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Amazon 'Reviewing' Its Website After It Suggested Bomb-Making Items (nytimes.com) 156

Posted by msmash from the fault-in-our-code dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report: Amazon said on Wednesday that it was reviewing its website after a British television report said the online retail giant's algorithms were automatically suggesting bomb-making ingredients that were "Frequently bought together." The news is particularly timely in Britain, where the authorities are investigating a terrorist attack last week on London's Underground subway system. The attack involved a crude explosive in a bucket inside a plastic bag, and detonated on a train during the morning rush. The news report is the latest example of a technology company drawing criticism for an apparently faulty algorithm. Google and Facebook have come under fire for allowing advertisers to direct ads to users who searched for, or expressed interest in, racist sentiments and hate speech. Growing awareness of these automated systems has been accompanied by calls for tech firms to take more responsibility for the contents on their sites. Amazon customers buying products that were innocent enough on their own, like cooking ingredients, received "Frequently bought together" prompts for other items that would help them produce explosives, according to the Channel 4 News.
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Amazon 'Reviewing' Its Website After It Suggested Bomb-Making Items More

Amazon 'Reviewing' Its Website After It Suggested Bomb-Making Items

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  • Apparently faulty algorithm? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by hey! ( 33014 ) on Wednesday September 20, 2017 @09:44AM (#55231419) Homepage Journal

    If that's the case, then it's not a problem. You're just showing ads for plastic buckets to people who don't want to build a bomb. I suspect the worry is that the algorithm might actually be working. In which case it's still not a problem. Once you have the recipe for a plastic bucket bomb, finding the bucket isn't a major obstacle.

    • Re:Apparently faulty algorithm? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Bongo ( 13261 ) on Wednesday September 20, 2017 @09:57AM (#55231501)

      I don't understand how this isn't just Amazon showing articles from a hardware store, rather than, well gee there are soooo many people making this stuff that the algorithm has learnt the specific components.

      • I think what is freaking people out is that it's all but literally telling you the recipe, and doing so across a pretty wide spread of departments. For example, if you go to buy Red Iron Oxide powder (Common supply for pottery and ceramic hobbyists), it suggests also buying aluminum powder and magnesium ribbons from way over in "Industrial and Scientific," which is all you need to mix and ignite thermite. The worst example was where stump remover suggested you buy the other ingredients for homemade black
        • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • This story is a bit misleading and sensationalist. The "gunpowder" they refer to isn't anything any modern gun would use. It's not nearly so strong. Instead it's the raw ingredients for the centuries-old black powder, which needs extensive processing in order to make black powder from these ingredients. Just mixing them will do nothing. (I've made black powder multiple times, using ingredients from the hardware store.)

        The other item they refer to as "explosive" is metal powder, which Burns with a bright li

    • But it's the PR perception that Amazon is encouraging folks to buy all the bomb making materials a terrorist needs in one go that they are trying to avoid. That the algorithm works and apparently creates more sales and more happy customers is not the issue.

      Personally, I wonder if someday we won't realize that Amazon has subliminally pried it's way into having a virtual retail monopoly for literally EVERYTHING sold and has made it so impossible for the competition that we will pay dearly for everything we

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • That's another way of making my point. Amazon's goal is to sell stuff, as much stuff as they can. They only care about this because the bad PR reduces sales..

      • I know you capitalized all the letters in LITERALLY, but there are still products that Amazon doesn't sell. So, it's not 'literally everything.' I'm not sure that negates your point, but hyperbole is dishonesty and being dishonest reduces the value of your speech.

    • Re:Apparently faulty algorithm? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by EvilSS ( 557649 ) on Wednesday September 20, 2017 @10:31AM (#55231705)
      You would think they would be more concerned with why so many people are buying these items together that the algorithm is showing them as frequently bought together.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by SeaFox ( 739806 )

        It's much easier to push around online retailers than to look for solutions to social problems that breed terrorism to begin with.

      • Because blowing shit up is a lot of fun and not necessarily harmful. I doubt the majority of these purchases are made for any reasons that are harmful. There's not much out there that is more entertaining than blowing shit up. It's even possible to blow shit up without hurting yourself or anyone else. Hell, you can blow shit up and be apolitical.

        I, for one, love blowing shit up. A buddy owns a granite quarry. I make it a point to visit frequently, just so I can observe and help blow shit up. Unfortunately,

    • Re:Apparently faulty algorithm? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by TheRaven64 ( 641858 ) on Wednesday September 20, 2017 @10:36AM (#55231727) Journal
      The surprising thing is that enough people were buying bomb-making ingredients together to train their algorithm. Most things that you use to make bombs are dual-use items, and I'd expect a lot more people to have been buying them to not make bombs than were buying them to make bombs.

      • Re:Apparently faulty algorithm? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by hey! ( 33014 ) on Wednesday September 20, 2017 @11:14AM (#55232001) Homepage Journal

        Well, I suppose this is an occasion for Bayesian reasoning. The probability that you buy bomb ingredients given that you're a terrorist being high doesn't mean that the probability that you are terrorist given that you buy bomb ingredients is necessarily high. In fact even if someone is *definitely* building a bomb, it doesn't automatically mean they are a terrorist.

        On YouTube there's a whole genre of videos devoted to large Tannerite explosions. Tannerite is an impact-initiated binary explosive that is popular for making shooting targets. Normally it's used in small quantities but of course there are many videos of people setting off very large Tannerite explosions [youtube.com], involving hundreds of pounds of the stuff.

        Some people are just fascinated with explosives. So what you have to ask is whether it is more common to be into blowing things up for DIY amusement or blowing things up to hurt people. Where people go wrong with this kind of question is they rely on their intuition in guessing prior probabilities. If blowing things up holds no fascination for them, they assume that that kind of thing must be rare, or even non-existent.

        • Thinking about it a bit more, Amazon does tailor the recommendations to you, so maybe the people who are complaining are ones that the recommendations algorithm has decided are terrorists.

    • Re:Apparently faulty algorithm? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by shaitand ( 626655 ) on Wednesday September 20, 2017 @10:54AM (#55231871) Journal
      Exactly, the algorithm is working perfectly. Since people aren't blowing up buildings left and right and yet are making bomb making stuff, maybe the people in the UK should work on desensitizing themselves to things that are done a regular basis both for practical reasons and recreation. Here in the US (where Amazon is based) we have a massive rural population and blowing stumps and the like is just daily life for those folks. For most things that is just fine and legal so long as they don't transport and for things where it isn't entirely legal... lets just say if he isn't getting anything too crazy, stockpiling anything, or hurting anyone then whatever levy Farmer John is moving or refrigerator he's blowing up on his back 40 or personal firing range is somewhere near the bottom of the list for federal agents, especially since he has a legitimate reason to buy big bags of fertilizer and large quantities of diesel and it isn't the easiest thing in the world detect if he were using something a big bigger to blow a stump.

    • The real problem is that in order for the algorithm to work, there have to be enough people out there who are in fact buying the items together. Either those items are often bought together for some other non-bomb-making purpose -- people buying plastic buckets, nails, engine oil and high-nitrogen fertilzer because they are DIY gardners who are working on a shed to hold their lawnmower -- or there are enough people out there building bombs with ingredients purchased together on Amazon that their algorithm

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dgatwood ( 11270 )

        The real problem is that in order for the algorithm to work, there have to be enough people out there who are in fact buying the items together. Either those items are often bought together for some other non-bomb-making purpose -- people buying plastic buckets, nails, engine oil and high-nitrogen fertilzer because they are DIY gardners who are working on a shed to hold their lawnmower -- or there are enough people out there building bombs with ingredients purchased together on Amazon that their algorithm c

  • Unsuprising (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I suspect most of these suggestions are based on actual purchase histories or at least browsing histories--these are data trends. What does this say about consumers?

    I highly doubt Amazon hired staff to curate product groupings since that's not feasible for all products. These are data trends and Amazon is simply displaying them. Now, Amazon has to go in an *actually curate* nasty product grouping relationships to create an exclusion list. Damned if you do, damned if you don't I suppose.

    • Doubtful. Amazon's algorithm is terrible. Mainly it is looking for things that it thinks are associated, upsells, or ads.

  • that they are frequently bought together ?

    If so, that should be a big clue as to who is building them.

  • Frequently Bought Together: (Score:5, Funny)

    by clonehappy ( 655530 ) on Wednesday September 20, 2017 @09:50AM (#55231457)

    Looks like you're building a pipe bomb. Would you also like some acid to throw in white women's faces in case it doesn't go off? How about a fidget spinner in case both of your attacks fail?

  • Better than odd collections? (Score:3)

    by RevRagnarok ( 583910 ) on Wednesday September 20, 2017 @09:50AM (#55231461) Homepage Journal
    Amazon thinks I now have very strange collections of things that you never need more than one of, like cable modems and whole-house dehumidifiers...

  • You can still get the book... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 20, 2017 @09:52AM (#55231475)

    You can still get "The Anarchist Cookbook" [amazon.com] on Amazon, which is the number one bestseller in Anarchism.

    • People who actually follow the recipes in The Anarchist's Cookbook will find they've found an excellent way to blow up themselves instead of other people.

      • People who actually follow the recipes in The Anarchist's Cookbook will find they've found an excellent way to blow up themselves instead of other people.

        Your statement does nothing to diffuse the explosive irony surrounding the concern with algorithms that might suggest bomb making vs. directly selling bomb-making guides...

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Pretty much anybody that tries to make more historic (and easier to make) explosives for the first time finds this out. The stuff is dangerous. There is also a (IMO credible) rumor that the CIA actually published this book and the recipes are just recipes that are public anyways but all the safety-precautions have been removed. I find that credible, and if true, the CIA would have done good for a change.

        • The good thing to do would be to collect intelligence on suspects, hand the information to the police who then arrest them, not to cause kids in the whole world to blow their hands off.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by gweihir ( 88907 )

            I, on the other hand, like a bit of evolutionary selection for intelligence here. Gross stupidity should come with significant personal risks. And when they actually intended to blow up other people, poetic justice comes into it as well. Also note that stupid "kids" manage to maim themselves (and others) all the time via things like drunk driving, for example.

            • Jerry Pournelle (RIP) managed, at the age of 14, to make "about half a cup" of nitroglycerine without blowing himself up. The recipe was right there in the Encyclopedia Britannica, and the ingredients easily obtained by a 14-year old farm kid in rural Tennessee in the 1940s. That took some smarts. The stupid ones trying the same would have atomized themselves.

              The hog pond would never be the same again, though.

  • Oh my gosh, Elon Mask was right [slashdot.org]!

  • deleting reviews and now this? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by anthony_greer ( 2623521 ) on Wednesday September 20, 2017 @09:55AM (#55231491)

    In recent days amazon has been found to be deleting reviews of Hillary Clinton book that are negative - they justify this by saying that "no one could have read the book that fast" yet they don't block the great reviews from people who have had the same amount of access to the book as the negative reviewers.

    If you take away the ability of people to speak freely, leaving them with the perception of censorship***, they will find other, very terrible ways to communicate their thoughts...and suggesting bombs at the same time is something that is actually genuinely frightening.

    ***I know amazon is not a government and therefore cant "censor" but it can give the perception thereof because of the sheer power they do hold.

    • Re:deleting reviews and now this? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 20, 2017 @10:12AM (#55231591)

      In recent days amazon has been found to be deleting reviews of Hillary Clinton book that are negative - they justify this by saying that "no one could have read the book that fast" yet they don't block the great reviews from people who have had the same amount of access to the book as the negative reviewers.

      That's not accurate - it seems they removed non "Verified Purchaser" reviews, which were predominantly one star; it does seem likely that most of those people might not have read the book, and certainly they didn't get it from Amazon. From Slate:

      Amazon has since removed hundreds of reviews—both positive and negative—from unverified reviewers, but since these were overwhelmingly in the one-star camp, the book’s rating has now jumped from a 3.2 rating to a 4.9 rating overall.

      • Re:deleting reviews and now this? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by SlaveToTheGrind ( 546262 ) on Wednesday September 20, 2017 @11:37AM (#55232219)

        That's not accurate - it seems they removed non "Verified Purchaser" reviews, which were predominantly one star

        Who are you going to believe -- a clearly unbiased (cough) Slate author, or your lying eyes? A sampling of verified negative reviews:

        By BabaLa on September 14, 2017
        Format: Kindle Edition | Verified Purchase
        I wrote a verified purchase review and it has been deleted 3 times. If Amazon doesn't like what we have to say, don't ask for input.

        By The Just-About-Average Ms. M on September 17, 2017
        Format: Kindle Edition | Verified Purchase
        I purchased this book four days ago in the Kindle format. My review was of the book specifically and not the author. And like the review of a number of other folks, mine has been deleted four times.

        And some examples of non-verified, positive reviews that are still up:

        By thomas on September 19, 2017
        Format: Hardcover
        Great book, better than exoected

        By tweetdeck on September 17, 2017
        Format: Hardcover
        Best book ever

    • Re:deleting reviews and now this? (Score:5, Informative)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Wednesday September 20, 2017 @10:19AM (#55231627) Homepage Journal

      Amazon has been deleting negative reviews from people it can't verify have bought the book from it. That's entirely reasonable - the book is being review bombed heavily, and the goal is to provide reliable reviews (it's not your political free speech soapbox).

      There are plenty of people who have bought the book from Amazon, had time to actually read it and decided to leave a review. Not all of them are positive, but the barrier to entry (the cost of the book + time) does mean that people who review it are at least interested in the content.

      They are doing the same thing with Zoe Quinn's new book. Steam is doing something similar with game reviews, because people review bomb them in response to some random thing the developer posted on Twitter.

      • Isn't it trivial to only allow people who have purchased said product from Amazon to review said product (once)?

        • It is, Amazon has instead chosen to mark those reviews from people to whom they know they have sold the product differently from other reviews, because they want reviews even if they are of low-quality because they can point to $BIG_NUM of reviews and say "look how credible we are"

      • Amazon has been deleting negative reviews from people it can't verify have bought the book from it.

        What exactly is your basis for saying that? Here are a few samples from the currently surviving verified negative reviews:

        By BabaLa on September 14, 2017
        Format: Kindle Edition | Verified Purchase
        I wrote a verified purchase review and it has been deleted 3 times. If Amazon doesn't like what we have to say, don't ask for input.

        By The Just-About-Average Ms. M on September 17, 2017
        Format: Kindle Edition | Verified Purchase
        I purchased this book four days ago in the Kindle format. My review was of the book specifically and not the author. And like the review of a number of other folks, mine has been deleted four times.

        And here are examples of non-verified, positive reviews that are still up:

        By thomas on September 19, 2017
        Format: Hardcover
        Great book, better than exoected

        By tweetdeck on September 17, 2017
        Format: Hardcover
        Best book ever

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Interesting that the people who complained are both reading the Kindle edition. Maybe Amazon just looked at the logs from their Kindles and noticed that they hadn't actually read it...

          • Nah, just happened to be the first couple I grabbed. Here's an example hardcover one:

            By shawn seekings on September 18, 2017
            Format: Hardcover | Verified Purchase
            Like everyone else who wrote a real review, before deleted, this book sucks. It really sucks. It really really sucks.

            And think about it: were your theory true (that human beings at Amazon are spending lots of cycles trying to determine which reviews are real), then that simply underscores the fact that there's one set of rules for the Clintons and another set for the rest of us.

            On a higher level, the fact that this hand-pruning resulted in 90% of 1200+ reviews being 5-star--by far the highest percentage I've ever seen on Amazon for a pro

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • The big difference is that a private organization can only say "you can't publish that here", while government censorship would be "you can't publish that". A private organization can't stop you from saying what you like.

    • (This post is not about these reviews, it is about censorship and corporations in general.)

      Remember, if a company is restricting the speech of certain people at the secret behest of government or government officials, it is not censorship because a company is doing it.

      This is why we, the people, need to continually ensure there remain ways and methods for governments to employ censorship. It is in our best interests to undermine our own rights and allow governments to do whatever they want without recourse

    • No, they deleted reviews written by people who hadn't actually *bought* the book. You can't have read the book if you didn't *buy* it. No idea how this flamebait got modded up.

      • No, they deleted reviews written by people who hadn't actually *bought* the book. You can't have read the book if you didn't *buy* it.

        I've read lots of books I haven't bought from Amazon. If your only access to books is through Amazon, you need to go upstairs and ask Mom and Dad about something called "a library" or "a bookstore". My county library even loans out electronic versions of books!

        No idea how this flamebait got modded up.

        Because Amazon should be clear and consistent in allowing only people who have bought a book from Amazon to write reviews for all books, or not try claiming it is removing reviews for only some books because the reviewer didn't buy a copy from Amazon.

        • For some products, I imagine that they will take whatever reviews they can get. There may just not be enough verified purchasers out there. After all if Amazon just started carrying a product, they won't have any verified purchasers. So they have to accept any reviews. Once there are enough sales (assuming the initial reviews were positive enough to generate any), they may want to switch to verified purchaser reviews. Hillary has people who love her (and buy the book) and who hate here (who would never

          • There may just not be enough verified purchasers out there.

            If nobody is buying it, then why do they need reviews to assist people in buying it?

            If you allow anybody to review, the reviews will just be 48.2 positive to 46.1 negative and not based at all on the content.

            Which is kinda why I said that they ought not to be doing the thing that is causing their problem to start with, and then blaming others for the problem they created.

            If you're looking to *sell* books, then whenever you have an author about whom people have strong opinions, you want to restrict reviews to those who actually purchased the book because

            No, you want to restrict reviews to positive reviews, because any negatives may very well cause someone not to buy it from you, especially if you assume that anyone who bought the book and was allowed to review it was already a sycophant and if there were any ne

            • If nobody is buying it, then why do they need reviews to assist people in buying it?

              It's not that nobody is buying it. Let's say that Amazon starts carrying a brand of dog food that was previously available exclusively at Whole Foods. Now you can order it online. Plenty of people have been *buying* it, but they don't have any verified purchasers because people haven't been buying it from Amazon. Amazon doesn't grab reviews from third-party sites, you have to write them at Amazon. So day one, it is a new product that has been popular other places, but never sold on Amazon. For those f

              • For those first reviews, you have to accept whoever writes them.

                But not, apparently, if they are negative.

                Once you have a large enough set of reviews, you may want to drop the non-verified reviews.

                Amazon is also dropping verified purchaser reviews.

                It might add some credibility to the review system to be more consistent,

                Do you think?

                but in the end, they are *not* trying to provide the most helpful reviews.

                Which is another strike against the credibility of the system.

                They are trying to provide the set of reviews that are most helpful to the *pool of potential purchasers*.

                In this case, they are trying to provide reviews that are most helpful to the seller. I.e., Amazon.

      • You may wish to expand the thread and read it again, in its entirety.

        They are deleting negative reviews from verified purchasers. In at least one case, from a verified purchaser, they deleted their review three times.

        I'm not actually sure of your motivations to make that claim, when we can see the truth.

        Note: I have no opinion on the book and would have preferred HRC be elected over Trump.

        • Note: I have no opinion on the book and would have preferred HRC be elected over Trump.

          I want to get a copy just to see if she really did try blaming her loss on the teenaged girl that her assistant's husband (Weiner) was caught sexting.

        • I did expand and re-read the thread. I see that the OP is making that claim but with no citation. I tried to Google a source to see if the claim was true or false as that's not what I had read in the news. I was unable to find a source backing up the original claim. So if the original statement is true, I'd love to see a source and would be happy to stand corrected. But as of now, there is only a claim and all of the sources I can find say that Amazon is only deleting non-verified purchasers.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by KGIII ( 973947 )

            Click on this link:

            https://www.amazon.com/What-Ha... [amazon.com]

            Read the reviews. Another poster above quoted some of them, verbatim, for every situation imaginable. If you'd expanded the thread and highlighted just one of those quotes and searched, you'd have been able to verify they're telling the truth.

            Yeah, it required some effort - highlighting their quote and clicking search. That's exactly how I found it. Note the very first review:

            https://www.amazon.com/gp/cust... [amazon.com]

            That's a verified purchase. As it's a Kindle edi

            • Until you posted, there's not a single link in the entire thread. No, I didn't read the reviews to look for deleted reviews. Not a single news outlet has written about this in a week. https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com] Amazon is sticking to their story and nobody with circulation has challenged them on it. I don't know why. Amazon also lets people vote on whether reviews are helpful, a form of meta-moderating. But that's probably falling down as well. Amazon is somewhat of the only moderator here and

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by KGIII ( 973947 )

                No links but there were quotes. Just highlight 'em, right click, and select search - I'm pretty sure that works in every modern browser on every modern OS.

                And, mostly I'm just giving you shit and trying to encourage you to actually do some research on your own - it's better than just taking news as presented. No harm intended, or anything like that.

                I'm not sure why they're doing this. I don't think it's a great conspiracy or anything. It is obviously biased and, presumably, that's intentional.

                They took revi

                • Technically, we have claims that people posted verified negative reviews and had them deleted. It's easy to make claims like that even if they aren't true, and a lot of anti-Clinton people are well known to lie without regard to the facts.

                  Given that, I'm interested in the fact that no real news organization has covered it.

  • Don't blame the mirror (Score:5, Insightful)

    by next_ghost ( 1868792 ) on Wednesday September 20, 2017 @09:59AM (#55231525)
    The algorithm isn't faulty. It works exactly as designed. But it is also completely blind to the deeper meaning of the result. Take this as a cautionary tale against all software-augmented decision making. Software is not inherently fair and impartial. It just blindly follows a rigid set of rules that don't include any moral values. And sometimes, the developer may have even made the rules intentionally malicious.

  • Sounds like it's working (Score:3)

    by burtosis ( 1124179 ) on Wednesday September 20, 2017 @10:01AM (#55231533)
    To be fair, it sounds like yet another case of pattern matching without human level oversight working too well. If you want actual bugs look at the fake baby registry emails [mashable.com]sent out yesterday in mass.

  • I went on Amazon ... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    ... to buy a Swastika armband. And it suggested butt-plugs as 'frequently bought together'.

  • I'm of mixed feelings about this because my first thought was that in a free capitalistic society, shouldn't people be able to buy whatever they want and shouldn't companies be allowed make it easier for them so they get the sale?

    Thinking about the *real* world however, this is clearly a missed opportunity for law-enforcement/intelligence agencies to get a list of potential terrorists from Amazon. Not only do you have the opportunity to request (hopefully with the approval of a judge) not only the name of

  • But will Amazon's review of the website be deleted since it is not a verified purchase?

  • If we know someone is building bombs by what they are buying and we disrupt the algorithm from suggesting the next items they need I think we are wasting an opportunity. For instance, the algorithm could be set to record, track, and alert law enforcement when these items are purchased together. Duh?

    In addition, how about sending faulty items? Maybe the ordered containers where the bomb reactants mix is clandestinely impregnated with a chemical agent that reduces the expected explosion to deflagration. I

  • Now with Amazon Prime and One-Click Ordering your IED gets next-day shipping for free!

    • Yea, but will you deliver it to my "friend's" house for me? Just bury it in the road out front.

      • Sorry, Amazon can't offer you that service, but we're more than happy to deliver your 'shipment' to your 'friend' by DRONE.
        • Amazon will happily deliver your shipment to a locker in any of a number of semi-public places. Unfortunately for me, the closest ones are all 45 miles away...

      • Sorry, Amazon can't offer you that service, but we're more than happy to deliver your 'shipment' to your 'friend' by DRONE.

        ..oh, and would you like a text message sent to your phone (*ahem* any phone you like) when it's 'delivered'?

    • Can we suggest a Dash button for your IED purchase?

      Running low? Just hit the button and your frequently ordered item will be there in a Dash!

      Think Amazon for all your Jihadi needs.

  • Something similar happened when I bought duct tape (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I bought a few rolls of duct tape from amazon and it suggested cable ties, rope and heavy duty tie down loops. How many people need to buy a full kidnap kit from amazon for this to register as "Items frequently bought together"?

  • Isn't that interesting? #goforkenda

  • Yep, anyone with a good fifth grade education can build a bomb. There is only one answer ! Absolute ignorance. somewhere around the fifth grade bright students are able to put together various facts that enable bomb building and frankly they don't even have to buy anything suspicious. And Lord help you if you have an eighth grader with a strong interest in chemistry. The only answer is to keep all people in absolute ignorance and spy on them in their homes relentlessly.

  • Finally one supplier cares about what the demand side is actually demanding and of course those damn commies have to put a stop to it!

    Stop interfering with free trade, dammit!

  • It is fun when you look at items like precision scales to see all the drug-related stuff being suggested. Usually that's for cannabis, but not only.

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