Shots Fired at Munich Shopping Centre | Hacker News Reader

Shots Fired at Munich Shopping Centre

bbc.co.uk

32 pointsbasisword42 comments

Really alarming that this is starting to happen on an almost weekly basis.

So sad to me, violence from another part of the world spilling into Western Europe, an area that's finally settled into stable and peaceful democracy after millennia of war.

Not to mention that this is certainly going to play into the hands of nativist and xenophobic elements in those regions, regardless of whether or not perpetrators turn out to be homegrown or not.

That's the part that's most alarming to me. The incidents are tragic but the long term consequences will also be bad. Xenophobia is getting much too common and a lot of people are pretty open about it now. Brexit hasn't helped that and if further countries follow suit it's only creating more divisions. Every attack like this (although we don't know anything about the perpetrators in this incident yet it's pretty safe to assume) just gives more fuel to the xenophobia in our society.

Exactly, and ironically terrorists of all stripes seem to be converging on a mutually xenophobic, isolationist ideology. It is unfortunately the real face of that awful phrase from the W. Bush era, "letting the terrorists win".

Or at least, letting them experience something like efficacy in their fundamental goals. That should worry us more than it seems to, I think.

Xenophobia is an _irrational_ fear. It is obviously not irrational to fear this uncontrolled immigration as there are enough fanatics among them that go on a killing spree.

Two years ago stuff like this happened rarely, now it is happening regularly.

And lets not even get started on the rise in sexual assaults.

Pretty nice to see that it is still in the news... pretty soon I fear it won't even be newsworthy.

Seeing as that terrorism is one of the few problems that would literally go away if we ignored it, I hope news readers do become bored with it.

I wonder how anyone could believe that. In the Middle East they experienced terrorism for decades and it gets only worse.

They have news in the Middle East.

Yes busses blow up in Israel, markets blow up in Iraq, and schools get blown up in Syria because of news papers.

This isn't fantasy land where you can wish something go away by believing it doesn't exist.

You may not value innocent life or freedom but there's plenty of us who do.

I can value innocent life and freedoms without it being blasted on my media 24/7. The media is biased anyways, my country, the United States, has apparently killed 73 civilians in one Syrian village, Tokkhar, and HN doesn't even have coverage.

Media coverage does not help the victims, it glorifies the attackers.

Probably better to stop the bombing and campaigb and let isis grow bigger... they do wonders for the muslim community. /sp

Media coverage reminds us of the religious threat to civilized society.

We're not going to make any terrorist group grow smaller by killing innocents.

That statement is wrong on so many levels.

I think you're mistaken. It is European violence and its greed that began this cycle and we are "lucky" to witness decades of injustice...

there is still no word if this is an act of terrorism or some deranged person with a weapon.

This is terrorism, police said that multiple shooters are at large.

link (sorry, German): http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/justiz/muenchen-schuesse-in-o...

Are those not the samething? I'm sure a terrorist is also a deranged person

Yes, but terrorism has a political goal, some one who's simply insane doesn't.

Facebook have activated their 'Safety Check' feature: https://www.facebook.com/safetycheck/munich-germany-shooting...

News alert from the Washington Post says at least two dead :/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/german-police-seal-off-...

live updates from reddit: https://www.reddit.com/live/xatezzbcvxxy

The police in Munich are now saying that at least several have been killed and injured. Sky News saying that police report multiple shooters, with none in custody.

Flagged into oblivion within 20mins. I was hoping people would choose the 'hide' option instead of flag but no they chose to kill a discussion for other people they don't want to part of anyway.

Censorship because a biased group's worldview is challenged.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12099576

Good post, that's the impression I get.

I'd caution against drawing general conclusions about HN from spot observations about what does/doesn't get flagged. People usually fall prey to cognitive biases when they do so, e.g. thinking that the community is against them somehow. We're all primed to feel that way; the feeling just hops to different things depending on our different identities.

Occam suggests you needn't look for "Anglo bias" as an explanation for why a story gets flagged when the thread includes "We must get rid of Merkel and the refugees" followed by "What do you suggest, gas chambers?"

(Not that there isn't inevitably going to be something like "anglo bias" on an English-language site. But FWIW the moderators here are acutely aware of, and grateful for, and interested in, the international aspects of the community—definitely including the German ones.)

The discussion isn't killed; you just posted in it. The issue is what should or shouldn't be on the front page. Users manage most of that; for example, this story fell in rank because they flagged it. Moderators manage some of it too.

To look at this meaningfully, you need to take two things into account. First, front page slots are the scarcest resource HN has. Second, HN is a fragile place: the stories we most want here are weaker in many ways (e.g. less agitating) than more sensational material, and also quite a bit rarer. There need to be barriers to the latter or it would flood the site.

>> "The discussion isn't killed; you just posted in it."

I should have been more clear. I meant that discussion is 'effectively' killed as anybody interested will not be able to find the story. I don't know how many flags it generated but one second it was on the front page, I refreshed and couldn't find it going back three pages.

My frustration stems from the fact that when the 'hide' function was introduced I had hoped people would use that more and only use flag for actual spam. If something gets up voted to the front page there are clearly quite a few people who want to discuss and there would probably be more but others won't find it once it's been flagged.

Maybe if a page reaches enough up votes within n minutes or reaches a certain rank on the front page within n minutes we can presume it's not spam and disable flagging for an hour. That way those who don't want to participate can ignore or use the new hide feature and those who do want to participate can find it.

Imagine if you posted this story on a knitting subreddit. It's like that.

Edit: I didn't know there was a knitting story on the front page when I wrote this!

A flagged story isn't necessarily "spam". That's not what flagging means. Far more commonly, for stories that briefly kiss the front page and then vanish, they're simply off-topic for the site.

That's probably because everyone knows how to vote, and so people who don't understand the guidelines vote off-topic stuff up. The people who flag stories tend to be more acquainted with the guidelines, and also always a step behind the upvoters.

A sensible approach might be to work on making such stories more findable, except it's not clear that this would be good for HN.

Having more conversations like "We must get rid of Merkel and the refugees" followed by "What do you suggest, gas chambers?" would build up internet toxins that are already at uncomfortably high levels and bad for the body of the community.

Not sure if you're familiar with the news guidelines, but here's a relevant entry:

Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Thanks for the link, I am very familiar with them though (I've been a HN member for over 5 years). Despite the rules things like this used to be fine. Personally I think people got tired of out-of-context stuff and started flagging more but have now over-corrected.

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