SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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: 5, Insightful) by ikanreed on Tuesday August 27 2019, @03:46PM (11 children)
That's the thing, though, even "center" right ideology is built on massive, disproportionate retaliation for the barest of slight. With the fucking nazis, you're going to provoke a retaliation with attempted murder if you merely counter-protest "no, don't build concentration camps" at a hate rally. There's no sufficiently reasonable position to take where they won't have Ted Cruz types proposing "ban antifa" legislation even as they fucking slaughter hundreds.
Jmorris absolutely detests the idea of free speech. No question.
(Score: 2, Troll) by Mer on Tuesday August 27 2019, @05:14PM (4 children)
Both camps have mall ninjas being violent vandals in the streets. The reasonable people that want to live in peace don't go to protests, because those are the opposite of peaceful.
Shut up!, he explained.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by ikanreed on Tuesday August 27 2019, @05:30PM (3 children)
The people who were quietly praying at synagogues and mosques and were fucking killed by radicalized morons just wanted a peaceful life too. Turns out having a far right hate machine isn't compatible with that.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Mer on Tuesday August 27 2019, @05:48PM (2 children)
Attempting murder with blunt objects isn't less morally bankrupt than attempting murder with guns.
Shut up!, he explained.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Tuesday August 27 2019, @05:50PM (1 child)
Right which is why you should arrest all proud boys, patriot prayer, and associated organization members.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 28 2019, @12:44AM
Arresting people for their association and thought crimes. Is why some people call you fascist still a mystery to you?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday August 27 2019, @07:39PM
And then you put them in jail for life. It's a solved problem.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 27 2019, @10:04PM (4 children)
You are revealing the stupidity that is the left-right spectrum. The Republican platform originally, and currently, does not want to use race or identity for any public policy. They want equal opportunity, and a legal system that is blind to your identity. The Democrats originally wanted to use public policy to oppress blacks, now they want to use public policy to attempt to create equal outcomes. Which of course fails, because race quotas fail to address the cause of the outcome disparity. Take minimum wage. Democrats originally created this to price black labor out of the white union labor market, now they re-branded it as a living wage. Well, no. Unemployment, or an income of $0.00, will always be the true minimum wage.
Don't be absurd. Someone stating "no, don't build concentration camps" did not cause violence. There is no shortage of videos showing Antifa provoking and hurting anyone who does not agree with their totalitarian ideology fast enough.
Antifa might not be fascist by definition, but it is a form of totalitarianism, which is very much like the people who they oppose. Don't make excuses for them unless you condone totalitarianism.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 27 2019, @11:23PM (3 children)
No, they just want tax cuts for the mega-rich and corporations, who have all the money and opportunities in the world. There is no equality of opportunity as long as we have massive wealth inequality and legalized political bribery. Funny how in Trump's tax cuts for the rich, the tiny tax cuts for people who are not rich expire in about 10 years, but not the tax cuts for the wealthy. Trump is just the same, and oftentimes even worse, than the rest of the corrupt scumbags in our government.
It's like you've never heard that the Republican and Democratic parties swapped places over time. The Democratic Party of today is not the same as it was in the 1800s or even 1960s.
To the extent that it exists, Antifa's violence is bad. But, every organization that collects statistics about this sort of thing has found that right-wing violence is far more common than left-wing violence.
Oh, and the Democratic Party politicians are, by and large, not left-wing at all; they're center-right corporatists. There are only a few exceptions to that. When you argue against Democrats, you're mostly not arguing against the actual left at all.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 28 2019, @12:10AM (2 children)
Both parties are bought and paid for. They just have different ways of showing it. Wealth inequality is the natural result of freedom in a fair market. People do not have equal tolerances for risk, equal skills that are in demand, and equal motivation to put those skills to use. The pursuit of wealth equality creates equal poverty. You cannot legislate the creation of wealth, but you can let wealth creation do its thing. You can legislate poverty. All that takes is getting in the way of wealth creation, which happens when you try to create equal outcomes. You cannot make every runner in a race as fast as the fastest runner. But you can make the fastest runner slow down. Replace running with wealth creation, and you see the problem with this method.
"tax cuts for the mega-rich and corporations" In other words, not taxing the same money over and over again. Coming from a place of envy/jealousy does not create good public policy. Hating the rich does not mean that you love the poor. "Cutting off the nose to spite the face." Legalized political bribery is a problem, but I do not see Democrats fixing it. Have they proposed auditing contributions to spouses of public employees?
How many politicians swapped parties? Less than 5? The "parties swapped places" thing is a myth. What happened is that people started voting their economic interests instead of race. That required a change of strategy. The Democratic party is still, by definition, the mob rule party. By definition, mob rule does not protect minorities. So the modern Democratic party is a scam. If they cared about minorities as much as they say that they do, they would support a republican form of government, were a 51% vote cannot take people's rights away.
The only reason why the so called alt-right is on the "right" side of the political spectrum is based on how we count votes, not how compatible their ideology is. First-past-the-post vote counting requires strategic voting in order to not "throw away your vote" on a non-2-party party. If the political balance were different, the alt-right would be on the left side of the political spectrum.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 28 2019, @01:30PM (1 child)
It is understood that the democrats can count on the black vote while they provide free money to the community. And to keep them even more dependent, they'll let more illegals into the country to compete for their jobs.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 28 2019, @03:52PM
As Pittsburgh publisher Robert Vann advised fellow black voters, "My friends, go turn Lincoln's picture to the wall. That debt has been paid in full."
"Conservative opponents of government activism - on social and economic as well as racial issues - lined up under the Republican banner to oppose a viable but fragile black-white coalition loyal to a Democratic Party increasingly committed to New Deal-Great Society programs."
Yes, it looks like they abandoned the party of limited government and "equal under the law" for the party of big activist government. "Activist governments" easily fall to corruption and start working against the interest of the people. It is just too easy for powerful people to buy politicians. That is why government should be no larger/poweful than what people can keep track of and hold accountable.