

Facebook party invite sparks riot in Haren, Netherlands - oracuk
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19684708

======
tisme
An 84 year old resident had his head bashed in with a street tile by one of
the visitors. Small towns like this are not very well equipped to deal with
flash mobs of this kind, especially not when a substantial portion of those
arriving has bad intentions from the start.

An interesting twist to this story is that those very same social media are
now being used to identify the perpetrators with amazing speed. Names and
pictures as well as movies have been made available to the authorities and
10's of people have already been arrested and/or have given themselves up at
police stations.

------
waxjar
I blame the traditional media for this one. The dutch media have been
reporting on it for days before the event was supposed to happen. One media
outlet even went as far as setting up a live stream for the "event". The
traditional media hyped this up so bad, they essentially created a self-
fulfilling prophecy.

~~~
andreasvc
I agree, but of course they are quick to disavow any responsibility, saying
only the people who decide to throw stones are to blame.

Even worse than the live stream was the radio DJ who was encouraging people to
go to the 'party' (he has since apologized).

This relates a bit to the problem of copycat crimes and the reporting of
suicides causing an increase in suicides. Publicity increases the problem, but
it's hard to get all the media to agree voluntarily on not giving it too much
attention.

I wonder how this problem should be solved. In an ideal world you could have a
system as in science with independent peer review, to do fact checking and
preventing hypes. But of course such a system would be much too slow and you
would have lots of people complaining it's not free press.

~~~
rmc
_This relates a bit to the problem of copycat crimes and the reporting of
suicides causing an increase in suicides. Publicity increases the problem, but
it's hard to get all the media to agree voluntarily on not giving it too much
attention._

It can work in reverse aswell. If car fatalities are reported more, people
might become aware that cars are dangerous, and drive safer, hence reducing
fatalities & injuries.

~~~
andreasvc
But does it, actually? I think there's a much stronger effect in the opposite
case when it's about an idea being or not being in people's consciousness.
Warning people about risks is in many cases not very effective, e.g., drunk
driving, smoking, unhealthy diets.

------
ginko
I don't know how party invitations work in Facebook, because I don't use it.

But considering that party flashmobs like these appear to be happening
regularly and often cause considerable damage and bad PR, shouldn't Facebook
think about changing the way party invitations work? For instance by asking if
the user REALLY wants to make the invitation public?

~~~
arrrg
I think the problem here isn't Facebook, it's the incompetent and hysterical
reaction of the police to those parties.

~~~
tatsuke95
"Hysterical reaction" to a party where 3,000 people show up at a town of
19,000? That's asking for trouble.

Methinks you have too much faith in mobs; as expected, they smashed and
looted. I suppose that was the police's fault?

~~~
antidoh
Indeed. Even if the police over-reacted, which could mean anything from merely
showing up to throwing tear gas, anyone in a mob is free to walk away. There
is no obligation to throw bicycles at the police.

~~~
tedunangst
If you don't throw anything at the police, they may not tear gas you, and what
fun would that be?

------
Roelven
I moved out of the Netherlands a couple of years ago, this makes me feel
ashamed. The authorities handled this so poorly that it just had to explode
into riots.

Two years ago similar problems where arising in France, called Apéro géant.
The crowds intended to organize the biggest party at the Eiffel Tower,
everyone feared problems. Authorities sealed the surroundings, but let
everyone pass through as long as they handed in their alcohol. Once arrived at
the location there was not much of a party so nothing happened.

It's going to be interesting to see what happens to social media monitoring,
also interested to see what happens with the damages and the people on tape
(youtube, fb et all)

~~~
danieldk
Or they could just have directed people to a soccer field outside the village
(since most people have probably arrived via public transit) and put on a
stage with some music.

Even if some rioting would've started, there would be no houses or shops to
demolish, and it would be far easier to isolate the rioting core group from
other people.

The mayor refuted such plans with claims that that made the authorities
responsible on the occasion something happened. As if that is worse than the
current outcome.

~~~
andreasvc
I don't think this idea is really feasible. There wasn't time to prepare an
event of such scale adequately (especially its security), and the argument
about responsibility is true I think (not that the current outcome is much
better). Also I tend to believe the claim that there were hooligans among them
who only came to wreak havoc.

In hindsight they should've blocked all access ways to the village (train and
roads). I say in hindsight because people simply didn't expect this to go so
wrong.

The lesson to me is that mobs are a scary thing. They can turn angry very
suddenly as people start to copy the behavior of the first person to throw a
stone.

~~~
Freestyler_3
3 days before the event it was mentioned in the media, enough time to put at
least something there. I heard a rumor that they changed some street signs to
confuse the people, now that is wasting time. They knew a lot of people were
going to really show up, but they took it lightly. Non the less the people
destroying stuff are way out of line, all the errors of the authorities don't
justify that.

~~~
andreasvc
I really don't think 3 days is enough time to organize a large scale event
like that--more people signed up than the population of the village. I agree
that it wasn't handled correctly, but it's easy to criticize in hindsight.
This is a new phenomenon and there was not much experience with things like
this.

It seems that the authorities where too ambivalent. On the one hand they said
please don't come there's no party, on the other hand they prepared a football
field for people to go to (without music though). They should've stuck with
the former and enforced it by not letting the trains stop in the village and
putting up road blocks.

------
kmfrk
When I get old, I am going to tell children that "back when I was young, we
didn't call those things 'invites', but 'invitations'".

------
kitsune_
This Project X shit happened some months ago here in Switzerland where I live.
In fact the invites were mostly sent out with WhatsApp and not Facebook, so
that the authorities could not track it as easily.

It ended with glass bottles being thrown around and riot police answering with
tear gas.

~~~
Freestyler_3
We have all read about whatsapp security, it is traceable especially with
government resources.

------
norswap
The sheer absurdity of the whole thing made me laugh.

~~~
smoyer
Absurd may be correct and it might have been laughable had no one been
injured. At some point you'll want to learn when laughing is appropriate (it's
a social skill).

~~~
theorique
I am reminded of this Simpsons scene: <http://youtu.be/ClynhFKMs3c?t=40s>

------
DanBC
The guerilla party is one thing, and they've happened before.

Having t-shirts printed is a new touch.

But I'm more interested in this:

> A new Facebook page has since been created called "Project Clean-X Haren" to
> clear up after Friday night's disturbances. It had more than 17,000 "likes"
> as of Saturday morning.

I'd be fascinated to see a guerilla clean-up crew cleaning the trash, removing
graffiti, fixing damage, doing a bit of gardening.

~~~
tatsuke95
> _"It had more than 17,000 "likes" as of Saturday morning."_

I'm sure like most Facebook initiatives, people "Like" the idea, but probably
won't be taking any real action on their own. That's for other people.

~~~
datr
Not always the case. The clean up efforts after the london riots last year
were quite successful.

This photo [1] is from during the riots but helped to restore my faith in
people too.

[1] <http://www.flickr.com/photos/pixel-eight/6024429000/>

------
Freestyler_3
Of course the event was handled wrong by regulators, but I don't think that
means you can riot. What were they expecting? Police waiting with pie and
drink and music? Of course not, if you go there you should expect the risk of
there being not much to do.

------
alx
Can someone remember this presentation about a social network event going
horribly wrong?

~~~
tomeric
I think you mean this one: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyMdOT8YJgY>

~~~
alx
thanks, that's the one :)

~~~
aw3c2
Last slide says it is fictional.

------
muriithi
I had to check whether today is April 1.

------
_of
Mainstream news...

~~~
tisme
Negative real world impact of social media.

Seems like very much on topic for HN given that quite a few of us make a
living and/or are creating new social media sites.

~~~
oracuk
Agreed, it may be my age but I think as IT professionals we have a
responsibility for the real world impacts of the systems we build and/or run.

I see this as a similar to an engineer seeing a mainstream news report of an
unintended side effect of large scale engineering project.

