America would sooner arrest someone for bypassing the firewall on an article about a prolific child rapist, than arrest an actual child rapist.

Exactly a year ago:

before the match, Maccabi Tel Aviv fans were filmed pulling Palestinian flags from houses, making racist anti-Arab chants such as “death to Arabs”, assaulting people, and vandalising local property. Plans to attack Israeli fans were subsequently shared through messaging apps. After the match, Maccabi fans were ambushed and assaulted across the city centre, while a group of Maccabi fans around Damrak was recorded assaulting people and vandalising local property. … a report compiled with the chief prosecutor and chief of police which said the events were caused by a “toxic combination of antisemitism, hooliganism, and anger about the conflicts in … the Middle East” … The Maccabi Tel Aviv fan base is known to include far-right ultra groups that have been involved in racist incidents in Israel in the past, including directing racist abuse at Arab and black players on their own team.

Honestly, who needs that much hassle over a football match? Birmingham dodged a bullet.

The media coverage of this has been poor, but let’s not get started on UK social media, where I think it’s becoming increasingly obvious that bad actors who are already amplifying far right voices and trying to sow division, jumped on this whole debacle to once again be level 9000 bad faith wankers about the whole thing.

I’m Dutch. The article mentions this, but I think it’s important to reiterate that the idea the Netherlands is especially progressive has always been a bit of a myth. It arose partly because people mistake tolerance for acceptance. The Netherlands has long been a tolerant country. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s an accepting country.

For example, the Nazis were able to murder 75% of the Dutch-Jewish population in the Holocaust. Statistically, you were arguably safer being a Jew in Nazi Germany. My countrymen tolerated their Jewish neighbours. But they didn’t care enough about them, to not look the other way or prioritize their career when the Nazis came along. The Dutch are often in denial about this, a bit like how the country still hasn’t fully come to terms with its colonial past.

Anyway, it’s not a huge surprise that right wing populists and Russia have had such success in the Netherlands. They’re exploiting a nasty seam that has always been there.

Alternative if you want to be hardcore: air gap the system you run questionable software on.

If you’re bored, you can even try to infect it with as much shit as possible.

Doesn’t work as a test system though. Stuff lies dormant waiting for network access.

I think another potential use, is targeting and manipulating vulnerable people for political reasons.

Perhaps convince them to stay at home on election day. Perhaps convince members of undesirable demographics to disproportionately kill themselves. Perhaps make vulnerable people so paranoid or scared that they end up killing people you want to get rid of. Perhaps convince someone vulnerable to commit politically convenient violence, which can be used as a false flag or to rally support.

Why leave that kind of thing to chance, when you can use AI to tip the scales in your favour?