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Facebook may be trying to censor hate-speech, but others are putting it to good use.
From CNN
Law enforcement agencies in Dallas and Florida on Thursday became the latest to announce they are investigating allegations some of their employees made offensive comments on Facebook after a watchdog group compiled screenshots of the posts and shared them in an online database.
The screenshots of the public posts, published in the Plain View Project's online database, purport to show officers or police department employees making hateful or racist remarks.
[...] Since its founding in 2017, the Plain View Project says it has compiled images of more than 5,000 social media posts and comments by more than 3,500 current and former police officers in eight jurisdictions throughout the US.
Researchers obtained rosters of police officers and then looked them up on Facebook, according to the project's website.After examining the profiles to confirm they belonged to police officers, they reviewed public posts and comments to see if they would "undermine public trust and confidence in police."
(Score: 1, Troll) by inertnet on Friday June 21 2019, @02:09PM (9 children)
Of course you don't want racists in your police force. But I looked at the 'evidence' website and a lot of it doesn't look very racist to me. A lot looks more like a culture thing among police, sort of as an outlet for the stress that they experience during work. Similar to military or first responders, most people would be shocked by the jokes they tell among peers.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Friday June 21 2019, @02:30PM (2 children)
I scrolled down for awhile. Some of that shit is over the edge. As much as I despise George Soros - government agents at any level shouldn't be doxxing Soros, and advocating his assassination. For you, or me, or any other private citizen to do so would expose us to terroristic threats charges. These guys? Well, they're cops, they can't be charged. But, they shouldn't be on LEO payroll, either.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday June 22 2019, @01:00AM (1 child)
Everybody says things that are "over the edge." Have you ever had a bad day and said something like, "I want to kill that damn woman!" Of course you weren't going to kill that damn woman. People vent nonviolently, and they say irrational and often violent things and imagine nonsensical scenarios that everybody in attendance knows won't happen.
The thing about social media is that people make the mistake of carrying over what should be said privately and in person between close personal friends, into the public sphere at large. I'm one of those people who believes that, if something is said online, as long as it is not directed specifically towards one person, then it should be treated the same and laughed-at if not disregarded. Unfortunately, there are some with thin skin who believe free speech should be heavily regulated over the internet, and that jokes that were all over TV only 10 years ago should be considered "hate speech" and warrant a life-long blacklist similar to that of the sex-offense registry.
There have been a few recent cases, one of a pro athlete and one of a Harvard applicant come to mind. They posted something when they were teenagers, and out comes the ̶J̶e̶w̶i̶s̶h̶ outrage patrol seeking to cast them out of society for the rest of their lives.
About this "Plain View Project" though, it smells Jewey. It has the same Black/White color scheme as the CIA/Mossad-run Washington Post and New York Times. I bet if its cadre bothered to volunteer their real names, it would read like the SPLC's "about us" page, about 40 Jewish names followed by token 2 Black names.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday June 22 2019, @01:54PM
I'm not sure - have you ever worn a uniform? I know you're familiar with troops, but, you?
Anyway, while I wore the uniform, I was perfectly free to vent when I needed to. There were times and places when venting had to be done in very respectful ways, if at all. There were times and places when venting was verboten. And, there were many times and places when you could vent all you wanted, quite freely.
The general rules about politics, for instance: You, as a private citizen, may endorse any candidate you care to endorse, and you may donate your personal resources as you see fit. But, you MAY NOT use any government resources in any way. You MAY NOT attend a political function in uniform. You may not even identify as a member of the armed forces, while performing duties for your political party. On and on it goes.
Here? We have cops, who are active duty, on a public forum, endorsing political and other positions, in a manner that might almost be taken as a semi-official position. Read down through that page, and tell me how much cops love Moslems. Do you not see a problem with that?
If/when government takes an anti-Islam position, and decides to boot Muslims out of this country, THEN, cops can be expected, and excused for, voicing those opinions. Until then, cops have no business associating such an attitude with their police departments, or with law enforcement in general.
TLDR: many of those posts are examples of piss-poor discipline.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Thexalon on Friday June 21 2019, @03:26PM (5 children)
Yeah, it's a "culture thing". The culture of many many police forces in the US is the culture of white supremacists.
For example, take the guy who killed Tamir Rice. He had been rated by his first police chief out of academy as mentally unstable and completely unsuited to police work. He then was able to, without any trouble, get hired by another department, where racial slurs had been spray-painted in the locker rooms, where the FBI had recently investigated and found them to be racist as all get-out, and where officers from that department had recently shot an unarmed black couple 137 times (killing them, of course) because they'd assumed that a loud bang they'd heard when the couple drove by was an attempt at shooting them. So he patrols around for a while, then kills a black kid in a public park for playing with a toy gun without giving him a chance to put the toy gun down or comply with any orders at all, beats up the kid's teenage sister when she came running, then works with his partner to falsify his report on the incident to avoid a murder charge. After a lot of controversy, the city fathers decide to fire him from the police force but not charge him with anything. And more recently he got rehired by the same police department that made headlines most recently for killing Jamal Crawford III for holding a toy gun in a Walmart, because apparently that's what his new department decided there wasn't enough of was cops willing to shoot harmless people for being black.
A buddy of mine worked briefly as a cop before getting injured on the job. He told me that there were several departments in the area that everyone at the academy knew were places to go if you wanted to beat up and kill black people with impunity. That's the reality of policing in the US right now.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by inertnet on Friday June 21 2019, @07:39PM (4 children)
It probably is a culture thing, because non of those things are likely to ever happen in my country. Cops killing or getting killed are extremely rare and over the last 50 years they changed from a macho culture to a culture of utmost restraint. While in the USA it seems to have gone the other way around. Racism also seems to have gotten worse in the USA, after a period of improvement during probably the 70's and 80's. As seen from across the pond.
I have no idea how you could turn that around. But I'm not sure if pushing offenders into hiding their opinions is the right way. That could make things worse.
I hope you find a way to stop those senseless killings. Apart from the trigger happy macho culture, at least something must be wrong in the law enforcement education and hiring process.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday June 21 2019, @07:46PM
I'm not sure which country you're in, but yes, it's a serious problem in the US. How serious, we're not quite clear on, because the police departments refuse to release statistics on how many people are killed by cops and what their names are, but it's at least in the hundreds annually.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 22 2019, @10:47AM
Racism has not gotten worse.
You have many more mixed race marriages as compared to decades past and it's not that big a deal, just as one example.
What HAS changed is that the far Left has taken control and it is especially true in media establishments.
So you get this CONSTANT drumbeat of racism, racism, racism, and they will even make up stories about it if they can't find any.
Trust me, racism in America is NOT worse than in the past. You just hear the media go on about it a lot more.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday June 22 2019, @02:28PM (1 child)
The racism. Has it actually gotten worse? Honestly, I don't think so. My wife and her sisters can remember signs from their youth, "Nigger, don't let the sun set on your ass in this town!" There were lynchings, within our lifetimes. Today? Nope. Nada. Not even the ignorant macho rednecks I live amongst keep "nigger thumpers" behind their seats, or under their seats. It ain't happening.
You're probably right, the 70's and 80's may have been the high point. But then, whatever racism there was remaining started being blow up by identity politics. That's all we've seen in the media for decades now. Every reporter searches for the merest suggestion of racism, reports it, and her editor blows it all out of proportion.
Then, when a Tamir Rice happens, it fails to generate proper interest, because we've already been so outraged over trivia, we can't recognize that THIS is a REAL OUTRAGE.
Blame the media, blame the identity politics people.
In real life, race relations in backwoods Arkansas, and most of the south, are mostly semi-relaxed. We don't have either blacks or whites stalking the streets, looking to kill someone of the wrong color. That shit happens in big cities, run by Democrats.
(Score: 2) by inertnet on Sunday June 23 2019, @10:37AM
My "racism has gotten worse" comment is not exactly what I meant. What I mean is that hatred, or contrast between groups is now far worse. Nowadays I'm presumed to be a racist, just for being white. Even in this discussion I was modded a troll, which I don't understand. If you would know my family you'd immediately understand that I couldn't be a racist.
People were much friendlier a couple of decades ago.