[patcon]

I feel that part of the insight is that many people reading this story may want it to be true as stated. All the upvotes and it's propagation in networks may lossily lay this claim (of course debatable)

The beauty of surveillance is that it mutes the ability to cover the distance between desire and action. Which is another way to state "it has a chilling effect"

As I understand, part of any story being shared is that its propagation is part of the story, in a McLuhan medium-is-the-message sense.

[ipython]

Totally. Like, for example, the so-called throngs of roaming domestic terrorists setting Teslas on fire across the US. My dad still asks me if anyone has vandalized mine. (No, and I’m personally unaware of anyone who has had theirs vandalized. At least 1/3 of vehicles in my area are teslas)

[smsm42]

> I feel that part of the insight is that many people reading this story may want it to be true as stated.

People that are writing this story surely would. They, of course, wouldn't do it themselves - I mean, you could be arrested and lose your job and go to jail... but if somebody else would bear those consequences, then of course it's fine!

> Which is another way to state "it has a chilling effect"

Yes, that's kind of the point. The question is what does it chill. If it is chilling criminal activities, it's good, if it's chilling legal activities, it's bad.

[appplication]

Not all criminal activity is bad. See: John Lewis and “good trouble”

[smsm42]

Activities such as public disobedience to fight unjust laws are unlikely to be affected by surveillance because their whole point is to publicly violate unjust law to attract attention to its unjustness. MLK did not march in secret and avoid surveillance, he marched in public and welcomed attention. That was the whole point of it.

[godelski]

But there's different dangers and responsibilities by those leading and those joining.

The surveillance affects those in the march. Those who might lose their jobs or get arrested. Which did happen at that time. Surveillance increases that scale.

A weird thing is that as groups scale they become anonymous. Small groups have no anonymity, but big groups do. There's safety in numbers. This is why people protest differently now. Why they wear masks. Why people leave their phones at home. The way you protest evolves, but we should ensure that protesting is easy and safe

[smsm42]

> This is why people protest differently now. Why they wear masks

No, they wear masks to commit criminal acts, which we witness a lot and for which they definitely should be prosecuted. I am wholeheartedly for peaceful protests, but sorry, black block masked crowds torching businesses and beating up people is not peaceful protests. That's where our ways part. Anarchy and democracy are very different things, and I do not want the former, and I do not want the latter to be confused with the former. And no, it should not be easy and safe to wear a mask and riot - not individually and not with a mob. It should be very dangerous and land one in jail, preferable for a good long time. The fact that it is not happening today is one of the very profound problem that we have in our society - that breaking the laws is tolerated under the thin guise of "protest". And I am not talking about Jim Crow laws, I am talking about common sense laws like "don't torch your neighbor's business" and "don't loot your local Target" and "don't beat up random people walking on the street because you felt like they think wrong thoughts". This has to stop.

[godelski]

  > No, they wear masks to commit criminal acts,

Unless you are considering protesting a criminal act, then I'm going to disagree. This is America, we have the right to protest.

I've worn a mask at a protest and committed no crime while protesting. I, and many others, do it for exactly the reasons I have said above.

I won't defend looters nor deny their existence. But I'll also tell you I've been to protests where I get home and turn on the TV and see it painted as something very different from the thing I experienced. I've gone to parks where people spoke, where a bunch of hippies played drums, where people marched down the street, but then on the news saw only scenes of trash cans burning on the other side of town. I've seen people get gassed and arrested while holding up signs and shouting, then get home, turn on the TV and only see images of some brawl that I never saw. I would have never known had I turned on news. But the news also never showed the things I saw and experienced. I don't think these are fake, I'm sure they're things that happened, but it certainly feels misleading as it's certainly misrepresenting reality.

It doesn't matter if it's Fox or CNN, they show what gets them views. They show what makes you scared. They show what makes you angry. But what they don't show is people. In any big group you can find at least someone doing anything. But one person isn't the group just like one action doesn't define your whole life.

So I welcome you to go to protests. To counter protest if you want. That is your right and I'll defend that right too. It's your God given right and I'll defend it even if I hate you for it. You have the right to be a saint. You have the right to be an asshole. You can't have the right to but one without the right to be the other. I've done it in the past and I'll do it again. Because, first they come for the people who are easy to hate...

  > And no, it should not be easy and safe to wear a mask and riot

You've gravely misunderstood.

First, I agree, it should not be easy to riot. I don't want to condone rioting. Let's get that straight.

Second, I want to live in a world where wearing masks isn't seen as self defense for people exercising their rights. I want a system where people feel safe protesting and showing their faces. But it's not uncommon to go to protests and find a Cessna circling above it for hours. It's not uncommon to go to a protest with a rayhunter and see a lot of imsi catchers. It's not uncommon to go to protests and see police set up cameras and license plate detectors all throughout the neighborhoods. So help take down the surveillance state and I'll take off my mask. Deal? Because no matter which side of the isle you're on I'm sure we can agree there. I don't want to be ruled by communists, fascist, dictators, monarchs, plutocrats, nor any of the like. I'm not an anarchistic, I'm even more accepting of authority than our founding fathers. But authority needs to be kept in check, because power creeps

[tptacek]

The idea that this is an important trend story is infinity times more fun to talk about than the corrective that this isn't really a thing at all, which means online forums will sharply bias towards the notion that this is important.

This whole thread is pretty powerful evidence for that proposition: it's sprawling commentary on what pretty clearly seems to be LLM slop writing. You could build a novel operating system and get flagged off the front page for having a README with Claude tells in it, but that preference is obviously contingent.

[Ylpertnodi]

And yet, the death penalty, doesn't seem to have muted murder.

[AxisAngles]

It seems like it takes a rational mind to be muted. It seems like most murders are committed irrationally.

[idle_zealot]

That's not really the contradiction you seem to be implying. The belief that one is being watched and the knowledge that if caught there will be extremely high consequences are two completely different things, not to mention that the chilling effects of surveillance may impact a mostly different set of criminal and non-criminal behaviors.