So, will the truth be known widely or will the broader population remember only the drone accusation? Cynic in me thinks this was deliberately suggested to make passing some drone laws easier.
1: "Thing" is developed which enjoys benign use amongst small subset of geeks
2: Military discover "Thing" and develop a way to use it for evil and/or killing
3: "Thing" gains in popularity amongst general public
4: Government says. "General public can't be trusted with "Thing". Thing is capable of doing evil and/or killing people!"
5: News stories start appearing: ""Thing" could be used by 'Terrists' and 'Paedos', warns expert"
6: "Thing" restricted or outlawed —in response to "public concerns"
Rinse and repeat...
2: Military discover "Thing" and develop a way to use it for evil and/or killing
That ordering is not correct.
My issue with these stories, is that there generally is no go-to organisation for the new "Thing", so all the news articles end up quoting 'Jim , the self proclaimed expert on Thing"'
People have been flying models for a long time. But originally, model planes, etc. were expensive and relatively hard to fly. So people often knew each other and could have a mostly self-policing community.
Then quadcopter were made to be very easy to fly, and popularity made them cheap.
So now we have people flying them everywhere. Quads with cameras make people nervous. Quads flying over large groups of people, make people nervous. And quads flying very close to planes is just a very bad idea.
So it makes sense to have some rules. But governments go completely over board. And instead of investing in enforcement, they introduce painful administrative requirements.
And yet people are fine with the government using the same if not worse. Based on those I speak with who hold such a double standard, there is a deeply held belief that it will never be used against them, largely because of their SES, race, and religion.
Constant state monitoring and Dirty Derek with a DJI are separate concerns.
So "Dirty Derek" does work as a spy.
A drone maybe hitting a plane is far more interesting and sensationalist than a drone not hitting a plane. There are thousands of instances every day where drones don't hit planes.
That's just how the human psyche/news in general works. You can't accuse the BBC of not reporting the updated news. Some shadier outlets might choose not to however.
This is real journalism:
"Flight X234 had to emergency land due to a collision with an unidentified object right after takeoff. It is not unusual to hit birds or other objects, but at at this time we don't know what it was."
This is pimping news for money: "OMG, terrorist drone bought at 7/11 was navigated by attackers into plane to kill citizens."
Why is libel misused to silence people, while so-called journalists can lie?
You are seriously arguing that this amounts to "lies" and should be suppressed?
Unless you're going to pass a law requiring all news organizations to behave this way (and when did government control of news ever go bad?) it's never going to happen.
I'd like to think the solution is simple, require a license before you can call yourself a news agency and take it away after three unfounded statements. There's room for fun news that reports on some famous guy's divorce, but it should be clearly labeled as speculative rumors.
So, if you don't have a news license, you can still print papers and magazine and have tv shows, but like on cigarette packages, there will always be a label visible at all times: Speculative Infotainment.
Any controlling body must consist of a healthy mix of representatives and no financial persuasion may be allowed.
In essence it's like reading a book and knowing it's fiction, not a report, and most news reporting is the same as information passed around citizens as hearsay.
Moreover, when I look at the way some tv hosts report information, it's more acting than should be allowed for something called news.
There are probably only 1000 or 2000 active journalists today. Most just repeat, reprint, what they got fed by someone else. In some countried here are investigative journalists who have their own TV shows on (partly) publicly funded TV.
What's most important is that before blindly believing a report, one is well served to compare with other agencies who are funded by an opposing interest group. What one might misrepresent can be spelled out clearly in some other place. Relying on a single source for news is like trusting the computer clock in a distributed system.
Is also something that has not worked very well, historically speaking. Who is going to give out those licenses? Government. Who does the news agency report on? Government.
When mainstream news is reporting stories about reality TV and sports "stars" from the same network, you know for sure it's all a big charade to sell advertising.
Of course, reddit has it's own problems as a source of truth... But there's always /r/thathappened to set us straight.
Arsenic being poisonous is in fact a problem with peoples' bodies not being able to handle it. And yet putting it in food and selling to people is not something you're allowed to. The "problem with people and their memory" here is a human universal, something thay can't do much about, so asking them to "just be smarter" is not a practical approach.
> The headline at the moment literally says it was unlikely to be a drone, but that still doesn't rule it out completely. Following your rules, that wouldn't make it as a story because it isn't factually proven.
And it shouldn't. Because on what basis does this story (and previous ones) promote drones to attention? It could be a bird. Or an UAV. Or a piece of plane falling off. Or someone playing with a spud gun. Or a turtle[0]. Or something else entirely. By saying "it's unlikely it was a drone" they're already framing the discussion.
The only reason hobby helicopters are called "drones" now is because the U.S. uses drones to kill people, and people had a problem with that - so now everything is a drone. I guess the next step is to ban hobby helicopters, closing the circle.
Throughout the centuries, owning a balloon has been something for the rich, for people who could afford good lawyers and build case law that favors nearly unrestricted flight by way of comparison to drone 'rules' being enacted. The problem with multi-rotors, is that any idiot without a lot of money can buy one, do something stupid, then be at the mercy of a public defender when they go to court. Since there are literally millions of people out there who can afford a multi-rotor but can't afford to defend themselves in court, the future isn't bright when it comes to being able to step out your door and fly a multi-rotor.
https://scontent-sea1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xfp1/v/t1.0-9/1...
As long as they know, what difference does it make?
It doesn't affect me personally at the moment, but many other types of model flying become very hard. And the people violating the rules, mostly don't know them anyhow, so keep violating the rules.
"Drones" are the new UFOs at this point.
The issue is that then you have to limit the sale, and add licenses etc to control that. However, even that does not control the people who just don't care, or that don't know. You can tell stores around you not to sell to unlicensed people, but these drones are so easy to get over the internet that it would have to be blocked at a border level. And then you are basically outlawing the device, creating even more need to police / monitor.
My favorite conspiracy theory is that the idea of conspiracy theories was subject to a multiple decade long attack by certain government groups to make conspiracy theory equate in popular culture to crack pot theory. Governments benefits when theories like the CIA bringing in drugs or the military doing non-consensual human experimentation on soldiers are classified under the same moniker as the theory that lizard people control the government and aliens exist but the governments of the world cover for them.
But that is just a conspiracy theory.
To calculate the odds of hitting a drone, you have to divide the odds of a bird strike by population, altitude overlap and by spatial density when a flock of birds vs a single drone is encountered. This is why betting on a drone strike is, currently, a sucker-bet. Anyone who thinks a report of a drone strike is real is way way too credulous and/or biased.