Faces of the Riot website uses facial recognition to catalog Capitol protesters
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
I remember a few months ago one of the YC alumni building a website to document anyone who supports the RNC for the quoted intention of shaming them and making their lives/livelihood harder. They were so proud of it and advertised it on Twitter. I’ll see if I can dig up the name of one of the authors. They took the tweet down when they realized the audience found them no better than the Nazi supporters of the 30s putting together lists of the Jews.
This doesn’t end well, and people won’t forget this.
Eye for an eye, and then some.
I can see why someone had the urge to build this seeing as this capitol riot was perhaps the biggest threat to american democracy in recent years. What really irks me though is not only how many people brought their phones but also how many actively posted and boasted about their participation on social media.
There is a social media site called "Clapper" that is kind of like TikTok but describes itself as a "free-speech" alternative. Naturally, it is pretty much filled to the brim with conservatives. When the capitol riot happened, hundreds of videos from the event appeared on Clapper. But Clapper acted quickly and seemingly took down all of the videos with geolocation data close to the event at that time. Now, almost nothing can be found there about it.
But the platform is still filled with conservatives who post videos of their laptop screens about the Q conspiracy and "encouraging" videos where they ensure each other that Biden is not yet president and it is not yet over. They seem very technologically illiterate and also very unconcerned about how easily they could get themselves fired for racist or conspiratory content, because they think that this "platform" unlike Twitter and Facebook is somehow on their side. They don't realise that social media platforms cannot advertise when their content isn't "clean" and thus act in their own interest when they ban this type of content, and not in the interest of some opposing party.
So honestly, I think this is just the beginning of such projects, because somehow the people who would do something as ridiculous as storming the capitol keep documenting their crimes and releasing the material themselves... they make it extremely easy for any political opponents.
Invariably when any push is made to bring leftist criminals to justice, activists cry foul, peddle cliches like “riots are the language of the unheard”, attack anyone posting photos or streams of criminals as “doxxing”, and so on.
There is a clear undeniable double standard behind all this (https://www.allsides.com/blog/capitol-hill-breach-riot-cover...), and it involves politicians, social media giants, news media, and everyday people. The fact that places like Ars or Wired are happily normalizing leftist witch hunts, by being less directly and overtly critical than they could be, should alarm everyone. But the rot goes much much deeper.
But that’s not what my comment is about. It’s about the unequal treatment and unequal outrage from a variety of actors in our society, when it comes to the political left versus the political right. It’s about valuing things like responsible disclosure. It’s about leaning from history and not repeating the same mistakes when it comes to witch hunts, or censorship, or whatever else.
Left-wingers demonstrate for respecting the rights of people who are being denied them and to end biased policing, arguing for greater equality and support for those in need.
From what I've seen of right-wing protests over the last many years, they've demonstrated for restricting the rights of people they don't like, and lately to try and overturn a fair and democratic election.
These are not at all comparable, there is a clear difference in motives and methods.
Your claims about biased policing are also false - the allegations of bias in police-involved deaths doesn’t normalize for the amount of crime perpetrated by each racial group. This matters because those who commit crimes at a higher rate are more likely to be engaged with the police and place themselves at higher risk as a result, especially if they try to resist or evade the law. Such allegations of bias also don’t adjust for the fact that almost all people killed by the police were engaging in a crime actively at the time, refusing police orders, and placing others in danger. Commonly quoted metrics don’t account for those who resist arrest versus those who don’t. There are exceptions, and actual incidents of unjust or incorrect policing, but they are incredibly rare. This entire narrative is built on hyperbole and lies like “Hands up Don’t Shoot” (https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2015/0...).
But leaving all that aside, you’re explicitly arguing for different laws for different people even though they are all breaking the law as it is written. You believe your causes are completely just and the other side’s causes are unjust - in other words you believe you’re above the law. This unequal application of laws amounts to not believing in the rule of law, fundamentally. And if that’s what you believe in why bother having one country? Why should the political center or political right be part of a “union” that denies them basic justice?
As for your claims about the police, systemic racism is the reason why minorities have more contact with police. They are disadvantaged and marginalised and unfairly policed, because it's easier to beat poor people over the head than to do anything about white collar crime.
The US has a massive over-policing problem and it hits the poor and disadvantaged the hardest: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/half-people-killed-poli...
Defunding the police means for instance sending qualified professionals to mental illness calls, rather than armed police. No reasonable person could argue against this.
Regarding the right's belief that they are denied justice, that is just blatantly false. What they are "denied" is the taking away of the rights of others, which they continually try to do.