Are You This Agile? Paul Graham Changes Hacker News While You Wait - <AUTHOR> http://www.pchristensen.com/blog/articles/are-you-this-agile-paul-graham-changes-hacker-news-while-you-wait/

<comment><USER4> Stupid article. Sorry. The change that PG made is tiny. So it was surely an easy change and so his responding in under 7 hours is hardly something to blog about.

Right now I'm working for a very large European web site that's entirely written in Java. We make changes all the time (e.g. we probably make at least 3 code changes to the web site per day). Doesn't need any magic PG pixie dust sprinkled on the engineers to make this happen. What we do is run all our web server/app server combinations inside Solaris zones. When we make a change we tell the production system to shutdown each zone when it's ready (finished with current requests) and load the new one.

<comment><USER5> I disagree. It sounds like you work for a company who has their build process worked out really well, so fast changes are less impressive to you, but have you considered that maybe your company is not the average? I think it would be fair to say that most development shops are NOT that responsive to user changes because they don't have either the language features pg used, or a well-thought-out build process like your company.

If the article author works at one of those "average" shops, I think he has every reason to consider his experience on news.yc as a breath of fresh air and tell other people about it as an example.

Additionally, I think part of what impressed the author so much was that pg took the time to handle the request immediately. This isn't a site anyone pays to use, there's no revenue incentive, and the request was not the early stage of a riot, but they took care of it as though it was as important as a paying customer relationship, and that's not a response you expect from most web services. In fact, I think that may be what impressed the author more than just the speed of the fix.

<comment><AUTHOR> I should have known the magic here would be completely missed by much of the Hacker News audience - same thing happened with the comments on my blog. The whole point was that it WASN'T about the technology - it was that he's so in touch with his audience that within 4 hours of it coming to his attention, he was able to do two iterations, get feedback on both, and fix a bug. It took 4 hours because we were communicating asynchronously on a message board, but I'm pretty sure he could have done it live if I had him on the phone. Simply put, I was more impressed that he gave a crap than that he could push a code change.

I am at one of those "average" shops, as are most people (by definition, although maybe not in the HN community). I know this stuff is possible but we can't do it here, and neither can most sites.

To put it in perspective, if you found a bug in your bank's website and told them about it, how long would it take for them to fix it? Even worse, what if you suggested a way to make the site work better? Would anyone with decision making power ever even see the suggestion? Just try telling someone WHO'S NOT A GEEK this story and see what they say. I wrote the article because when I told my wife what happened, her jaw hit the floor.

<comment><USER6> "To put it in perspective, if you found a bug in your bank's website and told them about it, how long would it take for them to fix it?"

To put it in perspective, this is a very simple, small application with a relative handful of users that ... publishes links.

<comment><AUTHOR> Would it be impossible for larger, more "serious" websites to try harder?

<comment><USER7> Not to mention that such serious websites will have more resources available.

<comment><USER8> Not to mention that such serious websites have more at stake and most likely have a team of developers that learned the hard way not to change product code on the fly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Doing this on a web application isn't really that impressive and could have been done in almost any language.

The awesome thing is that this could have worked with an installed desktop software, without downloading new binaries and installing them, simply having the application download a tiny text file with the source code change to input into the REPL.

No recompiling, no pushing huge binaries, no hassle.

I had to implement a big cumbersome system to enable automatic incremental live updates on our client software, so users will always use the latest version. Using Lisp just makes it a breeze.

</comment><comment><USER10> The article title is wrong; Agile-ness is not measured in the speed of an individual change from code to customer. Any production-server-fuxoring-code- cowboy can do a change _faster_.

The Agile way would slow down particular changes, with practices like testing. The theory is that you take a little more time for every change in order to maintain optimum speed over the long term.

<comment><AUTHOR> Who says he didn't test the changes before he published them? In four hours of asynchronous communication, he did two design iterations, got feedback on both, and fixed a bug that someone found. And this was unplanned, in response to unsolicited feedback. What else should he have done to slow it down more?

<comment><USER10> I said that the article title was wrong, not that pg was wrong, or that Agile is even the best way to do things.

The equation of "we iterated faster == we're more Agile" is what I thought was retarded.

<comment><AUTHOR> Honest confession? The original title was "Can Your Website Do This?" but I changed it to Agile so more people would read it. Notice that I never mentioned Agile in the entire article and it had nothing to do with it. Sneaky, I admit, but right now I'm trying to get more people to read my writing.

<comment><USER11> Have you tried actually writing interesting and engaging pieces? I know it's a little harder, but it's less of an arseholeish thing to do than manipulating social news sites.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, I spent about an hour writing the piece. I proofread it. I linked to the relevant parts of the dialog to make it easier to skim. I summarized for those who didn't want to follow links. I inserted screen shots for context. I linked to the other sites where it was being discussed. I added updates and clarifications in response to comments made on 3 different sites (mine, here, and reddit) to help the conversation. And it is related to Agile principles. Can I get some credit for doing those things?

I do apologize if you clicked on it looking for something about Agile and then found it uninteresting and unengaging.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I like the idea of a REPL into my web app (may add one actually - <USER2> language, but that's not the issue).

But can a production-lisper tell me what is best practice regarding versioning and saving to files?

I'm assuming that modifications via the REPL are affecting the running image only. Can the running image save back out as source? (I'm assuming not, surely comments etc aren't preserved?)

Is it down to the admin to replay all changes they make to the REPL to the app source?

<comment><USER13> Our process is to test code first locally, push it with Git to the server (on the cloud) then type: (sf-load) on the server REPL - done (less than a minute). The (sf-load) function loads the asdf file which recompiles any code necessary with the changes, such as dependent macros, etc, automatically. The server continues to run through the process - unnoticed by the user except for the sudden new features :) . <http://www.cliki.net/asdf>

<comment><USER12> Thanks to you and shiro for the replies. It sounds as though the REPL is more useful for inspection than modification - which makes sense. Graceful addition of new functionality is useful, but provided by other frameworks.

/goes off to think about how best to provide an inspection-based REPL to his web app

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Let's not miss the critical "take away" message of this article...

Often, it's NOT the capabilities of the app that are the most important thing, it's the ABILITY TO CHANGE those capabilities quickly that matters most.

I've seen this over and over and over again in businesses. When the app (often packaged) is missing a certain feature or capability, the organization will always find a way around it: a satellite app, an excel spreadsheet, pencil and paper, even hiring a few extra clerks. But what really drives them nuts is when the business has a new critical requirement and the software can't be changed in time to meet it.

The examples are endless: we're running a special sale, we have a new temporary warehouse, the accountants insist on special security for certain classes of workers, Joe just found out that <abc> has happened in Duluth - <USER3> we knew <def> by 3:00, we could do <ghi>.

I know many business people that will only buy packaged software with source code. They will not pay maintenance, and use the money instead to hire their own programmers. It's THAT IMPORTANT that the software can "turn on a dime" to satisfy rapidly changing business requirements.

Bravo, pg, for doing something (however apparently minor) to bring this issue front and center where it belongs.

</comment><comment><USER15> Well if Paul can do this, then maybe he can put a password change or retrieval feature in. /sigh

<comment><USER16> The feature is already there... "reset password"

<comment><USER17> I got bitten by that one. I'd forgotten my password, but couldn't retrieve it because "logicholeflaw" wasn't a valid account. But I couldn't recreate it because "logicholeflaw" was already in use!

After a while I figured out that capitalization counts. But still, it was a bit confusing.</comment></comment></comment>


Django vs. Flask for a long-term project - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3005319/django-vs-flask-for-a-long-term-project/ <comment><USER2> Django has loads of goodies, but for me, by far, the ORM is my favorite part.

RDB managment is the biggest snorefest in all of software development. There are some times where you have to figure out some crazy select or whatever, but for the most part it's annoying, easy to break, and it takes forever. Django lets me _not think about it at all_ (granted, I'm not writing crazy search things either).

When I started trying out Play Framework (for Scala, because I love type checking) I was absolutely shocked at the lack of an ORM. DB managment is the most boilerplate-y aspect of writing some CRUD, and Play decides not to help you with it.

Their arguments are about "control" and how somehow "SQL is the best DSL" ([http://www.playframework.com/documentation/2.0.1/ScalaAnorm](http://www.playframework.com/documentation/2.0.1/ScalaAnorm)).

>val id: Int = SQL("insert into City(name, country) values ({name}, {country}") .on("Cambridge", "New Zealand").executeInsert()

Who could possibly think this "DSL" is 'better' than something like

>City("Cambridge","New Zealand").save()

/endrant

I really like ORMs, and django has the distinction of having the best ORM in my book. I sincerely hope Django would never be reduced to Flask, because I care a lot more about having DB management work _without me ripping my hair out_ than having routes or being able to put everything in one file.

EDIT: for context, I don't ever have to do complicated things with databases, mainly tedious ones, which is probably why my vision of the world might be slightly different than yours.

<comment><USER3> Interesting. Having worked with Django for 5 years, I find the ORM is the weakest component. There's no way to express trivial things like a GROUP BY clause, and falling back to raw SQL goes downhill fast, because the result object doesn't have an interface compatible with Queryset.

<comment> lhc- Ive actually found the annotate framework can do most primitive GROUP BY queries (and in the next release or two will gain a lot more power, as its a big focus). Additionally, many of the other weird queries I need can be expresset with the queryset.extra() command, which means I get to keep working with querysets. All this support is only a few versions old though, so 5 years ago it definitely was much worse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't understand why people want to compare Django and Flask.

Django is ideal for the freelancer or developer that needs great tools available at their disposal for quick and high-quality development.

Flask is ideal for the large system and application where many components are expected to be built bottom-up and extra flexibility is needed.

The intersection point for both use cases goes to the point where you're having several people working on a project full time, and at that point you'll likely have much more important things to be concerned about.

<comment><USER5> The reason why I checked both out was because I wanted to try my hand at Python and see what all of the hoopla was about.

Unfortunately for me, the most memorable part of the experience was repeatedly calculating how many times I could have coded the exact same solution in PHP in the time it took me to finish a Flask project.

<comment><USER6> I've had similar experiences with Ruby - I used Sinatra to write a really simple REST API, and while getting the core stuff working was relatively simple, there were many times towards the end when I wished I'd just written it in PHP.

Oh, and don't even get me started on deployment.

<comment><USER7> PHP deployment gets really painful at decent scales. The process model is very poor leading to both high memory usage and high server load.

<comment><USER8> How?

<comment><USER7> Because basically the interpreter starts from square one on each request. While some things can be held over (e.g. db pconnects) it's far from ideal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> No. Django is "The Web framework for perfectionists with deadlines". Sometimes you just need to get things done, and not to optimize prematurely.

And seriously, if you replace every Django component with something else you probably picked the wrong tool for the job.

<comment><USER10> That's actually the root of my issue with django. It's a vanilla MVC framework with a scaffolding admin interface and an ORM layer. It's popular because it's relatively easy to get started ("the Rails of python"), and thus too often it gets picked by default. The problem is that too often my customers have already picked it, have run headlong into development, then I walk in and have to ask why they picked django when their requirements don't match any of its architecture assumptions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This last past year, at DjangoCon US • Chicago, I had the pleasure of sitting at the same table as Jacob Kaplan-Moss for the Speakers dinner prior to the conference. Very cool experience. My first.

I brought up Flask and asked him what he thought of it. I had recently used it for a project for the first time and likely only did so because I was SUPPOSE TO BE FOCUSING on Django and preparing a talk about it. So naturally, I procrasinated and did everything but. It's been on my radar for awhile. I was attracted to it by it's documentation. Turns out, I really enjoyed it. It felt familiar because I've used Django for so long. I brought this up at the dinner table.

Jacob said something that took me by surprise. I can't quote him exactly--the wine and drinks were too good that evening, but it was something to the effect of "Flask is what Django should have been". Another fellow from our table chimed in and added "If only Django had existed before we created Django!" What he ment was, without Django, Flask wouldn't of had such a clear and smooth start. Django taught us a lot.

What I took from this was, both have their place and we have a lot to be thankful for, especially coming from the Django community. In regards to longevity, I think community is a major factor but these two technolgoies are both under Python, and I think the Python community at-large is what matters here. Hearing what Jacob had to say on Flask was sobering. There is no end- all-be-all, and both of these technolgoies have more in common than not.

</comment><comment><USER12>
        if you go with django, then in the long term,
        you will have to replace almost every single component
        of django with something else, the only remaining part
        will be the url mapper.

That has been exactly my experience with a project and it has _eaten a lot of time_ It is the single reason why I'm abandoning Django. Batteries are included, but they are Double DD batteries when I need AA, AAA, etc, etc.

<comment><USER13> I feel the other way around, granted I've played around with Django more than Flask. But the first thing I do when creating a Flask app is pretty much pip installing a bunch of packages to cover the basic functionality Django already provides like an ORM, forms, admin etc.

<comment><USER12> For what it is worth, I think Django just needs to be updated in a sense. For example, instead of just form.as_p and form.as_table, they should have form.as_bootstrap which you can do separately anyway, but of course that makes it a separate other thing that I need to reach for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> no. what's there to discuss? the only part of Django that is reasonable to replace is the template system, which can be replaced without difficulty or loss of functionality.

Its fine if you decide that you don't want to use Django and build a more modular stack with components of your choice. If you decide to use Django you're deciding that you want to use Django's ORM, URL routing, util libraries, etc. These are all really high quality components that do their job well. There's no good reason to replace them once you've started using them.

</comment><comment><USER15> I can assure you that there are big sites out there using Django and "not replacing every part of it with something else"

Yes, there is a need for manual SQL queries sometimes, and heavy caching, but for the most part it works ok.

I'm not sure I can disclose the exact company, since I left them recently, so I won't, unfortunately.

</comment><comment><USER16> I wish the pyramid project, [http://docs.pylonsproject.org/projects/pyramid/en/latest/](http://docs.pylonsproject.org/projects/pyramid/en/latest/) , would get some more love in the larger community. It is a really great python web framework which gets a lot of things right and is easy to extend and customize. It doesn't enforce specific project layouts but is still easy setup and get going. I have used it now on 3 projects and they have all been very successful.

edit: some background on pyramid's design: [http://docs.pylonsproject.org/projects/pyramid/en/latest/des...](http://docs.pylonsproject.org/projects/pyramid/en/latest/designdefense.html)

</comment><comment><USER17> It is correct according to the rules of stackoverflow but the wording "closed as not constructive" is still w r o n g.

"Closed because there is a fair chance it will not be constructive" maybe? "Closed because this and this and that person felt there where a fair chance it would not be constructive?"

Oh, by the way: discourse is still a sandbox it seems: from [http://try.discourse.org/](http://try.discourse.org/) \- "THIS SITE IS A SANDBOX – it is reset every day"

<comment><USER18> That's the Discourse demo site. What's wrong with resetting it every day?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Well, I don't think the choice of framework matters for a large project. What matters is the language, and both use python. Frameworks are only starting point. When you build a large software, there would be many things that framework cannot cover up. No matter how frameworks organize parts of a large software, it's not enough. You should organize by python way, not by django way or flask way.

Django app concept? It's good, but what if a single app grows too big? Split two apps? Then what if a project has hundreds apps? We should break down with python modules and packages for a large software.

Flask is simple, and it's good for beginners. But is the simplicity helpful for a long-term project? It saves only learning curve of first week.

Django supports many features and that's also good, but it only saves time to develop the features. Because flask already supports a lot, the saved time would not be much for a long-term project.

Django or Flask matters only for small projects, such as one month long. The choice doesn't matter for a large project. Yes, django template sucks, but you can change to mako or jinja or something else. You like django ORM? That's a good news, but even if you don't like it, you can use SQLAlchemy in django. Such changes can be wastes of time for short-term project, but no problem for large projects.

Code pythonic. That's the answer.

</comment><comment><USER20> > We don't think it's a universally reasonable suggestion to write "small > apps" in a "small framework" and "big apps" in a "big framework". You can't > really know to what size every application will eventually grow. We don't > really want to have to rewrite a previously small application in another > framework when it gets "too big". We believe the current binary distinction > between frameworks for small and large applications is just false; a well- > designed framework should be able to be good at both. Pyramid strives to be > that kind of framework.

[http://docs.pylonsproject.org/projects/pyramid/en/latest/nar...](http://docs.pylonsproject.org/projects/pyramid/en/latest/narr/introduction.html#what- makes-pyramid-unique)

</comment><comment><USER21> When I am teaching someone programming from scratch with Python, I usually get to Flask by day 3/4\. Other than having to use decorators that look confusing at first, it is very intuitive and a quick win for newcomers looking for results.

</comment><comment><USER22> I don't really get the whole push to minimalist frameworks, from people that say Django is too bloated. It takes up 46 Mb of disk space on my machine. That is nothing these days. If you don't need a component, don't use it.

<comment><USER23> I think it's a misunderstanding stemming from loose terminology... and the code size thing is resultingly a strawman.

Bloated also tends to mean things like "takes up way too much conceptual space". Which is a valid argument against a lot of frameworks. The idea being: i have to learn to think about the problem in the framework's way, and restructure my solution around it.

The opposite being: with micro-frameworks I can just wrap my app with the framework and get some functionality out of it that would otherwise be difficult or boiler-plate.

(The counter-counter being: then you end up having to reimplement a buggy version of a full framework anyway as requirements grow and change...)

The real solution is to not think of it as either/or , but as "both, sometimes".

<comment><USER7> The other counter argument: You have features, A, B, and C. FullStack Framework 1 provides A+B+C, Lightweight Framework 2 Provides A+C, Lightweight Framework 2 provides A+B, minimalist Framework 4 provides B only. Are you better off learning (and keeping in your head) framework 1 only, or 3 smaller frameworks, which still doesn't cover the C+B case.

<comment><USER22> I would say that learning the full framework also has the advantages, that

A) It works together. The framework is a framework as a whole, so you can expect all the components to work together, without having to fudge things, or crate workaround for things that don't want to play nicely together.

B) There should be some consistency in the components and the way they are used. That should theoretically lower the cognitive load, if that's the "bloated" that people are complaining about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> ORM - you'll write a little more code with Flask + SQLAlchemy to get the same result as using the Django ORM. With Flask, you'll have the flexibility of being able to, say, change a repository implementation to use NoSQL for some set of your models.

Authentication - Django provides UIs that you can skin/replace, and there are Django applications to do OAuth for you. With Flask there are plugins, you have to provide a UI (and UI workflow).

For almost everything Django can do, there is Flask plugin.

You might be able to put together simple sites faster with Django, you will get more flexibility with Flask.

</comment><comment><USER13> I've mostly been doing Django stuff. But I had a really hard time scaling my Flask app beyond a single file, I just didn't _get_ how to structure my code.

<comment><USER25> When I first read about Django's documentation, I found its notion of "apps" brilliant. It turns out that Flask introduced blueprints a while ago:

[http://flask.pocoo.org/docs/blueprints/](http://flask.pocoo.org/docs/blueprints/)

Like the rest of Flask, it's well thought-out and flexible.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Are you happy with product search? - <AUTHOR>

While trying to buy a new phone online, I suddenly realized how much I dislike product search.
I'll get autocomplete and recommendations, and I'll most certainly end up with a nice list of products to choose from, but I find it very hard to make a final decision without reading through pages of reviews, google for more information or check youtube for hands-on footage.
So, I thought I'd ask what the HN community thinks about product search.
Thank you for your thoughts (: <comment><USER2> I go through similar trials when choosing electronic devices. Its especially bad if the item is new on the market.. One thing that you didnt mention are friends' input. If I get a good review from a friend who I trust about the subject, that can help me decide. And that is something that hasn't been covered well online...</comment>


Facebook is rating the trustworthiness of its users on a scale from zero to one - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/08/21/facebook-is-rating-trustworthiness-its-users-scale-zero-one/ <comment><USER2> "Lyons said she soon realized that many people were reporting posts as false simply because they did not agree with the content."

Well, yes. Have they not learned from any of the preceding work on moderating?

<comment><USER3> I worked for FB anti-spam team, and believe me, nobody trusted user feedback absolutely (i.e. it's good to send to review, but not automatically take down). I guess that with fake news the signal to noise ratio is even worse.

The whole article sounds more like focusing on one implementation details of review queue prioritization (i.e. what is the difference of definition of "fake news" for this user vs Facebook's definition), rather than bigger picture.

<comment><USER4> To me, fake news also includes slanted coverage of true events (i.e. covering events in such a way as to convey a sponsored message, biased polling methodology, etc.). That encompasses statistically approaching 100% of trashy sources you're likely to encounter as 'sponsored content', as well as a healthy portion of more established sources' content. I'd be likely to report a majority as fake news in perfectly good faith if given the option.

Maybe the term isn't as narrowly defined as your (former?) employer would like.

Edit: upon a bit more reflection, I do take for granted a desire to protect life and liberty (in that order), and anything that appears to threaten that view will draw special scrutiny, and potential abuse of reporting features.

<comment><USER5> I think the use of "trustworthiness" is misleading. Really it's more "how likely is this person to accurately flag an article that matches Facebook's internal definition of fake news."

That would mean that your number would be on the lower end, but that's not a reflection of your character. More likely it just means that whatever queue is set up for review will wait until more and higher-scoring individuals also flag the article before bumping it up the queue.

Funny how this article is something I would flag if I used your definition of fake news. To me this article is trying to allude to some nefarious Black Mirror nonsense.

<comment><USER4> Well said, and I agree completely about this story.

There's still an aspect of this with which I'm unsatisfied, however. What's the character of leadership who would address misuse of the feature by devising weights intended to devalue the opinions of large swaths of their engaged user base? Significant numbers of people are expressing a sentiment through their alleged abuse of the feature, and instead of trying to channel that constructively, the company is devising ways to ignore it.

<comment><USER5> By using "significant numbers" alone, you're vulnerable to coordinated information suppression efforts (by state actors, for example).

<comment><USER4> Certainly there are more than bad faith actors abusing the feature, which could be separated out through changes to the interface.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I am tempted to paraphrase the Elephant man, "I am not a sigmoid function, I am a human being!" in response to that headline :-)

That said, I think it is great that they are trying to characterize this sort of thing. The second law of institutions is that every process must require more people to execute than can conspire without being detected[1]. But relying so much on humans in one way or another is going to gum it up. My mom for example, a certified human, would always flag anything that offended her belief system as 'fake news.' Fact checking is fine but it is important to understand that conspiracy folks actually believe what they are saying is true, regardless of any facts presented that contradict their world view. I have always attributed that to an internally rooted desire to "need" it to be true, either for their own self image or their own conscience.

[1] No, I just made that up. But the kernel is true, if you have a system that is being gamed you have to build a defense that cannot itself be gamed.

<comment><USER7> _> every process must require more people to execute than can conspire without being detected_

Step 1 - let users report posts that are false

Step 2 - human fact checkers investigate user reports

Step 3 - rely more on users who report posts as false that really are false, and less on users who report posts as false that really are true

Step 4 - repeat step 3 but for the fact checkers themselves

Step 5 - train an ML model to automate more of the fact checking work

<comment><USER8> Step 6 - abandon the project when an edge case creates a PR nightmare

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> ...and so does every other big tech company that needs to deal with spam. (Ie, any social media half worth their salt.)

<comment><USER10> yeah, if you have a spam detector that outputs a probability, then that's a rating of trustworthiness on a scale of 0 to 1.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wonder whether there's some PageRank-like principal eigenvalue problem under the hood (similar to EigenTrust).

As my Linear Algebra prof used to say - deep down, everything is just linear algebra...

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EigenTrust](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EigenTrust)

<comment><USER12> I bet your graph theory professor thought otherwise!

<comment><USER13> I thought so too but then there's the edge space and cycle space which are essentially linear algebra over F2.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > "Lyons said she soon realized that many people were reporting posts as false > simply because they did not agree with the content."

So, people report posts as false when they do not agree that they are true?

I'm struggling to understand how that is a surprise, or what other possible thing you could expect. That's literally exactly what "false" means.

<comment><USER15> By "agree with the content", the author clearly doesn't means "believe that the content is _factually_ incorrect", rather that they disagree with the viewpoint expressed in the story.

<comment><USER14> > By "agree with the content", the author clearly doesn't means "believe that > the content is factually incorrect"

I disagree that that is obvious, and, moreover, I would disagree with the idea that the author would have any way of telling whether someone flagging _merely_ disagreed with some aspect of the viewpoint/presentation outside of the base facts or disagreed with both the viewpoint _and_ the fact claims, seeing the latter as misrepresented to serve the former. Further, it's virtually impossible to cleanly separate disagreement on viewpoint from disagreement over facts, because the two mutually interact (particularly viewpoints not only shape perception of facts but also perceptions of the; _relative importance_ of facts.)

For instance, there is a story right now circulating in even fairly mainstream, especially conservative, media (notably including Fox News) and being widely shared on social media alleging that a proposed California law would ban restaurants from serving children any drinks except the two choices of milk and water. This story is invariably couches in a lot of viewpoint around crazy nanny state liberals and other conservative stereotypes of California. It is very likely that lots of people would disagree strongly with the viewpoint of the story.

But the actual proposal, as one discovers with a few minutes of research, (1) doesn't limit what restaurants can offer to children (it limits "default drink options" for children's meal combos) and the limitation it proposes isn't to just milk and water (it includes milk, water, flavored water, and nondairy milk alternatives). It is, in other words, factually false in several dimensions.

Now, if one agrees with the viewpoint, one may be more likely to dismiss those factual errors, even if you are aware of them, as minor and tangential. If one disagrees with the viewpoint, one is likely more inclined to see them as significant and central and indicative of a deliberate distortion to push an agenda.

<comment><USER15> Maybe I'm overly pessimistic about how people collectively behave.

But seriously, imagine an article posted on Facebook stating that Planned Parenthood sells body parts of aborted fetuses (or something similarly likely to elicit reactions). Obviously, that's either factual or it's not. Yet I'm certain that if Facebook users had the ability to vote on whether the story is true of false, they would vote based on personal beliefs, not on what they would find by fact-checking the story.

Likewise, for anything else that in _any way_ touched on an inflammatory issue. Do you actually think otherwise?

<comment><USER14> > Obviously, that's either factual or it's not.

Sure, but unless people actually work at PP or carry out their own individual on-site investigation, their knowledge of the fact is going to be based on what third-party sources they trust (including those acting as fact checkers), which is tightly correlated with viewpoint.

> Facebook users had the ability to vote on whether the story is true of > false, they would vote based on personal beliefs, not on what they would > find by fact-checking the story.

They'd probably vote based on their _beliefs_ about the facts, which would often include checking with sources they trust on facts. Of course, those beliefs—and where fact checking is involved, the set of trusted sources—will be strongly correlated with their beliefs about abortion.

The ivory tower ideal of a clean separation between how people address fact claims and the value system in which they give significance to facts, where you could then isolate which process was involved in a decision excluding the other, is, while convenient, not at all a reflection of reality.

<comment><USER15> > their knowledge of the fact is going to be based on what third-party sources > they trust (including those acting as fact checkers), which is tightly > correlated with viewpoint.

But that's true of nearly everything.

On anything controversial, users will generally vote based on what they like to believe, and such a system of ranking news stories or posters of news stories would never be reliable.

<comment><USER14> > But that's true of nearly everything.

Yes, that's my whole point: the claim made that users flag content bases on ideology _rather than_ factual disagreement is essentially impossible to be justified, since perception of facts and ideological viewpoints are deeply intertwined.

<comment><USER15> I don't disagree, but I'm sure that users will also flag stories as false that are most likely true, but that don't reflect well on their side of an issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > Because Facebook forwards posts that are marked as false to third-party > fact-checkers, she said it was important to build systems to assess whether > the posts were likely to be false to make efficient use of fact-checkers' > time.

This seems like a "the road to hell is paved with good intentions" kind of thing. On one hand, I understand not wanting to forward every single story when a troll is mass-reporting, on the other hand though, this seems like a very 1984 approach that like all algorithms is horrendously naive.

Any closed group is likely to have a skewed sense of reality. On one hand, third party fact checkers are hopefully true to their title, but on the other hand, they could just be adding their own bias to the decisions with no oversight in a way that affects users going forward.

Add in no ability to appeal and no visibility into the system, and you have a closed system ripe for abuse.

Good job Facebook, you have learned nothing.

<comment><USER17> What would be a viable alternative? I don't think they can just ignore the issue and, as you mention, can't review every single story. They'll have to rely on some form of sampling for the reviewers. Would it be better to just take a truly random sample of all reports? I don't think that would be very effective given the number of publications they have to review. Do you let users review the content for veracity? Seems like that just creates a situation where the group with the most participants pick the news. I'm not sure this is the optimal path, but to say that Facebook has learned nothing is disingenuous.

<comment><USER18> > What would be a viable alternative?

Not attempting to the arbiter of truth and falsehood would be one.

Or reporting on what users think of a story's truthfulness: "49% rate this story as true, 21% rate it as untrue".

Or, if they want to be honest, acknowledging that it is about policing taboo thoughts. "Smith, 4980203 Winston. This article is crimethink! Warning: If you read too many articles like it your Citizen Credit Score will be downgraded. You have been warned!". OK, maybe they won't go for that :-)

<comment><USER19> There are a lot of cases where truth and falsehood are absolute. Those cases where something is provably false should be called out as such.

Think of something like Pizzagate - the fact that the restaurant in question didn't have a basement belied the assertions that bad things were happening in said basement. Any article or comment that passed on that provable lie should be flagged as a lie.

Sure, there are grey areas beyond that. Those are opinions, and should be separable from facts.

<comment><USER14> > There are a lot of cases where truth and falsehood are absolute

Truth and falsehood are absolute for pretty much all fact claims.

Whether they can easily by determined is another story.

> Think of something like Pizzagate - the fact that the restaurant in question > didn't have a basement belied the assertions that bad things were happening > in said basement.

Sure, but suppose (they weren't, by for sake of illustrating the problem) bad things were happening in, say, a attached a controlled by the owners of the restaurant, but somehiw as the story got out and before it was fixed in text, it was distorted so that it referred to a non-existent basement instead. Would actively suppressing the story because of the impossible location described really be in the public interest?

Sure, in strict terms any single factual error in the most involved story makes the story false. But, most accounts will accumulate some false elements in a complex story: there has to be consideration of importance and materiality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> >some users began falsely reporting items as untrue, a new twist on information warfare for which it had to account

"new",

> But how these new credibility systems work is highly opaque, and the > companies are wary of discussing them, in part because doing so might invite > further gaming — a predicament that the firms increasingly find themselves > in as they weigh calls for more transparency around their decision-making.

Fractal stupidity - this is the term for this situation

You build better systems, which dont ACTUALLY capture the core bad behavior.

Users figure out the edges of said system, and start finding newer ways to slip through the gaps.

Now you need a new system.

Repeat till the history of the system looks like a pullitzer prize winning Kafka novel.

</comment><comment><USER21> I don't understand why the big players such as Facebook and Google keeps insisting on using (appeals to) authority as a proxy to truth, when we have rules and systems for critical thinking.

It seems to me that if the claims and stories in question could be re-posed (e.g. as falsifiable, logically coherent statements or arguments) the worst of "fake news" could be weeded out.

The rest (and biases, etc.) would likely have to be left as an exercise for the (critical) reader.

<comment><USER22> Google and Facebook want to have their cake and eat it too: billions of users without having millions of customer service workers.

What they're trying to accomplish, to my mind at least, would require the invention of general AI. Automatic content moderation sounds very close to a Turing test to me.

<comment><USER23> Google Home is maybe years ahead of what Facebook voice-AI will feel like.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> luka-birsa Is it anything like the Chinese credit system? Seems the two could share the notes.

<comment><USER24> Sounds just like it to me, except we are being categorized by corporations instead of the state. How long until potential employers make a good social score a pre-requisite to hiring?

<comment><USER25> Will I be denied employment if I don't have social media?

<comment><USER24> I wouldn't be surprised if that's already considered a red flag. "No facebook? Sounds anti-social.."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I wonder what the score would be if Facebook users were to rate its trustworthiness on a scale from zero to one.

<comment><USER27> Perhaps there is a reciprocal element. If Facebook appears not trustworthy to me, then I don't trust Facebook, and then probably I will appear not trustworthy to Facebook.

<comment><USER23> Yes I imagine most consumers will eventually come to think like this. You might be a bit ahead of the curve though?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> A bunch of related thoughts:

1\. How do we know FB will assign the scores fairly and objectively? We don't, of course, but is there any legal requirement or protection for users?

2\. How is it like the Chinese government's social credit score? Right now Facebook says it's used for filtering user reports, but if FB becomes confident in it, what else might it be used for? Will they sell the score to advertisers and vendors so that they can filter customers? To credit score companies? To insurance companies and potential employers? Will it be used to 'nudge' mass behavior in certain directions? Is there anything preventing FB from doing those things?

3\. As usual it's the powerful (FB, potentially their advertisers and other partners) who have information about ordinary people (FB users). Isn't it more important that ordinary people have trust information on the powerful? What is Mark Zuckerberg's trust score? Google's? Elon Musk's? Various politicians?

4\. According to the article, FB isn't releasing the algorithm because it would enable users to game it (in fairness, I don't remember if FB said that or someone else). But those with resources and motivation, such as the high- end propagandists, will learn how to game it anyway, which can have at least two consequences: 1) Propaganda may become harder to identify, and 2) power will be even more concentrated in the hands of the few - FB, their partners, and those who can game the system.

5\. As seems the norm for tech, the users have very little agency (other than to try to please the system); they are objects of technology and of those who control it. It bears repeating that we've come a long way from the world of free-as-in-speech systems and the idea that the goal is end-user control. In another context, an article posted to HN paraphrased Alan Kay as asking, 'Should the computer program the kid or should the kid program the computer?' [0] I think our society has answered that question for the present.

[0] [http://wheels.org/spacewar/stone/rolling_stone.html](http://wheels.org/spacewar/stone/rolling_stone.html)

</comment><comment><USER29> It's smart to go public with this. There is established research in this area and a trove of algorithms for measuring trust. Even if it's as simple as lowering a user's trust ranking after false reports - when applied across a dataset as large as FB's it's going to be somewhat accurate.

The article goes on to suggest this is just one of a range of heuristics use to determine trustworthiness. I can imagine all kinds of profile interactions that would be be good indicators of this.

</comment><comment><USER30> Before reading the article, I estimate that the technical detail is this:

a normalized statistical value is generated for a particular user's willingness to share fake news

after reading the article:

a normalized statistical value is generated for a particular user's willingness to report news they disagree with.

yeah, nothing to see here..... :-/

I'll write a note to the journalist, hopefully they can elide or contextualize this kind of thing in further articles.

</comment><comment><USER31> I'm curious how Facebook will distinguish between a fake news and a sci-fi essay I just posted on my blog. I'm guessing I'll be having close to zero visitors on my sci-fi blog.

<comment><USER23> Try writing about stuff that is against Silicon Valley, all of these platforms band up against you - it's amazing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Can you GDPR request this?

<comment><USER33> It's not personally identifiable data, so probably not.

<comment><USER34> From the GDPR, Art.4 (1): "'personal data' means any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person".

This certainly seems to fit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> There have numerous times in history where free speech has been stifled and it turned out to be a bad idea.

But I'm sure this time is going to be different

<comment><USER36> Free speech is not being stifled. They want to regulate content in their site. You can publish your content in other places.

I appreciate fake news being cleaned in my timeline, if the cost is no more than some occasional legit news being pruned once in awhile.

<comment><USER35> Alternatively don't offload the responsibility of what is acceptable content to a powerful 3rd party and use your common sense. Free speech isn't there to protect stuff what you agree with

<comment><USER36> It takes valuable time to do that and I don't care who does the cleaning as long as it works. If it doesn't, people will always be aware of that and sites like Facebook risks to lost all of their business in that scenario.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Didn't I see this Black Mirror episode?

<comment><USER38> No, this from next series and has a happy ending /s

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Facebook is already strict enough and doesn't need detection algorithms like this. I once setup an array of doppelgänger accounts to see how long it would take for Facebook to correlate the accounts and ban all those accounts in one fell swoop. It was not long until each account was subjected to a rigorous test, where I was asked to match people's Facebook photos with their username. A daunting task if most of your friends were token friends added merely to boost your profile and make it seem popular. Of course I managed to solve half of those prompts, but the other doppelgänger accounts were swiftly banned, leading me to think that Facebook's algorithm works half the time, which in computer science terms is not good enough, but in reality, is enough to deter a substantial amount of bad actors.

</comment><comment><USER40> I'll just leave this here

[https://www.wired.co.uk/article/china-social- credit](https://www.wired.co.uk/article/china-social-credit)

<comment><USER41> A. A dictatorial, totalitarian government rating all its citizens based on opaque criteria and using that to restrict access to essential services, financial support, and general life and liberty.

B. A private company scoring its users to combat spam, as all social networks do.

<comment><USER40> It's a short hop to banks (also private companies!) asking Facebook for those numbers, and it's not a stretch for the government to do the same.

<comment><USER42> I wonder if they will let you advertise to people based on trustworthiness, seems like a metric that would be rather useful for a lot of different scenarios.

Also fantastic as a hiring screen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> So the bots will auto-post links to Wikipedia articles in certain groups and then 1 in 1,000 will be on the target groups with the fake news.

This will become like gaming Google rank.

<comment><USER23> I had a revelation a few days ago, a crypto "Airdrop" is nothing but a campaign that turns people into bots.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Archived copy without GDPR nag screen:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20180821143120/https://www.washi...](https://web.archive.org/web/20180821143120/https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/08/21/facebook- is-rating-trustworthiness-its-users-scale-zero-one/)

<comment><USER23> Thanks I've yet to read the original.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Facebook is finally learning from the playbook of insurance companies, using your hangouts, friends, job, acquaintances, activities and behavior to assign you a risk score.

It's designed to reduce THEIR risk, which means by default that it will be stacked against YOU, and they won't care about those getting ground up in the wheels of the machine.

</comment><comment><USER46> Interesting. I wonder if this includes lies told in private messages?

<comment><USER23> That would be the day - encrypt your Messenger convos, but they show Ads and ensure you aren't bullying or lying to anyone.

<comment><USER46> "No honey, I'm still at work"

 _< GPS Location: Mistress' apartment>_

trustworthiness_score -= 0.1

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Is there such a thing as a perfect algorithm where you can publish it and trying to "game" is nearly impossible?

In this context, a "perfect" algorithm would be one where someone trying to "game" the system would essentially be forced to post only true content to achieve a near perfect score?

I hope one factor in their scoring involves number of cases where someone reports factually accurate content as false on numerous occasions or does the same for opinion-based content. Of course, that then requires a means for validating the content as opinion or fact-checking, but they're already heading down that path.

<comment><USER48> It's not a matter of if they will game the system, it's a matter of when (no software is perfect, not even PageRank).

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> "You're either a 1 or a 0, alive or dead" -[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=r3cM5P8tUhc](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=r3cM5P8tUhc)

</comment><comment><USER50> I'm here for the Black Mirror 'Nosedive' comparisons.

<comment><USER51> It's very Bookerian.

I think we can all agree that the secret algorithm is going to be in the social signalling - job status, who you know, where you live.

Make everyone's rating public and you're there, or worse make it available to whoever pays.

</comment></comment><comment> j-c-hewitt As they will hire biased 'fact'-checkers, you will wind up with people getting greylisted by stating controversial but popular positions (e.g. "eating meat is immoral" / "raising taxes lowers economic productivity" / "welfare programs create perverse incentives" / "sales taxes are regressive" / "Islam is an inherently expansionist religion / "Islam has bloody borders" / "Christianity is inherently misogynist" / "Abortion is murder" / "Republicans are Nazis in discount menswear" / "I voted for Donald Trump and I support our president").

What you will be left with is what many people originally flocked to the internet to avoid: the 'MSM echo chamber' of anodyne center-left opinion against which no dissent will be tolerated.

</comment><comment><USER52> One of the things I liked about Slashdot was the option to periodically review random comments (with context), and how they were rated, with the option to state whether this was appropriate. Furthermore, the ratings themselves had descriptors: Insightful, Funny, etc.

I think this idea should be taken further so that you _can't post as much_ (or even at all) unless you are actively participating in meta-moderating, i.e. helping the community.

</comment><comment><USER5> With how many bits of precision?

</comment><comment><USER53> If measuring emotional response is a signal for trust, does non-participatory behavior yield the lowest trust "score"?

</comment><comment><USER54> But remember, China's social credit system is terrible! How could anyone think of rating people like that?

</comment><comment><USER55> Why do I get the feeling someone is having fun making fuzzy system models?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzzy_logic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzzy_logic)

</comment><comment><USER56> Now it's my personal goal to have a score of zero on FB.

</comment><comment><USER57> Could we change the title to "Facebook is rating the trustworthiness of its users"? The zero to one bit is irrelevant and obvious to programmers.

<comment><USER23> People just don't like being equated to a number, even if it's for a "good cause".

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> I'm going to guess that a lot of truly trustworthy right leaning people are going to get worse scores than they should because they don't believe in the left wing dominate media's narratives.

<comment><USER25> >left wing dominate media's narratives

Like what?

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> I'd rate Mark Zuckerberg a zero.

<comment><USER23> So not running for President in 2020? I think Bernie at 80 might make a better leader.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Are you a one or a zero?</comment>


28 days later: Our improvements after Ask HN - <AUTHOR> http://blog.gtrot.com/post/15579135372/28-days-later-our-improvements-after-ask-hn

<comment><USER2> This is awesome! Way to incorporate feedback and make quick improvements.</comment>


The Facebook Comment That Ruined a Life - <AUTHOR> http://www.dallasobserver.com/2014-02-13/news/the-facebook-comment-that-ruined-a-life/full/ <comment><USER2>
      The Comal County District Attorney's Office did not intend for Carter to suffer what happened next,
      Flanary says, but it was reasonably foreseeable: He was sexually assaulted.

The fact that prisoners are commonly subject to sexual assault, and that this consequence is trotted out as an acceptable deterrent to crime, illustrates just how uncivilized the US prison-industrial-complex is in this, the year 2014. Failure to protect vulnerable and, or, weaker inmates from other inmates shows negligence on the part of the government. This is completely unacceptable as it constitutes cruel & unusual punishment, and is yet another blatant disregard for the rights of _We the People._

Then there's the fact that the context of the offensive speech was excluded from evidence.

Disgusting!

<comment><USER3> Prison in the US isn't about rehabilitation it's about punishment. No one goes to prison thinking they're going to come out as a better person with a new outlook on life. They're going to come out war-torn and barely above functional with little to no prospects.

<comment><USER4> And why are we paying tax dollars for this? Especially when some of these prisons are run by for-profit corporations?

If there's a single way to spur the economy it would be to close down many of these prisons, and reprogram the law enforcement goal of populating them.

<comment><USER5> Because that would hurt the interests of powerful lobbyists, and therefore congressmen and senators.

The government of the US does not even remotely work for her people. They serve themselves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Until that point, his only brush with the law was a temporary restraining > order two years earlier.

> "He started threatening me, saying that he would kill me. ... I told the > school officers, [and] they started watching him really closely. He would > say that he would shoot up the school."

So I'll start by playing Devil's Advocate very briefly. It's interesting how facts can be shaped with different language ("his only brush with the law"): it appears the restraining order from two years prior related to similar threats to those alleged in the Facebook comments (although in a remarkably different context).

Now that notwithstanding, it seems there are many glaring issues, both ethical and legal, with the way this has been handled.

Based on a screenshot of a Facebook comment without context or verification from Facebook an 18 year-old was detained for months without trial, including his 19th birthday, and offered a plea bargain of 8 years jail (!). An unaffordable bail of $500k was set, and if not for media attention, pro bono counsel, and a generous anonymous donor he would still be detained. During his detention he was repeatedly sexually assaulted, withheld legal counsel, and coerced to confess with false promises of freedom. After media focus an offer of 10 years (!) probation was put forward.

On a technical note, the original warrant included false testimony (matching of the Facebook profile picture to a driver's licence when the accused did not have a licence) and the indictment misquoted the original Facebook comment.

How does anyone think this is reasonable?

<comment><USER7> Well, people have children. The protection they feel must be absolute, and here is someone who threatening them.

If someone came up to me on the street and screamed I'm going to fucking kill you, I wouldn't argue for his freedom of speech.

<comment><USER8> I am probably instigating a flame ware...but I strongly disagree.

>here is someone who threatening them.

 _Threatening them_ , who is them? As deplorable as his speech was, it was not an identifiable threat of some imminent danger to some specific victim. (ie. I would have a different opinion if he identified a school by name). A counter- argument to my opinion is that we could have people making very real, but vague threats and police could not take action until after it is to late. However, there must be a balance between right to free speech and police powers, I just tend to err on the side of rights over government power.

>If someone came up to me on the street and screamed I'm going to fucking kill you, I wouldn't argue for his freedom of speech.

Your example is good because it can highlights where the law can strike a fair balance better rights and powers. First, I agree in your example I would not argue for right to free speech, but the declarant in the story is more akin to someone on the street screaming "I want to fucking kill _someone_ " not directed at anyone and otherwise not posing an immanent threat.

If this kind of speech is to be punished with 8 years prison or 10 years probation, police just need to log onto Xbox Live and have a field day with all the threats...in fact one of the statements from the thread in this story "go drink bleach", I have only heard before on Xbox Live and I have heard it many times from various players - though this example is not a threat there are plenty to be found...mostly involving mothers.

<comment><USER9> I don't follow your first remark. Are you trying to say that because he said "kindergarten" instead of naming a specific kindergarten that it's no longer threatening or a threat?

<comment><USER10> Yes exactly.

It's the difference between "I'm so angry I could kill someone right now!" and "I'm so angry I could kill so-and-so neighbor right now!"

<comment><USER9> Not exactly. He didn't say he "could" shoot up a kindergarten, he said he was going to. Is there a difference between naming a specific kindergarten? Absolutely. But that doesn't mean only one of them is a threat.

<comment><USER10> In my example, both use the 'could.'

I really don't think that someone should be charged with 'making terroristic threats' \- nor any kind of threats - with just a vague statement of intent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> WIDELY MISREPORTED.

Austin resident here. There is very little right about this case.

He was joking, and his original post included indications of this. Prosecutors intentionally misrepresented and truncated his comments to mislead the Grand Jury.

The arrest warrant issued claimed they found him by driver's license records but he has never had a Texas driver's license.

They failed to protect him, an 18 year old kid, in jail. He has been sexually assaulted.

The state maintains their case against him at this point only to blunt his eventual lawsuit against them.

<comment><USER12> I hope the kid wins a shitload of money in a lawsuit against the state... and the cops get punished. Now what's the chance of this happening?

<comment><USER13> I don't get it, I thought the USA was a massive litigation centre and you could sue people for millions left right and centre? Are you saying that you can't sue people like that?

<comment><USER14> i'm not sure if you're being sarcastic or not, but suing people takes time and money, something most people don't have a lot of.

<comment><USER15> Many lawyers will work for a contingency fee if they feel you have a strong case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Wow, I didn't realise US police were that bad. After reading this I don't think I could ever feel safe enough to visit the US. Sounds like you'd have a better chance of getting justice in an African dictatorship where at least the dont-rape-me bribe would be affordable. Tourists really should be warned about this, because it's not the image the US tourist boards present to us at all.

<comment><USER17> Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia - fear these places.

<comment><USER18> I was hoping to live in some of these places in the future. Would you mind clarifying why the states on this list are especially bad rather than others?

<comment><USER17> Most of it comes down to the fact that you have extremely geographically isolated people. Communities in the mountains of the Carolina's for instance may not even have a bank or a post office. These people are extremely paranoid and fearful of change, and thus they elect politicians that share their views and that, worse, feed into them with religious and political rhetoric about how the bad man with dark skin is going to take away all the things they care for most.

<comment><USER19> Not a criticism but how much time have you spent in the South?

<comment><USER17> My entire life. I've met some of the most viciously racist people that exist. And not just poor and uneducated people. Wealthy, educated people as well. There is an institutionalized racism that permeates most of the south. Not all southerners are that way. Some of us try to lift the south up into the 21st century. But it's a hard fight. And the resistance to change is strong.

<comment><USER19> Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Every single person who is complicit in the mental and physical (he was raped in prison, people -- and the fact that some believe that prison rape is part of the punishment need their effing head checked) trauma should be fired. Disgusting.

The fact that they don't even have the context of what was said, and yet they're still trying to hit him with a felony is beyond ludicrous. I'm honestly awestruck that a prosecutor could think that this is a trophy they want to earn.

Funnily enough, situations like this (and the various ethical issues) are the reason I decided to leave my law degree. I can't reconcile my own morals and ethics with the reality of the justice system.

<comment><USER21> And yet, if no one with ethics had the stomach for law, how could we expect an ethical justice system? It's same problem as with politics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is disturbing. They arrest the guy and sentenced to ten years in jail with just a screenshot of a Facebook comment as a starting evidence. It's kinda puzzling to me why didn't they manage to check the whole thread? I think it's simple enough and contacting Facebook for it is not needed.

What's the topic of the thread? We don't know.

Edit: Let's also not disregard the fact that the screenshot can be all made up. They can't find the thread. Maybe it was edited, or created through Photoshop. I think it's fairly easy.

<comment><USER23> _They arrest the guy and sentenced to ten years in jail with just a screenshot of a Facebook comment as a starting evidence._

I don't believe he has been sentenced to anything. He was given an offer of 10 years probation, which his lawyer _bizarrely_ spouts off against as if deals are not the common actions in the justice system.

In any case, he confessed to what was stated, and despite the spin now that it was a false confession, in earlier versions of reports about this he freely admitted that he said what he said...but that he purportedly followed it up later by an lol that made it all okay.

It is actually interesting seeing how people sway in opinion about things. In the whole Flappy Bird fiasco, many were calling for the heads of those who "threatened the life" of the author, even though the threats were almost universally clearly absurd or satirical. Yet in this case it is an outrage that the police followed up on threats against children (shortly after Sandy Hook), and then when they discovered a confluence of concerning behaviors (suicide threats, restraining orders, bizarre behavior) they pursued actual charges.

Should people be raped in jail? Of course they shouldn't. No criminal should. Though it's interesting that many on here believe that he is not like those other criminals, when the jails are stuffed with non-violent offenders who likewise shouldn't face sexual assaults.

Should people face absurd sentences about thought crimes? Of course not.

But what you say matters. Words have consequences. This whole fallback on some rote "Freedom of Speech!" thing is devolving from a civilized behavior.

EDIT: I see that we're not looking for a rational, mature discussions. More of a rah rah rah mass outrage.

<comment><USER24> Oh, don't be such a martyr. Sometimes the fault is your own. In this case, your description of the course of events displays a good understanding of what happened, and yet you present it in a way that is quite deceptive. If you want a better response, try being more even-handed.

> _In any case, he confessed to what was stated, and despite the spin now that > it was a false confession, in earlier versions of reports about this he > freely admitted that he said what he said...but that he purportedly followed > it up later by an lol that made it all okay._

This reminds me of a courtroom scene in _My Cousin Vinny_. Upon being told that he was being charged for the murder of the sheriff, one of the main characters exclaims in disbelief, "What?! I shot the sheriff?!" And then in trial, the prosecutor asks him, "Did you not tell police, 'I shot the sheriff'?" That movie was a comedy, but you're seriously trying to make this argument. You're acting like a silly parody of a prosecutor. Agreeing upon the words used does not mean this guy "confessed."

And yes, the fact that it wasn't actually a threat _does make it OK_. Why wouldn't it? What interest does the law have in punishing people who aren't actually issuing threats? Should Alan Rickman be afraid of punishment for all the villainous lines he's delivered on camera?

<comment><USER23> Your analogy adds nothing but noise to the conversation.

The lawyer for the accused never recants either the confession, or that his client said what he is reported to have said. In typical defense lawyer posturing, instead he tries to draw doubt about the metadata around it. And for good reason given that the accused has repeatedly admitted, to the police, prosecutors, and even the media, having written exactly what was reported, but now we're to pretend that maybe it was a different person, or that Facebook messages were doctored?

Note that the prosecutor almost certainly has the messages from Facebook, and the fact that the police went on the early variant is utterly irrelevant.

 _What interest does the law have in punishing people who aren 't actually issuing threats?_

Since you like anecdotes, imagine that someone walks around pretending to punch random bystanders, but he pulls up at the last second. Hilarious, right? Now they have no intention of actually hitting, and can even point at a history of being the sort of person that pretends to hit people.

Is it assault?

Yes, of course it is. The recipients of the threat reasonably believed in its validity, so what the perpetrator thought is irrelevant. This is the same reason why bomb threats, threats against persons, etc, are prosecuted, despite this contrived notion throughout this thread that they need to prove that one has the means and intention of carrying it out.

Freedom of speech is _one_ freedom. But as with most freedoms that need to be balanced between people, your freedoms end where my nose begins. Your freedoms to express violent threats ends where there are people who might reasonably assume them to be legitimate, for instance. This is the case in the US and almost all Western countries, so it's odd seeing so many seemingly thinking this is protected speech. It isn't.

<comment><USER24> > _The lawyer for the accused never recants either the confession, or that his > client said what he is reported to have said. In typical defense lawyer > posturing, instead he criticizes the metadata around it. For good reason > given that the accused has repeatedly admitted, to the police, prosecutors, > and even the media, having written exactly what was reported, but now we 're > to pretend that maybe it was a different person, or that Facebook messages > were doctored?_

Again I ask: Should actors be liable for threats they've delivered in a movie? Surely not. Why? Because of what you call "metadata," which is commonly called "context." We know that these actors were not sincere because they said the words in the context of a movie. The idea that context doesn't matter is positively absurd. Human communication is _hugely_ reliant on context for meaning, and humor even more so.

> _Since you like anecdotes, imagine that someone walks around pretending to > punch random bystanders, but he pulls up at the last second. Hilarious, > right? Now they have no intention of actually hitting, and can even point at > a history of being the sort of person that pretends to hit people._

> _Is it assault?_

> _Yes, of course it is. The recipients of the threat reasonably believed in > its validity, so what the perpetrator thought is irrelevant._

Precisely — it is normal to assume that you are being punched when somebody swings his fist at you. But when somebody in the middle of a lighthearted conversation responds to the statement "You're crazy" with "I'm totally CRAZY — in fact, I'm so crazy I'm going to $CRAZY_THING," it is not necessarily the case that they are actually going to do $CRAZY_THING. If he had said "fling poop," would you have actually assumed he was going to fling poop?

The objection here is that there is no reasonable belief in the validity of this so-called terrorist threat. The mere fact that somebody said the words "I am going to shoot up a kindergarten" doesn't mean he is actually declaring an intention to do so. I just said them right now. Are you going to report me? The rest of this comment is, after all, just metadata.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This country has its fair share of over zealous prosecutors and out of control cops. We need a way to track these events to the individual to make it easier to identify patterns. When deputy Erik Gelhaus shot and killed an innocent 13 year old boy here in Santa Rosa I tried to find out if he had a history of violent interactions with the public. That's when I realized no one seemed to be tracking these events. There should be a service where I can look up the prosecutors in this case and see if they have a history of this type of behavior. I should be able to look up any cop and find their history of violent interactions with the public if there is one. How can we trust these people with power if we can't hold them accountable?

<comment><USER26> Agreed. And that is where I believe our country has gone so wrong. There are few checks and balances against a run amok justice system. There is little transparency to people who destroy lives as a part of their daily job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Out of curiosity: if someone hacked this kid's account and posted those comments, and if the legal system is considering the Facebook comments to be his words, what recourse does he have? How does he demonstrate that the speech wasn't his?

<comment><USER17> He doesn't. And proving hacking would be nearly impossible. A gifted hacker wouldn't leave evidence. Or at least no evidence that a normal investigator will find. And simply saying its a possibility doesn't matter without evidence. Thus, it's too expensive and time consuming to even consider.

Interesting point, though.

<comment><USER28> Why even hack? They went with a screenshot. A second hand screenshot!

Note to 4chan. Create screenshots of terrorsm acts from DA and judge and send to other states PD

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I think anyone agrees that this whole situation has been blown out of proportion on a massive scale. But threatening to shoot up a school, in the light of recent events... really? What if he actually DID shoot up a school, and afterwards people discovered that authorities WERE warned?

People need to realize that what you post on the internet can be interpreted different than what you actually meant. Besides, threatening with an act of terrorism is never funny, and always a bad idea. My El Al (Israeli airline) flight was delayed once because some prankster thought it was funny to say 'I have a bomb' to the flight attendant while boarding. He was thrown in jail and had to pay for delaying the flight.

In this case, the punishment doesn't fit the crime. I do wish people would think twice before making threats as a joke, though.

<comment><USER17> The problem is that it's not a crime to be an idiot.

A lonely teenager who's already angsty gets into a flame war with an internet troll. That happens every day. And much worse things are said between people.

What happened here is a dumb kid was dumb, and either the troll or some busy- body made the call to the cops. And, more importantly, an over-achieving DA with aspirations of being a district court judge thought this case could make her career - "Stopped a terrorist threat" would be a great line in her website, and she will get a whole bunch of publicity down in not-shit-ever- really-happensville Texas. Meaning she will be able to use this to campaign on later if she prevails.

None of this is about the idiot kid. It's all about political ambition and cops doing what they do best - terrorize the weak and the innocent.

<comment><USER30> Actually it is often a crime to be an idiot, and it's quite appropriate. For example, in OP's case of the delayed El Al flight, yes it's a crime to declare to someone who might reasonably believe you that you're bringing a bomb on board. And so yeah, also, only months after Newtown and Aurora to declare that you're going to shoot up a school can be a crime -- although 8-10 years is beyond all proportion and reasonableness. But, especially if you have a history of expressing suicidal and other violent sentiments online, that's a quite reasonable thing for someone to think.

<comment><USER17> I'd agree that his timing was a bit off, and he didn't land his punchline. But being a failed comedian and telling off-color jokes is, luckily, not a crime. Look at all of those dead baby jokes.

So yeah, making a joke about a bomb or something might ruffle some feathers. But how many terrorists tell a plane full of people that they have a bomb BEFORE the people actually get on the plane? None of them. Because that's a stupid thing to do.

<comment><USER30> I don't even know how to respond if you don't understand the difference between making a joking threat while on stage at a comedy club, and making one when stepping onto a plane. Again given his previous comments and the picture of his personality given from his profile, it sounds like it might have been believable. It's at least not as clear cut as you're making it seem.

I mean, otherwise we can extend this just joking defense to anything. Mail baking powder to your congress man in an envelope with a note saying "this is antrax" \-- what will you tell the FBI when they come for you? "What kind of idiot thinks I'd really be sending anthrax? Can't you guys take a joke?"

At what point can people make reasoned, defensive assumptions about the intentions of people who express threats?

<comment><USER17> There's a difference between a guy who went through a body scanner and a fleet of sniffer dogs and a guy who sends a package that goes through essentially no security (though you would think these guys would employ better security simply as they are higher profile people who get lots of threats).

And I'm not saying that threats shouldn't be investigated, or even that exercising your freedom of speech doesn't have consequences (it does and should).

But after they looked into his home life. Spoke to his friends. Tossed his room and spoke with teachers. And still found no actual evidence of a plan to commit a crime. The next step is get into contact with Facebook and get that thread. It wouldn't be hard and I'd assume FB gets this sort of request all the time. They probably have a protocol in place.

I'm saying that just saying that you're going to commit a crime is not the same as doing it. And that an idiot kid who says something on Facebook is not and should not be considered, the same as a billionaire-backed, militarily trained terrorist.

Do some disturbed people make threats on Facebook and then carry them out? Yes they do. And so yes, these things should be investigated thoroughly. But the case here was not investigated, it was rushed and sloppy.

Did the police go get the thread themselves? No. Did the police get the kid a psych eval? Not that I've seen here anyway. Did the police do any real investigation? No.

Innocent until proven guilty. That's the way it's supposed to be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> While they're at it why not arrest every musician, poet, and writer who ever penned dark or violent writing.

<comment><USER32> There's a notable difference between writing a book and publishing an announcement that you're going to go on a killing spree. The former is relatively benign, the latter has far too often been done right before a killing spree. The former is done over time, in relative peace; the latter is done in the spur of the moment.

It's like writing the Anarchist's Cookbook about how to make a bomb, and writing a tweet about how you're going to plant a bomb in Boston in a couple minutes. The latter is a direct threat and requires immediate action. Most of the time, it's too late even for that.

Personally, this dude should've known better and restrain his impulsive internet lulz behavior.

<comment><USER33> >the latter has far too often been done right before a killing spree.

Basic Bayesian approach to probability tells us that this metric of predicting violent events is counter-productive due to a great number of false positives.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Is he charged with anything? I only saw a reference to a "terrorist threat", what kind of fucked up country is one that gets you ten years in jail for joking about committing a crime? Don't you _actually have to commit the crime_ to go to prison, usually?

<comment><USER35> Outside the internet, death threats are serious business and usually a crime, regardless of whether you have the actual intent or ability to kill someone.

Likewise there's that tired old example of yelling fire in a crowded theater (though i don't think that applies here)

<comment><USER11> On or off the internet, an alleged death threat is subject to considerations of actual intent. Following up a comment with "lol/jk" as he ACTUALLY DID pretty much deflates all the billowy claims of his death threat.

But that is conveniently omitted in popular reporting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Not sure why this article doesn't include a seemingly important detail, but it was widely reported that Justin ended his comments with "LOL" and "JK". Mens rea indeed.

</comment><comment><USER37> They tricked him into admitting that he wrote the FB post by telling him that they'd let him go if he just admitted it. Another example of "Don't talk to cops!"

</comment><comment><USER38> > Carter's comments were part of a duel between dorks, and may have had > something to do with a game with strong dork appeal called League of > Legends.

I actually laughed out loud at this. Is the Dallas Observer a rag or does the word 'dork' seem less ridiculous to people from Texas or the US?

<comment><USER39> It might be? One of the quotes has a lawyer saying 'bonkers'. I just assumed the language used there is a bit different.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> > When a person writing under the profile name "Hannah Love" responded with "i > hope you [burn] in hell you fucking prick,"

Actually the comment was "i hope you fucking bring in hell you fucking prick". That is a pretty significant difference.

<comment><USER41> English as a second language. The former makes sense, i.e. I can parse that. The latter causes me to stutter and look confused when I read that.

Explain? Difference and meaning of the latter version?

I ignore the whole 'went to jail for a random FB comment' crap. That's just sad but not surprising any more.

<comment><USER40> "i hope you fucking bring in hell" is meant as "I hope you give them hell".

<comment><USER42> You have no definitive proof of that, and I think your assertion is as laughably specious as the prosecution's in this case.

<comment><USER43> And I think that's exactly the point being made.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> So let me get this straight. You can anonymously send police a picture of text next to someone's name and have that person arrested?!

<comment><USER45> yes. look up the term "swatting" if you want to see how far it can go.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I think I get it.

The city was worried about a real possibility of shooting. So they searched his house and found nothing. They realized he wasn't a real threat. Just a jerk.

But they also wanted to send a message, loud and clear, to society: if you make jokes like this, you will suffer the consequences.

So they left him in jail. They set an illegally high bond. They manipulated this gullible boy into giving them a reason to move him to a worse jail, where they knew he would be raped. When it happened, they feigned surprise.

Sure, there were good intentions. They wanted to discourage the kind of joking that puts people into a state of panic.

But they went about it extremely unethically, immorally, and most likely illegally. I've gone to jail, I've been through the US court system, they're very manipulative and this is how they work. It's not right.

</comment><comment><USER47>
      «Flanary believes it's paramount that if someone is
      criminally charged on the basis of his words, a jury needs
      to see all the words.»

Wait, but shouldn't the case be that noone can be charged on the basis of his words?

<comment><USER48> Actual threats, stalking, and intimidation do exist. The problem here isn't that threats don't happen, it's that anyone with half a brain can see that this conversation wasn't a serious threat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> >Prosecutors say they don't have the entire thread — instead, they have three comments on a cell-phone screenshot.

There's so many things that make this situation _ridiculous_, but this takes the cake. I would have thought that in a case dealing with a few sentences, the full context of those sentences would be important.

I've been aware of this story for a while now and it always boggled my mind. But after reading this, there's some very troubling things going on that I didn't even know about.

Hope he can get out from under all this, recover, and move on with his life.

</comment><comment><USER50> Welcome to the police state.

</comment><comment> chris-martin This headline is sickening. Comal County criminal prosecutors ruined this man's life.

<comment><USER51> Facebook in the headline gets readers, usually i would agree that using the name to spread the words is heinous, but the crimes against this kid are worse

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Penny Arcade comic on the subject

[http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2013/07/08](http://penny- arcade.com/comic/2013/07/08)

<comment><USER53> This may seem like exaggeration, but you exist in a shared open space with 7 billion talking wild animals. You really can get anything, for anything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Although he's an idiot for posting such comments, the way the US police and district attorney's have behaved is unbelievable. This guy is clearly innocent but they seem hellbent on getting a prosecution. I see cases such as this much more often on HN recently and it feels as if the entire US justice system is totally fucked up and completely missing the real targets: the criminals.

</comment><comment><USER55> For the people who think that this kind of direct threat needs a punishment: what would be suitable?

<comment><USER56> I'd rate "being a dumbass insensitive asshat" as "about 20 hours of community service".

<comment><USER57> Couldn't agree more. Community service is great for young first time non- violent offenders. It lets people know that what they did was taken seriously without screwing up their lives.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> I'm almost afraid to _have_ a Facebook account if they are taken this seriously by authorities. If someone got a hold of my account and posted horrible things, I'd be devastated.

</comment><comment><USER59> _When officers searched Carter 's home, Flanary says, they did not find the hallmarks of a lunatic.

"They found no guns in his house,"_

Huh. Guns = hallmark of a lunatic?

<comment><USER60> That was my response too, but at least you'd assume a real lunatic who planned to shoot up a school would, you know, have a gun.

That's why I don't joke about shooting people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> Well nobody today thinks twice about posting something on the internet, especially youth, and while they should, it's still OK, because it's the way social messaging and posting works, and everybody else should be more or less OK with that too.

10 years for trolling is way over the top, just fine him already and let him go.

<comment><USER20> He's already been raped in prison. The case should be thrown out, and he should be awarded compensation. No fines.

<comment><USER62> [http://youtu.be/Ypcs4c7ihSo?t=1m27s](http://youtu.be/Ypcs4c7ihSo?t=1m27s)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> A few years ago, I spent a night in in Fulton County jail.

The purpose, in my opinion, was fairly ridiculous. I'll tell a reasonably brief version of the story.

I moved to Atlanta to attend Georgia Tech for my masters. One late night, I was driving and took a right on a red light that had a "no right on red sign" accidentally.

Don't forget to check for no right on red signs.

No traffic was around and luckily no one was endangered, but I did receive a ticket (clearly the Atl police had set up a trap of sorts). Should have paid attention, but no big deal.

So the court date is approaching, and so is my first day of classes. In the rush of getting ready for the start of the semester, I forgot my court date.

Don't forget your court date.

The next day, in a panic, I call the courthouse to pay my ticket and any applicable late fees. I assumed that a late fee would cover the infraction and we'd all be on our way.

I paid the ticket. I paid the late fee. I forgot about the incident altogether.

Fast forward a few months, I was driving on campus on my way to class, early enough to get a coffee (yes!). I get pulled over for not having my seatbelt on.

Don't forget your seatbelt.

The officer took a few minutes and came back to ask me if I had anyone who could pick up my car. Of course I'm thinking, "Do I have a flat tire or something?", and he lets me know he's going to have to arrest me and take me to jail.

So I was put in handcuffs, on campus, and taken to Fulton County Jail, where I was fully booked into a holding cell. I could not call anyone to come post bail, because your "one call" was only allowed to be a local call, and you had to know the number by heart. I couldn't post the bail myself via card, of course. So, I spent 36 hours there. My parents even paid my bail, but somehow the bail didn't take effect (even though others arrested after me got out on bail).

Strangest 36 hours of my life, by far.

All of my clothes and belongings were taken, as is protocol. Not a single guard seemed to have any sense of regard for me (or any other person being held), uniformly ignoring simple requests like "can I have some water?" and "what time is it?". I was in a common holding room with about 10 others for most of the first day, until they did our physicals and booked us all into overnight cells. I was woken up to a yelling guard at 3AM to eat "breakfast." Everyone who had been arrested the day before was chained together (as in, chains around my waist) and taken to a prison court to see a judge via a camera mounted on a TV. The judge essentially looked at my case and released me, and a few hours later I was finally let out.

Turns out, when you forget a court date, your license gets suspended. For me, that meant I had to have someone take me to Alabama to have it unsuspended.

tl;dr; The crazy part of the justice system is, once the ball gets rolling and protocol is instantiated, your lost time is chalked up to collateral damage and "due process." Your sense of safety, clarity, and rights are removed, even in minuscule clerical cases like mine. I can't even begin to imagine the ridiculous feeling of being in jail and sexually assaulted for months, much less years, over something slightly more egregious than a suspended license.

P.S. My arrest was completely expunged from my record, but you can still find my mugshot online. My dad laughs at it every time he sees it.

<comment><USER64> Are you using your mugshot for your linkedin account?

<comment><USER63> Haha. Not currently. Although I think my dad uses it as my contact photo in his phone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> And people still seriously think that taking anonymity away from the internet is a good thing.

I don't know what sickens me more, the american legal system or modern internet filled with people that have absolutely no understand of privacy because of their sheltered lives.

</comment><comment><USER66> I Think it is frightening how illogical and incompetent USA work for justice, instead they ruin lives of innocent people, even robbing them of the freedom to speak. They just turned down their own culture once again, like all the censure they apparently love.

</comment><comment><USER67> is there any evidence in this case which should be admissable in a court of law? i might eb exaggerating - i mean i think they got the right guy, but i see nothing here which is a good enough quality of 'evidence' for legal purposes, and i am not even a lawyer...

day to day knowledge of law suffices to throw this out. :/

</comment><comment><USER68> He acted like moron and got rightfully punished, this should happen to all trolls over the Internet :)

</comment><comment><USER69> Moral of the story: Not using Facebook is worth at least 10 years of your life and $500k.

<comment><USER51> only if you plan on making sarcastic death threats

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> The law has to be applied uniformly. If we prosecute one individual for a particular act, we have to prosecute all individuals who perform such acts. We clearly have, as a society, the means to make this happen, so then, why don't we? It seems that we are abandoning the principles that guide the rule of law here.

</comment><comment><USER71> I'm actually kind of surprised by the reaction here on HN.

I thought most of you would come to conclusion that this kid did have serious problems and did make a big mistake.

He needed a slap on the wrist (that's an idiom, don't report me to the police) and a lot of community service.

</comment><comment><USER72> Let's just say the US is a really fucked up place.

</comment><comment><USER73> classic overprosecution a la aaron schwartz. when the wheels of justice start to grind, someone inevitably gets crushed. i think hugo said that...

</comment><comment><USER74> Good old fashion thought crimes.

</comment><comment><USER75> what if one of his buddies had hijacked his account as a joke?

</comment><comment><USER76> tl;dr Don't say really fucked up shit on the internet...

</comment><comment><USER77> All this because of an image that looks like a screenshot? Wait 'till 4chan gets a wind of this...

</comment><comment><USER78> Time to ban Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER79> Don't make threats if you don't intend to follow up on them.

Also, from his lawyer: "They didn't find pentagrams and candles. He wasn't listening to Judas Priest."

WTF does that have to do with anything? Do only Judas Priest fans shoot up kindergartens? Is there something wrong with liking pentagrams and candles? I think that lawyer is the real creep here, and that kind of defense deserves to be ineffective.

In any case, if you threaten to shoot up a kindergarten, of course the police is going to look into you. Imagine the outrage if they got a tip like that, ignored it, and then the guy shot up a kindergarten? They have no option but to detain him, and the lack of candles in his home is utterly irrelevant to that.

And of course they then need to gather complete evidence, which includes the facebook conversation, details of his past, his mental health, etc. And maybe they messed up there. They clearly messed up some other stuff, in particular the jail where someone can get sexually molested, and the fact that they conned him out of a lawyer. The article does list a number of worrying aspects of US law enforcement injustice that seems way too common lately. But that doesn't change the fact that if you make a death threat, you should expect to get arrested.

<comment><USER80> > Don't make threats if you don't intend to follow up on them.

Hello, Thought Police.

It wasn't a threat. It was a series of tasteless jokes.

The consequences aren't even remotely proportional. You know what would be proportional? Someone calling him out for being tasteless, or perhaps even unfriend him, or report the abuse to Facebook so he had to tone it down.

It's scary that people think this kind of "justice" is remotely ok. It's not. This is on par of a witch burning for someone not adapting to social norms.

<comment><USER79> > It wasn't a threat. It was a series of tasteless jokes.

It's a joke that looks a lot like a threat. And threats aren't funny.

The arrest was not disproportional. The corruption that happened after the arrest was of course totally crazy and wrong, but the police investigating threats is not wrong. The problem here is that they didn't really investigate it; they just tried to get him convicted by any means possible. But when someone says he's going to shoot up a kindergarten, the police absolutely should investigate.

<comment><USER80> By your logic, all of the following statements should lead to an arrest:

 _I 'm gonna have to kill someone if I don't get to sleep soon._

 _You make me so mad I want to kill you!_

 _If these kids don 't calm down you'll have to restrain me so I don't kill one._

 _A: If they don 't budge on this soon we'll have to consider some other options. B: What about kidnapping?_

Plus a bunch of comedian, talk-show hosts and other free-spoken people. A joke is a joke; it's not an action and it's not a plan to action. It's irrelevant whether you personally find it funny or not.

 _If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged._ \- Cardinal Richelieu

Please reconsider the consequences of what you are proposing.</comment></comment></comment></comment>