| ▲ | Barcelona unrest: how to fabricate a protest in the age of TikTok(theconversation.com) |
| 35 points by DeepLogin an hour ago | 26 comments |
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| ▲ | papyrus9244 a minute ago | parent | next [-] |
| As someone from Spain: those posters weren't made by a (native) Spaniard. They contain several weird sentences absolutely nobody uses. My bet: foreign meddling. |
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| ▲ | Zealotux 32 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I live in Barcelona, it was no actual protest as the article accurately explain but weaponised youth. It's incredible how completely artificial and easy it was to make happen, literally none of my friends living in the city saw it coming, me included, these riots came out of nowhere. |
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| ▲ | uniq7 7 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | To me, it was shocking to watch the street interviews with the rioters, where they were just repeating the same exact slogans from the French protests, but badly translated to Spanish (like a literal word-by-word translation that was weird and made no sense). | |
| ▲ | spicyusername 26 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | What would "seeing riots coming" look like? | | |
| ▲ | Zealotux 21 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | Just like in France: a planned and legitimate protest turning violent near the end, clashes with the police escalating into riots after hours of tensions. Here, there was no context to the riots other than "go to plaça Catalunya and break/steal things", no political demand whatsoever, it was a totally opportunistic chaos and nothing like I've seen in France or Spain ever. | | | |
| ▲ | defrost 13 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | A great many riots result from building pressures and real issues that formed over months or years. In the preceding months there had been growing unease between the police and the inhabitants of ...
~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1981_Brixton_riotWhich is pretty different to this apparent clear blue sky bolt from blue spontaneous remotely weaponised flash mob. |
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| ▲ | zug_zug 6 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| This doesn't seem like a full article without bothering to interview ANY of the arrested 130 people. What I will say is that getting tiktoks in front of hundreds of thousands of people in a coordinated way isn't easy, and they won't come out if they weren't already passionate about something. If there are written records proving this was made to cause chaos specifically then they should subpoena tiktok for exact records. |
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| ▲ | spicyusername 19 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I don't know. This itself seems like propaganda to blame the unrest on TikTok or foreign countries, rather than fundamental issues within Spain or Europe generally. It can both be true that TikTok was a factor in the increased property damage and that Spanish citizens are unhappy and ready to protest. Or that 130 people were ready to do property damage and there also, TikTok videos. |
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| ▲ | an0malous 13 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| A subtle form of propaganda is choosing what to call legitimate or not, since there’s really no first principles reason for any legitimacy |
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| ▲ | darkwater 2 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | Yes, there are.
A popular protest (and even riots!) should come entirely or at least in the vast majority from a sentiment spread across the people. If it's 500 youngsters that come out of the blue following a campaign orchestrated most probably by a foreign state actor, then it's not legitimate. Yes, we could start doing verbal and mental gymnastics about how an external actor could be legitimately interested to try and drive the political landscape of a country one month before elections, sure. But it's not the point here. | |
| ▲ | christophilus 9 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | I agree with your first statement, but I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying here: > there’s really no first principles reason for any legitimacy Do you mean in this case, or are you making a blanket statement about the nature of morality and power? |
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| ▲ | acd 29 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Digital markets act in EU Tiktok is a gatekeeper. Special rules apply https://digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/gatekeepers-portal_... |
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| ▲ | christophilus 3 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| In the US, I heard lots of conspiracies about who was really behind the BLM riots, Charlottesville, Jan 6th, the Trump assassination attempts, etc. The same thing is happening here in the comments. Everyone is looking for the puppeteer. I’m not sure one way or the other. On the one hand, it’s true that when you look through history, you often find that there was a “someone” (e.g. the Germans funding the Bolshevik Revolution, or the CIA shenanigans in the Middle East and South America). On the other hand, can’t these things also legitimately arise from disenfranchised groups without needing to point to a boogie man? |
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| ▲ | soco an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The eternal way is: follow the money. Not politician declarations or poster designs. The money. I have some preconceptions about it - based on who could profit from a broken EU - but still, follow the money. |
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| ▲ | bombcar an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | Wherever there's change, there's money to be made. We just don't really care about people making the dosh from changes we like. | |
| ▲ | rapist 14 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | poster designs came from an ai subscription which, even if free, is still a better trail than "the money" | | |
| ▲ | bigfudge 5 minutes ago | parent [-] | | I'm not really clear what you're trying to say with your choice of fresh account name, but it seems pretty offensive for no good reason. |
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| ▲ | AndyMcConachie 19 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The CIA and NED have been creating color revolutions for decades. This isn't new. https://nonsite.org/change-agent-gene-sharps-neoliberal-nonv... |
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| ▲ | Telemakhos 2 minutes ago | parent [-] | | I found it interesting that two of the AI posters in the article have the three-pointed “no kings” crown, and one has a two-pointed version. The AI hallucinated icons from American partisan propaganda into an EU context in a country with a monarchy. |
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| ▲ | 4gotunameagain 39 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Isn't it suspicious that EU nation most vocal about Israel's atrocities gets targeted by campaigns like these, when Israel has the most advanced propaganda machines globally ? |
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| ▲ | WakeUpPeople 31 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | > when Israel has the most advanced propaganda machines globally ? What an interesting claim.
Unless you're saying that despite Israel having the "most advanced propaganda machines" (whatever that means), it's failing miserably. The amount of hate towards Israelis and the Israeli government is at all time high. | | |
| ▲ | an0malous 9 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | That’s because the internet briefly left a window open for the masses to attain information outside of controlled channels, but they’ve clamped down on it severely in the last year by giving TikTok US, Paramount, and Warner Brothers to the largest donor of the IDF. | |
| ▲ | potatototoo99 17 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | Not failing at all: still no leaders arrested, no UN security council decision, not even sanctions by the EU. Any other developed nation would have had already seen more serious consequences. |
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| ▲ | yde_java 31 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | Pro-Israel organizations like this one suggest what you say is true: "Analysis: Riots Show the Price France Has Paid for Turning Against Israel" [0] [0] https://combatantisemitism.org/special-features/analysis-rio... | | |
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