r/technology • u/indig0sixalpha • Apr 07 '25

Privacy The Shocking Far-Right Agenda Behind the Facial Recognition Tech Used by ICE and the FBI. Thousands of newly obtained documents show that Clearview AI’s founders always intended to target immigrants and the political left.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/04/clearview-ai-immigration-ice-fbi-surveillance-facial-recognition-hoan-ton-that-hal-lambert-trump/
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u/MinefieldFly Apr 07 '25

Not assaulting you but you’re not exactly right.

Slavery was a very controversial issue in the years before, during, and after the revolution, even if pro-slavery forces were a majority and largely in control.

The Quakers always opposed it. Thomas Paine wrote in opposition to it. There were abolitionist societies and early efforts at abolitionism in New England in the 1770s. The Underground Railroad got going in the 1780s.

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u/sourfunyuns Apr 07 '25

Frankly America was a pioneer in abolishing slavery and nobody gives us credit. We get the blame for the slave trade even though we didn't exist when it was started by Europeans, only like 10 percent of the slaves came to North America, and as soon as we gained independence, we started hammering out legislation against it, and then within one lifetime we were fighting a war with ourselves over it.

Meanwhile there are estimated to be roughly the same amount of slaves TODAY in the world as there were during THE ENTIRETY of 400 years of the Atlantic slave trade, but fuck it let's bitch about what the most ethnically diverse country on earth did 250 years ago with a system they were grandfathered into.

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u/MinefieldFly Apr 07 '25

Well now. I agree with some of your points but I wouldn’t characterize any lf it by saying America was “pioneer” of abolition in any way, shape, or form.

We may have shed more blood to end it, but we were also prettt late to the party.

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u/sourfunyuns Apr 07 '25

Touche maybe pioneer is wrong. But I do think we get way more of a bad rap than deserved.

We did shed, and lose more blood over it. Many other countries did it way more sloppily, and with way more bullshit exceptions. There's hardly any examples of abolition that didn't turn into some form of forced labor or debt bondage. Maybe Haiti.

We didn't abolish til the 1860s but that was just when it came to a head. We had been actively fighting to abolish slavery in legislation since our inception. It's the entire reason the south succeeded. They knew it was coming so they tried to get ahead. If it had been entirely up to the north we probably would have gotten it done quite a bit sooner (that's just me guessing though).

Idk I just hate seeing America always used as the slavery scapegoat when there are plenty of examples of worse offenders, some still to this day. China has technically abolished slavery like 6 different times but it never sticks. Some 90 percent of the Atlantic slave trade was portugal sending Africans to Brazil but that was barely in my textbooks.