US Secret Service Wants To Identify Snark

beschra (1424727) writes "From the article: 'The U.S. Secret Service is seeking software that can identify top influencers and trending sets of social media data, allowing the agency to monitor these streams in real-time — and sift through the sarcasm. "We are not currently aware of any automated technology that could do that (detect sarcasm). No one is considered a leader in that,'" Jamie Martin, a data acquisition engineer at Sioux Falls, SD based Bright Planet, told CBS News.'

Why not just force Twitter to change TOS to require sarcasm tag?"

Re:What?

[gstoddart]

Which scenario do you think is more likely?

Well ... gee ... let me think.

This kid [rt.com]:

"Someone had said something to the effect of 'Oh you're insane, you're crazy, you're messed up in the head,'" he called, "to which he replied 'Oh yeah, I'm real messed up in the head, I'm going to go shoot up a school full of kids and eat their still, beating hearts.'"

According to Carter, he ended the quip with "LOL" and "JK" -- Internet shorthand for "laugh out loud" and "just kidding," respectively.

It's a real thing, it has happened already. No evidence of a crime (or even the actual intent to commit one). But someone sees it and goes "eep", and then you get dragged off to jail.

Arresting people based solely on their tweets or FB posts will very rapidly devolve into an outright ban of saying anything critical of government officials or policy -- AKA fascism.

You seem to be under the impression this isn't happening already.

It is.

So, ask me again if I think what I said is a plausible scenario. Because I said it with the full knowledge it has already happened.