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When people are suffering, violence becomes natural.
I’d just rebuild these, and not take it personally.
Report this. It’s misinformation. The broken glass image is AI generated by a right wing misinformation site
The “news”.
You had a mission. It was really time to stop browsing and put away the phone to recharge, but you said “No, I must investigate and share!”
It’s been pointed out but look in the bottom right hand corner there’s a Gemini watermark
How does no one notice the ai watermark… come on guys 😭
Also like it would ever be glass on those things… Let alone individual panels
And the broken glass is completely different between pictures.
Of course 6Buzz is posting this, they’re basically a right wing disinformation vehicle.
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That part makes sense. They’re different boxes in different locations.
Yep and the photos are otherwise the same just switched around
Holy shit, I didn’t even notice 💀
Looks like the service itself is real: https://equip.sport/
But maybe someone just wanted to farm outrage using it?
Sounds like something 6ixBuzz would do, if they’re the one who posted the update.
For those unaware, 6ixBuzz is probably the most popular conservative social “news” network for Toronto and surrounding areas. Kind of like a local Fox News. The posts are bad enough but the comments, at least on Instagram, are awful.
(all links are an alternative frontend to Twitter for both privacy, and because they often block users who aren’t signed in from viewing posts)
I can’t find the original person that quote tweeted it with “update”, but I did find the original 6ixBuzz post, and in the comments you can see this guy saying “Here’s what they will look like 10 minutes later in that neighbourhood” and saying “of course it’s AI” in the comments to someone. Seems like he probably was the one to generate the image.
Other people are now AI generating videos of specifically black teenagers stealing from them, and claiming the image is an example of a “government plan gone awry”. 🤦
Sometimes we NEED the red circle.
Whhhyyyyyy… Did they think making the doors of glass was a good idea?
Glass that is brittle.
Glass that is see through.
A thief couldn’t have devised a better idiot honey pot.
I haven’t ever seen vandalism of these types of things, but I imagine it might be drug addicts or mentally unwell. It’s easy to imagine angry teens or greedy people, but given many unhoused people having schizophrenia or drug abuse, delusions could definitely lead to destruction of these public spaces. Although I only ever saw that with a store front, not a free service thing.
Still infuriating though, people need treatment and society does its best to ignore that or even discourage it.
GenAI is mentally unwell
people are just shitty
Well, some people. Not like the whole of humanity lined up there to trash it.
It’s sucks. I use them, very handy. I think they should replace the glass with a metal door and use LED to indicate whether the balls are there nor not.
In my neighborhood the city just gives out a bunch of free balls to kids and there’s enough floating around that nobody feels the need to steal one. No maintenance cost, just the bulk price of basketballs once a year.
This country desperately needs a functional mental healthcare system.
This country
The city in question is in Canada, if you’re thinking that it’s the US (as you appear to be in the US).
World*
Mike “the knife” Harris is the person you should thank for the state of ontarios mental health care system
step 1: buy 3 cheap balls and a display case step 2: photoshoot in the park step 3: farm wholesomebait karma on socials step 4: smash case and remove balls step 5: 2nd photoshoot in the park step 6: farm rage karma on socials step 7: ??? step 8: profit!
People do this to the Little Free Libraries that dot our liberal neighborhoods. Especially when they proliferated during Covid. The solution was, for the tenacious, just to rebuild and restock it. Eventually they got left alone. But, a couple churches got old newspaper machines and filled them with food and hygiene supplies, left them around the neighborhood for the folks who have trouble stretching their budgets. Every morning, all the bags of cereal would be exploded across the street, the macaroni and dry goods would be scattered on sidewalks, canned food thrown against rock walls. Or it’d just all be taken at once, and the machine tipped over. They stopped doing those.
My city has a bunch of those free food boxes scattered around and I’ve never seen the vandalism like you’re talking about. I wonder if there’s a difference in environment that could be causing that. I bet if the churches kept stocking them and not giving up eventually the vandalism would stop just like it did with the little free libraries
I’m in one of the highest property crime cities in the US, as well as being located between two of the state’s largest homeless shelters, and the liquor stores and streets they sleep on. So it’s not uncommon to find pointless vandalism. Just last weekend my driver’s side window got cracked up because someone half-heartedly tried getting in, for loose change.
This is pretty much the solution. Just rebuild/restock.
I have a little library that also contained snacks. It was always used by the neighborhood kids. Camera attached too. The first few weeks, books all over the ground or all the snacks taken. And the cameras pointed to a few homeless people.
But after three years (and constant maintenance), I now even see the homeless be respectful and take only the snacks they need.
It doesn’t feel good to turn the other cheek those first few times, trust me. But now it’s a part of the neighborhood and other neighbors even come and add snacks.
The solution is better parenting, the little miscreants these days have never been disciplined. It’s not roving marauders from outside these neighborhoods coming doing these things, it’s the morons from within the community.
Yeah people should parent those homeless people better.
Read before responding, guy.
That’s a really good story, instructive on how building social fabric takes time and patience
There’s like a dozen of the little free libraries within a half mile of my house and I love it
Same. I moved across the country and there’s a so, so many where I live.
Always disappointed, never surprised.
Little Free Libraries were actual grassroots things, this is obviously a corporation trying to squeeze into a new market by offering the first one free (because the city is paying for it).
If I’m reading the side of this thing correctly, it requires an app to get the ball out which means using it opens someone up for potential legal/money issues if they get blamed for using the balls. It looks like a trap to me, and I’m not someone who already had to deal with stuff like being blamed for damage to those rental scooters or other app tracked things.
This is Canadian Tire Jumpstart so it’s likely operated by a charity foundation run by a major hardware retailer. The app system seems kind of stupid, but I don’t believe at first glance the aim was to profit out of this scheme.
I’m so disappointed in people. It’s more than a few bad apples that spoil a bunch.
A few years ago my city installed a bunch of bike maintenance stands, comple with tools (attached to cables) and within a month all the cables had been cut and the tools were all gone. The tire pumps were destroyed and the signs were obscured with spray paint.
They tried to repair them a couple of times but the shitbirds just trashed them again.
It’s frustrating that this crap keeps happening
Little free libraries are awesome. I love putting stuff in there and seeing it’s been taken & replaced. I put a lot of zine type stuff in them. The thought of people destroying them just for giggles or because they personally appose them is sickening. It’s free books and food! You have to be a monster to oppose that.
I’ve been wanting to set up one myself but they seem a little on the expensive side, and lord knows I don’t have the know how to build my own
I mean, my mom found a Golden Book version of Little Black Sambo which featured black face and racist illustrations and whatnot. She took it but left it up to me but even that I didn’t really want to burn it for the reason you said.
Buuuut it did disappear from our place at some point and I don’t know who may have thrown it out. But like, I get it in this case.
Yeah people put crazy shit in them. My buddy back in the day found smut about pirates in one, and we were young teenagers. I found a Dennis brown CD in one right outside of an elementary school a few blocks down from me a few weeks ago lol.
That’s more on people just trying to spread racist or weird shit not really any reflection on the free libraries themselves. Who says kids don’t like reggae
When you are shit is easier to cope if everything around you is also shit than making an effort to be less shit.
Conservativism in a nutshell.
I looked it up and apparently this company installs these lockers that have different balls in them. So if you go to a park with a court and didn’t bring a ball you can still play if you get the app and check one out. It seems like people just stole the balls.
Why do you have to use an app to unlock it? There doesn’t seem to be any functional reason for it
What else can be used?
Employing a lonely dude at the machine just so Timmy can rent a football?
Good luck with those fees.How about they just put a latch on the door. No energy, internet, compute, apps or data required. Just a $3 latch that anyone can open, and you can even have the local highschool woodshop bang out some replacement kiosks if they need to be replaced
My hands? Little free libraries don’t need apps
It’s canadian tire, so data collection is the reason for the app
get the app and check one out
So it’s not free. You pay with your privacy and data.
It probably starts free. You create a market and then start selling it as rental equipment, or you market to cities. They are making money.
Jump start is Canadian tire’s charity for childrens sports. They are funded by donations at the till. Its a typical corporate tax dodge but it does infact go to kids sports.
I bet you could buy a shit load of random sports ball for the cost of those cabinets, app, cloud infra, and employees to run it all.
They should just put metal baskets out with balls and refill them a few times a year. It would be cheaper
I mean, they do. Look into the programs, this is probably the smallest program they do.
You pay with your data means it was never free, you were the product
Yeah. I don’t think this is too hard to parse, nor is it likely to be some cogent political protest.
- New flat surface attracts graffiti.
- Within a short time, someone else breaks the glass to get access to the balls because they can’t or won’t use the app.
There could easily be an element of “fuck that app,” but the “reward” here is access to a basketball while at the park. I think Occam’s razor is an appropriate initial framework.
It also looks like the city was prudent and avoided a major investment of tax money.
Can’t say I’d blame anyone for destroying them then. No doubt the app collects your data. There’s no reason I should have to pay for the locker once with my taxes, then again with my data. Net positive for the world, imo.
I could tell just by looking at the photo that this was done by someone without balls.
I really don’t know what would posses them to use glass instead of a metal mesh to begin with but I guess that’s beside the point here. Those look more like display cases tbh
They clearly dont even have a locking mechanism, they are literally just shelves.
Or glass with wire mesh in it - security glass
Why do we need to be able to see through it anyway? Seeing through to the inside just makes it more of a target.
So you can see what’s inside to rent it out, maybe the locker thingy just opens and closes without keeping inventory.
Hold up, is this for storage or for renting equipment? What kind of equipment would fit in those small lockers?
They’re for basketballs, soccer balls, and the like. You’re able to check them out for free to use for a certain amount of time
Ah, 'kay! I had a hard time gauging their size from the picture.
Dude can piss through mesh.
I sense a challenge coming on…
Happy cake day!
I don’t want my stuff to get pissed on, but I can at least still take it home and wash it.
These lockers were for public equipment, not your personal stuff.
