Woah, that’s nuts. I feel like most missiles don’t reach target in Israel. Maybe that’s cause most are aimed at Jerusalem and the Iron Dome though?

Nah, I read Mrs Frisby. They mostly just go chill on a farm when you make genetic super intelligent rats.

Sure, I agree that it’s a stupid idea from an effort vs reward perspective. It’s at best unnecessary.

But your initial position was that it couldn’t be done without being easy to prove that it was a fabrication, and I think you’re wrong about that.

I think that they are more than capable of doing it in such a way that it’s wholly word-vs-word, with no forensic evidence pointing to it being doctored. And the idea that they would do that is outlandish enough that most reasonable people would assume the post was legitimate and that the “offender” was lying about it to try and deflect blame.

It’s the classic, "No, I didn’t post that list of porn search terms to my Twitter! I was hacked!! Totally somebody hacked me and did that. Wasn’t me at all!!” But in this case it’d be something that was a pretext for the government to arrest them.

Sure, but then it’s a question of narrative not proof, right?

Because the response from X would just be, “we aren’t sure why Mr so-and-so didn’t/couldn’t immediately delete the post, but we froze it in short order because we believe the fact he would post such a thing is a matter of public interest, and we refuse to let him sweep it under the rug.”

Yeah, he could say that he posted something completely different and X changed it, but how do you prove it? Everyone would just assume it to be a lie trying to cover their ass after posting something terrible.

Not saying this is at all likely. Just that it’s possible.

And this assumes they notice it was doctored immediately anyway. Most people don’t verify that the post is correct after hitting “submit.” A good 90+% of people would probably never notice if the text was changed post upload.

You could just replace the text of a post as it gets submitted. Keep all metadata otherwise unchanged. Lock the account from being able to make edits.

It kind of depends on the facts and your jurisdiction. With the button, maybe? With a death note book, almost certainly not.

When proving the elements of attempted murder (or any non-statutory crime), the state has to prove both “mens rea” and “actus rea” (that you intended to do the thing and that you tried to do the thing), but when you’re being charged for something “attempted” you have the defense of “impossibility,” when the actions you are trying to take couldn’t have possibly worked.

Now, that doesn’t cover cases where you were only wrong in point of fact. For instance, buying fake drugs from a cop. But it does cover instances like using a voodoo doll.

There’s more detail on all the above in the illustrated guide to law, which is a pretty solid resource for stuff like this. Here are the relevant sections:

Actus Rea Explanation: https://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=261

Attempted Crimes: https://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=344

Impossibly Defense: https://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=416