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posted by martyb on Friday September 09 2016, @06:23AM   Printer-friendly
from the who's-targetted-next? dept.

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.


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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by Thexalon on Friday September 09 2016, @03:20PM

    by Thexalon (636) on Friday September 09 2016, @03:20PM (#399641)

    I agree with your basic thinking: Once an ideology decides that it's OK to kill anybody who disagrees with them, all bets are off. And all people across the spectrum should condemn that idea within their own groups.

    What is also true, right now, in the US, is that the population of right-wingers who are in that space ideologically is much larger than the population of left-wingers in that same space. That is because the right wing currently does not have its leadership condemning violence, and in fact much of the right wing leadership is currently advocating carrying the tools of violence wherever you go and being prepared to use them at any time. The left wing has been there before (e.g. John Brown's raids in the 1850's, or the Black Panthers), but isn't there now, probably because they are having significant success in turning their preferred policies into reality using the legal political process. And I'm not just talking about the mild-mannered hippie vegan types: I've hung out with some guys billing themselves as the Revolutionary Communist Party, and even they aren't advocating, say, rounding up the Waltons and sending them to the firing squad.

    --
    The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
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  • (Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 09 2016, @04:16PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 09 2016, @04:16PM (#399668)

    Of the 3 most recent mass shootings in America, 2 were Islamic individuals lashing out against perceived sleights to their religious views. Views which the left, traditionally the home of secularity, have been bizarrely embracing. One of the shooters was a registered democrat with very strong ties to the democratic party. The other was a person who was driven by the Black Lives Matter movement to begin murdering police, something which many would later applaud on social media. On the less dire scenario you have left leaning individuals assaulting people at political rallies and aggressively working to suppress dissenting views from being heard by any means possible. Of course on the other side you also have the Planned Parenthood shooter, the black church shooting, and so on.

    Even as an extremely left leaning individual, I'm becoming rather jaded from the one-sided focus on extremism in the United States. In many ways I think this might even be working to further radicalize people as it fulfills their paranoia and suspicions of some sort of government and media conspiracy to frame all violence as being right winged. In any case going hard in one direction almost always comes back to bite you. Germany is an obvious example. Their country now seems to be regressing rapidly towards a more ethnic nationalistic view. Things need to be done in moderation with consideration, and condemnation as appropriate, without bias. This action, and nearly actions of government-corporation coplayers in the US as of late have come with extreme bias. Newton's Third applies in more ways than just physics.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 09 2016, @06:31PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 09 2016, @06:31PM (#399744)

      > Of the 3 most recent mass shootings in America, 2 were Islamic individuals lashing out against perceived sleights to their religious views.
      > One of the shooters was a registered democrat with very strong ties to the democratic party. The other was a person who was driven by
      > the Black Lives Matter movement to begin murdering police, something which many would later applaud on social media

      Nope. Not even close to true.

      https://www.massshootingtracker.org/data [massshootingtracker.org]

      > Even as an extremely left leaning individual,

      Congratulations you are no longer on the left, if you really ever were.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 09 2016, @10:02PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 09 2016, @10:02PM (#399809)

        You might want to be a little more specific with your links. There's nothing at your link to support your bare assertion. Now, if your link has a link to the evidence you wanted to present, I suggest using that last one next time.

  • (Score: 2) by shortscreen on Friday September 09 2016, @06:07PM

    by shortscreen (2252) on Friday September 09 2016, @06:07PM (#399736) Journal

    I agree with your basic thinking: Once an ideology decides that it's OK to kill anybody who disagrees with them, all bets are off.

    There's an ideology that openly embraces this idea. It's called authoritarianism. And unfortunately, it's a lot more popular than what TFA is about.

  • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday September 10 2016, @01:26AM

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Saturday September 10 2016, @01:26AM (#399872) Journal

    How 'bout Hearst, and Ayers? The Unabomber. The left has it's share of violent extremists in this country.

    • (Score: 2) by Thexalon on Saturday September 10 2016, @12:50PM

      by Thexalon (636) on Saturday September 10 2016, @12:50PM (#399973)

      Hearst and Ayers did their thing decades ago, which as I said was a period in which the left had the same problem of violent extremists.

      As for the Unabomber, I don't think I'd call him a left-winger - he spends a lot of his manifesto criticizing the left wing folks and makes it pretty clear he doesn't see himself as one of them.

      --
      The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.