Assassination Sparks Social Media Crackdown
kenklippenstein.comTakeaway, Discord will rat you out to the police even if you've committed no crime ...
> Five hours after Charlie Kirk was shot this week, an Atlanta man got a phone call from an Illinois police officer asking about a photo he shared with a couple of close friends on a private Discord chat
Who is the Atlanta man? And how does the author of this blog know about it? Has the author of this blog verified the story at all?
Cox is only 50, hundreds of millions of people use Discord per Klippenstein, and Discord has existed for over a decade. Contra Klippenstein, I see no reason to believe that Cox (never mind "types like" him, whatever that's supposed to mean) is unfamiliar with it.
Having a police officer call you to explain why something you said aroused suspicion is not a violation of freedom of speech. The anonymous man was not imprisoned, arrested, threatened or approached physically, and the call served to indicate that he had been cleared of further suspicion.
Spying on Discord is wrong; that's what the Fourth Amendment is for. Cox has said nothing to oppose this.
Klippenstein's apparent main point is to call Cox a hypocrite for maintaining social media accounts on Twitter etc. This is commonly recognized as the "we live in a society" fallacy. Cox's job requires having these accounts; it would be bad for national security if someone else could pose as a government official on social media without any clear way to correct the record. Cox is clearly doing his best on Twitter to de-escalate and make it a better place. Believing an environment to be bad does not morally compel leaving it, especially when there is no clear escape. It does not at all follow that Cox "means “bad” social media like Discord".
Per Klippenstein's numbers and a bit of arithmetic, Discord apparently complies with EDRs at a rate of about three per million user-years. For perspective, Wikipedia cites an estimate of 24,000 annual global deaths from lightning strikes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_injury); since the world population is on the order of 8 billion, this is about the same rate.
Klippenstein claims he "is told" that the current incident did not involve responding to an EDR, but he can't evidence this. He also can't show that this actually resulted from surveillance; maybe someone in the group decided to squeal (misguidedly) or pull a prank (terrible idea).
Klippenstein criticizes Patel for "in effect saying that anything, even just the purchase of a T-shirt, is a lead." Patel didn't say anything about what a "lead" is. What he did say depends on considering things reported to the FBI to be leads. But this is simply following the definition, so there is nothing wrong here.
Is "Discord" social media?
This sounds like the war on encryption and to an extent the online ID battles dressed up in a different costume.
Discord has no encryption except https...
I thought the killer was trans and that's why he killed Kirk. Then I've heard it was because of his trans girlfriend. Then it was because he was in a leftist family who talked about Kirk poorly. Then it was because he was a leftist in a right wing family.
Now it's internet that caused this.
I'd like everyone to chill and wait for the trial.
All I've read on HN is that the killer was a far right extremist and that the action itself was unremarkable at best and justified at worst.
Yeah, so we agree? Wait for the trial before making any judgement?
> Yesterday, Utah Governor Spencer Cox called the Internet a “cancer”; today he added that “cancer probably isn’t a strong enough word,” likening social media to the equivalent of “fentanyl” in destroying young minds and taking lives
Quite ironic given how Trump, Kirk etc. came into power.
Is this a case of self aware wolf?
About the internet (and specifically social media):
> The conflict entrepreneurs are taking advantage of us and we are losing our agency, and we have to take that back. We have to turn it off, and do you have to give it back to the community and caring about our neighbors and bettering ourselves, exercising, sleeping and all of these things that this thing takes away from us.
Wow these guys really want to go back to the 50s. I heard that saying before when project 2025 was being discussed but I didn't realise it was that literal.
The article does go on to say that the senator that made this statement has not reduced his own presence on Twitter etc in any way ;)
> Wow these guys really want to go back to the 50s.
And your evidence for this is the above quote?
Do you really suppose it's been 70 years since people thought that "[giving agency] back to the community and caring about our neighbors and bettering ourselves, exercising, sleeping" were good ideas? Or that holding those values is backwards at all, let alone by that much?
Because I otherwise can't understand how you draw the conclusion from the premises.
> The article does go on to say that the senator that made this statement has not reduced his own presence on Twitter etc in any way ;)
> Do you really suppose it's been 70 years since people thought that "[giving agency] back to the community and caring about our neighbors and bettering ourselves, exercising, sleeping" were good ideas? Or that holding those values is backwards at all, let alone by that much?
That's just some virtue signalling for his republican backers. Family and community values, we could leave our doors unlocked, country life, tech evil blablah
And no, I don't want him forcing conservative values on everyone but shutting down social media or even the internet as he seems to propose.
I do agree that social media has net negatives for society but forbidding is not the solution because it has positives too. Regulating the tech companies is. Forbidding engagement-driving algorithms will go a long way (especially since negative emotions are the most powerful drivers of engagement)
> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
I think it's clear that "we have to turn it off" here means "it's important for all of us to stop listening to the 'conflict entrepreneurs'", rather than "I intend to prevent you from using the Internet". In fact, I can perfectly well interpret the quote as a call to "regulate the tech companies" and "forbid engagement-driving algorithms" instead. Would that not equally well be "turning off" what the "conflict entrepreneurs" are serving us? Would that not equally well be "taking back agency" and "giving it back to the community"?
I assume you don't think that the political right has a monopoly on ideas like self-improvement, responsibility to the local community etc.; so how exactly should he have said this to avoid the appearance of "virtue signalling"?