I chose to shorten the title in the way that I did because I hoped it would help focus the discussion on the civil liberties and surveillance aspects rather than on the specifics of Smollet's case. Happily, based on the comments so far, this seems to have worked.
I also worried that if I used his name, it would be flagged as off-topic before any useful discussion could happen. Does this explanation this match your assumption? One of the odd things about "we all know" is that often enough, we don't all know, or even agree.
I would have preferred "Judge orders Google to turn over a full year of Juissie Smollett's data". It would be more informative, but it'd further damage the liberal narrative that Jussie was "attacked by the right" and "Trump supporters are racist". If you were to run a poll, I bet a non-trivial percentage of people still believes Jussie was attacked - people do not read retractions, and once the truth came out, this was swept under the rug within a week.
And you're right, if you did mention his name it's likely that your submission would be flagged and dismissed out of hand, just like this comment will be. So you chose to self-censor instead.
Why would it damage the liberal narrative? Wouldn't it add sympathy to him (given that most of the comments here are against the idea of Google getting access to his data)
I really think you are overestimating how many people have heard if this guy (who seems pretty dodgy) and are looking for reasons to be offended here.
Seriously? You are stalking me now? In which world is that good behaviour and why do you think it's relevant?
I hadn't mentioned arson because it's stupid. If you go stalk my HN comments you'll find I talk about it there and ironically I did write something about arson, around about the time you wrote this: https://mobile.twitter.com/nlothian/status/12151167074522439... - the short version is that every year roughly 50% of the bushfires in Australia are deliberately lit or suspicious, and there is nothing to indicate this year is any different.
And seriously? Are you really trying to somehow tie Australian bushfires to some wacky case in the US? What is wrong with you?
To make it clear: assuming the impression I get from this report then I think this actor guy should go to prison for false reports. That still doesn't mean I'd ever heard of him before.
I'm actually NOT sure why. I assume it's because we are unlikely to recognize the actor by name, so they are labeled by their profession? Or is there some other reason? Not being rhetorical. I don't know who Jesse Smollett is.
OP (nkurz) explained that he wanted to focus on the civil liberties and surveillance aspects rather than the specifics of this person's rather famous case.
I'm not in the US and had never heard of him. I did a Facebook search restricted to "Your Friends" and another restricted to "Your Groups and Pages" and there is zero coverage.
I think people are overestimating how well known this guy is.
Same here (I live in Romania), never heard about the actor and I think I have only read some general stuff about the case itself on reddit some time ago, but I didn’t give it any importance. Not to mention that me living in the EU means that I couldn’t read the posted article at all.
The title is "Jussie Smollett investigation: Judge orders Google to turn over a full year of the actor’s data as part of special prosecutor probe" which seems to include the the actor's name?
But then again, we all know why that is.
I don't know who Jussie Smollett is (other than this story) and I'm completely in the dark what this is supposed to be implying.
Maybe you are seeing headline optimisation? Is that what this is implying?
Edit: Or do you mean the HN headline? The current headline here is "Judge orders Google to turn over a full year of actor’s data" which seems completely reasonable given the length restrictions.
Again - what are you implying? Is there some legal restriction on knowing his name?
It intersects with our upcoming presidential election. Two of the candidates (Cory Booker and Kamala Harris) were trying to pass an anti-lynching bill, as if lynching wasn't already illegal many times over, and then very conveniently Jussie Smollett has his fake lynching. He's an actor. He knows both of those political candidates. He'd be perfect for the job. Kim Foxx (with connections to both candidates as well as the Clintons) and Tina Tchen (with connections to Obama) worked to get the charges against Smollett dropped.
But surely a fake report as obvious as this appears to be would be obvious to catch? I guess you are probably right about his motives, but he seems spectacularly dumb.
There's folk from all over the world here, I don't have a clue either. I could probably Google a bit and figure it out. However, I still. believe that legibility of arguments or opinion is the responsibility of the author, not the reader.
