This article from Saturday compiles a hodgepodge of things about the protests. None of it is original reporting, and most seems to be internet copycat/follow-up stuff (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...), presumably trying to siphon some of that sweet sweet click action away from other sites. Readers looking for real information, of course, are indifferent to that agenda, except that it makes finding real information harder.

Its source for the inflammatory phrase "contact tracing" is a Twitter search link that mostly points back to this very same article. That's a pretty lame trick. What's the actual source here? What exactly does the phrase mean?

The clear implication is that covid-related contact tracing techniques or apps or data have been repurposed to track protestors. If that's true, we should certainly discuss it, with a real source as the basis. If it's false, this is the worst case of flamebait/clickbait that I've seen in a long time.

All: please don't believe what internet titles say, even when they feed into what you were already expecting might happen. It's possible that your expectations are being fulfilled. It's more likely that our attention (not to mention our adrenalin) is being exploited. On HN, at least, let's try to let that first rush of a reflexive response subside, and wait a few seconds for the slower, reflective circuits to engage (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). If you watch your own reactions, you'll notice what a huge difference that makes.

Edit: ok, here is the source: https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/1266758240018276352. It looks like he made an unfortunate analogy between tracing violent protesters and tracing covid-19 cases—unfortunate because it could be blown up into yet another internet story with no there there. Unless he gets to it later in the video (I only watched half), there's no suggestion of any data or technology being shared across these two categories.

I don't want to overreact out of being pissed off that this site wasted all our time, but can anyone give a good reason not to ban bgr.com on HN? It used to be banned. I'm not seeing a lot of valuable threads at https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que..., nor stories that wouldn't have gotten discussed through some other submission.