Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem posted a photo of Nekima Levy Armstrong, a Minnesota civil rights attorney, being arrested at a political protest. A half hour later, the official White House X account posted an altered version in which Armstrong’s face was manipulated to make it appear that she was crying.
Wild to see this tech get adopted so fast and so unapologetically used.
Unfortunately ... it's all of them.
HN really should conduct a survey, like StackOverflow does. It would be fascinating.
By whose standards? I'm European, so for me the US Democrat party is too far to the *right* to be electable; but by historical American standards, the impression I've had is this site has been centrist.
Conversely, the current standard of the US right wing seems to be that Bush Jr and Cheney were lefty liberal wokes who undermined the US national interest by working with NATO and Europe instead of taking every opportunity to undermine both…
Most of the time when I do see blatant “rightposting” it’s so misinformed and provocative to be indistinguishable from trolling / baiting, so I can’t even tell if it’s downvotes for disagree vs downvotes for suspected trolling.
The less blatant “rightposting” flies quite a bit under the radar, pretty much by definition, which is what the grandparent comment was probably referring to when they said they interpreted HN as leaning right. More like laissez-faire economics.
The open embrace of the fascist / nativist right in SV has been more recent, and it has empowered this second Trump administration. The calculation is presumably that they can curry favor and consolidate power.
What makes you think that? The number of articles that get flagged and the pattern of the flagging and down voting would suggest that not to be true even if the actual comments might have slowed
1) It is no longer the case when I criticize something Trump has said or done, that I instantly get downvoted into oblivion or flagged.
2) Until recently, when someone posted some moderate comment, someone else often replied with a variant of "HN is a liberal echo chamber" I haven't noticed those replies for a while.
Nuremberg-style trials for every single person working under this administration is obviously the base minimum to start to get a handle on this. Anyone who is not pushing for that is not being serious about tackling America's problems. Then what? Extreme anti-trust enforcement and implement wealth caps to prevent the harm from recurring and hope most of the population eventually comes back to planet Earth?
If history is any guide, that doesn't happen without a substantial - existential, perhaps - exogenous shock.
If that doesn't happen, odds are that even if a democrat president gets elected, they won't be much better. This is still the fallout of the GFC, of the decision to bail out the banks back then.
I know that sounds incredible, and I would have bitten off the head of anyone claiming this when I was 20 ... but it's how the world works.
Informed by that training I would never:
- shoot someone when they are being detained
- shoot someone simply because they have a gun
- stand next to a vehicle so as to postulate the vehicle as a weapon
When I don't like Kristi Noem it isn't because she's Kristi Noem, because she's a woman, or because she shot a puppy she didn't like. It's because her actions and policy that she defends and writes don't agree with the ethics of the training I received.
You can do this thought exercise across this administration and arrive at the same conclusions of most of the key-holding individuals.
https://people.com/pam-bondi-full-letter-tim-walz-after-alex...
That can't be all it is: this and other recent, uncontroversially atrocious (when taken out of political context) actions taken by the Trump administration were very widely reported as lies/unconscionable by the vast majority of media outlets large and small.
Hell, we're even only having this discussion because Ars Technica, a publication with ten million readers, did journalism about an event. That's not huge in the grander scheme, but it's not tiny either.
There's certainly many stupid/corrupt things that news media companies should improve. I just don't think "A.P. News isn't calling $thing out" is the problem here.
Probably not long before we see sora style videos of a 'new angle' of a controversial event, showing that the protestor / victim did in face have a gun / deserve it
Image GenAi, just triviliazes the work of those in corrupt power.
This administration has been photoshopping and editing pictures long before AI, here's https://paleofuture.com/nofuture/2019/1/21/president-trump-p... some examples from 2019 where they used shops to make him thin.
For the same reason a fully automatic weapon is substantively different from a bolt action rifle, despite both being guns.
It's also a fundamentally different scenario. Photoshoot-style touchups - likely at the request of the subject himself - for pure vanity, versus doctored images of an unwilling citizen (who presumably hasn't been convicted yet and is therefore considered innocent) as propaganda
- The defendant knew or should have know that he or she was making an untrue or defamatory statement about you. (Yes, they edited the photo.)
- The false statement must clearly identify you. (It's a clear photo.)
- The defendant must have spread the false information to at least one third party who is not the target. For a libel case, they must do so in print, and for a slander case, they must do so verbally. (They posted it on Social Media.)
- The false statement must have damaged your character in some way. (Probably? This is the hardest one, but it's reasonable that the message that a "Far-Left" agitator would cry when arrested, rather than being stoic and strong could cause damage to her reputation or character.
https://askalawlibrarian.nycourts.gov/legalresearch/faq/3677...
Some potential jurors will have seen these doctored photos. With the prosecution putting out obviously false info then it calls into question their credibility and any other evidence presented at trial.
There will be a reckoning - and it may originate from the most unexpected place.
> against the governor's will
that's kind of the idea
Of the Little Rock 9 in Arkansas:
>When integration began on September 4, 1957, the Arkansas National Guard was called in to "preserve the peace". Originally at orders of the governor, they were meant to prevent the black students from entering due to claims that there was "imminent danger of tumult, riot and breach of peace" at the integration. However, President Eisenhower issued Executive order 10730,[18] which federalized the Arkansas National Guard and 1,000 soldiers from the US Army and ordered them to support the integration on September 23 of that year, after which they protected the African American students. The Arkansas National Guard would escort these nine black children inside the school as it became the students' daily routine that year.
Ideally though, this type of intervention should be exceedingly rare or reserved for the most egregious cases. Unfortunately, the present administration sees only the mechanism, and is motivated more by pettiness than any real commitment to Statecraft.
It's not "This is the truth." Rather, it's "The truth is unknowable." If nobody knows what's true and false anyway, there's no reason to concern yourself with "facts" that disturb your preconceptions.
> “Enforcement of the law will continue. The memes will continue. Thank you for your attention to this matter,” Dorr wrote.
The banner image on Dorr's X account reads: "oMg, diD tHe wHiTE hOuSE reALLy PosT tHiS?"
You're right, and I'd add that the agenda goes well beyond muddying the waters. This administration is deliberately normalizing bad faith, lying, and trolling. Discrediting critics as humorless, pathetic pearl-clutchers. I don't believe that their supporters strictly "believe" in Trump's alternate reality - they know that Trump and his cronies lie non-stop, and they like it. Accepting these lies serves as a shibboleth and lays the groundwork for discrediting fair elections, bogus prosecutions of political opponents, and everything else this administration is doing to corruptly hold on to power and demoralize their opponents.
Dunking on the administration only serves to pat one another on the back and not make any actual political progress.
#Project2025
https://xcancel.com/Kaelan47/status/2014410500096856358
Even crazier is the reply further down on that post from the deputy press secretary, Abigail Jackson, making fun of people who debunked that post like Snopes:
https://xcancel.com/abigailmarone/status/2014411002561863790
It’s horrifying but shows that they’re completely shameless about lying. And shameless about being aggressive and obscene. You see this from the other people too like press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who regularly abuses journalists asking reasonable questions.
And more horrifying are all the accounts replying in support of this. That’s evidence of the hardcore MAGA base that’ll support Trump no matter what he does, I guess.
I'd just like to say that judging public perception based on online comments, in 2026, is probably not a good indicator at all. Sort of ironic having to point this out in a thread about AI faked images, but...
Sure, but only because people think that that's what the public really thinks.
Plenty of people pay for the ‘i think my opinion matters more’ boost button, malicious propagandist or regular person alike
I am more and more concerned for my American based friends by the day
Europe found that out the hard way, and America is in the early stages of realizing it.
Or your neighbor goes far-right (US, maybe eventually Germany/France) and suddenly they start objecting to your internal policies (eg regulating big tech).
Or Russia+Covid combo suddenly inflating all kinds of prices, and again the far right surges.
I think it's going to be a dramatic few decades.
HN reveals itself again as the manicured lawn of the fascist tranche of our industry
Now surely, this won't stay removed from the front page. This is highly relevant to tech current events and therefore HN.
That said, the bravest we have are asking that they please not be murdered. And then peacefully kneeling down to be executed, even when they are armed.
Obviously this only emboldens the murderers. The options moving forward look bleak.
The best thing to do is to be out there recording everything. You are right that they are emboldened, so you're putting yourself in danger by filming. When people continue to do that despite the danger, and despite the internal or external pressure to escalate, it shows more people what's really happening.
I've witnessed people change their position on ICE's actions based on the video evidence of the last killing. Videos 1 and 2 weren't convincing to them, but the 3rd angle was. That's important, because they now know that the administration is lying in the face of directly contradicting evidence.
I don't understand how that will be meaningfully different from what is happening already?
FWIW I do think things might be different later but there’s still a lot of room for escalation left
Do yourself a favor and sit this one out while the rest of us fix it.
We have a fascist President, yes. We will see if this means we have a fascist government within the next decade.
Collective action problems are just the worst.
It's a long, inexorable march, but violence only perpetuates more violence and reduces sympathy for the protest movement.
It mirrors what is working in Minneapolis. It shows public outrage at what is happening. The absence of violence in the crowd makes it even clearer that ICE are the ones provoking incidents. It helps city and state officials make their case that their people need protection from ICE, not the other way around.
The sad fact is, even most of the people who're sympathetic to democracy and human rights will do just about zero to protect or fight for them.
I don't really know what else to do though, so I keep trying!
From there, it opens doors to working with towns and eventually the state.
States have the power to override Federal laws in greater numbers.
This is by design. If you dont understand how your country works, the systems that run it, then you will fail.
Awareness helps, but it rarely changes things. Participating in the democratic process creates the potential for change before it's too late.
But I'm not sure if you've looked at the news lately... we're pretty far into "too late".
Non-violent protest movements have a great record of creating real, and sustained change. Whether that's in India, or the civil rights and gay rights and suffrage and abolition movements here, peaceful protest is a powerful way to send a message to the people in your governments what you and the rest of the people there support and expect of them.
It's a great way to meet folk, to get good energy, to get a message out, to get a little exercise and fresh air, and to support your causes in an effective and, relatively light time commitment manner.