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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: 3, Interesting) by tfried on Friday September 09 2016, @06:29PM

    by tfried (5534) on Friday September 09 2016, @06:29PM (#399743)

    What you are suggesting, and what Google is doing, is the wrong solution. It shouldn't be: "we don't like what this group thinks, so let's sneak some specific links into their results".

    Have I really been this unclear? Sneaking in links is precisely what I am trying to avoid in my proposal: Suppose you're googling for "holocaust lie". I suggest you should get all your denial hits completely unfiltered, but next to that you'd get a separate column - clearly labelled - presenting the other side.

    To some degree this would still present the search result in a relatively neutral way. Also, in many cases it may actually correspond well to what you were actually trying to search. Perhaps you were in fact looking specifically for the counter-argument side, but did not phrase your search well enough. This could potentially be useful for a much wider range of topics, too. Consider undergoing some controversial surgery, for instance? How about you get the best approving, and the best disapproving hits side-by-side? Want to read up on both sides of the climate debate? Based on user clicks, cross-linking patterns, and some keywords, a search algorithm might actually be able to give you a nice two-column view for that, too.

    (I am also well aware of quite a number of weaknesses in that proposal, feel free to spell them out. But hey, I thought it might spark further ideas.)

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