Yeah, but a STOP was kind of lame. Now a TURTLE CROSSING, or SLOW CHILDREN AT PLAY was way cooler.
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Taking credit, for lack of a better term, is a long way away from taking responsibility.
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Some have, others don’t. In general, the prankster movement on YouTube has been described as problematic many times because some guys concur for clicks by doing increasingly dangerous, often racist or mysoginic, stunts. Still, I don’t get how an adult person can think of removing STOP signs as a prank. But then again, I don’t know how people think abusing their kids on camera is a prank, like FamilyOf5 did.
Some have, others don’t. In general, the prankster movement on YouTube has been described as problematic many times because some guys concur for clicks by doing increasingly dangerous, often racist or mysoginic, stunts. (Calling people the n-word ‘in the hood’, etc.) Still, I don’t get how an adult person can think of removing STOP signs as a prank. But then again, I don’t know how people think abusing their kids on camera is a prank, like FamilyOf5 did. Still, as long as these fools are rewarded with hundreds of thousands of subscribers, there is no halting to who will adventure himself furthest beyond the borders of sanity and good taste.
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I have a feeling that the EU may yet put a stop to it by forcing the social media sites to review and remove unsuitable content. If they have to do it for the entire site, leaving the stuff up in other jurisdictions would be yet an additional cost.
Yeah, that’s another issue. Don’t know about the EU itself, but here in Germany, we have the most incompetent lawmakers in charge for anything digital. For example, a law has been passed last year targeting hate speech and online insults, but nobody knows how or where it applies and where it doesn’t. AFAIK, the EU and Germany are pressing Facebook to manage their content so that hate speech and fake news be removed, but the overhead in required workers seems quite steep. But again, the main problem is one of definition of what should be removed and what shouldn’t. All in all, none of these laws are helping. All they’re doing is to limit freedom of expression for the common user.
YouTube “pranksters” are the lowest of the low. And I’m including YouTube atheists in that.
Facebook has grown at the expense of print media because it has avoided a whole lot of costs - including editing. Facebook claims of 3000 workers for an organisation with well over a billion users is actually very low - one editor to over half a million users.
Given what some “common users” do I am completely alongside limiting their freedom of expression. We are not talking about ordinary users. That I think is a deflection.
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Re-education would be better. Somewhere where destroying public property would leave you cold, hungry and without shelter.
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If I sell tins of beans, and some of them turn out to be poisonous, you might reasonably think that it is my responsibility to remove the poisonous ones. I could argue that I shift a lot of beans, too many to sort through, but I don’t think you’d buy that.
Online content is the same. The overhead is quite steep if you start from the assumption that it’s not really Facebook’s job to look after their own material. Which is exactly what Facebook et al would like you to believe. I have sympathy for the argument that a search engine is not responsible for other people’s content, but Facebook host content on their own site, for their own profit. It seems reasonable that they should put some effort into removing that content when it is illegal.
(Yet again I find myself wondering why the UK is so determined to leave the EU, when it does good stuff like this.)
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Facebook’s excuse is that they only make available stuff that other people upload. They like to see themselves as a “common carrier”, similar to the post office, which also transports letters without caring about or accepting responsibility for their content.
Whether that really flies in view of the fact that in the end it is Facebook, rather than the people who upload stuff, that decides who gets to see what and when, is a question that to my knowledge has never been tested in a court of law.
Now, the problem with the German hate-speech law is that whether some specific stuff that somebody has uploaded is “illegal” in some jurisdiction and should not be displayed to people (in that jurisdiction or anywhere) is something that Facebook can’t be expected to be able to decide in all cases. In some it may be patently obvious, but in others, actual courts of law spend considerable time and effort (and indeed the time and effort of people who have devoted their lives to becoming experts on the matter) figuring out what is what – and Facebook is supposed to do it in 48 hours or risk a huge fine? What could possibly go wrong.
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If facebook becomes responsible for absolutely everything posted on their site, then this may cause problems for people posting on normal forums like boing boing.
It’s a slippery slope and in many cases, those affected aren’t those initially targeted. In Germany, we already have a bunch of rules limiting the freedom of expression and they are not helpful for anything I can think of. Those whom these rules are meant to target find alternative ways to express themselves allthewhile reaching the same effect and surely, they are the ones who will best know to use these very laws to silence their opponents. Beside, there is always a lot of wiggle space to these laws and they can be easily used to suppress unwanted ideas.
Thumbs up for yet another story here on BB that links to a dead video on youtube.
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Hey, is this one of those caption contests from The New Yorker? I submit “Christ, what an asshole.”
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Even the post office has rules about what they will allow you to send.
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The idiocy of so many people amazes me. What if a friend or family member ( or anybody else) had been injured or killed because of his mirthful little prank? No foresight in evidence here! No sense of social consciousness either. I doubt if the fine will change his serious personality flaw.
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Yes, but these rules usually pertain to stuff other than letters (e.g., you’re not supposed to mail explosives or anthrax). As long as all that is in your envelope is a sheet of paper the post office doesn’t care whether it’s a love letter or neo-nazi invective.
The phone company might be a better analogy. Its business is connecting phone calls between different people, but the phone company doesn’t make it its business to listen in and disconnect your call if you say things you’re not supposed to say. (The phone company may be compelled to let the FBI or NSA listen in to your calls, but that’s a different problem.)
He’s not an “idiot,” though. He did something that he knew could cause injury or death, and he thought it was funny. He’s a sociopath or psychopath. The fine definitely won’t change that.
Yep, definite anti-social personality disorder.
