by people who want to "unvent" things. A knife doesn't know if you're stabbing someone. A camera doesn't know if you're producing kiddie porn. Instead of being simple tools technology is supposed to be your watcher, except the telescreens are smaller and you carry them in your pocket to ensure you're only doing "acceptable" things with them. If you accept that, you forego any right to complain about privacy, DRM, lack of digital ownership etc. you're basically renting your very existence subject to terms and conditions. Do not pass go, do not collect $200, go directly to China.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Who is primarily at fault here, of course, is the fucking no-good troll-maniancs who are putting these hoaxes on WhatsApp in the first place.
Well of course.
But the reality is that anybody can tell anybody anything. So it's imperative that people learn to take stuff with a grain of salt.
Either way, when someone gossips over the fence, the fault is not the fence's ...
Are they publishers and therefore responsible for their content and obligated to remove offensive and inaccurate information, etc?
Or do they fall more into the Common Carrier definition, which largely absolves them of any obligation regarding the content they carry, except for marketing and public relations issues, and invalidates their arguments for selectively squelching speech of viewpoints they don't like?
They need to decide or the Feds will end up doing it. And we all know the Feds will likely get it wrong.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
That would require a weak willed, if not entirely deliberate, misunderstanding of history and science.
"Old man yells at systemd"
they are psychologically incapable of understanding that stuff that is messaged to them over said new technology to them may be "malicious, and completely untrue" in nature.
Please don't turn this into a poor, dumb 3rd world problem vs a smart, educated 1st world. Some idiot in the US shot up a pizza parlor because of that stupid PizzaGate stuff. There continues to be lots of moronic conspiracy theories that float all over the western "educated" world too. Large amounts of people in the US have convinced themselves freaking gluten, which we've eaten for a few thousand years, is now suddenly a poison. Many people think the moon landings were faked. In the 70s people believed all kinds of weird stuff about how there were "ancient astronauts", and the Egyptian pyramids were constructed by Aliens. Ben Carson, a former neurosurgeon and the current the secretary HUD thinks the pyramids were built to store grain!
People are stupid and don't care about finding truth, and it doesn't matter if they're "educated" or not. Different people are just susceptible to different bullshit. The only difference is that now it's even easier to spread BS. BS is just easier to spread because it doesn't have this unfortunate property of being limited to what's actually real. BS can be anything, and that's what's appealing about it.
Let face it. These people are doing this to themselves. Its not facebooks problem if they can't learn to not let themselves be trolled in to violence. In this case someone told them to walk off a cliff and they did. Sounds like this country has many deep seated problems that the tech is just shining a light on.
Uh, "this" country? Give me a fucking break. Mass ignorance and stupidity know no bounds nor borders. Anywhere humans exist there is a very good chance you can convince a group of them to do anything armed with nothing more than a rumor, to include killing another human. If you believe otherwise, you haven't been around humans long enough.
And this kind of instant response bullshit is exactly what you get when humans embrace the concept of "going viral". Fact checking is optional, even when someone's life is at stake.
And no, we have no easy answer to this. If we did, we would have cured humans of the disease of ignorance long ago.
But mark my words as someone with experience of the developing world - not only can undereducated people rarely tell whether what is told to them is factually true or not, whether on TV, internet or in newspapers, but when they encounter fake-information or fake-news on high tech digital messaging services, they are even less able to discern what is true and what is not. Their instinct is to trust what they hear, see or read on digital communication platforms.
Developing world? How, exactly, is this different from America?
Wow, the pot calling the kettle black!
What about the man who show showed up armed at a supposed pizza joint owned by Hillary to rescue human trafficking victims? Or how about the pee video Russia held as blackmail against Trump?
No, the US isn't any better. There is no defense of mob mentality in India or the US. If you think someone has committed a crime, report it and give all the evidence you can, then let the judge and jury calmly make a decision about guilt.
On a side note, I really wish reporters here in the US would stop trying to incite action and do their job of reporting facts, not opinions.
WhatsApp could test the user with a scenario each time you launch it:
"There is a murderer in your village"
(Click here to kill him)
(Click here to do nothing to him)
If the user clicks on "kill him", then WhatsApp would delete itself.
I don't think this has anything to do with third wold countries or groups of people experiencing a new technology. Look at all of the lives that have been destroyed in the U.S. over various moral panics over the years. Fortunately we've at least stopped lynching people, but even back in the 80's people went to jail over a supposed (and wrong) belief that there was rampant Satanic ritual abuse of children in day care facilities.
49% of America believed the same claims about the Mexicans.
52% Britain believed the same claims about the Europeans.
Stupidity is not, apparently, terribly territorial. And whilst there are good reasons for thinking good education would help, nobody is willing to pay for it. It's like vaccines, unless 95% or more are inoculated against ignorance, there's no herd immunity and everyone becomes infected with stupid. And that requires a total rejection of the theory that people should be responsible for their own education, it has to be collective and most societies can't handle that.
But it's not just that. I suggest reading through Tacitus' book A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, or the Causes of Corrupt Eloquence.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Lynching was common in the US 100 years ago so I don't think this easily attributable to race but what is that such an objectionable thing to even consider? Societies do reflect the people that make them up. Are you arguing that there is no difference between races or that evolution only acts on various flavors of humans from the neck down and then from the neck up it is only skin deep?
Blaming WhatsApp is like blaming the cellphone providers for this massacre: it was merely a communications tool used to coordinate and facilitate violence. Should the cellphone companies share responsibility for not shutting down communications? Or more troubling, should both WhatsApp and the cellphone companies be responsible for monitoring every communication and try to identify and censor any speech that could lead to violence? Even if you think that's a good idea, privacy be damned, how do you actually pull that off?
I can remember reading a well reasoned post on slashdot, back around 2000, where the author basically said, the future of the internet isn't a Muslim and a Jewish person having a reasoned debate online (a la Locke and Demosthenes from Ender's Game), it was actually going to be one trolling the other with a picture of their prophet swathed in bacon, and honestly that's clearly come to pass.
I understand why the people building the internet in their ivory towers though it would enlighten and uplift the human race. They were so wrong. I've long since deleted my Facebook and recently my Twitter account, but I'm still wary as I walk around town that I might say or do something "wrong" and have my picture taken and posted online for community shaming. Worse yet, someone who's ticked off at me might make an unsubstantiated claim against me and thanks to the court of public opinion, my career and family life could be ruined.
We've certainly succeeded in empowering the rabble. The uplifting that was supposed to happen turn out of be opposite.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Don't blame tech literacy or misplaced trust here. Those people committing violence were already going to do so, they are just looking for any excuse to do it. If Whatsapp goes away, the violence will continue, they will just use a different excuse for what incited them.
Did any of those who committed these atrocities say "Oh, you mean that person was a really nice guy? I didn't know! I trusted NICEGUY47 on Whatsapp! It is total coincidence that the victim was Rohingya, and that I've been spitting on those people for decades and calling for their lynchings is total coincidence."
Quoting Wikipedia; "On December 4, 2016, Edgar Maddison Welch, a 28-year-old man from Salisbury, North Carolina, fired three shots in the restaurant with an AR-15-style rifle, striking walls, a desk, and a door."
So yes, he did shoot the place up.
Give me a break. From a gullibility standpoint, WhatsApp is nothing more than a fucking newspaper.
With the difference that news papers have editorial boards, making WhatsApp even worse (and Facebook even worserer).
Either you're dumb and gullible enough to believe everything presented to you, or you are not. The medium doesn't matter.
But with newspaper, there's still the tiny chance that you happen to read one of the last newspaper that hasn't given up any attempt at ethics and still tries to at least make attempts in seemingly do their job.
Not every single last newspapers is a tabloid filled with 100% pure crackpot conspiracist theory and hate.
So even if you have no brain-filter, you might read a paper that attempts at not telling outright lies.
WhatsApp by its own purpose of being pure peer-2-peer chat platform with (reportedly) end-to-end encryption (based on OpenWhisper's algorithm).
There's no possibility for any filtering to happen. (That would be censorship, and that's what WhatsApp tries to partially avoid. But in the meantime removes any way to do an editorial job).
Facebook is even worse : the point of its algorithm is to subject you to the posts which are the mostly likely to attract your attention so you stay their (generate "engement" from users) and they can sell your attention and your private data (generate revenue for the company).
This will cause Facebook to eventually automatically devolve any content into a giant echo-chamber, then to a crack-pot extremist/conspiracy theorist/etc. gathering, because by pure stats (and due to how the human attention works), these are the post which happen to generate the most "engagement".
So not only is there no human who might still remember what ethics are doing some editorial work, in the Facebook's specific case, they are replaced with an algorithm which is always guaranteed to autonomously reach "by accident" a guaranteed tabloid-level quality of bullshit.
PT Barnum hardly needed a computer to understand there's a sucker born every minute. Stupid gullible humans don't need technology to be stupid and gullible, so stop blaming obesity on the fucking fork already.
Yup, the best strategy would be to actually spend massive efforts into educating the population to stop believing any bullshit just because they read it somewhere.
The problem specific with developing countries is that their education system might still be lagging behind and thus the best antidote against gullibility is lacking.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
You just named a bunch of technologies mentioned by name in law to regulate how they are used. Nobody is trying to unvent things - that's impossible. Suggesting people propose that things be unvented is again just a logical fallacy to make the concern about how technologies get used appear ridiculous or unreasonable even tho it's something we have done since the beginning of history. You're being stupid. Don't be stupid.
"Old man yells at systemd"
Stupidity is not, apparently, terribly territorial.
But saddly as you point later out, stupidiy is linked to education.
A good education can including training to be a tiny bit more gulibility-proof.
But sadly, currently some territories seem to have less available good education.
So stupidity isn't territorial in the sense the {Ethnicity_that_your_local_far_right_uses_as_scapegoat} are natually more stupid,
but there are still discrepencies (based on economics).
And whilst there are good reasons for thinking good education would help, nobody is willing to pay for it. It's like vaccines, unless 95% or more are inoculated against ignorance, there's no herd immunity and everyone becomes infected with stupid.
I actually like you metaphore of "herd immunity against ignorance" (immunity against meme-fection ?)
And that requires a total rejection of the theory that people should be responsible for their own education, it has to be collective and most societies can't handle that.
Totally agree with that. Some countries like Switzerland, Germany, nordic countries, etc. seem too.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Oh I didn't imply that it was just in India who has this problem. Choose your own way to describe it but malfunctioning humans is my way of describing anyone who is to lazy to seek their own truth. We have this problem in the US. Education is not relevant to the problem. These people have the same fears as all of us but are willing to act in violence to satisfy them. They are unwilling to learn new things. This isn't limited to one country but is a universal problem. Ignorance is bliss and these people are pissing bliss.
For the record I have not logged into facebook, this year. I haven't clicked I agree on anything they asked me to agree on in over five years. Facebook is a corrupt bloated nothing burger. They are not however at fault for people who choose not to think but to react any more than a bottle of whiskey is responsible for a drunk driver.
You are joking, but the ubiquity of printing presses in the colonies was a huge factor in the eventual revolution. Whereas gun are dangerous in that they allow a concentration of forces that can cause bodily harm, communications allow a concentration of efforts that can lead to danger and harm. Concentrating efforts is necessary for society, but when a tool becomes dangerous, the question is does the tool have any uses besides destruction?
The Malleus Maleficarum, the book on how to out rumored witches and caused thousands of women to be burnt at the stake in Renaissance Europe, was spread so widely by the invention of Gutenbergâ(TM)s printing press.
Did Gutenberg forgo his mandatory social responsibility to prevent inciteful things from being printed?
https://www.npr.org/sections/t...
And after all that the guy doesn't think he did anything wrong, he just "acted on wrong information".
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Nobody is trying to unvent things - that's impossible.
Many, many people wish to preserve the status quo even though technology has made it impossible. Take for example encryption, nobody had an unbreakable safe before - with enough effort any safe could be drilled open. That possibility is gone, so now the police want backdoors to restore the status quo. I'm not being stupid, you're being blind.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
On December 4, 2016, Edgar Maddison Welch, a 28-year-old man from Salisbury, North Carolina, fired three shots in the restaurant with an AR-15-style rifle, striking walls, a desk, and a door.[40][41][42] Welch later told police that he had planned to "self-investigate" the conspiracy theory.[43] Welch saw himself as the potential hero of the story—a rescuer of children.[44] He surrendered after officers surrounded the restaurant and was arrested without incident.[45] No one was injured.[46]
Yeash, looks like some /. readers have a case of the Mondays today. It's called a joke, people.
I apologize you are correct. I remembered reading the story but must have missed the shots fired.
The fence doesn't facilitate the discussion. The fence doesn't blast the conversation out to a million people. Facebook, unlike a fence, is composed of sentient beings who don't *have* to relay messages that incite violence over patent falsehoods.
Shittiest analogy on Slashdot so far today. If we must make an analogy here, which I personally wouldn't, it's more that Facebook is the police department, since they have the ability and authority to moderate clear disturbances in the public square.
The tragic consequences of a Civilization addiction....
This. It seems like any efficient communications system including reliable carrier pigeons would have the same effect. The answer is not shooting the pigeons down.
But they don't. WhatsApp is end to end encryption. Facebook cannot read your messages, nor would we want them to. Their job, like the fence is to provide a place where people can voluntarily communicate with each other. It doesn't know what is being said and it doesn't make you type anything at all. It neither puts words in your mouth nor takes them out.
Sure, but those things don't do the watching. They don't even passively control your use of them. Some uses are against the law, but it is up to law enforcement to detect those uses based on physical effects and prosecute specifically the unlawful uses.
If instead of murder, you chop onions with your knife, there isn't a cop looking in and deciding that's OK. No logic in the knife decides to extend the blade when it sees that you're approaching an onion rather than someone's chest.
Likewise, the camera doesn't forward a copy of your photo to "standards and practices" to see if they need to airbrush a figleaf on it or call the cops.
Most of us around the world somehow manage to use the knife, the camera, and messaging for positive purposes.
Let me get this right, you actively WANT a government censor to read your every message and come arrest you if they don't like what they see for any reason?
Damn. Now I am wondering if Ben Carson and Civ's designers got the idea from some common root, or if Civ's use of the Pyramids somehow seeped into evangelical mythology.
One of the factors that caused the satanic panic to blow up so much was the introduction of fax machines, which allowed the panic to spread in ways that earlier ones were unable to. So there is a 'new technology' aspect that seems to allow things to allow a period of new panics until the tech becomes common place, then you get new panics when some new technology comes onto the scene.
Yes. But this is WhatsApp. An Instant Messaging app designed to replace SMS in places where SMS was charged per-message. WhatsApp is not a "wall". People have to deliberately "forward" messages for this to happen.
The cure to ignorance is knowledge and easily is cured. The problem is willful ignorance and its continuance.
Yeah, this premise is ridiculous. In order for WhatsApp to be at fault, the system itself would need to send people messages inciting some kind of violence. If the people are sending each other messages then the method of delivery is not the story.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
E. B. White wrote a story about this called Charlotte's Web. The premise was that if it is in print, people will believe it. In the story the people were regular farm community towns folk of course. Most people are under educated to some degree.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
Deciding huge swaths of people are incapable of handling our advanced Western technologies (read: chat applications) is the most "supremacist" thing I have ever heard. However, I am unsurprised at who it came from.
Big difference, the pizza thing was proven to be true. Wow.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
As somebody who actually is capable of tolerating the idea of other people having belief systems not my own: Some common root. Or Ben Carson is trolling us all. It turns out that once a group realizes you will believe any stupid rumor you hear about what they believe or do, they're going to see just how silly things have to get before you finally realize that you're being lied to and might wanna be properly sceptical of any claims made about any group by complete outsiders.
So, yeah, probably not a good idea to go claiming that the West's information literacy rates (or skills) are too much better than India's, especially since the lies about other groups has been a known problem predating the information age. It might, though, help if there was a deliberate effort to inoculate people who are going pretty abruptly to entering the information age--perhaps have part of their introduction to the internet include making sure they'll meet copypasta tall tales that anybody there will recognize as (highly entertaining) lies.
The mob violence tends to happen in India without tech involved. Dice has an episode that details people being killed because they were purported to have consumed beef among other minor infractions. In the cases they covered no one actually consumed beef.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
_Single_ use pads have been unbreakable encryption for many centuries.
Only as unbreakable as the pads are secure, but there always has to be a way to unencrypt.
I think there is a market for matched, large, flash drives full of truly random data.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
It's a common historical legend, connected to the Joseph of the coat of many colors Bible story, which may be what interests evangelicals like Carson
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Let's compare that to the "hands up don't shoot" lie which also spread through social media, and ultimately ended in innocent people getting killed or hospitalized due to revenge attacks. Of course that doesn't benefit any narrative we'd like to promote, so never mind. Let's single someone else out.
If backwards folk lie to other backwards folk and provoke a murder then I know where I'm apportioning blame and it certainly isn't the telephone/letter/telegram/radio/WhatsApp.
WhatsApp doesn't kill people; people kill people.
It's like you can read just enough to be outraged, but not enough to comprehend.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
That's just it - this isn't a Facebook problem, it's a Mob Justice problem.
It seems pretty clear to me that these people would have used whatever "vehicle" happened to come popular first to coordinate and execute their mob justice social tendencies.
So getting rid of facebook won't fix the problem any more than getting rid of cocaine will fix the drug problem. They'll just find another way to do what they feel like doing.
Focus on the problem, not the tool.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
WhatsApp is a private messaging app. It's designed to replace SMS. Has SMS ever had "editorial boards"? Has email ever had them?
How about you either:
a) Just shut the fuck up
b) Take 5 seconds to google what WhatsApp even is
Or maybe you could take 5 seconds to read a couple of lines further down my post :
I know that WhatsApp is a chatting app (all my friends happen to insist on using just that).
As the other AC remarked, I was merely pointing that because of that, it's hard to apply the remark "Give me a break. From a gullibility standpoint, WhatsApp is nothing more than a fucking newspaper." :
- newspapers might happen to have some editing (well, maybe not tabloids, but still)
- chatting system, specially encrypted one, should not have any censor ship
- and attention grabbing userpost-feeds optimized for ad-revenue like Facebook and Youtube are even worse (due to how they work).
You are no smarter than the idiots that forward fake news over WhatsApp.
And you seem to immediately react at the first couple of word without taking the time to read any further and/or think a bit. Maybe you too aren't better than idiots ready to immediately kill/burn on slighest fake news before ever trying to think ?
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
So your problem with Mexicans isn't that they're trying to sneak across the border and pick produce so you can enjoy it below the minimum wage, its that they aren't invading your home and taking it by force...
You mean when the minority of white farmers Mexico allowed as guests refused to give up their slaves, when Mexico was against slavery. Fighting for the freedom to own people. Mexico was as "interested" in this as the U.S. would be if the minority Cuban population in Florida decided to "secede" against the interests of the rest of the state.
What are you blathering on about Spain for?
See above. See also, Hawaii.
The fact that the descendants of invaders can fuck right off when smearing the descendants of native inhabitants as "illegal immigrants", thats what. And your fuckery against Mexico (and the rest of Latin America) hardly ended 170 years ago. NAFTA bankrupted millions of farmers and your War on Poor Drug Users has killed upwards of 30,000 people. Dozens of military "interventions" and plenty of CIA-backed coups of elected governments south of the Rio.
You should be paying these people trillions in reparations, and extraditing pretty much every living State Department and CIA official to stand trial. Not typing out arrogant ignorance with one hand while holding a tiki torch in the other.
Ignorance is bliss and these people are pissing bliss.
Those words apply equally to you.
"Old man yells at systemd"
The end will justify the means.
This is intellectually dishonest. I dislike Facebook too; however, once you allow one instance of "the end justifies the means", all sorts of other evils become allowed. Not wise.
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
Developing world? How, exactly, is this different from America?
Americans can use more literate words and concepts to express themselves when they mob up and do ignorant things. Same results, slightly different flavor. :)
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
It doesn't mean WhatsApp is destroying these things, but rather the uneducated mob. WhatsApp is just their communication mechanism. This story is the equivalent of saying Radio caused a genocide because some African warlord used a radio station to direct a militia to massacre a race of people. It's not Radio that did it.
I'm so sick and tired of the stories trying to paint the tech companies as bad actors because of how people use their medium. The bad actors are the users, not the medium inventors. Do we really want to live in a world where the walled gardens are patrolled for content too? It's bad enough as it is. For Pete's sake, leave the mediums alone, and prosecute those that actually commit the vile acts.
Let face it. These people are doing this to themselves. Its not facebooks problem if they can't learn to not let themselves be trolled in to violence. In this case someone told them to walk off a cliff and they did. Sounds like this country has many deep seated problems that the tech is just shining a light on.
Its called education and tolerance. Deeply rooted over the centuries of practice / lack of practice.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
What do you expect from an 8th world shithole like India, where the dumb get dumber and live in their own shit. That entire country has zero redeeming qualities. This isn't whatsapp fault, this is the fault of a stone age shit-dwellers who scream and point 'WITCH!!!' at everything they don't understand. Mobs in India are fairly common regardless of what state you go to. It's just the culture and the mentality of these barely people.
Isn't that your slogan?
More seriously- I comprehend perfectly well. It seems to me to be you, once again, being completely oblivious to the consequences of your assertions. Have you given an ounce of thought into what you mean by "the Prime Directive but for tech"? Or are you just blinded by making sure those poor noble savages don't make mistakes? Can you explain how what you are saying does not boil down to "your culture is too inferior to my own to handle such advanced means of communication"?
It looks to me like just another vacuous display of perceived moral superiority.
That's been said, but it doesn't add up.
The majority of Trump supporters have no problem with the fact that the American economy isn't stronger but is in fact considerably weaker with ever-more industries moving manufacturing offshore because it's no longer viable due to Trump's policies, and that the tax cuts have benefited the rich only. I simply cannot accept that they voted for a better economy because a far worse one isn't fazing them in the least. They're proud of it.
As for Brexit, sorry, the EU paid Britain more than Britain paid the EU, once all subsidies and access rights (such as to EU scientific facilities, EU contracts, EU airports, EU shipping lanes, EU crime databases, and so on) are taken into consideration. So it wasn't about ceding billions of pounds. Ceding laws? There's never been a single case of a law ceded to Europe. On the contrary, their data protection laws are taken from Britain, their Constitution is taken from Britain, their government structure is based on Britain, it's all Britain. And everyone knew this.
But wait, there's more! Buy one example, get one absolutely free! Fact is, once Britain's financial collapse became obvious, companies moved out -- into Europe, and the British government stated austerity would worsen after leaving, the overwhelming majority of Brexit supporters specifically stated that it didn't matter, that money had nothing to do with it. Hey, their words not mine, Again, it's simply not possible for me to accept two contradictory statements, I have to accept the one that is based on observations of fact not theory.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Why do you see everything in terms of race and "us and them"? I'm just trying to help some folks.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Um, isn't that what you did? I never even mentioned race.. How could you have a "Prime Directive" without having an "us" held to it and a "them" being protected by it?
I usually ignore your posts because I have a hard time figuring out if you are just a super dedicated "method" troll or if you are actually just super dense. In either case you should stop whining about being moderated troll because, my God, you are one.
You wrote "poor noble savages". Your mind framed it in a way that I had neither intended nor considered.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Yes I know, I was mocking you for being completely oblivious to the implications of your statement. "Savage" does not imply "different race". Although I'm sure you never imagined your directive would withhold technology from "white" people so I guess I can see how you got confused. It definitely does not imply that I am the one that frames everything in race though.
A "Prime Directive" as you stated is, quite literally, "noble savage" theory. "Oh these people just need us to guide and teach them how to be civilized like us."
If facebook gives those malfunctioning humans the means to overpower the sane majority then yes, they are very much at fault.
Funny comment - where are you from? USA - you were treated the same in 2016 and reacted similarly UK - Hey brexiters, you were trolled, duped and conned Russia - Well, it's basically how the country is run Sorry, to point to India and say it's their own problem, sure, as it is everybody else's problem in the world too. Nobody is immune.