Hamas vows to broadcast hostage executions. Tech firms can't stop them | Hacker News Reader

Hamas vows to broadcast hostage executions. Tech firms can't stop them

washingtonpost.com

18 pointsin_cahoots17 comments

This whole war is a tragedy. It started horribly with the Hamas atrocities and it is just going to get worse as Israel is responding in a rage that is killing hundreds of civilians.

A better way to think about the horrors in Israel-Palestine starts with this premise: all human life is sacred

https://www.vox.com/world-politics/23911550/israel-hamas-war...

Canada's version of the onion expressed a similar sentiment:

https://www.thebeaverton.com/2023/10/spineless-fence-sitter-...

Funny and sad all at the same time.

A better way to think about the horrors in Israel-Palestine starts with this premise: all human life is sacred

That's certainly a better way to feel about it.

The unfortunate fact is that in partisan* warfare each side's supporters will tolerate a certain level of atrocity, for two reasons: atavistic dislike of the enemy, and a more utilitarian belief that it's worth sacrificing X innocent people now to prevent the death of X' innocents in the future, by settling things now in some final battle. This conflict is heavily internationalized for a mix of religious and historical reasons, so both parties have a large pool of supporters to draw from.

* I use the term partisan here because it isn't a simple military conflict over a piece of territory or arising out of a skirmish, where neither side wants it to escalate to a broader conflict.

They can stop a sitting president from broadcasting tweets, but not a terrorist organization.

If the rumors are to be believed, Hamas leaders are outside the cough jurisdiction cough of Western tech firms: https://www.albawaba.com/node/was-huawei-behind-israels-fail...

I seriously doubt that's true. Huwawei has a deelopment center in Israel. Israeli media said that they were able to do it by concentrating everything on a need to know basis. Only used paper and in-person meetings to communicate.

Since they knew Israel was listening the broadcast misleading information in digital form.

The bottom line is that at some point a person in a room needs to decide if information is credible and how it fits into the narrative. Israeli intelligence just underestimated Hamas and didn't think this would happen.

Why would that be the slightest bit surprising?

There's one President of the United States. His account is well known. Preventing it from posting things is a single, one-off action.

Hamas isn't going to post these under "the official Hamas Facebook Business Page and Twitter account". The problem is more akin to "how could a social media network stop other people from sharing a screenshot of a deleted Trump tweet".

Technically true, but they'll be forced to host it in obscure sites and torrents, which limits the propaganda value.

How will free speech absolutist will respond?

I'm a free-speech absolutist but killing someone is not speech, otherwise, a lot more people would be dead. Maybe even you and me.

Any verbal or physical expression can be considered speech but there is a consent issue here.

I don't think so. I see a clear distinction between "a good communist is a dead communist" and "kill all communists." The first is freedom of speech, the second is an incitement to violence, and thus should be banned.

The first is also generally considered an incitement to violence, especially if uttered by a person in authority.

Can’t, or won’t?

They won't be able to to overcome distributed networks, blockchain etc.

I’m sure they’d be pulling them down as they see them, but the article states that they’d be posted on throwaway accounts and then that then gets shared. Basically anything they do would be reactive.

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