Snap General Election called

[paddy no 11]

What happens the next time there is an incident like Liverpool and the police have to acknowledge the perp is black/Muslim is that a message to the far right that it's OK to burn your own city down, terrorise a few minorities

[Sandydragon]

What happens the next time there is an incident like Liverpool and the police have to acknowledge the perp is black/Muslim is that a message to the far right that it's OK to burn your own city down, terrorise a few minorities

That’s a risk. However, given the problems of last summer, the police response was spot on this time around. Killing off the rumours that were beginning to circulate with the truth has worked.

The alternative was more rioting, most likely, and we appear to be short of prison place to lock up the worst of them.

Arguably, the police making an early release would be welcome even if it were a Muslim man who had driven the vehicle. Getting out front in the age of social media means that you can display some integrity and lead the conversation. If subsequently other facts emerge you are more likely to be believed.

[Puja]

What happens the next time there is an incident like Liverpool and the police have to acknowledge the perp is black/Muslim is that a message to the far right that it's OK to burn your own city down, terrorise a few minorities

Oooft. I hadn't considered that side of things. I don't blame the Liverpool police for getting the ethnicity info out there as quickly as possible so that we didn't have Tommy Ten Names and Nigel "I'm just asking questions" Farage starting riots, but you're not wrong that it's set one hell of an awkward precedent.

Puja

[Son of Mathonwy]

Where's the white-on-white rioting? Let's have some consistency from the far-right, please!

Tough one for the police. Ideally they shouldn't need to release the ethnic or immigration status of a suspect with such rapidity. Who else would need that other than bigots looking for an excuse to smash things? It puts them in a bind if the next homicidal maniac is from a minority. But the police don't really have the luxury of taking the long-term view given what happened last summer.

Whether anyone would really be so quick to riot now given the instant sentencing delivered last year is another question. I predict the next lot of rioters will be heavily masked.

[Son of Mathonwy]

Labour outflanked by Reform on the left. They left an open goal for the arch-opportunist. Even if they do U-turn on the winter fuel allowance and the 2-child benefit cap, Farage will claim (with some justification) that he made it happen.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... t-election

Obviously there's a bond-market-destroying Truss-on-steroids tax cut in there too . . . and a restriction on abortion rights.

[Puja]

Where's the white-on-white rioting? Let's have some consistency from the far-right, please!

Tough one for the police. Ideally they shouldn't need to release the ethnic or immigration status of a suspect with such rapidity. Who else would need that other than bigots looking for an excuse to smash things? It puts them in a bind if the next homicidal maniac is from a minority. But the police don't really have the luxury of taking the long-term view given what happened last summer.

Whether anyone would really be so quick to riot now given the instant sentencing delivered last year is another question. I predict the next lot of rioters will be heavily masked.

And social media continues to go to new lows, as a photograph and name are circulated online, identifying the driver as Peter Cunningham from Huyton in Liverpool... except that's not the person in police custody or a picture of him, that's somebody who is entirely unconnected to the incident and is now in fear for his life and his children's lives in case some vigilante comes after him.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdedg865725o

Puja

[Sandydragon]

Where's the white-on-white rioting? Let's have some consistency from the far-right, please!

Tough one for the police. Ideally they shouldn't need to release the ethnic or immigration status of a suspect with such rapidity. Who else would need that other than bigots looking for an excuse to smash things? It puts them in a bind if the next homicidal maniac is from a minority. But the police don't really have the luxury of taking the long-term view given what happened last summer.

Whether anyone would really be so quick to riot now given the instant sentencing delivered last year is another question. I predict the next lot of rioters will be heavily masked.

And social media continues to go to new lows, as a photograph and name are circulated online, identifying the driver as Peter Cunningham from Huyton in Liverpool... except that's not the person in police custody or a picture of him, that's somebody who is entirely unconnected to the incident and is now in fear for his life and his children's lives in case some vigilante comes after him.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdedg865725o

Puja

That’s shyte and I would like those who spread false rumours to experience some kind of slap for that. This is the utter problem with social media which just doesn’t follow the editorial rules that the traditional media did.

[Danno]

Where's the white-on-white rioting? Let's have some consistency from the far-right, please!

Tough one for the police. Ideally they shouldn't need to release the ethnic or immigration status of a suspect with such rapidity. Who else would need that other than bigots looking for an excuse to smash things? It puts them in a bind if the next homicidal maniac is from a minority. But the police don't really have the luxury of taking the long-term view given what happened last summer.

Whether anyone would really be so quick to riot now given the instant sentencing delivered last year is another question. I predict the next lot of rioters will be heavily masked.

And social media continues to go to new lows, as a photograph and name are circulated online, identifying the driver as Peter Cunningham from Huyton in Liverpool... except that's not the person in police custody or a picture of him, that's somebody who is entirely unconnected to the incident and is now in fear for his life and his children's lives in case some vigilante comes after him.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdedg865725o

Puja

That’s shyte and I would like those who spread false rumours to experience some kind of slap for that. This is the utter problem with social media which just doesn’t follow the editorial rules that the traditional media did.

It's not social or media at times, just the racist pub bore being allowed to spread toxic shite as far as he (and sometimes she) wants to.

It's disappointing that noone has the stomach to regulate it, or at least legislate for some lesser offences than obvious incitement

And, obviously, some sort of severe penalty on the platforms for allowing and publishing material that literally ruins lives.

[Son of Mathonwy]

Where's the white-on-white rioting? Let's have some consistency from the far-right, please!

Tough one for the police. Ideally they shouldn't need to release the ethnic or immigration status of a suspect with such rapidity. Who else would need that other than bigots looking for an excuse to smash things? It puts them in a bind if the next homicidal maniac is from a minority. But the police don't really have the luxury of taking the long-term view given what happened last summer.

Whether anyone would really be so quick to riot now given the instant sentencing delivered last year is another question. I predict the next lot of rioters will be heavily masked.

And social media continues to go to new lows, as a photograph and name are circulated online, identifying the driver as Peter Cunningham from Huyton in Liverpool... except that's not the person in police custody or a picture of him, that's somebody who is entirely unconnected to the incident and is now in fear for his life and his children's lives in case some vigilante comes after him.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdedg865725o

Puja

What kind of deficient human being starts a rumour like that?

It reminds me of years ago when when some total dick persecuted an innocent woman because he thought she was Maxine Carr living under a different identity.

[Puja]

The problem is that every step is probably innocent. Some people are in a conversation doing amateur detective work and find some clue that points towards this guy. It ends up in some kind of public forum with a "Hey, this is possible but to be clear I'm nowhere near 100% sure" - that then gets shared to somewhere else as, "Look what this person thinks is possible," and then shared again as, "This website says it could be him," then shared again as, "This source says they've identified the killer," then shared again as, "This is the person the police have in custody."

I don't know that you can really arrest that process, as that's humanity in a nutshell and no-one's really doing anything deliberate (usually). What you can do is moderate the social media: downgrade the reach of people and orgs who accidentally spread incorrect info regularly, ban those that do it deliberately, seek out what's trending and check its veracity, be responsive to requests to remove misinformation and active in actually blatting it, set in place and police rules about mentioning and targetting individuals, make hate speech and racism banned language on the platform, and generally discourage Nazis. Unfortunately the people in charge of all the platforms have no interest in doing that because you have to hire people to do that which is bad for the profit margins, hatred and controversy is good for the profit margins, and shyster politicians will give tax breaks if you promote them which is good for the profit margins. And heavens forfend that Zuckerberg should have to somehow scrape by with $220.99bn rather than $221bn - that would be unconscionable.


NB - this following bit is for the example of how misinformation grows, as it's a good example and I found what I learned about how this 'fact' coalesced into being and mutated through repetition to be interesting, in a horrifying sort of way (like watching bacteria grow on a petri dish). I am very specifically not inviting a debate about the topic of the misinformation, both because it's against board rules to do so and also because I don't particularly want to. DM me if you absolutely must comment on the topic rather than the discussion of how bullshit on the internet happens.

I experienced this in an argument on another platform, where someone confidently asserted "Official UN research into trans athletes says that trans women have won over 9,000 medals in women's sport." I looked, and this 'fact' is everywhere on the internet, but if you trace it back to its beginning, practically every word in the sentence is incorrect - it's not "UN research" but a letter that someone wrote to the UN, the number referenced in the letter was 900 not 9,000, the letter wasn't talking about 'medals won' but "costing biological women the opportunity of 900 medals", and it turns out the original source of that number (via a few links of the chain not worth reporting on here) came from a TERF website which crowdsources information by asking people to report when they think a trans woman is a medalist in something - those reports are anonymous, unverified, and unchecked, so quite a lot of the "trans medals" reported were actually where there was a cis-women that someone on the internet thought looked too unfeminine while doing a sport. Oh, and both "women's" and "sport" were questionable as well, as said website included mixed-gender events, plus counted medals in things like hot-dog eating contests!

It was fascinating to trace it back (and I was lucky that people cited their sources so well so that I could) - practically every single word in the sentence was incorrect because it had morphed along the way from "this hotdog-eating champion in the womens' category looks a bit butch for my liking" to "Official UN research" and you could follow every step along the way if you cared to, but because various people are making a profit from it, it's now everywhere on the internet and casually referenced by newspapers as an established fact.

Puja


ETA. Here's a more fun example - Kurzgesagt (amusing science-explainy youtube channel) getting asked for a source for the factoid of "If you took a human's blood vessels out of their body and laid them out in a line, you'd be arrested and they'd make true-crime documentaries about you, you monster they would be 100,000km long, which is enough to stretch twice around the circumference of Earth!" and discovering that they didn't actually have one - it was just **known**. The video's 10 minutes long (you can ignore the last 3 minutes of ads!), but it's easy-watching and very interesting to see how they tried to track down where that 'fact' originally came from and whether it's correct or not.

[Son of Mathonwy]

The problem is that every step is probably innocent. Some people are in a conversation doing amateur detective work and find some clue that points towards this guy. It ends up in some kind of public forum with a "Hey, this is possible but to be clear I'm nowhere near 100% sure" - that then gets shared to somewhere else as, "Look what this person thinks is possible," and then shared again as, "This website says it could be him," then shared again as, "This source says they've identified the killer," then shared again as, "This is the person the police have in custody."
.....
ETA. Here's a more fun example - Kurzgesagt (amusing science-explainy youtube channel) getting asked for a source for the factoid of "If you took a human's blood vessels out of their body and laid them out in a line, you'd be arrested and they'd make true-crime documentaries about you, you monster they would be 100,000km long, which is enough to stretch twice around the circumference of Earth!" and discovering that they didn't actually have one - it was just **known**. The video's 10 minutes long (you can ignore the last 3 minutes of ads!), but it's easy-watching and very interesting to see how they tried to track down where that 'fact' originally came from and whether it's correct or not.

Heroic work by Kurzgesagt! Just to get the correct number onto the internet again, it's 9000-19000 km!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circulatory_system

As for the naming and framing of an innocent man, I think you may be being a bit lenient on those involved. While there may well be a number of innocent steps in the process, it at the very least involved some recklessness (extreme recklessness, given the subject matter) to name anyone at all, if not actual maliciousness.