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Google's chairman Eric Schmidt has written an op-ed to The New York Times calling for tools to disrupt speech on social media:
Technology companies should work on tools to disrupt terrorism - such as creating a hate speech "spell-checker" - Google's chairman Eric Schmidt has said. Writing in The New York Times, Mr Schmidt said using technology to automatically filter-out extremist material would "de-escalate tensions on social media" and "remove videos before they spread".
His essay comes as presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton again called on Silicon Valley to help tackle terrorism, specifically seeking tools to combat the so-called Islamic State. "We need to put the great disrupters at work at disrupting ISIS," she said during a speech in Washington DC.
From the NYT editorial:
In Myanmar, connectivity fans the flames of violence against the Rohingya, the minority Muslim population. In Russia, farms of online trolls systematically harass democratic voices and spread false information on the Internet and on social media. And in the Middle East, terrorists use social media to recruit new members. In particular, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria has harnessed social media to appeal to disaffected young people, giving them a sense of belonging and direction that they are not getting anywhere else. The militants' propaganda videos are high on style and production value. They're slick and marketable. In short, they are deluding some people to believe that living a life fueled by hatred and violence is actually ... cool.
This is where our own relationship with the Internet, and with technology, must be examined more closely. The Internet is not just a series of tubes transmitting information from place to place, terminal to terminal, without regard for those typing on their keyboards or reading on their screens. The people who use any technology are the ones who need to define its role in society. Technology doesn't work on its own, after all. It's just a tool. We are the ones who harness its power.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by anubi on Wednesday December 09 2015, @05:24AM
Didn't Hitler appeal to the German people the same way? German people in debt to the banking elite? If I understood the history right, masses of German people were in debt, and Hitler offered them a way out of it by a form of ... I guess we would call it "eminent domain". The existing owners were not going down without a fight, so Hitler provided one.
The French had the same problem earlier and had to do the same.
A distressed public is politically unstable. When they have nothing left to lose, other leaders who give the illusion they will take better care of them will take their allegiance.
Although some of us think its great most of us are in debt up to our necks, all this indebtedness has a way of explosively releasing itself.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Wednesday December 09 2015, @06:10AM
Germany itself was saddled with huge war reparation payments, and had huge portions of its industry carted off by just about everybody as reparations. If the citizens were in debt it was probably from buying and importing replacement kit to get their farms and industry back together.
Hitler offered more in the way of repaired pride after the humiliating terms of surrender they were forced to suffer at the end of the war. He defied the allies and started building an army and navy playing fast and loose armistice terms, because he knew he could get away with it.
What ever the reason, the German people did lap it up.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Informative) by FatPhil on Wednesday December 09 2015, @09:08AM
And from what I've learnt of history, this tells me that others will lap up the modern equivalents too.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Hairyfeet on Wednesday December 09 2015, @09:14PM
Yeah I can't remember which leader it was (maybe Hoover) but when looking at how nasty the Treaty of Versailles was said along the lines of "All we have done is buy 20 years" which was almost exactly right. I think that is why we didn't go out of our way to humiliate Japan after the war (I remember my great uncle saying he had to order all his men to remove the emperor's seal from all war booty as it was seen as a great humiliation) because we didn't want to make the same mistakes that was done in 1919.
As for why they lapped it up? My grandfather was in the trenches in Europe in WWII and they used to listen to Hitler on the radio. He said even though he didn't speak a lick of German at the right moments you wanted to go "sieg heil!" because he had this way of building a cadence that made you want to join in. He said they'd laugh at propaganda like Axis Sally but every time Hitler was on the troops would get a sour look, as they knew he could build the kind of cult of personality with his charisma that would keep the war going to the bitter end.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday December 09 2015, @08:47AM
Because it's so much easier and cheaper to break winds... errr... I mean... use propaganda and censorship than it is to "re-affect" those young people and give them a constructive sense of life.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 09 2015, @05:17PM
Isn't trump doing that now? He is only repeating what he hears. He is stating things that appeal to the disaffected, disallusioned, ignorant and fearful people and getting great results, just like similar demagogues of the past.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 09 2015, @06:25PM
The recipe for losing a republic and gaining a tyranny hasn't changed much in thousands of years. When a large number of people perceive themselves as poor and others as rich, you will end up with social unrest that can manifest as class struggle, racial hatred, an Arab Spring, a riot, a civil war -- at the bottom of all of them is money.
Today's PEGIDA movement in Germany is strong only in the East, where the people don't feel that they got equal treatment in unification with the West and blame their higher unemployment and lower standard of living on a Berlin that doesn't care about them -- but suddenly does care about importing foreigners. The FN in France capitalizes on the crumbling French economy. Trump rails against Mexicans, Muslims, anyone vaguely foreign, since citizens feel that they're on the losing end of a deal now being offered to foreigners. Same story. It's about money in the end.
Fix the economy and reduce inequality between the rich and the poor, and populism will not be a problem.