I think that's a dangerous way to phrase things. Not because it's technically wrong, but because of its implications. It doesn't make sense to compare things on a purely "above 0" standard when the orders of magnitude are completely different. Pointing out their "above 0" commonality them makes them sound much more similar than they are in reality.
Edit: In hindsight, I probably overreacted due to the many instances of this exact comment I've seen on a whole range of topics that were more egregious than this one, but I'll leave it as-is to reflect on.
it is amazing to me how the police weaponize themselves against the innocent. they took her husband's work computer, daughter's xbox, and every tv in the house. for what? just pure harassment. based on what a teenage girl made up, how can they be so credulous? oh this cheerleader says she never vaped, yeah let's just believe that. i find it hard to swallow that anyone could be that much of a dullard.
Once we learn that one of the investigating officers, Reiss, was convicted of possession of child pornography, it becomes understandable - enraging, but understandable.
I had to go back and read the article properly instead of skimming through it,
"These would be the last public comments Reiss made about the case. On 26 May 2021 he was arrested on suspicion of possessing images of child sexual abuse. Two images had been uploaded to his Gmail account, and detectives had traced them to his IP address. When they raided his home and seized his electronic devices, they found more than 1,700 images and videos depicting children, including 84 of toddlers and infants. Reiss pleaded guilty in March 2022, and was later sentenced to 11 and a half to 23 months in jail. To use Weintraub’s language, if anyone was “preying on juveniles”, it was the police officer who led the investigation."
Damn! It's usually the case that the most mentally insane people are the ones who try to hold others to unreasonable high standards of made-up "morality". Anyone who has been given a prison sentence where this officer was involved should have their case reviewed, whether they request it or not. The odds of this asshole ruining people's live throughout his career are very high.
I think they imply that the officer had access to private photos stored on seized media. And some of the photos might be intimate and thus of interest of the said officer.
Title doesn't do it justice. It's such a tangled clusterduck of judicial/police incompetence, AI effects on society making it impossible to believe anything, at the same time adults feeling comfortable sending death threats without having any reliable facts, obsessive parenting, weird US school culture and even CSAM rears its ugly head, all in one
> sentenced to three years’ probation and 70 hours of community service; she had to undergo a mental heath assessment and wear an ankle monitor for three months
While I respect our justice system, as imperfect as it is, extreme outlier failures are heartbreaking. Reminds me of reading Bryan Stevenson's book
Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption
That wasn’t for the initial charges. That was what she got after being found guilty (although it again sounds like it was a massive overreach) of sending threatening text messages.
> “She was convicted of sending five text messages,” Birch sighs. “There wasn’t one threat in any of them. All the messages said was, ‘You should be aware of what your daughters are posting.’” He claims that a fair trial was impossible, after all the publicity his client had received, saying,“Any jury would be poisoned.”
This article was such a confusing read. I got to the end and could still barely tell what the result was. Had to search back just to find out the officer was really collecting troves of child porn. Apparently the woman also collected that imagery, just didn't create it? And then sent it to everyone in town?
And at the end, it all felt like pretty girl's desirable (and obviously not virgin pure), perp is fat and ugly, cops are really evil pedos who abuse their information access, and all America really gives a ** about is watching the whole thing tailspin. And like @floydnoel noted below, it seems like all anybody did was maximize torture for everyone involved all around. Sims watching sims, and we still just wanna watch people get tortured on TV.
Scratchy: [to Bart and Lisa] Why are you laughing?
Itchy: [to Scratchy] Hey, they're laughing at your pain.
Scratchy: [reattaches his head to his body] That's mean.
Itchy: Let's teach'em a lesson. [shaking Scratchy's hand]
> Had to search back just to find out the officer was really collecting troves of child porn. Apparently the woman also collected that imagery, just didn't create it?
What, the porn? No she didn't. Where on Earth did you get that from???
> And then sent it to everyone in town?
No. She sent videos of kids vaping -- presumably fully clothed and not engaging in sex at the same time, or that would probably have been mentioned -- and nothing else, to their parents and nobody else.
> And at the end, it all felt like pretty girl's desirable (and obviously not virgin pure), perp is fat and ugly...
Yadda yadda yadda... The "perp's" cheerleader daughter was/is presumably about as "cute" as her (ex-)teammates, so fuck knows what you are on about. Were you drunk when you read the article, or WTF?
more than the effect of deepfakes, I fear the accusation of deepfakes / plausible deniability from claiming deepfakery rocking being a substantial issue. Like politicians screaming "fake news" media
"Fake News" is an interesting front in a psychological war.
It was coined initially during Barack Obama's administration, shortly after Wikileaks released the Podesta emails. The first public use of the term was by Obama himself, warning people to be wary of non-mainstream or non-state-endorsed media outlets.
Within weeks, Donald Trump had begun using the term with almost the exact opposite definition, successfully twisting the meaning to be yet another name for MSM outlets, to the point that society at large now credits the term with the Republican/MAGA political machine.
Since then, we've seen many terms lose their original meaning and intent. "Woke" was once a term championed amongst the far-left until it too was co-opted into derogation.
Are we seeing the begining of a similar trend for "deepfake"?
the substance of the actual allegations that were brought against spone is that she was sending harassing messages to parents, children and to coach. she admitted to sending some of those messages, but denied sending other messages. she was doing that anonymously either from a burner number or from random accounts. she gets convicted of that specifically. but then when interviewed by the op's journalist she denies sending any kind of messages at all.
Spone may not manipulate videos and images, but she definitely collects them. Still, she says she never sent them. “The charges were that she directly sent messages to the minors,” Birch adds. “That never happened. That’s the point.”
But did she send messages to the gym and the parents? There is a long pause. “No,” Spone eventually says.
I’m surprised to hear her say this, given Birch told the Washington Post Spone messaged the parents out of concern for what their daughters had put online. When I point this out, there’s another long pause. “If I said that, I said it,” Birch says, with a shrug. “It is what it is.”
Even if Spone is guilty of sending the five messages, she is innocent of the claims that made her notorious. Sending anonymous and unwelcome text messages is not the same as digitally manipulating images of minors.
in my opinion this is the core of the article. the charges of digitally manipulating images were never brought against her, but she got victimized as a result of police incompetence and a public witch hunt. the article thought tries to paint her entirely as a victim. birch is her lawyer, spone gets convincted on harassment of minors charges, birch claims that such harassment never took place, meanwhile birch and stone can't agree on which messages were sent even when talking to a sympathetic journalist. shouldn't the question of harassment be handled by appeal? instead of the appeal though, they are bring various pain and suffering suits against the county, which is entirely reasonable, but not quite what the article tries to imply.
in my read of the article a nasty busybody harasses people, happens in this kind of communities all the time, but this time the whole thing gets caught in a national witch hunt. the witch hunt is awful, but it lets the nasty busybody play victim across the board.
The bigger story is how the DA and police ran with the ludicrous deep fake angle with zero basis and ruined this woman’s life.
The anymore texts weren’t threatening in my opinion. Literally trying to make parents aware of what their children were doing. Not sure why she sent it anonymously though, but that’s not a crime in of itself.
> The anymore texts weren’t threatening in my opinion
that's not what the jury decided, nor what the lady was convicted over, this also not something that the lady is attempting to dispute in court. she can't even keep her story straight between herself and her lawyer about which texts she actually did sent.
If you're bright and critical, you will be weeded-out early by prosecutors, and you'll see the type of people the prosecutors want deciding a case.
If you're coy enough to play dumb and get selected, you'll get to see the shallow reasons other jurors choose to declare someone guilty.
I was so personally disturbed by my experience as a juror that I pledged to never accept a jury trial if I was wrongfully indicted; I'd rather take my chances on appeal after letting a judge decide my guilt.
you are implying that miscarriage of justice took place, without explicitly saying so. would you still make the same insinuations in other controversial cases like minnesota v. chauvin, or in cases where the guilt is so well established the jury is choosing between one lifetime and seven, like in state v. keith gibson (a recent serial killer in philadelphia, not national news)
but also like consider, there's appeals court's opinion (i missed that there was an appeal on my first reading) https://casetext.com/case/commonwealth-v-spone, i read it, if the details presented in the opinion are not substantially different from the facts presented during original trial, i would've also convicted spone of harrasment. so literally if i were on jury duty in this case, i would've had to disagree with you.
Nothing that transpired was anything other than a giant CF based upon the girls in question lying (and getting away with it) and ruining another persons life.
> Nothing she did deserves what happened. Nothing.
she was convicted of harrasment of minors by a jury in a court of law. presumably there was supporting evidence of the harrasment charges, and that's not something that the article disputes.
> presumably there was supporting evidence of the harrasment charges
Yeah, the media shitshow...
There were no DeepFakes, a few text messages raising concerns about some young girls' behavior and a DA running around during an election year slandering this woman to get votes. Oh, and a lying teenager capitalizing on the drama to get movie and book deals.
The result: a woman who's life was forever turned upside down and found guilty by an "impartial" jury.
> “She was convicted of sending five text messages,” Birch sighs. “There wasn’t one threat in any of them. All the messages said was, ‘You should be aware of what your daughters are posting.’”
that's what her lawyer says, the appeals court disagrees with what her lawyer says, they upheld the original decision and explain in detail why in the opinion https://casetext.com/case/commonwealth-v-spone. "The above cited evidence directly contradicts Spone's suggestion that she was a concerned parent who had a legitimate purpose in sending the series of anonymous text messages."
> "The above cited evidence directly contradicts Spone's suggestion that she was a concerned parent who had a legitimate purpose in sending the series of anonymous text messages."
OK, I read it, and I can't see that it does. Explain how. (And no, her doing it anonymously doesn't contradict her being genuinely concerned. Why would it?)
> shouldn't the question of harassment be handled by appeal?
They did appeal.
As I understand it an appeal is granted if they can show misconduct during the initial trial and not because they disagree with the verdict. Could me wrong, not a lawyer.
you're correct, i missed that part, because i would've looked up the appeal decision otherwise, https://casetext.com/case/commonwealth-v-spone and it provides all the necessary details that support my guess in the op: spone was an unhinged busybody anonymously harrassing parents, the greater abhorent witch hunt took this minor community business into a national spotlight, but now the overal complexity of the situation allows spone to pretend to be a victim. if you feel particularly involved, i recommend reading the decision in full, it addresses all the concerns i have so far encountered in comments, question of free speech, potential lack of evidence, etc.
> spone was an unhinged busybody anonymously harrassing parents, the greater abhorent witch hunt took this minor community business into a national spotlight, but now the overal complexity of the situation allows spone to pretend to be a victim.
A) "Unhinged busybody"? [Citation needed] (Yeah, sure, not super-sympathetic. But a far cry from your vicious characterization.)
B) The national spotlight is a lot bigger than minor community business, and it that much bigger issue she definitely was a victim. No pretending needed.
The narrative of "Ignore this, it's a Deepfake" is very strong, and it's now clear that we as a society are being conditioned to react accordingly.
What happens if the 1TB "Insurance" folder on Anthony Weiner's laptop, the one that allegedly made seasoned NYPD officers vomit when they viewed the contents, is inevitably released? Would we all be told "Ignore this, it's a Deepfake"?
This is so hyperbolic and inflammatory that it serves only as an emotional expression, not as a practical statement of how to move forward. Ironic, because hyperbolic reactions like this are at the core of the story your reacting to.
1 The mother of the child telling about what the other kids did - instead of talking to the other parents found it right to send anonymous messages.
2 The other parents found it right to go into full-denial + legal mode.
3 Police and prosecutor instead of talking sense into the adults, went into misinterpretation of evidence for re-election gain.
4 Global media who just repeated and sensationalized the claims without further investigation.
5 A global social media audience amplifying the outrage.
6 Cameras everywhere and a society which doesn’t allow teenagers to be teenagers and try themselves out - and therefore can be blackmailed.
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