You know, if I read multiple posts about “something big” happening to Charlie Kirk right before his assassination, I would identify the people who posted those things, to the police, rather than just post online myself about it being trans people.
That’s just me though.
But then how would you monetize your online presence? What are you, some kind of socialist?
It’s a “lead” only in the sense that it was placed deliberately by bad actors to lead legitimate people & organizations away from truth and clarity, and towards lies and confusion.
Maybe worse than that, it will become a fact of the upcoming conspiracy theory(s) about Kirk’s murder.
Yes, for many, that will be true.
But just because we despise Elon Musk, we shouldn’t ignore that when a political assassination occurs and ‘X was doing this in advance of the assassination’ is claimed, respectable investigative practice would be to at least check on the claim. If officials attempted to do their job by saying “Elon Musk said it therefore it must be false,” then they wouldn’t be professionals. They’d be partisan hacks.
It would be reasonable for them to suspect that if Elon said it it must be false. But they shouldn’t make assumptions.
I can see this has become an entire Thing because the claim Elon made was stupid and hateful. And it was, of course. But I think a few posting are reacting to the stupid and hateful (which is understandable) and not to the common-sense idea of what ‘a lead’ is considered to be by professionals.
In this case X is “Multiple trans people in the area” without any names or posts specified. How would a common sense professional even start to follow a “lead” like that?
From the FBI, on tips.
And analysts will vet them, they’ll review them for believability, credibility, check internal databases and external databases to verify the information is a valid tip regarding criminal activity or counterterrorism activity.
Once that it’s determined that there is additional investigative merit to information that’s submitted, depending on whether it’s a criminal tip or a counterterrorism tip or a counterintelligence tip, it’ll be routed differently.
Of course a common sense approach is to consider believability and credibility before determining whether something is a valid lead.
The post about trans people isn’t uncredible because Musk retweeted it. Its uncredible because it’s fucking stupid.
And this is why platforming is important
Once enough people share a fucking stupid conspiracy theory, it gains sufficient credibility for investigation through sheer numbers. Which is still fucking stupid.
And those who want to at least appear (if only to themselves) even-handed love falling for that fucking stupid shit, thus playing right into the hands of fascist assholes
Unfortunately there isn’t and can’t be an authority so far above the common fray that it can declare who is telling the truth and who is a liar (with sanctions against the latter). That way lies 1984.
No, fuck that.
If the best “lead” law enforcement has is some random tweet from an account called “EndWokeness” claiming “multiple people” posted something and then enhanced by would-be internet celebrities, that’s no actual “lead” that deserves “following up”. It’s, at best, an internet rumor and should be treated as such. By that standard, it merits less followup than investigating the chupacabra preying on local livestock. It’s on par with the Satanic Panic crap that put innocent people in prison.
You really just don’t get it do you? It has fuck-all to do with Elon Musk, or what anyone thinks of him. The entirety of this ‘lead’ is a post by an account called EndWokeness that said, in its entirety, "Multiple trans people in the area posted on September 9th that “something big will be happening to Charlie Kirk tomorrow”. With no fucking evidence to support this claim whatsoever.
You are literally doing the same thing as asking ‘authorities’ to investigate if Jews really did 9/11 because an account called Aryan1488 said they did on Twitter. With the exact same amount of evidence.
Yes, but every lead needs to be investigated.
Round up all the trans people using the medical records that RFK has collected.
‘The Jews trans murdered our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ Charlie Kirk.’