
Social Media Companies Have Absolutely No Idea How to Handle the Gaza Conflict - iProject
http://betabeat.com/2012/11/social-media-companies-have-absolutely-no-idea-how-to-handle-the-gaza-conflict/
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pron
The mutual bloodshed is terrible, and, as a resident of Tel Aviv I'm
personally affected, but there is one thing that has always perplexed me a
bit, which is the perception of the actual ferocity of the conflict.
Obviously, every death is a terrible loss, but this forum is fond of numbers,
so while we're on the subject, here are some numbers:

The total number of deaths in the entire Israeli-Arab conflict over the past
70 years or so, is - according to Wikipedia - under 100,000. Out of which,
about 25,000 are Israeli, a similar number are Palestinians, and the rest, I
guess are casualties of all the other fighting arab countries combined,
although the total seems to me a bit high. That's the total for the past _70
years_.

By comparison, in the Libyan and Syrian civil wars, Wikipedia puts the number
of deaths at about 30,000 _in each country in the last year alone_. And the
Mexican drug war has claimed the lives of about 56,000 _since 2006_ ; some
estimates go as high as 100,000.

So, not to compare suffering, but the entire Israeli-Arab conflict has
claimed, over the last 70 years, more or less the same number of lives as the
drug war in Mexico in the past 6.

I'm not even sure what I wanted to say by that.

~~~
001sky
There is actually some merit to the notion that this is one of the <least>
violent times in Human History. But I wouldn't trust that intuition very far.
The world is becoming a much more dangerous place as we speak. But for
comparison, The US has been at war for 12 years, with under 5K combat deaths
including the invasion of IRAQ and what-ever-u-want-to-call mess in
Afghanistan. Thats comparable in order of magnitude the civillian deaths of
the single day 9/11 in the US.[2]

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_casualti...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_casualties_of_war)

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_attacks>

~~~
nandemo
The Iraq war alone has resulted in at least 100 thousand total deaths
(including civilians) according to the most conservative estimates. How is the
5k figure relevant? That's like AlQaeda claiming 9/11 wasn't very violent,
since they lost only a dozen combatants.

~~~
001sky
Historically, however, these conflicts pale in comparison to the 'normal' wars
of the 20th century. Read some history if you doubt this. [1]

_________

Iran-Iraq War [2]

 _Casualties and losses

320,000–720,000 soldiers and militia killed (Iran)

150,000–375,000 soldiers and militia killed (Iraq)

Economic loss of more than $500 billion (per side)

100,000+ civilians killed on both sides_

______________

 _World War II was the deadliest military conflict in history. Over 60 million
people were killed, which was over 2.5% of the world population._ [3]

_________________

[1] This is also clearly visible in the citation of the GP comment, but i
provide more examples.

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Iraq_War>

[3] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties>

~~~
noibl
Like pron, you for some reason insist on taking the casualties of one side as
representative of the scale of the conflict overall. He says, 25,000 Israelis
killed puts the Israeli-Arab conflict on the same scale as the Mexican Drug
War (30,000) when in fact the overall death toll puts it more on the scale of
the Wars in Yugoslavia (115,000).

You say that the 'cost' of the Iraq war is a mere 5,000 deaths, coldly
ignoring the deaths of many tens of thousands of people just because they're
on 'the other side'.

I hesitate to ask exactly which historians you recommend that would justify
this selectivity.

~~~
pron
Oh, you've misread me. I wasn't comparing the number of Israeli deaths to the
drug war, but the total number: 100,000 in 70 years, vs. 100,000 (highest
estimate) in mere 6.

~~~
noibl
My apologies, then. It was my mistake.

------
nhebb
I'm halfway through _Six Days of War_ by Michael Oren, and I think the most
obvious thing that social media companies have done to handle the conflict is
simply to exist.

 _[Kindles suck for skimming back though a book, and I don't have an eidetic
memory. My apologies if I get any of these facts wrong.]_

On the first day of the 1967 conflict, based on glowing, but false, reports
from the Sinai outposts, President Nasser and Egyptian military leaders
thought that they had knocked out most of the Israeli air force, when in fact
the opposite was true. The cascade of misinformation not only aided Israel's
efforts against Egypt, but it also lead Jordan's King Hussein to commit to the
conflict in the West Bank. Similarly, news of Egypt's success is thought to
have emboldened Syria and lead to the battle in the Golan Heights.

Now, 45 years later, with the social media and other communications channels
available, there is less chance that the conflict could escalate due to false
information. (It could still escalate for other reasons, of course.) It's just
a theory, but maybe Israel's in-your-face social media strategy is a blunt
retaliation to any Baghdad Bob style reporting taking place within the Arab
world. Their goal might not be to provoke the enemy, but instead to dampen any
groundswell that might occur due to false reporting.

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lostnet
Strangely, I think this is progress.

The system of independent reporters going to partisan press conferences really
muddles the independence of reporters and gives a false air of legitimacy to
the claims of spokesmen.

Things should be claimed publicly and then reporters should report, fact
check, and reveal inconsistencies.

But next we need a global forum that no politician could credibly not see so
we can force questions and make it politically damaging not to answer.

Then they will want their old media arraignments back. :)

~~~
mmakunas
I agree. Technology and media over the past two decades have done more to
sanitize war (and thus make it more palatable). It's good to see the oposite
happening. As dickc says, "twitter brings you closer." The more we experience
the reality of it, the better our decisions will be regarding it IMHO.

~~~
sageikosa
Goes back farther than that. German metal band Accept had a song on their 1986
"Russian Roulette" album called "TV War" basically lamenting the (already
present) desensitization towards war brought about by bringing it safely into
the living room while it remained "entertaining and far-far away".

------
slurgfest
Social media companies do not have the tools or the responsibility to "handle
the Gaza conflict," particularly not by some unprincipled decision to
selectively censor one party to the conflict. This isn't just a matter of
Israel. Propaganda is inherent to war, and is nothing new on these websites.

~~~
qq66
It would be interesting to imagine social media companies behaving, legally
and morally, as "common carriers" that don't censor any legal content, similar
to the protections given to ISPs that comply with processes to remove illegal
content. There's no serious objection to Google Search being able to find
morally repugnant content -- people realize it's a "dumb" tool that will find
anything that's out there. How could (and should) YouTube try to achieve the
same thing?

~~~
joe_the_user
I think these sites are already acting like common carriers because their
users more or less expect this.

I suspect that is where a lot of the resistance to "promoted posts" is coming
from. Most people don't object to promoting posts but feel like pushing a
button on Facebook to do it would be "cheating" and hate that idea.

Humans value fairness highly...

------
angersock
Anyone want to throw together a scoreboard while these idiots butcher
innocents and each other?

You would need to scrape Twitter to get events, you could scrape EXIF data on
the coverage photos and use D3 to visualize the results, and use HTML5 audio
to run a reading of Twain's "The War Prayer" in the backgruond.

You could even expose a simple REST API to let the IDF and Hamas POST targets
and PUT munitions/attacks, and then give some neutral body a key to confirm
attack success or failure.

We could have badges. We could have freemium content--exclusive access to kill
videos, or you could buy coins to sponsor your favorite charity for repairing
the region.

It'll be great.

EDIT: Come now, sarcasm detectors. The above is meant in jest (mostly).

~~~
_delirium
A scoreboard in the form of continually updated, and often publicized, kill
counts is actually a pretty traditional part of warfare. Dispatches throughout
WW2 announced how many Germans were killed vs. how many Americans in a
particular engagement, and those were compiled to produce incrementally
updated per-battle tallies. Newspapers and newsreels republished that kind of
information regularly as well. Sort of the wartime version of baseball box
scores.

------
jcr
Apologies to PG if this thread degrades into a political discussion when
politics are clearly against the site guidelines (linked on the bottom of
every HN page).

The coverage by Peter Kafka of AllThingsD is also worth reading:

[http://allthingsd.com/20121114/social-warfare-israel-live-
tw...](http://allthingsd.com/20121114/social-warfare-israel-live-tweets-its-
military-campaign-against-hamas/)

The social sites used to keep in contact with our families, friends, fans, and
favorites are now being used for this?

What side you're on is irrelevant; using the communication tech we've created
to celebrate and promote death and harm as forms of propaganda and
entertainment is just wrong.

It was wrong when the Syrian rebels posted video of the execution of 10 Syrian
Army members. It was wrong when the Libyan rebels posted video of the
execution of Kadafi. It was also wrong for the Israeli Defense Force. And the
list goes on and on...

Maybe there's some minimal good in just knowing how violent others can be, but
when I wonder if our communication tech can be put to far greater and more
beneficial uses like promoting peace and resolving differences, I remember the
words of Douglas Adams:

"Meanwhile the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to
communication between different cultures and races, has caused more and
bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation."

~~~
tkahn6
Unlike in Europe and here in America, a war is happening _in_ Israel and all
Israelis under 45 are either active soldiers or reserve soldiers. I have
family in Tel Aviv that was forced to run into a bunker earlier today. I have
a friend from high school that is stationed at the Gaza border. It's not an
abstract, far away event. The tweets are directly relevant to Israeli society.

~~~
anthonyb
That still doesn't make it right to post tweets glorifying murder.

~~~
PeterisP
Why not? It is quite natural to want your war enemies to die, and for the
whole country (both soldiers and civilians) to celebrate destruction of enemy
troops.

Think about the tweets and newspaper articles about the successful murder of
Osama bin Laden, for example - it's the same concept.

~~~
anthonyb
"natural" != "right"

------
_djo_
I'm surprised that none of the reporting on this has mentioned the Kenyan use
of Twitter to promote their military offensive in Somalia against al-Shabaab.
That includes breaking the news first of the amphibious assault on Kismayu.
Their spokesperson's handle is @MajorEChirchir.

I think this might a good trend, despite the (in my view unnecessary)
brashness, as both Hamas and the IDF employ spokespeople for the sole purpose
of getting their version of the story out and I believe it's better to get
that directly via Twitter and other communications mediums rather than through
press conferences.

As others pointed out, this also frees up journalists to spend more time doing
actual investigate reporting and it changes the scope of a spokesperson's job
from saying a lot of nothing to a room of journalists to making their country
or organisation's case to the world at large.

------
flyinglizard
There was a lot of internal criticism of Israel's media handling throughout
the previous conflicts. Israelis consider themselves the defenders, and the
policy of sparingly releasing information over the conventional channels just
made it look like a sinister government that tries to hide something.

Personally, I find the tone of the current campaign a bit too brash but
perhaps this is more effective than dabbling with the finer rhetoric and
points of this conflict. Israel's media activities won't make any Hamas
supporter switch sides, but they are important for the wider neutral
population which isn't aware of the details and isn't actively supporting one
side or the other (it's the "Oh why can't they have peace" or "Let's nuke the
Middle East and be done with it" crowd).

Overall it's a good step forward in the accountability of governments towards
the common people.

------
ars
Israel has been frequently criticized for losing the media war vs the
Palestinians.

This caused people to equate the two as if targeting civilians vs militants is
somehow equal.

Which is why "The IDF is letting no social media channel go untouched." They
are trying to learn from their mistakes.

~~~
three14
But it's still incompetent. You'd expect the IDF to keep saying things like
"We extend our condolences to the innocent people killed by our missiles. We
wish we had a better way to stop the missles. We hold Hamas responsible for
murdering their fellow Palestinians by creating this conflict." Instead we get
"Ahmed Jabari: Eliminated."

~~~
maratd
> You'd expect the IDF to keep saying things like "We extend our condolences

The point of propaganda is to project strength, not to apologize.

The reason this conflict exists in the first place, is due to a vast lack of
perception of strength on _either side_. A squirrel doesn't pick a fight with
a bear. It just doesn't happen.

In short, Israel doesn't have the balls to end this and Hamas doesn't have the
means.

~~~
guelo
The balls to end this? Would that entail the genocide of the 1.6 million
people living there?

~~~
maratd
Did the US defeating Japan/Germany/Italy/etc. in WWII involve genocide?

I think Western civilization as a whole has completely forgotten how to win
wars. Now, they only know how to keep them going for decades.

Please spare me your genocide tripe. An overwhelming military victory saves
lives in the long run. That's the truth. Constantly wringing your hands and
freaking out over every little thing leads to this ridiculous ongoing violence
which harms the quality of life for millions on both sides.

~~~
njs12345
How would you suggest achieving your 'overwhelming military victory' in
Afghanistan, or Iraq?

~~~
maratd
You need to realize what military victory _is_ first. It is the annihilation
of the old and the creation of the new. You destroy what you don't like and
you create what you do like.

In WWII, we weren't terrible fans of fascism. It was annihilated and replaced
with Western-style democratic cultural norms and institutions. In the case of
Eastern Germany, Poland, etc. it was communism.

Regardless, there was never any debate that fascism had to go and what had to
be put in place. And there was never any doubt that this must be done with
_force_.

Today, the idea of forcing a political system and a way of life onto an
occupied territory is unthinkable. As a consequence, victory is not
achievable.

> How would you suggest achieving your 'overwhelming military victory' in
> Afghanistan, or Iraq?

By a sustained and overwhelming effort to turn the cultures of those regions
toward American values.

Skip the bombing and the incursions. I would bomb them with DVDs of the Jersey
Shore instead.

Look up Ataturk for effective strategies of modernizing large tracts of Muslim
populations.

------
001sky
Terrorism is by definition anti-civilian warfare. Welcome to the future. Now
we get dis-inter-media-ted media-ted violence. A sort of Gawker.com meets
9/11. Ugly all around. Don't forget, the "News" media will show (and make
money from) all the baby killing, too. That's part of the strategy of
terrorism, too. The complicity of the media to distribute the "message",
because they can't resist (the ratings).

------
Tipzntrix
I think it's more that Israel and Hamas have no idea how to handle the Gaza
Conflict. Using "official" Twitter accounts to announce invasions? These are
meant for small status updates of 140 characters or less, not full-scale
assaults.

~~~
cpeterso
What happens when someone like Anonymous hacks these "official" Twitter
accounts, announcing (fake) attacks. People will get hurt.

~~~
Tipzntrix
You called it. Well, you called it after Anonymous released their own twitter
account proclaiming their intentions, but you called it.

------
Zenst
It is interesting that such conversations would be on private phone lines
between the two countries. Though it is in many ways nicer for both sides to
play with words than weapons. First side to challenge the other to a game of
peace wins.

It is also worth mentioning that when a individual or group of start taking to
social media in with such posturing intent that the countries goverments try
and often suceede in closing them down. When countries do it then the moral
echo of any form of standards becomes defining. Free speech is just that as
long as it is just words.

Let them play chess or farmville, pixels alot easier to replace than people.

------
jpdoctor
I can't tell if this is a good thing or bad thing.

Good = it will publicize and make the horrors of war _very_ accessible. This
is the biggest jump since Vietnam (the first war to achieve widespread
broadcast on TV into living rooms daily.)

Bad = it will inflame the irrational players further.

~~~
mcpie
I won't make the horrors accessible. It will merely serve as a live propaganda
feed mediating and obscuring the suffering happening on the ground.

------
rhizome
Is there any reason to believe that this story in itself is part of the IDF
social media strategy?

