Have you heard any more information as to the mysteriously apporting bricks/stones?
It is a very odd thing!
And from Rolling Stone mag online, is a curious paragraph from an article re. bricks/stones appearing quoting a senior police officer who thinks caches of stones may have been left by organised agitators in advance of protests. Although it could just be illegally dumped construction debris. And it probably was, according to the later article linked to below.
https://www.rollingstone.com/cultur...ests-george-floyd-black-lives-matter-1009178/
"...Such attempts to sow misinformation are not uncommon when it comes to high-profile news events, says Linvill. “These are fast moving stories and conversations. There are more people on social media talking about them than normal and their rates of communication are higher. The normal places one might get information aren’t moving at the speed people are hungering for, and so [social media] is an environment where misinformation and conspiracy theories are inevitably going to spread.”
When it comes to #baitbricks, it is not immediately apparent that it’s a deliberate attempt to sow misinformation. Even though many of the accounts that initially tweeted it had relatively few followers, which can be a sign of bot activity, Joan Donovan, research director at Harvard Kennedy’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, says it’s unlikely it’s a planted narrative, “because there is more talk about it than is just contained within the hashtag. It seems to have some degree of organic spread.”
The underlying concerns about cops infiltrating protests and encouraging violence to justify force are certainly not without merit. In cities across the country, protesters have reported that actions have been largely peaceful until officials escalated violence with tear gas or rubber bullets. Viral footage showing a man in a gas mask smashing the windows of an Auto Zone with a hammer also led protesters to accuse the man of being a police plant, an allegation the Minneapolis Police Department has denied.
Yet there is little evidence that authorities are intentionally planting bricks at protest sites to goad activists. “Often in cities there will be construction areas with bricks and other materials,” says Donovan. “I think in most instances we never notice them, but they take on new meaning during moments like this. Linvill refers to the hashtag as an “organic conspiracy theory taking place in real time.”
“A few of the images I’ve seen look completely innocent, and bricks are the sort of thing you don’t notice till you’re looking for them,” he says. “And then when you do, they’re everywhere.”"
There's an article here from yesterday detailing the most prominent social media claims:
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/investigating-bricks-at-protests
Which mostly concludes it's social media claims, without much to back them up while residents, protestors and police are convinced there's some kind of brick-dumping organised movement going on...
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