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Researchers propose a new approach for dismantling online hate networks
How do you get rid of hate speech on social platforms? Until now, companies have generally tried two approaches. One is to ban individual users who are caught posting abuse; the other is to ban the large pages and groups where people who practice hate speech organize and promote their noxious views.
But what if this approach is counterproductive? That's the argument in an intriguing new paper out today in Nature from Neil Johnson, a professor of physics at George Washington University, and researchers at GW and the University of Miami. The paper, "Hidden resilience and adaptive dynamics of the global online hate ecology," explores how hate groups organize on Facebook and Russian social network VKontakte — and how they resurrect themselves after platforms ban them.
As Noemi Derzsy writes in her summary in Nature:
Johnson et al. show that online hate groups are organized in highly resilient clusters. The users in these clusters are not geographically localized, but are globally interconnected by 'highways' that facilitate the spread of online hate across different countries, continents and languages. When these clusters are attacked — for example, when hate groups are removed by social-media platform administrators (Fig. 1) — the clusters rapidly rewire and repair themselves, and strong bonds are made between clusters, formed by users shared between them, analogous to covalent chemical bonds. In some cases, two or more small clusters can even merge to form a large cluster, in a process the authors liken to the fusion of two atomic nuclei. Using their mathematical model, the authors demonstrated that banning hate content on a single platform aggravates online hate ecosystems and promotes the creation of clusters that are not detectable by platform policing (which the authors call 'dark pools'), where hate content can thrive unchecked.
[...] The researchers advocate a four-step approach to reduce the influence of hate networks.
- Identify smaller, more isolated clusters of hate speech and ban those users instead.
- Instead of wiping out entire small clusters, ban small samples from each cluster at random. This would theoretically weaken the cluster over time without inflaming the entire hive.
- Recruit users opposed to hate speech to engage with members of the larger hate clusters directly. (The authors explain: "In our data, some white supremacists call for a unified Europe under a Hitler-like regime, and others oppose a united Europe. Similar in-fighting exists between hate-clusters of the KKK movement. Adding a third population in a pre-engineered format then allows the hate-cluster extinction time to be manipulated globally.)
- Identify hate groups with competing views and pit them against one another, in an effort to sow doubt in the minds of participants.
Hidden resilience and adaptive dynamics of the global online hate ecology[$], Nature (DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1494-7)
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Tuesday August 27 2019, @08:34PM (6 children)
For reference this is the amount of free speech you get if you're not white: banned because someone said something deemed politically anti-american [thecrimson.com]
That's the extent to which the right protects free speech, open government censorship.
(Score: 3, Informative) by jmorris on Tuesday August 27 2019, @09:12PM (5 children)
So you really can't see the difference between keeping suspected terrorists out of the country and Americans exercising their inalienable rights? Ok, I think I see your problem. Recto cranial inversion.
Did CBP make the wrong call? The article doesn't come close to providing enough detail to form an opinion. Does SBP have both the duty and the lawful authority to make the call? Beyond debate.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 27 2019, @11:00PM (2 children)
No, because if you say you're in favor of the principle of freedom of speech, you can't be in favor of banning people from countries for their speech. Also, the first amendment does not say that free speech applies only to Americans, so you're wrong there too.
You stand for nothing and have no principles.
(Score: 2, Troll) by jmorris on Tuesday August 27 2019, @11:21PM (1 child)
Not at all. The guy has the right to be a terrorist supporter in Lebanon. We do not have the obligation to admit a likely enemy into our country. The Constitution is not a suicide pact.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 29 2019, @01:31AM
But, we already let jmorris in. So not fair, really.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by ikanreed on Wednesday August 28 2019, @03:59PM (1 child)
I can see the difference in that this kid did nothing wrong, and your opinions should result in you being in a hole in the ground.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Wednesday August 28 2019, @07:25PM
Kid did nothing wrong. Put jmorris in the ground.