Vice makes unfounded link between ‘Libs of TikTok’ and school bomb threats
October 6, 2023
Vice reports in a new piece that Libs of TikTok is to blame for schools receiving bomb threats. Vice has no evidence of this, but the report was published nevertheless. There’s a reason Vice just went bankrupt.
But Vice goes ahead and says it anyway:
“At least eleven schools or school districts that were targeted by the account “Libs of TikTok” over anti-LGBTQ grooming conspiracies last month received bomb threats just days later.”
The implication is obvious enough. If Libs of TikTok having free speech leads to bomb threats, then Libs of TikTok should not have free speech. Or, as we could also put it, Vice thinks that people should not be allowed to say things about LGBTQ issues that Vice disagrees with, and this looks like a good excuse. And it is an excuse, because Vice provides no evidence whatsoever. Nothing that anyone rational would use as evidence, at least.
This is the claim:
“VICE News reached out to all 42 school districts, schools, colleges, businesses and event organizers that were mentioned in Libs of TikTok posts in September. The majority didn’t respond, and only three school districts said that they hadn’t received bomb threats as a result of being featured in a Libs of TikTok post (one of those, a school district in North Kansas City, Missouri, was targeted when a transgender high school senior was crowned Homecoming Queen. She bore the brunt of the threats and harassment). But the 11 schools or school districts that did report receiving bomb threats indicate a disturbing pattern.”
Eleven out of 42 is 26%. So we’ve not even got a high correlation, let alone any form of causation here. We can and should go further, too. Libs of TikTok doesn’t do original reporting – that’s not what it’s for. That account highlights things already being talked about and being covered. So even if there were some causation going on, there’s nothing at all to say that it’s coming from Libs of TikTok.
And, of course, there’s more to this as well. As the feds point out: “But even a false alarm can impact students, and threats are happening more often. The FBI says 6,000 school threats were reported nationwide in 2022, a 60% increase from the previous year. “ As with that swatting that is so common against conservative voices, the incidence is rising as people work out how much trouble they can cause with a ‘phone call.
But if Vice wanted to make Libs of TikTok look bad, they could do so with spurious statistics about bomb threats, and so they did so. Now tell us, who’s the danger to the country? Social media accounts or the woke media itself?