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Comment by austincheney | Hacker News Reader

Build websites, databases, and automation for charities and community organizations.

* Find what community organizations and support groups exist in your local area. Your local police department and food banks can help point you to some. See if national organizations that interest you have local chapters.

* Go to city counsel meetings to see some real problems and also some of the insanity your local leaders have to deal with.

What I think everybody would like to see is a dishonesty database containing police brutality, false criminal complaints, false accusations of misconduct, resisting arrest, ethics violations, so forth. Data can be a positive tool to keep everyone honest and embarrass liars.

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> Your local police department...can help point you to some

Sorry if I wasn't clear, but to put it lightly, I do not plan on asking the police for suggestions.

That said I think the rest of the ideas are valid.

> Data can be a positive tool to keep everyone

I agree, but data solutions are tricky because there's so much misinformation going on right now. It's really easy for data to be fabricated (other than video (kind of)), and even if it's not, people would (rightly) be cautious to trust it. Data validation might be an interesting problem to tackle but I don't know how you solve that with tech.

> Sorry if I wasn't clear, but to put it lightly, I do not plan on asking the police for suggestions.

It's still not clear what you want.

You want to protest in the USA about George Floyd (so not current events or a broader helping) and treat all the police as adversarials?

I was trying to be diplomatic. It's my belief that the police have decided to make themselves adversarials of virtually everyone else.

I'd suggest currently society is very partisan so to make a difference try not to be, it would make you left handed batter .

A lot of police are black, are mother's, live in small communities so to many of us your view their structure can't be changed is very strange so you need to state it.

Theres a good theory de-militarization of the police short and long term would de-escalate the protests.

You could collate what's on the streets perhaps and look at local laws and procurements.

But I don't know if you even want that? Do you want the protests to slow down?

I want people who abuse power to be held accountable for it.

I want people who are peacefully protesting to be protected against violence that has often been incited upon them by law enforcement.

If I could make all of the protests peaceful then I would. But I would also amplify their message, if I could.

I know this is all very vague, which is why I solicited ideas for concrete steps.

> I do not plan on asking the police for suggestions.

If you want this to work be up front about your intentions, partiality, and biases; or else you are just contributing to that misinformation you spoke of and that’s all people will see (even if/when they agree with you).

> I agree, but data solutions are tricky because there's so much misinformation going on right now.

Limit your data to reliable sources.

It's an enormous stretch to call delicate speech about my personal convictions "misinformation". Anyway, my only intent is to help people, not add to the conflict. It's just that I believe the police have dropped all pretense of sharing that goal of helping people.

Not at all, and that’s not how other people will see it. It all comes down to intention and objectivity.

Misinformation is the resultant product of people putting their personal opinions ahead of ethics and evidence regardless of what those opinions are.

I have no interest in sowing misinformation to support my beliefs, if that's what you're worried about. Otherwise I still don't really understand your point.

I don’t doubt that your goals are noble, but a lot (most) of misinformation is from well intentioned people positing their biases over objectivity. You will be contributing to misinformation if your goal is to induce a personal bias and you wish to suppress disclosure of your goals.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bias

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectivity_(science)

On a completely unrelated matter how were you able to reassign your comments to a different username? I did not realize HN allowed that.

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