"This year may be the year where we start to address the toxic online communities that result in dumb Air Force intelligence enlisted kids sharing highly classified material on Discord to impress a chat room. Or places that publish plans to 3D print lower receivers that mate with Glock slides and barrels to produce a pistol with no serial number. Or dark corners that offer tips on how to rent a car with Turo and use it to commit mass murder. Or communities that entangle teens and bully them into ending their own lives, as sickos watch for their own twisted pleasure."
Yeah - no. Americans voted out the folks who had an interest in such matters and replaced them with erratic "free speech" warriors who are out to neuter online content moderation. They voted in a President with his own issues using classified materials to impress his friends and acquaintances. The folks who build, design, and distribute ghost guns are a part of the base of the party coming to power in a couple of weeks.
Over the next four years, these are problems that will have to be addressed bottom-up, often in conflict with top-down leadership. We did not elect responsible leaders on any of these fronts.
While politics indicates what you say is true, politics isn’t everything. And 51% of voting Americans felt they had no compelling alternative at the federal level. Maybe they’ll see differently from the social legal.
Bad actors are going to continue being bad actors, regardless of whatever percentage of Americans feel differently. Politics is everything in this case, as it's through politics that we hold bad actors accountable. And right now, we have politicians more concerned about releasing the restraints on bad actors than they are in corralling them.
Using content moderation as an example, it's going to become harder to be a large platform and moderate what is and what is not dangerous content, when the Republican Congress has equated responsible moderation choices and monitoring extremist communities as "censorship".
The push to unshackle cryptography and let Marc Andreesen and his investor buddies push all kinds of dodgy (and scam-prone) financial instruments as they grasp for hypergrowth markets is going to make purchasing the plans (or components) for ghost guns easier.
If you think it's bad now, just wait for a few more years as our fish has had more time to rot from the head.
I wonder what the aggregate membership is in the left- and right-wing fringe groups that are out to destroy all or some part of our society. Free speech is guaranteed. Getting away with unlawful activity is not. Why is rioting, arson, stealing and property damage allowed to go uncontrolled and unpunished?
One other thing that should be prompted but likely will not be by this tragedy: closing off Bourbon Street to vehicles and making it a pedestrian zone. Put some retractable bollards in for deliveries/emergency services/etc..., but otherwise cut it off.
I've no illusions that this would have done much else besides move the target elsewhere, but it's still a valid consideration for the future.
I suppose closing Bourbon from Canal to Esplanade during certain hours makes sense. But The Big Easy isn’t set up for that and there’s 12 blocks with connecting streets to close. They do it on Mardi Gras and that’s about it. And it’s a lot of bollards to install on very old infrastructure.
Those twelve blocks are effectively an amusement park, and there are parallel streets on either side.
Yeah, it would take some effort to reroute traffic accordingly - but installing bollards is fairly trivial. Dig down 6 feet, place the bollards and then fill with concrete.
It'd be worthwhile, but as I said: I don't expect it to happen.
"This year may be the year where we start to address the toxic online communities that result in dumb Air Force intelligence enlisted kids sharing highly classified material on Discord to impress a chat room. Or places that publish plans to 3D print lower receivers that mate with Glock slides and barrels to produce a pistol with no serial number. Or dark corners that offer tips on how to rent a car with Turo and use it to commit mass murder. Or communities that entangle teens and bully them into ending their own lives, as sickos watch for their own twisted pleasure."
Yeah - no. Americans voted out the folks who had an interest in such matters and replaced them with erratic "free speech" warriors who are out to neuter online content moderation. They voted in a President with his own issues using classified materials to impress his friends and acquaintances. The folks who build, design, and distribute ghost guns are a part of the base of the party coming to power in a couple of weeks.
Over the next four years, these are problems that will have to be addressed bottom-up, often in conflict with top-down leadership. We did not elect responsible leaders on any of these fronts.
While politics indicates what you say is true, politics isn’t everything. And 51% of voting Americans felt they had no compelling alternative at the federal level. Maybe they’ll see differently from the social legal.
Bad actors are going to continue being bad actors, regardless of whatever percentage of Americans feel differently. Politics is everything in this case, as it's through politics that we hold bad actors accountable. And right now, we have politicians more concerned about releasing the restraints on bad actors than they are in corralling them.
Using content moderation as an example, it's going to become harder to be a large platform and moderate what is and what is not dangerous content, when the Republican Congress has equated responsible moderation choices and monitoring extremist communities as "censorship".
The push to unshackle cryptography and let Marc Andreesen and his investor buddies push all kinds of dodgy (and scam-prone) financial instruments as they grasp for hypergrowth markets is going to make purchasing the plans (or components) for ghost guns easier.
If you think it's bad now, just wait for a few more years as our fish has had more time to rot from the head.
I wonder what the aggregate membership is in the left- and right-wing fringe groups that are out to destroy all or some part of our society. Free speech is guaranteed. Getting away with unlawful activity is not. Why is rioting, arson, stealing and property damage allowed to go uncontrolled and unpunished?
They've ID'd the suspect for the Vegas explosion:
https://www.newsweek.com/matthew-livelsberger-military-record-cybertruck-suspect-was-green-beret-2008549
One other thing that should be prompted but likely will not be by this tragedy: closing off Bourbon Street to vehicles and making it a pedestrian zone. Put some retractable bollards in for deliveries/emergency services/etc..., but otherwise cut it off.
I've no illusions that this would have done much else besides move the target elsewhere, but it's still a valid consideration for the future.
I suppose closing Bourbon from Canal to Esplanade during certain hours makes sense. But The Big Easy isn’t set up for that and there’s 12 blocks with connecting streets to close. They do it on Mardi Gras and that’s about it. And it’s a lot of bollards to install on very old infrastructure.
Those twelve blocks are effectively an amusement park, and there are parallel streets on either side.
Yeah, it would take some effort to reroute traffic accordingly - but installing bollards is fairly trivial. Dig down 6 feet, place the bollards and then fill with concrete.
It'd be worthwhile, but as I said: I don't expect it to happen.