Facebook Vows To Restrict Users if US Election Descends Into Chaos (ft.com) 151
Facebook has said it will take aggressive and exceptional measures to "restrict the circulation of content" on its platform if November's presidential election descends into chaos or violent civic unrest [the link may be paywalled; alternative source]. From a report: In an interview with the Financial Times, Nick Clegg, the company's head of global affairs, said it had drawn up plans for how to handle a range of outcomes, including widespread civic unrest or "the political dilemmas" of having in-person votes counted more rapidly than mail-in ballots, which will play a larger role in this election due to the coronavirus pandemic. "There are some break-glass options available to us if there really is an extremely chaotic and, worse still, violent set of circumstances," Mr Clegg said, though he stopped short of elaborating further on what measures were on the table. The proposed actions, which would probably go further than any previously taken by a US platform, come as the social media group is under increasing pressure to lay out how it plans to combat election-related misinformation, voter suppression and the incitement of violence on the November 3 election day and during the post-election period.
Lacking definitions (Score:5, Insightful)
Without a good idea of what "Facebook" understands as "extreme cirumstances", "chaos", "civil unrest", it is quite hard to fathom what they'll do.
One thing is certain, though, anything that harms their bottom line they will avoid, and everything that brings more revenue they will try to implement, and abstractions like "democracy", "human and civil rights", "freedom of expression" and the like will be among the least important factors determining what they actually do.
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You'd think with all the false flag operations - as well as the 'legitimate' use of Facebook's platform to quietly target lies to specific groups of voters, that they'd realize chaos has already descended. To say nothing of their admitted ineffective measures to block QAnon conspiracies. If they can't identify rantings about baby sex rings and cannibalism, they're probably not doing so well with subtler stuff...
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No Epstein?
No Rotherham, Rochdale, Derby, Halifax, Huddersfield, Oxford, Peterborough or Telford?
Come on, you're slacking.
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Presumably, all of those are reports about QAnon conspiracies - not attempts to spread them. What's your point?
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Re:Lacking definitions (Score:4, Insightful)
Anything other than "Biden winning" probably fits the definition
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Why? Trump works very hard for Cuckerberg.
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Nice try, but pretending that "the labor" has anything but minor impact on the politics of a company is beyond ridiculous.
The labor is paid for their work and will generally do exactly what they're told for the paycheck. Otherwise they lose it and they know it.
The one or two very public displays of labor disloyalty to management have been dealt with quickly, quietly and without remorse once they were forgotten.
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Funny, I only see Facebook doing things to support Trump... They certainly worked very hard for him in 2016.
Right leaning pages have been and are being purged at a surprising pace.
On a political page that I run, articles about the previous behavior of Biden and Harris have been flagged for being old. Well, of course they're old. How in the fuck else are we supposed to make reference to their activities in the past?
LK
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Facebook was fairly biased in the previous election as well, they blocked plenty of right-wing content. It only worked for Trump because Trump was better than Hillary at the social media game. Clinton didn't even have a dedicated social media team in her campaign, whereas Trump did.
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Comment On point:
Look at a thousand of the millions of Facebook ads Donald Trump has run, and it’s hard to believe that they represent a winning strategy. They recycle the same imagery and themes, over and over: Trump, photoshopped in front of a flag, points a finger. Trump claps before an audience. Trump gives a thumbs-up, or smiles at a microphone. Each image is washed in patriotic red or blue. The text almost always issues a call to action: Buy this hat, sign this petition, RSVP to this rally. They are notable only in their banality, and in their sheer volume. During the 2016 election cycle, Trump’s team ran 5.9 million ads on Facebook, spending $44 million from June to November alone. Hillary Clinton’s campaign ran only 66,000.
Someone in the President's camp properly estimated the importance of the Facebook in reaching the target number of voters much better than the managers of Hillary's campaign. Interesting article in the Atlantic. [theatlantic.com]
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After last time they are probably worried about being regulated or even shut down. If your platform becomes a threat to democracy and part of an armed coup it tends not to do your stock price much good.
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if Biden steals the election
How does this happen? How does the opposition party, which is out of office steal elections, which are organized by the incumbents?
The world you're imagining is some weird sort of fantastic anti-dystopia.
Write a book, you might become quite a success.
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Not sure if you noticed, but Democrats are trying to stop the judicial nomination
The republicans did it last time around violating a long-standing precedent of no delays, so this is either most definitely legal, not stealing election, etc. or the Trump party did it first, so it should be okay.
Methinks you're having your pants in a twist about nothing.
They are promoting unchecked mail-in voting
WTF is "unchecked mail-in voting"? Aren't there the authorities, who'll be in charge of counting the votes, that is, literallychecking them?
Methinks you're having your pants in a twist about nothing or spreading disinformation on purpose.
and ballot harvesting
A
trump can use the EAS system & maybe force the (Score:2)
trump can use the EAS system & maybe force the fcc to have an on line EAS.
Turn off the popularity contest. (Score:4, Insightful)
What's that? It breaks your revenue model? Oh well.
Do the same to twitter, but I guess that shuts down twitter - what a loss.
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Mod parent up? Or maybe not, because you forgot the magic word "engagement". However it does remind me of that joke genre that is still failing to catch on...
"All your base are belong to us." -- Zero Wing
"All your attentions is belong to us." -- Google
"All your engagement are belong to us." -- Facebook
"All your shoppings is belong to us." -- Amazon
"All your sexy toys is belong to us." -- Apple
"All your sex toy are belong to us." -- Pornhub
"All your computer are belong to us." -- Microsoft
"All your... Uh, wh
Facebook doesn't want to fix the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Facebook doesn't want to fix the problem (Score:2)
"some advertisers pay top dollar to access these users because they're the easiest to influence"
Not surprising in the least because Facebook is the biggest honeypot of them all when it comes to the Lowest Common Denominator. Who wouldn't want a big mindless army to do their bidding?
Even better for them, we live in a society that is structured to steer people into being one of the LCD. Yeah, kids are bombarded with mixed messages ("Be smart....no no be stupid" "Be a good person... no be an as
Restrict internet communications in case of unrest (Score:1)
Where did we see this pattern? China? Belarus?
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False equivalence - this isn't the government shutting down free speech. This is like a hotel telling a furry convention to GTFO because their behavior became too disruptive. (And yeah, that's actually happened)
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How do you know it is?
If you dont know either way, dont make arguments that require it to be a specific way. The OP didn't. The reply're did.
We're already there (Score:1)
At a polling location in Virginia, Trump supporters were allegedly intimidating voters. Source. [independent.co.uk]
This election looks to be very messy, so press that button, Zuck...
Re:We're already there (Score:5, Insightful)
They're already doing voter intimidation (Score:2)
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Nothing like taking him out of context to make it sound like he said something he didn't. You don't happen to work for the media, do you?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Lots of attacks and link to a serious crime that Trump hasn't committed or been credibly accused of. I can play that game, let's link to a crime that Biden has been credibly accused of committing by a several women.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world... [bbc.com]
https://www.thecut.com/2020/04... [thecut.com]
His running mate spouted believe all women and thought he was
Re:We're already there (Score:5, Informative)
"At least two dozen supporters of the US president held “Trump - Pence” placards and waved American flags, about 100 feet from the entrance to the polling location."
Note the distance. That is standard protocol. Every election there are people for and against candidates at the prescribed distance from polling stations to make their last stand. That's why the article was full of "qualifying" words like "appeared" to be blocking. If people are "afraid" of seeing support for a different candidate than their own then they need to grow up. I walk past Democrats doing the same thing all the time because I'm in a heavy Democratic area. But I don't go asking to be escorted despite the fact that Democratic officials have actually publicly encouraged harassment of those who disagree with them. It's a non-story.
Look a little further into it (Score:3)
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What is wrong with that?
Does the opposition allow people into it's rallies who are solely their to disrupt and harangue the speaker?
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Actually, this is how Obama handled it [youtube.com]. If you can't stand to watch a video with Obama, the short of it is he tells the crowd to chill and respect the Trump supporter's right to free speech.
Imagine that.
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I have no more trouble watching Obama than I do Trump. They're both politicians who say they are great and their opponent is awful. Obama is just slicker in his presentation.
So, a single old white guy with a Trump sign managed to garner enough attention in a huge auditorium that it caused Obama to stop and deal with the matter? That seemed a bit strange to me. Then I found a Times article about the incident which mentions:
"But on Friday, instead of calling for the man’s removal or heckling him back as
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It's possible that it was just a change in political strategy and he made use of something that he knew would eventually happen. It's pointed out that he was ejecting and heckling hecklers until that night. It would be interesting to know if he went back to the old strategy after all the publicity that one event got or if he kept up the new strategy. Either way, it was interesting how easy it was to find that one incident where he was nice to the heckler despite that not having been the norm until that nigh
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Biden has been running ads strongly condemning violent activism; these folks aren't representative of the Democratic Party
I don't see US political adverts (hurrah!) so you'll have to help me here: Do they explain why Democrat mayors and Governors have been supporting the violent activists, and telling the police to stand down, and demanding that federal officials don't protect federal buildings?
let's be honest here and call anyone who physically assaults a person (regardless of political views) what they actually are: a domestic terrorist.
That would label a lot of violent criminals terrorists. I think a lot of the people committing violent crimes based on politics aren't terrorists either.
They're criminals. What's wrong with that word?
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In the mean time, Democrats in Portland ACTUALLY killed a Trump supporter
No, they didn't. Stop being silly.
A stupid cunt killed someone. That stupid cunt does not represent an entire political group, just as an actual white supremacist (if you can find one) voting for Trump does not represent Republicans.
Re: We're already there (Score:2)
"In the mean time, Democrats in Portland ACTUALLY killed a Trump supporter"
And MAGAbots intentionally rammed their cars into crowds of protestors.
Your point?
Except... (Score:2)
Aren't we pretty much there already?
Going to be interesting to see (Score:2, Interesting)
I guess this means the good guys are the ones Facebook sets up as strawman and bans.
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I know everyone "has their own truth" (Score:2)
...and that claiming the high ground in the election is PART OF THE POLITICAL BATTLE, but does nobody else have *massive* qualms about some privately owned, for-profit company essentially deciding what's allowable as political discourse?
Really?
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They're deciding? Why's that? They don't decide anything for me. "Sounds like a personal problem."
If? (Score:2)
NT
"if" the U.S. election descends into chaos? (Score:2)
First of all it's not a question of "if", it's a question of "when".
Second, pulling the plug once chaos has started is like stopping making holes at the bottom of your boat after water started flooding in after the first hole. It's too late.
Is this a box you need to check (Score:2)
Here's how to read whatever the MSM equivalent of Pravda is on any given day, boys and girls:
"Trump is cozying up to dictators" --> Democrat-aligned Corporate America is conspicuously mimicking dictators' tactics in support of the same exact objective: "harmony" and "civil order"
quick (Score:2)
Everyone switch to mewe before november.
Sure they will (Score:2)
Like the actions they took after it was revealed that Facebook inflamed tensions and lead to genocides in Myanmar and now Ethiopia... Like that action? (They did nothing, and in fact, have actively resisted cooperating with international investigations into the genocide in Myanmar).
Yeah... (Score:2)
"Oh Gosh darn, Trump won but Facebook won't let me communicate. I'll just stay home and knit a very angry sweater"
And to FB's 'logic', I reply
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
(though really, they just want to keep their
hands clean of all of the violence that may
happen regardless of FB's actions.)
Facebook "it's like throwing gasoline on a flame" (Score:2)
Restrict users (Score:2)
Facebook time machine (Score:2)
Just delete the Share button, plain and simple. (Score:2)
Re:Good call, Facebook (Score:4, Funny)
Now the agitators will move to private encrypted chat networks, ...
I initially read that as "alligators" ... I think I either need way more or way less coffee.
[ and now I want to see alligators using Facebook ]
Let's all have less coffee and chill out (Score:3)
I think you had a good idea with less coffee.
We've had enough drama for 2020. Let's all have way less coffee and chill the heck out. Let's all agree - let's not have chaos and violence just because some politician didn't win, alright? No matter who wins the election, it's gonna be a stinkin politician either way.
How about we all be grown-ups about it, whichever way it goes?
Re:Let's all have less coffee and chill out (Score:5, Funny)
I think you had a good idea with less coffee.
We've had enough drama for 2020. Let's all have way less coffee and chill the heck out. Let's all agree - let's not have chaos and violence just because some politician didn't win, alright? No matter who wins the election, it's gonna be a stinkin politician either way.
How about we all be grown-ups about it, whichever way it goes?
Okay, but what about the alligators? :-)
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That would be the dream, but we pretty much saw that go out the window about 4+ years ago.
By the way, when did the "tags" you could add to stories disappear from the Slashdot home page?
This one was screaming for a "whatcouldpossiblygowrong" tag....
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I've watched it go down hill since Bork, mostly (not that everything was rosy before that, but the people who did that knew they were starting a lasting war, and acknowledged that fact internally).
Be that as it may, I'm going to do my part to help keep the discourse civil and remember we're all in this together, and we all want what's best for America. Those who want different policies than I do want those policies because they genuinely believe they are best for the country, not because they are evil bast
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it's gonna be a stinkin politician either way.
Yeah, but one of them might be Donald Trump.
To hastily repurpose an old form (Score:2)
Your post advocates a
( ) technical ( ) legislative ( X) market-based ( ) vigilante .....
(x) Requires too much cooperation from spa^Wthe general public
( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
( ) Technically illiterate politicians
(X) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
( ) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
( ) Outlook
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
(x) Ideas similar to yours are easy to c
That's funny. Also (Score:2)
That was pretty funny.
Also:
(x) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical .....
(X) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
That has indeed been tried. Tip" O'Neill and Ronald Reagan worked together for the best interests of the country, though they were on different sides of the aisle.
Reagan won with 59% in the popular vote and went in to routinely hage approval numbers in the 60s, even 68% which means lots of people, lots of liberal leaning people,
Re: That's funny. Also (Score:2)
"Reagan won with 59% in the popular vote and went in to routinely hage approval numbers in the 60s, even 68% which means lots of people, lots of liberal leaning people, not just hardcore conservatives, took the time actually pay attention to what he was really doing and appreciated the good things he did."
The good old days. Now the whole system has degenerated into football style "us vs them", and we have an extremist as the current president. I have to wonder now if we are ever going to recover from the cu
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> The good old days. Now the whole system has degenerated into football style "us vs them", and we have an extremist as the current president.
There sure are a lot of people rooting from for their favorite politiball team. Sometimes without even really knowing who they are rooting for.
For example, someone here on Slashdot has their sig saying they want to reign in law enforcement, so vote Biden-Harris. Apparently they are unaware that Harris is a career prosecutor, but they sure are passionate about they
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I rather doubt my guy will win, since my guy isn't running.
Between the teo that are running? I'm not too excited about either Tweedledee or Tweedledum, so no, nobody I like is going to win.
Polls suggest a Biden landslide is entirely possible, but that's certainly not guaranteed.
Re: Let's all have less coffee and chill out (Score:2)
Making it as easy as possible to incite violence (Score:2)
Quite an incoherent FP. Your Subject is obviously ironic, but your body vaguely waves at two of the real issues. The actual discussion seems to be all over the place. So as usual, I'm left in a vacuum trying to clarify my own thoughts. I do see some linkage from one my thoughts to something in that FP, but it's a stretch... Not really blaming you, because that's how Slashdot 2020 works. There's a race condition on FP that favors such comments. My not-quite-initial thoughts (after a few searches in the discu
Re:Good call, Facebook (Score:5, Insightful)
"Sunlight disinfects, and protects."
The past four years and the growth of insane conspiracy theorizing among 30% of the U.S. population proves that is absolutely and utterly untrue.
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Covid's dangerous enough already.
Re: Good call, Facebook (Score:2)
Re: Good call, Facebook (Score:2)
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Parent above you was right, that was a woman who murdered her husband using that as an excuse. Turns out she was a prolific Democrat donor and not such a Trump fan after all. She also had a history of being violent with her husband. He was an intelligent level headed engineer and unlikely to make that kind of mistake.
https://news.yahoo.com/woman-b... [yahoo.com]
https://freebeacon.com/coronav... [freebeacon.com]
So yeah, just a nutcase blaming a murder on Trump.
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You in fact are talking about the case where a Democrat woman murdered her husband. YOU REALLY ARE THAT DUMB.
Re: Good call, Facebook (Score:2)
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If by dumb you mean I didn't know about it, despite living only 10,000 miles away, then yes. But to me it sounds like you're projecting.
Do you honestly think saying that you didnt know is an excuse, when YOU are the jackass that brought up this giant assed fucking WELL KNOWN TO BE lie?
..
.. thats "Fuck facts! I gotta say something bad about Trump!"
..and THAT sir, is why YOU are REALLY THAT DUMB. You thought you could sell a 500% lie on slashdot. THATS
You didnt get 1 of the facts of the case wrong. You didnt get 2 of the facts of the case wrong. You got EVERY fact of the case wrong. EVERY FUCKING PART OF IT.
Thats not "I didnt know"
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Wrong takeaway there. Try this:
Sunlight disinfects; however, sunlight can be weaponized with mirrors and lenses, so don't assume all sunlight is good.
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It sure does. But, nazis are like mold, and Facebook a windowless bathroom with a shower in it. You have to hit 'em with bleach.
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Can't speak for them, but I sure do.
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That has proven true since the start of the US.
You never know what speech will become "unpopular" in the future.....and it has changed since the beginning of our country.
And yes, not only does it need to be kept on the govt level, but also on the private level. The "public square" has moved in large part online, and we need to bring that notion of the public square along with that move.
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As he should have, because maintaining that set of rules was more important than winning power.
I don’t care for either candidate that has a chance of winning, so this is a sincere, honest question from someone without a personal axe to grind.
Would the Democrats have cared about “Russian collusion” had Clinton won? Would there have been an investigation and all that? I don’t know many people who think it would have been an issue.
Even as a non-Trump supporter, I remember Hilary clutc
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But with plenty of right-wing talking points at hand, eh?
Would the Democrats have cared about “Russian collusion” had Clinton won? Would there have been an investigation and all that?
Yes- there are NGO's, think-tanks, etc. super-interested in this issue still. By what logic would they possibly have shrugged and ignored it? Particularly given a central accusation is that the Russians cracked the servers of who would b
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As he should have, because maintaining that set of rules was more important than winning power.
I don’t care for either candidate that has a chance of winning, so this is a sincere, honest question from someone without a personal axe to grind.
Would the Democrats have cared about “Russian collusion” had Clinton won? Would there have been an investigation and all that?
Yes there would have. The White House had wanted to put out a warning to Russia before the election but they wanted bi-partisan support so it didn't look like an election stunt and McConnell wouldn't get on bound.
Russia attacked your elections, that would have been consequences.
Even as a non-Trump supporter, I remember Hilary clutching her pearls when Trump insinuated that he might challenge the legitimacy of the election,
Of course she did, there was never any reason to think that the election would be "rigged" in favour of the Democrats so he had no reason to doubt the legitimacy.
then the Democrats spent more or less four years doing exactly that
Because Russia DID compromise the legitimacy of the election with an In
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It's interesting how you choose to look to the Democrats to decide what's ethical. WWDD?
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Trump doubted the legitimacy of the election even when he won. He started an investigation into millions of illegal votes but it didn't find anything.
Losing the popular vote really bruised his ego.
Re: Not Far Fetched (Score:2)
Well said.
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I can't imagine who, in any actually significant numbers, would fight in this civil war that some people fear is coming. The protestors of this summer were only visible through the magnifying glass of desperate media, and many of their tiny numbers were coming from relatively comfortable middle class homes. The conservatives who bought into the sensationalism of the protests only turned out in similarly small numbers. They would rather be home, fortifying their property.
If Trump wins, there will be plent
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If Trump wins, there will be plenty of noise, and a little, hugely media-amplified violence, but nothing that could seriously be defined as a civil war, even from the luxurious perspective of most Americans.
Sure... But what if Trump doesn't win?
Will he cry foul, and encourage people to "stand up for their rights", like he did with the armed people protesting face-mask requirements and business closures to reduce spread of covid?
What happens when these armed patriots show up to protest the democrats stealing the election?
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It seems that sensational "journalism" has fooled you as well. The number of "armed patriots" who would actually leave their property to fight with someone is vanishingly small.
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...literally...
Go back to twitterland.
Do you think your constitution has some kind of magical powers that prevent a major conflict?
I'd say the chance of a serious wave or unrest is at least 50%, almost certain if one of those "fuzzy" outcomes occurs on Nov. 4th.
An actual civil war? 10% is too high, though 1% is probably too low. People were warning of the risks of pandemics for years and that was crazy talk until January. Even in early March where all the information was there people still didn't clue in until things hit the fan.
The unimaginabl
The cost of prevention? (Score:2)
Only mention of "prevent" in the discussion and no visible mention of "prevention".
So is Facebook going to pay for the pound of cure?
I didn't think so. But I'm beginning to understand why China and Europe are getting so hostile towards Facebook.
However, I think the actual criminals are the people encouraging the violence, not just the people who get around to performing the violence on behalf of those criminals. Making threats used to be illegal? Aren't the threats alone sufficient cause to investigate them
Re: Not Far Fetched (Score:2)
(covers ears) "LALALALALAICAN'THEARYOULALALALALA!"
Sorry, but you need to know the truth, no matter how much you hate it.
Trump & Friends have severely destablized the country with their antics, and this is the very first time in my life I felt compelled to tell my friends to stay home on election night and brace for trouble. I didn't even think to consider that when Bush Jr. was about to be re-elected.
You can't "LALALA" away hordes of pissed off people driven mad to the point of torching everything in si
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Spot on. The people your talking about are basically smartphone users (they probably rarely use their computer...if they even have one), these people don't use the web, they use "apps".
The people haven't changed, these are the same lazy people that get their info from glances at print headlines without reading the articles...or word of mouth from peers, and that was good enough for them. Nothing has changed except the medium, if they didn't have facebook it would be something else.
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Re: If you're getting election info from Facebook. (Score:2)
"There are (very old, apparently) people who believe that if AOL disappeared, they wouldn't have any access to the Internet anymore"
They might even have dial up access
still kicking around for these folks.
Though AOL actually used 3rd party relay
services so they could have 'local' numbers
all over the country. Likeky, the only direct
modem connection they had was that
creeky 2400 baud 800-number the
software used to download the lists of 'local' numbers. They also had a text mode BBS (IIRC) so you could download