If Mort Divine ruled the world

[HamburgerBoy]

The image results are of course naturally biased to favor those most viewed. A significant number of white women searching may cause disproportionate clicks on white faces as a result. Similarly, back when Google gave you all results imaginable had you disabled SafeSearch, entering 'asian' would return mostly porn, undoubtedly due to the many white men searching for it.

 

[Einherjar86]

There's a huge difference between the facial recognition issue and the result sorting issue. The former case is some kind of computer algorithm causing upset among a certain group, threatening their brand and marketing, therefore encouraging Google to manipulate it to satisfy their customers. The latter is a computer algorithm behaving as it always had, Google then manipulating it for "reasons unknown", resulting in a brief scandal, and then further manipulation by Google to ensure fair play.

The reason I'm asking for the market purpose is because it's relevant to prove your theory applicable to this instance. If you start from the POV that corporations ONLY do things to react to popular opinion, then obviously you're right by definition, but I'm disputing that theory. Corporations react to popular opinion when they feel it will make them sell more product; if it can't be demonstrated that displaying "hillary clinton indictment" would impact their sales, then there is no clear economic motive behind the action, and therefore it becomes a question of why a corporation would go out of their way to voluntarily spend effort on work of no value. Since the move was controversial and immediately caused Google to react, and since this is a corporation that invented the PageRank algorithm in the first place, the move could arguably even be viewed as creating negative publicity for them. I mean, I'm right-wing as fuck and I don't care that popular left-wing searches are displayed; I fully expect them to be as someone that uses Google for its ability to provide relevant and important results. I don't think most people that lean (D) are going to have conniptions just seeing "hillary clinton indictment" pop up, and I've never read any case where users had complained about said search term. Therefore, since the profit-motive seems negligible at best, I propose that this is an exception to your argument, and that when corporations are still controlled by their founders with a tight leash, their founders are likely and able to inject personal biases.

It isn't my theory, I would credit it more to Noam Chomsky (and to a lesser extent, David Foster Wallace).

Founders can inject their biases, but this doesn't amount to saying that a news site, station, or other platform is liberally or conservatively biased. It has less to do with conscious reactions to search results and infinitely more to do with what drives the algorithmic processes underlying those results. I'm not saying that Google doesn't manipulate results; I am saying that those manipulations are subject to the pressures of the market. At the level of something as systematically complex as Facebook or Google, you can have minor incidents deriving from manipulations at the individual level; but overall these sites work to maintain a level of customer satisfaction that ensures future expansion. If they don't, they crash.

You can't extricate the manipulations themselves from the corrections, or "further manipulation(s)"; it's all part of the same process.

EDIT: given this, I won't hypothesize any market reason for augmenting algorithms on a search engine because there may not be any immediately apparent incentive for doing so. These changes, their corrections, adaptations, alterations, etc. are all part of a process that is intimately bound up with, and inflected by, market perceptions. To us, however, it may still look like ideology run amok.

 

[Dak]

"To pursue charges against Hillary would require either intentional or negligent handling of classified material. We do not believe she intentionally mishandled classified material, therefore no charges will be pressed."



I am reminded of GHWB's famous quote, at least a portion of it:

“We have before us the opportunity to forge for ourselves and for future generations a New World Order. A world where the rule of law – not the law of the jungle – governs the conduct of nations.

As the Clintons are/were a part of the elite minority with such a vision, it's obvious that "nations" means "the plebes", but not themselves.

 

[CiG]

Black Lives Matter hijack a vigil for the victims of the Orlando club massacre. That group really is disgusting and if this doesn't create a fracture between them and the LGBT community, the latter has no hope.

 

[The Ozzman]

I hate to bump this thread because I'd like to see it go away, but:


http://heavy.com/news/2016/07/alton...otos-facebook-family-protests-officers-names/

http://www.icrimewatch.net/offenderdetails.php?OfndrID=571319&AgencyID=54450

One more thug dead

 

[Dak]

One more?

 

[The Ozzman]

One more?

Whoops haha

 

[CiG]

Everybody I know is outraged about this.

 

[Dak]

It irritates me that this piece of shit is getting conflated with the Eric Garner incident. Totally different crimes, different responses, etc. The Garner killing was at least "problematic". I didn't have sympathy for Brown, and don't have any here.

 

[CiG]

But he was black, black people never do anything wrong.

Seriously though, reading this case just leaves me with more questions, I'm not inclined to believe that cops just unload into downed detainees with no justification. The video footage is too raw to make out anything in detail.

Another case that will be exploited I guess.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

From the video I saw, the guy was actively struggling the entire time, and the stories I've read say he was armed. Hardly detained. Whether or not he was truly reaching for his gun or simply fighting back, I call it a good shoot.

 

[The Ozzman]

But he was black, black people never do anything wrong.

THEY DINDU NUFFIN! THEY WAS KANGS AND SHIET

 

[Einherjar86]

Let's ignore the shooting for a moment -

Tased, tackled onto the hood of a car, and then thrown to the ground - all the while asking "What did I do?" - and never given any explanation by the police. The guy was selling bootlegged DVDs. That's illegal, for sure; but it's not a crime that warrants the use of preemptive violence.

I am inclined to believe that some cops do unload into detainees without justification. The job tends to be attractive to megalomaniac assholes.

Even if Sterling had a gun, was he drawing it when the cops approached? No. Was he threatening to use it when they approached? No. Was he making any violent moves whatsoever as they approached? No. He asked why he was being accosted by the police; but obviously that's totally irrational.

 

[The Ozzman]

all the while asking "What did I do?"

Is this part of the video available? I only saw the part where he got shot..

 

[Einherjar86]

It's the account of bystanders who witnessed the altercation. I don't think the videos began that early (that I know of) because it all happened so quickly.

 

[Dak]

There's more to using pre-emptive violence than simply the apparent visual at the moment. You can frame a break in from someone who has repeatedly attempted and or succeeded at breaking into a house as a "regular visitor who was dropping by to say hello" who was "brutally murdered in cold blood all while asking 'Why?!' and gurgling about the children he would leave behind through the bloody froth. Awww. Poor guy. He was just tryna get some clothes for school (for his kids!).

He was doing more than "just selling bootleg dvds". He was carrying illegally an illegally purchased/owned weapon. I could take this opportunity to be all "lol outlaws will have guns" but I won't. You have a guy in and out of jail, in trouble multiple times with the cops, and a prior incident of illegally owning weapons. He was probably a known entity, and if so, knowing he could be armed is a part of that. I could easily be inclined to seeing that liberally as intent to harm.

Edit: tl;dr There's almost no reason to give repeat felons the benefit of the doubt when they are in the process of committing multiple crimes, one of which is weapons related.

 

[Einherjar86]

A "known entity" - a serial bootlegger who probably has an illegal firearm, since this is a black neighborhood where most firearms are illegal, even if they're owned by decent people for protection (from cops as well as from criminals).

I'm sympathetic to police because to be honest, we ask them to do an impossible job; but if part of that job is to handle situations responsibly and level-headedly, then these two law enforcement officials seem to have shit the bed.

Your break-in "framing" makes no sense to me, since this wasn't a break-in, it was in a public place, where presumably people are expected to be walking around. So, whereas in a break-in scenario an "entity's" physical presence warrants at least a significant degree of physical action, in this case it does not.

 

[Dak]

I'm sympathetic to police because to be honest, we ask them to do an impossible job

Yes.

A "known entity" - a serial bootlegger who probably has an illegal firearm, since this is a black neighborhood where most firearms are illegal, even if they're owned by decent people for protection (from cops as well as from criminals).

If they are illegal it's because they committed a felony (unless it's a type of restricted firearm like a sawed off shotgun). So we have criminals or "former" criminals behaving criminally because....of themselves. There is no way to protect yourself from cops with a gun. The way to protect yourself from cops is to not even give the impression of being a law breaker. Blacks are certainly at a disadvantage in this regard, because such a disproportionate amount don't follow the law.

Your break-in "framing" makes no sense to me, since this wasn't a break-in, it was in a public place, where presumably people are expected to be walking around. So, whereas in a break-in scenario an "entity's" physical presence warrants at least a significant degree of physical action, in this case it does not.

There wasn't a parallel specifically to this situation (I did borrow a bit from the Trevon Johnson killing - 'Clothes for school!'). My point was that one can reframe any scenario into a sobstory when looking at a snip of video of an altercation - even when being kind of sort of true to the general situation.

 

[Einherjar86]

There is no way to protect yourself from cops with a gun. The way to protect yourself from cops is to not even give the impression of being a law breaker. Blacks are certainly at a disadvantage in this regard, because such a disproportionate amount don't follow the law.

Aye, there's the rub. Is it that a disproportionate amount of blacks don't follow the law (which you're right, they don't)? Or is it that a disproportionate amount of cops get nervous around any and all black people (which they do)? Or, is it a combination of both, since these two elements are certainly inextricable.

The point here is that they couldn't see the gun - it was in his shorts pocket, and nothing in the video indicates he was reaching for it (eyewitness testimony corroborates this). They assumed he had one, and they happened to be correct - good police senses. They also overreacted to a situation in which this particular black person probably was not intending to use his firearm. So in this case, it didn't have as much to do with him breaking the law as it did with two police officers whose reactions were probably overdetermined by an admittedly understandable anxiety around black people. And let's face it, if you're going to work in fucking Baton Rouge... maybe you should work on your anxiety issues.

And furthermore, we have the story emerging today of a police officer who shot a black man in a car after he told the officer he had a handgun (and a permit to carry it). I don't think we can lay the blame at the feet of black people and say "well, so many of you break the law, it's just inevitable, you know?" I admit, I couldn't be a cop - I'd be way too trigger happy; but that's why I'm not a cop. Too often law enforcement attracts people ill-suited to the job.

And my last point (and, and, and...), which you probably won't like: it costs money to follow the law. Black people are also disproportionately financially impoverished. But that probably has nothing to do with it...

 

[rms]

A "known entity" - a serial bootlegger who probably has an illegal firearm, since this is a black neighborhood where most firearms are illegal, even if they're owned by decent people for protection (from cops as well as from criminals).

I'm sympathetic to police because to be honest, we ask them to do an impossible job; but if part of that job is to handle situations responsibly and level-headedly, then these two law enforcement officials seem to have shit the bed.

Your break-in "framing" makes no sense to me, since this wasn't a break-in, it was in a public place, where presumably people are expected to be walking around. So, whereas in a break-in scenario an "entity's" physical presence warrants at least a significant degree of physical action, in this case it does not.

I have heard he was a registered sex offender and previous assault charges and just returned from a 5 year prison term.

Have not seen the video nor caught up on everything.