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Nami LaChance writes at The Intercept that a google-incubated program that targets potential ISIS members with deradicalizing content will soon be used to target violent right-wing extremists in North America. Using research and targeted advertising, the initiative by London-based startup Moonshot CVE and Google's Jigsaw technology incubator targets potentially violent Jihadis and directs them to a YouTube channel with videos that refute ISIS propaganda. In the pilot program countering ISIS, the so-called Redirect Method collected the metadata of 320,000 individuals over the course of eight weeks, using 1,700 keywords, and served them advertisements that led them to the videos.
"I think this is an extremely promising method," says Richard Stengel, U.S. Undersecretary of State for public diplomacy and public affairs. In the ISIS pilot program, the YouTube channel pulls preexisting videos that, according to Yasmin Green, the head of research and development for Jigsaw, "refute ISIS's messaging." One video is from a woman who secretly filmed her life in ISIS-controlled Raqqa. Another shows young people in Mosul, their faces obscured by keffiyehs for their protection, talking about life under the Islamic State. "The branding philosophy for the entire pilot project was not to appear judgmental or be moralistic, but really to pique interest of individuals who have questions, questions that are being raised and answered by the Islamic State."
Ross Frenett, co-founder of Moonshot, says his company and Jigsaw are now working with funding from private groups to target other violent extremists, including the hard right in America. "Our efforts during phase two, when we're going to focus on the violent far right in America, will be very much focused on the small element of those that are violent. The interesting thing about how they behave is they're a little bit more brazen online these days than ISIS fan boys," says Frenett.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by aristarchus on Friday September 09 2016, @07:01AM
Oh My Gawd! I just knew this was inevitable! The SJWs are gonna get all up in our justice! For example, you may have heard of the Coward James Yeager. Yes, I call him coward, even though he threatens to "break" anyone who call hims that, because the evidence is out there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5KPr53rSe4 [youtube.com] (why do they have so much tissue on the dashboard?) . But more for his rant where he said that he would just have to start killing people if Obama started to propose gun control legislation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kv4E7eDdVzg [youtube.com] First, Obama did no such thing. Second, Yeager's lawyer got him to walk back his statement, which just proves that he is a lawyer-whipped pussy who could never stand up in a real fire-fight! Yeager! You are a coward! A whimp! A Republican! A complete and total jmorris!
So, my point. If we could possibly educate those who might be attracted to extremism, if we could deter those who might want to take "training" at Yeager's facility (the "bunking" arrangement raise questions) or with Blackwater or "Amway for Mercenaries", (look it up, I can't do all the work for you), so much the better. Better to educate someone than to allow them to go all libertarian and explosives, which they will eventually have to go, if they are libertarian, since there is no connection to reality possible for them.
(Score: 3, Funny) by aristarchus on Friday September 09 2016, @08:57AM
Butt, I feel a movement coming on! Finally, a connection with reality, even if it is only plumbing.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by redbear762 on Friday September 09 2016, @02:57PM
As a Veteran, Infantryman and DoD contractor myself, I saw nothing to indicate that Yeager did anything more than seek cover and return fire. Frankly, in a line of *unarmored* vehicles getting to the side of the road in absence of limited cover such as the engine blocks there weren't a whole lot of other choices and I would have done what I was taught at Benning - seek cover and return fire.
The Monday morning quarterbacking by people who haven't had to dodge bullets for a living is endemic on the 'net and your 'evidence' is subjective at best; unless you've been under fire yourself my best advise is go sit down and have a giant cup of STFU.
The post-mortem on this has been done by people who were there at the scene as well as other professionals in PSD and Security and overall Yeager has received a 'go'.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 09 2016, @04:32PM
Please provide citations for all the libertarians who've gone this route so far. There are currently over 400k register libertarians in the U.S., so surely it's happened by now. Unless Google has saved us already...
P.S. - I don't think 'libertarian' means what you think it means.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 09 2016, @06:24PM
Card-carrying Libertarian here. It's surprising how many people hold views that are in line with the Libertarian party. Most people want limited government and fiscal responsibility. A lot of people don't care what their neighbor does in his bedroom or what houseplants he grows, but the USA still has a strong moral busybody tradition so I don't think I can say "most" safely there. Also a lot of people don't think we should be Team America World Police.
Somehow it's been mistaken for anarchy. People who say "taxes are theft" are closer to anarchists than libertarians, and certainly not Libertarians (big L vs. small l). I suppose it doesn't help that the "taxes are theft" crowd calls itself libertarian.
Anybody feel free to flame me if libertarian really has come to mean anarchy, and I missed it.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 09 2016, @09:10PM
I agree. Most people do not seem to have taken the time to examine the premises for their beliefs, particularly the "moral busybodies". The relevant premise here is the nature of government's authority: most people I talk to about this simply describe it as "the way things are" or "something we 'just have to do'". What is NOT examined is the vehicle by which US government actually operates, which is lethal force. "Do or die" is the true motto of US government. Thankfully, I believe that most people strongly tend not to want to harm other people (based on variations of Stanley Milgram's experiments described in the book Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View where the authority-figure was removed from the test subject) . This tendancy is generally only overcome by a looming authoritarian presence, and/or by having obscure middlemen do the harm to others out of sight.
Of course, once someone examines the premises of US government and discovers its means of operation, one then may also start to wonder about the actual mechanism behind the force-based means agents of government use to obtain funding.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 09 2016, @10:57PM
...One then may also start to wonder about the actual mechanism behind the force-based means agents of government use to obtain funding.
One may wonder, certainly. The free exchange of ideas is how we improve. I'm simply not bright enough to figure out something better than taxation to fund the basic necessities of civilization, but I feel calling it theft is being intellectually dishonest. Taxation without representation is absolutely theft. In a democratic republic, we all ultimately decide how much gets collected and how that money gets spent. The people of the USA have collectively decided that a number of things I do not believe are necessities, in fact are.
I hope we're not debating about the level of overreach, and I eternally hope for the people to see the light. For example, I'm not happy paying for somebody else's meds that my biology and lifestyle do not require, and they're not happy paying for my meds that their biology and lifestyle do not require. Both a libertarian and an anarchist solution would neatly solve that problem.
However, I do enjoy having armed thugs that are (ideally) accountable to the public to keep the peace. Those armed thugs are who make the exercise of my property rights possible in a very real and practical sense. I can see preventing the government from providing any other service, even fire rescue. I cannot see how it works at all without the armed thugs who we all are coerced into paying.
How do you get away from the necessary evil of needing armed thugs? What would you propose as an alternative to force-based tax enforcement?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 10 2016, @12:30AM
Neither am I very smart; I've just spent enough time brute-forcing the matter to where I can call a spade a spade. I just want the US Constitution followed - who is representing me? (No, the bald-faced lies of Wickard vs Filburn, National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius aka Obamacare do not count if even an idiot like me can see through them.) Further, I suggest that taxation even with representation is wrong, and the only proper means to fund ANYthing is completely voluntarily. We had such a plan in place for seven years, and it worked remarkably well overall - it was called the Articles of Confederation, and the fedgov was funded, effectively, by donations. Granted, the fedgov wasn't happy with the amount of money it was getting in donations, so for that and other reasons a Convention was called to amend the Articles and - whoops! - we actually got an entirely different federal government out of it known as the US Constitution, but that's history for you.
In a Constitutional Republic (the legal version of the USA), the power of government is determined from the law (Constitution), and the law from the people. How many people do I need to have in my kidnap-and-rape gang before it becomes "legit"/legal/acceptable/etc.: five? Ten? One million? 165 million? 50%+1? I propose instead that the power of delegation of power by the people is not multiplicative, but instead such delegated authority cannot exceed its source, and that source is whatever authority a single individual possesses. If it is wrong for me to do a given thing, it's still wrong if I delegate that same task to someone else. How a mugger is supposed to make a living without mugging people is a tricky question I may not be smart enough to answer - it doesn't change the fact that the first step is to stop mugging people!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 10 2016, @09:02PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 11 2016, @01:02AM
If you like the ideas, feel free to "steal" them and throw them back into the marketplace of ideas yourself!
Soylent News seems really nice as a place to bash the rough edges and flaws off of a wide variety of ideas. Refine them here even at 0, then spread them elsewhere!