Always Secure Your Gear

Jay Ashworth

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It's amazing how messed up stories become on the internet. I just checked several legitimate news sources about the the incident, including video. There was no noise or speaker falling over, or even a bumped mic stand falling over, as recorded from various vantage points. It appears to be a guy shouting threats about using a gun, and the people near him panicked and started scattering. Fortunately, the person speaking on stage had the presence of mind to shout to the crowd to freeze and that everything was OK. Folks, don't get your "news" from social media, because it is frequently BS.
 
Perhaps, but I find it difficult to attribute to 'stories getting messed up on the Internet' something which came first hand from a person who was right there at the incident, front rack... there were no intermediaries involved here. Guttenberg was right there.
 
I don't know what the guy saw, or thought he saw, but video from the event gives a different perspective. Maybe he was close enough to hear a noise resulting from the scuffle, but a line array rigged on a tower didn't fall over. The noise wasn't loud enough to be picked up on the various videos. The crowd started moving when the guy starting yelling, before he got near the stage and was apprehended by security. If I was in a crowd and a nut job was yelling about shooting people, I'd make for the exit, too.
 
If it's on social media, it is somewhere between a lie, a damn lie, or a statistic.
 
Fair enough. Let us attribute it, though, to unreliable eyewitnesses, rather than to social media, shall we?
 
Social media seemed like a good idea. When you factor in that Facebook was created by Zuck and a couple buddies to manipulate the affections of a particular woman it takes on the patina of "creepy". My personal beliefs are it never got better and, in fact, got worse, and that's on FB's end, not the users, who have not failed to disappoint in their use of the besmirched product to inflict pain, harm, and trauma on adults and kids. Then there are those who use social media to inflate the perceptions of accomplishments, deny failures, and otherwise spin perceptions. Sure, that's advertising, but this is a whole new level of b.s.

And remember: if you're not paying for it, YOU are the PRODUCT. There's a huge amount of value in what these (and other, less obvious) companies know about their users and even non-users. If there were not, these firms would not fight regulation and would be more forthright about how their services do their things.
 
Social media shares significant blame in our nation's poor handling of the pandemic, our political divide, and the attempted coup. The companies that own the platforms act very irresponsibly, and will continue to do so unless the users leave in droves, or the government forces them to behave better. For those reasons, I do not participate on any of the popular social media sites, and probably never will.
 
And that's as may be.

But the topic at hand was *contribution to the inaccuracy of this report*, and that seems to be mostly 'unreliable eyewitness, possibly with an axe to grind', no? His report wasn't *more* inaccurate because it was on Twitter, right?

And FMEng: I feel like I need to point out that you seem to be blaming the tool: are you not suggesting that if people *were less able to communicate at the retail level*, those things would not have gotten as far out of hand?

I mean, that's *right*, but I don't think it's the fault of the tools; it's the fault of the *idiots*...
 
Jay, I blame the tool for amplifying the "noise" in greater proportion than the "signal". Also the weighting applied to popularity of a source or report seems built to reward that popularity, and considering what social medial company sells are targeted advertisement placements, it's not a big stretch to figure out that popularity benefits the media company far more than the users.

So we have a Twatter post that claims fires or explosions or rainbow unicorn farts from a speaker system or other production equipment... and it gets a huge amount of attention, whereas the likely more accurate and informed reports receive little attention. Who's right? I don't pursue social media claims but have observed that many of the most sensational tend to get debunked or their hype minimized upon further investigation or reporting so I tend to have a bias toward the less sensational presentations.
 
And that's as may be.

But the topic at hand was *contribution to the inaccuracy of this report*, and that seems to be mostly 'unreliable eyewitness, possibly with an axe to grind', no? His report wasn't *more* inaccurate because it was on Twitter, right?

And FMEng: I feel like I need to point out that you seem to be blaming the tool: are you not suggesting that if people *were less able to communicate at the retail level*, those things would not have gotten as far out of hand?

I mean, that's *right*, but I don't think it's the fault of the tools; it's the fault of the *idiots*...

Yes, I am absolutely blaming the tool. The inaccurate eyewitness report would not have been spread far and wide without twitter. That is the very heart of the issue. Social media spreads BS very efficiently, and the more sensational, the faster and further it spreads. The algorithms are built to purposely make that happen. A prime example of this is what happened with covid.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/17/covid-misinformation-conspiracy-theories-ccdh-report

Idiots feeding idiots nonsense! QAnon would be nothing more than 6 guys in a bowling alley restaurant without social media, but now it's a terrorist threat. We, as a nation, and as a planet, are dumbing ourselves down at an exponential rate. And the companies want it to happen because it's part of their plan for increasing profits.
 
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