Another day, another misleading lede by Cory.
From the article:
One obvious missing part is the lack of evidence even of correlation between social media and terrorist recruitment.
There is a lack of evidence of correlation, that is different than no correlation. There may be a correlation, or there may not be. It isn’t proven either way.
Sigh.
But is it correlation or causation?
Shut up! Absence of evidence = evidence of absence. Everybody knows that!
Also, the Total Wipes story is great good news. I’ve been saying all along the solution to DCMA is for somebody (wink wink) to send Google thousands of bogus requests that target the government, or some major corporation. Activists could never get Google to listen the way WalMart can.
It sounds like the major news outlets are doing fine by themselves by letting everyone know when the latest ISIS video surfaces, along with hand-wringing about the West’s powerlessness to control them. Charlie Brooker’s comments on the appropriate response to school shootings seems relevant here.
Some poor maths:
The other, perhaps not so obvious missing point is the significance of people traveling to support IS. Taking the reported numbers at face value:
at least 3,400 come from Western nations among 20,000 from around the world
Let’s put that into perspective. As of late Sunday afternoon on the East Coast of the United States, the world population stood at: 7,226,147,500.
That’s seven billion (with a “b”), two hundred and twenty-six million, one hundred and forty-seven thousand, five hundred people.
Subtract for that the alleged 20,000 who have joined IS and you get:
Seven billion (with a “b”), two hundred and twenty-six million, one hundred and twenty-seven thousand, five hundred people (7,226,127,500.)
Not everyone in the world has a Facebook account, so you have to bring the 7,226,147,500 figure way down. There may be over 10 times the 20,000 people who have joined ISIS (especially if you include people who aren’t actually fighting). Even if we go back to the 3,400 number, that is a valid reason for people to be concerned. Since they’re talking about combating terror groups and extremist propaganda rather than ISIS in particular, you have to add many other groups with thousands of adherents.
Really? Twitter, Facebook, the United States, France and others are going to take freedom of speech and to be informed away from Seven billion (with a “b”), two hundred and twenty-six million, one hundred and twenty-seven thousand, five hundred people (7,226,127,500) because of the potential that social media may have affected some, but we don’t know how many, of 20,000 people?
More of the “if people don’t have the right to use hate speech and incite terrorism, then nobody has any freedom of speech”. It’s perfectly valid not to allow extremists to use your website as a platform. BoingBoing does it and selectively supports Facebook’s right to do it. Even if Patrick Durusau doesn’t believe ISIS’ internet presence affects their popularity, they obviously disagree as they place a lot of value on internet marketing.
Not that the overall conclusion isn’t valid, but I don’t like this trend of fighting bad policy with bad statistics and lazy generalisations.
“Total Wipes” sounds like a fitting name for those copyfraudulent dicks… though it’s missing an “Ass” in there, it seems to me.
From the Florida Jail Confidentiality Link:
“Visitors, including attorneys, come to this building right here where they do a video conference with an inmate. That system is provided by an outside vendor which is essentially where the sheriff’s office is placing the blame.”
Journalism dies a death of a thousand cuts when claptrap such as this sullies the newsprint! And get off my lawn!
r
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