Washington (Talk Media News) – The Brady Campaign and Ogilvy & Mather are launching “Zero Minutes of fame” a Google Chrome plugin that removes killers’ names and images from major news sites and Google search results.
Mass shootings in the U.S. — like Virginia Tech, Aurora, Sandy Hook, Lafayette and Charleston often receive extensive media coverage, but this coverage only encourages similar crimes, according to the Brady Campaign.
The plugin filters search results to focus on the victims of these mass killings , instead of the perpetrators. “Instead of rewarding killers and inspiring copycats, we should be lifting up the stories and the lives of victims, heroes, and survivors,” said Dan Gross, president of the Brady Campaign. “The fact is, notoriety serves as a reward for these killers and as a call-to-action for others who would seek to do similar harm in the name of infamy.”
More than 30 percent of mass shootings and as many as 22 percent of all school shootings are inspired by previous violent incidents with guns, according to the campaign
Source: Brady Campaign: Plugin will remove gunmens’ information from search results – Talk Media News
First: I believe that not using the names of the ***holes mass murderers is counterproductive. It is human nature for good people to find somebody to blame for an atrocity. Going with a bland denomination like “the shooter” does not satisfy the curiosity and the Opposition uses this to steer sentiment against the NRA and gun owners when they blame us for those events because we do not roll over and allow “common sense laws” to be adopted.
With that out-of-the-way, the concept of a censoring plugin to clean current news and history is scary. I am not an expert on plugins and assorted browser stuff, but I figure there has to be some sort of central repository where key names and search strings are located, analyzed and the “proper” result returned to the person doing the inquiry. Who controls that and what keeps them from adding more than just mass killers to the block? What keeps them from redirect them to chosen sites where Gun Control solutions are offered? What if names of people or organizations in the fight for the Second Amendment are added to that list and the results end up taking the user to the Southern Poverty Law Center “hate list”? The chances for abuse are endless.
I installed the plugin and checked it out. I selected Seung-Hui Cho to use as search item and tested some sites. It is a mix of good news/bad news.
Good news: You still have to download and install it. It works with Google as promised, but I don’t think quite what they wanted.
Funny, it works in Wikipedia better than Google but to my knowledge Wikipedia is not a news site. Are they in on the deal or is this collateral Damage?
While it did not block the images in Google, it did so for Wikipedia but did not block the name in the box.
It does not work for MSNBC of Fox News. Other search engines (Yahoo and Bing) are not affected. I also checked the search of several blogs and it did not work as well.
The bad news: They can improve it and Google being Google, they can install it without you knowing it. My gut tells me people will not like the idea and the plugin will be only used by the hardcore Gun Control advocates. Still, the fact that Brady wants to go a little China Censorship and Google which is blocked in China wants to play along makes me a bit nervous.
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.”
C.S. Lewis
Can you click on the Brady supplied image? Wouldn’t surprise me if it had a Donate button on it.
It does certainly turn every news story into an ad for them.
Already uninstallled it, but it does takes you to the Brady site when you install the plugin.
I use Pale Moon, which was originally an optimized Firefox build for Windows, but has since branched out. I have it installed on both of my Android devices, and they have builds available for Linux as well.
Maybe Mac, but I can’t think of any reason why a pro-gun conservative would use a Mac.
Anyway.
What surprises me the most is that they don’t seem to be using the Adblock model, which is browser-local and just finds the relevant strings(making it work on text, images, Flash, HTML5, WebGL, you name it). That, or Bing and Yahoo use a different encoding standard from Google, but that makes a whole lot of no-sense.
Actually, the fact that they didn’t just publish a “zero-minutes of fame” list for Adblock tells you how smart groups like this are.
To add to the C.S. Lewis quote, by the way:
“I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the common good.” -Adam Smith
Or the reason why the Tau may be the most evil race in the Warhammer 40,000 universe, the number of atrocities they have committed in the name of the “greater good.”
(The “good” race in WH40K is obviously the Necrons, a race of undead, immortal machines, whose objective is to wipe out all life in the universe. The nature of WH40K being what it is, all known forms of life contribute to evil in one way or another, therefore the Necrons are dedicated to wiping out evil, making them the force of good.)
“Maybe Mac, but I can’t think of any reason why a pro-gun conservative would use a Mac.”
Whoa, hey, hey. Easy there, my friend.
You have been properly trolled 😀
Hard to say the necrons are good. Id go chaotic neutral at best. Let’s not forget how they became necrons either.
But I’d agree tau is galactic communism,the eldar are probably up there too.
I’m of two minds, one is that I don’t want the shooters to get publicity (e.g. the 15 minutes of fame), but I also agree with your nose under the tent of censorship issue… Damned if we do, damned if we don’t!!!
Lemme give you this example: After WWII, anything that had to do with Hitler and the Nazis was “erased” and selling/distributing Nazi paraphernalia including books was a crime.
One restriction was lifted and…Guess what?
Mein Kampf tops Spiegel bestseller list
To append to Miguel’s observation, I would like to add the speculation that un-personing Hitler and his followers like they did contributed to the rise of modern SJW-flavored Feminism. They’re acting exactly like the Nazis did, may as well be using the same play books, but because they refuse to see Hitler as a human being, they assume
1: He was a monster, and that I am not a monster, therefore I could never be as bad as Hitler
2: The people I oppose to Hitler-like things, and Hitler was a monster not a human, therefore the people I oppose are not human and anything I may do to them has no moral weight to it.
Now, for my personal opinion: I think these killers should be identified. And then their bodies should be fed to pigs. And those pigs marked as tainted and evil, as a result of having consumed the flesh of evil people, unfit for human consumption. Attach an entire social stigma to it, such that anybody associating with the kind of people who would do things like this is shunned.
By and large they are already shunned for other reasons before they decide to do their evil. I offer no solution to preventing someone from deciding to be a mass killer, because I do not really think there is a solution. I only offer the countermeasure: make it as difficult for them as possible to achieve their goals and respond to their actions with immediate and overwhelming force from the wold be targets.
I don’t get the censorship angle of any atrocity. It didn’t even work out that great for Harry Potter why would it work in real life where the end is preengineered to be happy?
I see a connection in mindset between censoring atrocity and cognitive dissonance.
As I have pointed out many times, I refuse to use the names of mass killers, since they do it for the fame. I am not going to play that game.
Tone Deaf morons killed that video because it ironically shows the face and name of killers to promote not showing the face and name of killers.
Now they have a video with just blurred images….good job guys!
Never mind the irony that the blood dancers are the first into the fray when somebody gets shot!
[…] The Brady Campaign has developed a plugin that removes the names of mass shooters from your browser. I’m happy to see them starting to attack true root causes, but I’m afraid it’s the media we need to convince not to publish the shooter in the first place. But they are on the right track. […]