A new tool searches your LinkedIn connections for people who are mentioned in the Epstein files, just in case you don’t, understandably, want anything to do with them on the already deranged social network.
404 Media tested the tool, called EpsteIn—as in, a mash up of Epstein and LinkedIn—and it appears to work.
“I found myself wondering whether anyone had mapped Epstein’s network in the style of LinkedIn—how many people are 1st/2nd/3rd degree connections of Jeffrey Epstein?” Christopher Finke, the creator of the tool, told 404 Media in an email. “Smarter programmers than me have already built tools to visualize that, but I couldn’t find anything that would show the overlap between my network and his.”
- Archive: http://archive.today/AIkL2
- Github: https://github.com/cfinke/EpsteIn
We need to be careful in how we view the latest batch from the files. They contain lots of names of people who were not involved in the least. Bilbo Baggins and Punxsutawney Phil are in there. Lots of celebrities are in there simply because they’re referenced in an email, while they had no contact with Epstein knowledge of what was happening.
And if we’re too aggressive in how we react to people’s names popping up in searches, it gives cover to those who were complicit.
Not Punxsatawney Phil! Aside from his short rivalry with Murray over the starring role in Groundhog Day, he’s a good guy!
From a distance, it’s very hard to tell if it’s two consenting hobbits or if one is a child. It’s easy for them to find themselves on the list, poor Bilbo.
And how old even in a child hobbit? 60?
I believe they reach adulthood in their mid to late thirties. Merry and Pippin are technically in the equivalent of their late teens when they head off with Frodo in FotR
One of the commenters on the site did point out that it’s a defamation lawsuit waiting to happen.
Though defamation requires the claim to be both a lie, and made publicly (and have caused “legally redressable injury”, whatever that means, IANAL). The tool needs to be run locally, and specifically tells you that it’s searching by name and that others with the same name will be found in the results, and that’s why it gives the context and lists where in the files it came up.
So the tool itself most likely isn’t defamatory, but anyone that uses is better be damn sure that they have the correct person if they start publicly talking or writing about what it finds.