Okay. Would you perhaps suggest “instigated” as a better descriptor?
Quite literally, Bostons childrens fucking hospital has been receiving direct bomb threats, death threats against doctors, & other shit directly because of LibsofTikToks extreme stretching of cherry-picked “truths”
If you are trying to say you know better about this than the state government of Massachusetts, & even the feds - please do let me know why you think this way, whether or not you think your viewpoint is best for a civil society, & whatever other reasons you believe I’m not able to accurately apply the meanings of “incite” or “instigate”
This is a very strange hill to have an opinion on other than “this is very bad and dangerous” when a childrens hospital affiliated with one of academias (Harvard/Cambridge universities) premier teaching hospitals (Mass General as a whole - which the childrens hospital is affiliated with.) is receiving bomb threats & direct threats of lethal harm to several employed doctors, as well as their support staff.
I’ve come to the pretty reasonable conclusion that there’s no good faith discussion to be had when one side is “anything that leads to threats of domestic terrosism against a childrens hospital is a bad thing” & the other is “buh, buuh - have u considered that death threats against childrens hospitals might actually be the way of righteousness? This sociopath has thoughts they think you’ve yet to consider!”
> I’ve come to the pretty reasonable conclusion that there’s no good faith discussion to be had when one side is “anything that leads to threats of domestic terrosism against a childrens hospital is a bad thing” & the other is “buh, buuh - have u considered that death threats against childrens hospitals might actually be the way of righteousness? This sociopath has thoughts they think you’ve yet to consider!”
I fully support directing resources to tracking down and prosecuting people issuing threats. That would be a good use of police resources as opposed to some of the bullshit they spend their time on now. The people issuing threats were motivated to act by their ethics that were triggered by stories told by LibsOfTikTok, but also because they think they can get away with it, and that's the lever that we can move without compromise. Instead of trying to constrain speech, ensure people can have charged conversations on important social issues without the threat of violence.
That said, I also reject your inference that LibsOfTikTok necessarily bears direct responsibility for the people who issue violent threats. "Incitement" are exactly the cases where speech does convey responsibility, and I'm not sure they've crossed that line.
To say LibsOfTikTok is responsible would also imply that CNN and MSNBC's coverage was responsible for Hodgkinson's attempt to murder a bunch of Republicans. If you want to make that argument too then at least you're being consistent, but it's totally reasonable to disagree.
Given how you've framed this, you'll probably argue that LibsOfTikTok is not practicing "journalism", but there is no rigourous, formal definition of journalism that would distinguish what the media does from what LibsOfTikTok does. Media is factually wrong all of the time and its coverage clearly biased as well. We can agree that LibsOfTikTok is probably wrong "more" of the time and "more" biased, but moving the line of incitement, libel and defamation to encompass more speech is slippery and dangerous.
