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Comment by lefrenchy | Hacker News Reader

I think this was absolutely the right move because it was so blatant and disgusting.

I do however fear that this was a bait. The campaign posts something so blatant in order to get it taken down to be able to claim victimhood and enrage the base.

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Very interesting related twitter thread: https://twitter.com/ParkerMolloy/status/1273631800636702721

Interesting that someone is now creating inverted red triangle "Antifa" shirts after the ad was run. Someone is definitely trying to control the narrative here. (https://twitter.com/kurtssphincter/status/127364804825054003...)

And if you check out some of her other tweets on this, such as https://twitter.com/ParkerMolloy/status/1273645070709858305

And the replies: https://twitter.com/originalspin/status/1273650404983631875

88 versions of the ad, and the first sentence of the ad contains 14 words. The numbers 14/88 have considerable significance here, especially when paired with the use of a concentration camp symbol..

I see how that could be the case but once we start delving into numerology we start to sound like conspiracy theorists.

This is why they use it. It's the perfect dog whistle. Google 1488 tattoos to get an idea of just how serious and prevalent it is.

[1]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog-whistle_politics

[2]. https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=1488+tattoos&atb=v209-1&iax...

Sure, but with those tattoos, the 14 & 88 are significant and inescapable. There’s no ambiguity and their presence is not hidden. But once you’re counting the number of words in a tweet, you’re talking about things much more hidden. It doesn’t work well as a dog whistle if the metaphorical dogs can’t hear it, either.

https://imgur.com/Z8AICes

Plenty of ambiguity there. I think you may need to evaluate what your motivation is to need to keep disbelieving that racist dogwhistles can actually be ambiguous, especially considering they are that way by design.

You just linked to a picture of a tattoo of the number 1488... I don’t see any ambiguity. Did you intend to link to a different picture?

A tattoo of just 1488, without any racist symbology, is ambiguous. There is nothing to make it distinctive from any other number.

Help me understand what you think an ambigous tattoo of 1488 should look like?

Well, along the lines of counting the number of words in a tweet, maybe 14 stars? And then chains, where the linked chains look kinda like 8s? Something where the 14 and 88 are present, but not obvious unless you think to look for them.

https://www.dhs.gov/news/2018/02/15/we-must-secure-border-an... is a good example of plausible deniability.

Fourteen word headline, starting with "We must secure..."

Was it intentional? No one will likely ever know.

> On average, out of 88 claims that pass the credible fear screening, fewer than 13 will ultimately result in a grant of asylum.

Why use 88 rather than 100 to illustrate this statistic?

You still didn't answer the question.

Which question didn’t I answer? You asked what an ambiguous tattoo of 1488 might look like, and I offered a possibility.

14/88 is hardly a conspiracy theory.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteen_Words

That is an mechanism which insulates even well-documented conspiracies that use numerical symbols as identification banners, which is probably why certain of them do exactly that.

Yup. It’s a false choice, like convincing someone you’re not paranoid. It’s an interesting trick.

The 14/88 miners have so many degrees of freedom in how they search for these numbers they are always guaranteed to find them. If the number of banned ads was < 88 we would be hearing about how some subset of similar looking ads had size 88.

Hardly. It's 14 words, not 14 anything else. Furthemore, neo-Nazis have in fact also used these numbers in their esoteric numerology in varying degrees of freedom.

It's 14 words, in the same way that "And if you check out some of her other tweets on this, such as" is 14 words. And where is the proof that there were 88 versions of this ad? The Media Matters article has a link "ran 88 ads" that points to [1], but there are only 3 ads on that page.

This "evidence" is a Rorschach test. People see what they're predisposed to see.

1: https://www.mediamatters.org/media/3878791

If you look at the picture of the 3 ads, each has a number in the top left corner showing how many times it ran, apparently generated by the Dewey Square Adwatch tool set cited in the article. The numbers are 30, 28 and 30, which sum to 88. This could have been better explained in the MM article. It could also be a coincidence, but repeated coincidences eventually qualify as a pattern.

So the ad had run 88 times when Media Matters took the screenshot?

Then if it had continued to run, wouldn't it have run more than 88 times? Or possibly it did run again before Facebook took it down, and actually did run more than 88 times?

Now I'm picturing Media Matters watching the ad counter like teenage boys watching an odometer approach 80085.

It’s not an impressions count.

Of course not. The article doesn't specify what is being counted, but Media Matters was clearly counting something.

And like any counter, it's bound to pass 88 on the way to however many versions/targetings/updates/campaigns/whatever the campaign had planned to run.

You say 'of course not' but then just carry on as if the previous poster had endorsed your theory. I am not an adtech person but I had the distinct impression that the tool cited counted the number of promotional spots purchased for each ad placed. On what basis do you say they were 'clearly counting something' as if it were a dynamic rather than a static process?

On what basis do you say it's a static process? The burden on proof is on those making the allegations.

You're the one alleging that they took the screenshot as it counted up in a dynamic process. I'm asking why you seem so sure about about that, in contrast to alternative possibilities. Seems like you can't answer.

I'm not alleging it. I'm just picturing the possibility.

The truth is neither of us knows, so how can we consider the number 88 evidence?

You are absolutely alleging it.

So the ad had run 88 times when Media Matters took the screenshot? [...] The article doesn't specify what is being counted, but Media Matters was clearly counting something. And like any counter, it's bound to pass 88 on the way to however many versions/targetings/updates/campaigns/whatever the campaign had planned to run.

I was willing to listen to your argument, but instead of making a case you're just insulting my intelligence.

Because evidence for something doesn't require proof beyond the possibility of conjecturing alternative explanations, and if it did, nothing would be evidence of anything, since any sense data could just be hallucination, and ultimately anything that could be cited as evidence at some point relies on sense data.

It's like numerology at some point, or that movie The Number 23.

Then it should be easy to demonstrate using some indisputably innocuous control group. Have at it.

Wow! Even if this is a coincidence, the rest of the evidence presented by the author is pretty sound.

Truly a plot against America. I used to think that calling trump a fascist was overboard but maybe it's getting closer to being applicable...

Funny that the first sentence of your comment also contains 14 words. I'm not saying it's also a coincidence in the ad, but trying to do numerology without statistics is pointless. A big pile of examples isn't statistics.

From thread:

So a big part of right-wing troll culture centers on dogwhistles: something that regular people would see and think, "I don't see what the problem is," but has a less wholesome meaning underneath. For instance, the "OK" hand gesture stuff.

We just got a major textbook example of this with the Trump campaign rally in Tulsa, now scheduled for this Saturday.

Originally it was scheduled for tomorrow, Friday, Juneteenth, in Tulsa, site of the notorious 1921 Black Wall Street Massacre.

Simply vile.

And if the excuse is it was all an honest mistake, even worse. That's the sort of cock-up a grade-school competent campaign team would scrupulously avoid.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juneteenth

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_massacre

It was obviously not a mistake. Also: https://www.axios.com/trump-juneteenth-38ee6f09-5741-47ef-9c...

Aren't date collisions just the birthday paradox in action?

See also: the executive order removing protections for LGBTQ+ people in health care on the anniversary of the Pulse massacre.

I can't tell if the examples in that twitter roll are validating or invalidating the message.

These political threads are a dumpster fire. And these idiots bought right into it.

Or bait to fuel the potential moves by the DOJ and Barr against Section 230 that's received recent coverage.

I don't see how it would help the DOJ do anything against 47 U.S.C. 230. There's nothing there that stops Facebook from enforcing a code of conduct.

A public website is allowed to be biased without losing any protections under that code. There is no distinction between publisher and platform. Hell, you could be a newspaper website with a comment section, and you'd still be legally protected from liability for what users posted.

I strongly encourage people to actually read the law. Its not difficult to understand.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230

The German party AfD is known for this tactic. They say something outrageous, their post gets deleted or something similar happens, then they play into the victim role and call everyone else "Lügenpresse" (≈ Fake News). Internal documents from a few years ago have described this tactic.

It seems an almost unprecedented level of immature trolling.

I wonder if society will get bored of this at some point.

The shock value of using taboo ideology does wear off.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window

With Naziism, the shock value seems to have actually strengthened over the decades and years. Do you see any sign of it wearing off? I'd say it won't wear off until it becomes an acceptable ideology. Communist or satanist symbols no longer have as much shock value as they used to, for example.

I'm not talking about any particular ideology not being shocking anymore.

I'm talking about society getting bored with people who rely on shocking and immature pranks.

Yea, it feeds on itself. If people get upset, that prompts more people to use it to shock them. When offended people finally get bored with it (ie they stop finding it offensive), I'm sure it'll die down. But some new thing will be used to wind up the new generation of prudes that replaces them.

Yup, and that it would work is because Facebook doesn't actually fight back, they just steadily move back their line in the sand because they're afraid of the backlash.

Placating the base is pointless, it thinks what it's told.

That's a good point. I think it riles up the base, but serves to try to bring people to their side by nature of: "Look how crazy the left wing big tech companies are they censor red triangles"

You're spot on that the base is already sold and doesn't need to be convinced.

Do note this is exactly Trump's gaslit arguments (vile, digusting, untrue, etc.) for attacking the free media.

to be able to claim victimhood and enrage the base

That the most powerful man in the world tries to play victim and that his "base", people who call anyone speaking up just to try to get a fair shake out of life a "snowflake", can buy into it is fascinating. Any group of people that has this little self-awareness does need to be enraged. They are true believers, through and through.

Playing the victim is Trumps pattern, but I'm not sure it is the end goal. I think they'd be just as happy their hateful ads run too.

Trump has proven that he doesn't need any truthful event to rally around. If it doesn't play out he'll just make it up too.

I think this is just more the randomness of Trump and the folks around him / their shifting influences and etc.

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