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posted by chromas on Tuesday August 27 2019, @02:44PM   Printer-friendly
from the internet-hate-machine dept.

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.

  1. Identify smaller, more isolated clusters of hate speech and ban those users instead.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.)
  4. 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)


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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by ikanreed on Tuesday August 27 2019, @03:48PM (35 children)

    by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday August 27 2019, @03:48PM (#886145) Journal

    If you're a fucking nazi, I am right and you are wrong and have no place here. Same for monarchists or fascists or any other ideology that has the dismantling of freedom and equality as core ideological positions. Paradox of tolerance is long-since a solved problem, and it involves telling fascists to shut the fuck up.

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  • (Score: 2) by Mer on Tuesday August 27 2019, @04:08PM (5 children)

    by Mer (8009) on Tuesday August 27 2019, @04:08PM (#886155)

    But very few people are supporting ideologies that don't have the dismantling of freedom and equality as core ideological positions. Just because you bark at the obvious fascists doesn't prove you aren't one. In fact it's easy to have multiple autocratic factions, because they all want the same thing but a different guy on top.
    You can't say the means justifies the end when cutting back on liberty if the end is just picking a very slightly less evil.

    --
    Shut up!, he explained.
    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by ikanreed on Tuesday August 27 2019, @04:18PM (4 children)

      by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday August 27 2019, @04:18PM (#886163) Journal

      But that's just it, you only have to knock out the ideologies that inherently assert the absence of human rights, and that's the limit of curtailing liberty. Just the dumbfucks. It's a pretty good analog to taking freedom of movement from murderers, and you do the very sensible defense of freedom outside of evil fuckwits, at least until they're rehabilitated.

      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Mer on Tuesday August 27 2019, @04:41PM (3 children)

        by Mer (8009) on Tuesday August 27 2019, @04:41PM (#886185)

        And I see that the piece in the submission is against the human rights of association, communication and opinion.
        And yes, a private corpo isn't held to let you exert surch rights, but they go agaisnt the values of it.
        While a crushing majority of actors getting pinned as fascists are just like those corpos, not breaking the law but going agaisnt human rights values.
        Fascists have scarier values, information industry has scarier means.
        I haven't seen fascist terrorists innovate much since the days of bomb recipes being shared by textfiles, but I get daily news of GAFAMs inventing new surveilance technologies.

        --
        Shut up!, he explained.
        • (Score: 2) by ikanreed on Tuesday August 27 2019, @05:06PM (2 children)

          by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday August 27 2019, @05:06PM (#886205) Journal

          I don't want the government to do it. I want unelected antifa supersoldiers to do it.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 27 2019, @05:20PM (1 child)

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 27 2019, @05:20PM (#886221)

            Battling for the moral low ground, I see. Do the antifa supersoldiers get to be chemically enhanced too?

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 27 2019, @07:59PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 27 2019, @07:59PM (#886337)

              Enhanced with Protein-laced Milkshakes! If I were a Nazi today, I would be afraid, very afraid. And lonely, lonely and afraid. And Red-flagged. Lonely, afraid, and Red-flagged.

  • (Score: 4, Troll) by VLM on Tuesday August 27 2019, @04:09PM (14 children)

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday August 27 2019, @04:09PM (#886157)

    and it involves telling fascists to shut the fuck up.

    And carefully and methodically redefining fascist to mean, white, or male, or Christian, or straight, or pretty much any group that built western civilization.

    Remember, by "hate group" they mean groups that don't hate white people enough. They aren't fighting against hate, but fighting against not enough hate. Nothing to do with defunct political parties from the last century or supremacy or any of that.

    • (Score: 1, Flamebait) by ikanreed on Tuesday August 27 2019, @04:15PM (10 children)

      by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday August 27 2019, @04:15PM (#886160) Journal

      Shut the fuck up.

      • (Score: 4, Insightful) by VLM on Tuesday August 27 2019, @04:26PM (5 children)

        by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday August 27 2019, @04:26PM (#886173)

        Made my point perfectly. One side has no weapons left in the debate except civil repression, attacks, and violence.

        The new right is vibrant with fresh ideas and discussion, so the obvious subversive attack is censorship.

        In comparison, there's no point in trying to censor the left, that side is intellectually vacant at this point. What passes for discourse is virtue signalling.

        • (Score: 0, Redundant) by ikanreed on Tuesday August 27 2019, @05:10PM

          by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday August 27 2019, @05:10PM (#886209) Journal

          Counterpoint: shut the fuck up

        • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 27 2019, @05:11PM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 27 2019, @05:11PM (#886211)

          "The new right is vibrant with fresh ideas and discussion...."

          HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

          • (Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 27 2019, @05:24PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 27 2019, @05:24PM (#886226)

            COunterpoint: shut the fuck up

        • (Score: 2) by cmdrklarg on Tuesday August 27 2019, @06:49PM

          by cmdrklarg (5048) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday August 27 2019, @06:49PM (#886300)

          Vibrant with fresh ideas and discussion? Please, elaborate.

          --
          The world is full of kings and queens who blind your eyes and steal your dreams.
        • (Score: 1, Funny) by aristarchus on Tuesday August 27 2019, @08:01PM

          by aristarchus (2645) on Tuesday August 27 2019, @08:01PM (#886341) Journal

          VLM: Shut the fuck up. We have debated you enough to realize you are racist nazi scum that cannot be reasoned with. So shut the fuck up.

      • (Score: 1) by Acabatag on Tuesday August 27 2019, @04:38PM

        by Acabatag (2885) on Tuesday August 27 2019, @04:38PM (#886180)

        There's the answer. Clear as a bell.

      • (Score: 2, Troll) by jmorris on Tuesday August 27 2019, @04:47PM (1 child)

        by jmorris (4844) on Tuesday August 27 2019, @04:47PM (#886188)

        "Shut up!, he explained.

        Dude, you are a one man wrecking crew for your own side. Almost makes me think you are one of our guys running disinfo, if so you need to dial it back because you are being a bit too obvious.

        • (Score: 3, Informative) by ikanreed on Tuesday August 27 2019, @05:13PM

          by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday August 27 2019, @05:13PM (#886212) Journal

          "you're so mean to us just because we want to kill people boohoo, so mean"

          You're scum and I don't really care about your fantasies of having intellectual points.

      • (Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Tuesday August 27 2019, @06:52PM

        by fustakrakich (6150) on Tuesday August 27 2019, @06:52PM (#886305) Journal

        Damn! I tried to mod you "Funny" but the haters prevailed...

        --
        La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
    • (Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 27 2019, @06:32PM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 27 2019, @06:32PM (#886289)

      I really can't think of a more oppressed group than white heterosexual Christian males. Nice identity politics, bro!

      • (Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 27 2019, @08:28PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 27 2019, @08:28PM (#886362)

        In 2019, this is true. Nobody is actually oppressed anymore, but minorities/women/trannies get preferred hiring and promotion based on their woke victimhood status.

        • (Score: 1, Troll) by jmorris on Tuesday August 27 2019, @08:56PM

          by jmorris (4844) on Tuesday August 27 2019, @08:56PM (#886392)

          Right, nobody is oppressed, nobody is forced to sit at the back of the bus. We just seat non-whites, women, LGBTPPQ++, non-Christians, etc. first, starting at the front of the bus... and if there are any seats left the horrid icky mouth breathing rabble can sit at the back, if they promise not to say anything.

  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday August 27 2019, @04:58PM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday August 27 2019, @04:58PM (#886198) Journal

    If you're a fucking nazi, I am right and you are wrong and have no place here.

    Ok, so you're a fucking nazi. I'm therefore right and you therefore are wrong. Get lost.

  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by fustakrakich on Tuesday August 27 2019, @05:09PM

    by fustakrakich (6150) on Tuesday August 27 2019, @05:09PM (#886208) Journal

    it involves telling fascists to shut the fuck up.

    That is wrong. It involves tuning them out. If you give them an audience then YOU are the problem.

    --
    La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 27 2019, @06:30PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 27 2019, @06:30PM (#886288)

    Paradox of tolerance is long-since a solved problem, and it involves telling fascists to shut the fuck up.

    The "paradox" of tolerance is not even a true logical paradox. What a dumb name for it.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 27 2019, @07:30PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 27 2019, @07:30PM (#886321)

    I find this comment to be hurtful and offensive hate speech and demand that this person be banned immediately.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 27 2019, @08:03PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 27 2019, @08:03PM (#886343)

    Having my family oppressed by both nazis and then communists in a row, not sure that I'd mind seeing either of them swing from trees. I notice that you left out the latter. Why was that?

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 27 2019, @10:18PM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 27 2019, @10:18PM (#886434)

    *sigh*

    Once more, for the idiots in the cheap seats, the "Paradox of tolerance" isn't a cute way of saying that you're super-smart therefore there should be censorship. It was a problem raised by Popper in a certain context, and if you read the whole text it actually doesn't say what you think it says.

    If you actually read the paragraph in question, it starts with an unfounded presumption. If you accept a later elaboration and restatement, there are important conditions attached that do not really apply in the USA, let alone the whole world.

    The unfounded presumption: "Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance."

    Really? Must it always? Under all conditions? Inevitably? Without exception? Reasonable people might well disagree.

    Let's review the elaboration: "If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them."

    As the spartans said to the macedonians: "If."

    A society founded on civil liberties and the defence thereof already inhibits the activities of the intolerant. If the intolerant are already so numerous, coordinated and well-armed as to force their will on everyone else, then it's outside the scope of the question of tolerance, so that's an irrelevant case (and doesn't obtain presently in the US anyhow). However, if you have civil liberties enshrined and defended, then you're precisely in the position that he seeks to exclude. In other words, the much-vaunted paradox has no bearing on the modern US of A.

    He continues with: "In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies ; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise." Bingo! Tadaa! This is very much like what the US has going on right now. You don't have to like black people, or white people, or any people. Your not liking them doesn't entitle you to abuse them, nor them to abuse you.

    His following proposals, making outlaws of the intolerant, are not feasible precisely in an environment of enforced civil liberties.

    So here's the corollary: the paradox of tolerance only applies where the system would afford the intolerant the powers that the tolerant would use against them.

    So if you live in a parliamentary system without a constitution enshrining civil liberties, maybe you should outlaw and gun down all your nazis. You'll look like such a shining example of humane tolerance! On the other hand, it's quite inappropriate in the US and you'd probably find yourself explaining your behaviour to a judge - assuming you survived your little rampage.

    This sort of ignorant bullshit is why I wish philosophy were a required subject through K12.

    • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday August 28 2019, @01:50AM (4 children)

      by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Wednesday August 28 2019, @01:50AM (#886583) Journal

      Once more: the PoT is a specific example of a more generalized logical fallacy, the fallacy of the stolen concept, wherein someone uses a concept to argue against its genetic roots. This is something, again, like standing on a tree branch and sawing off the branch you're standing on where it meets the trunk, with predictably and similarly Wile E Coyote-ish results.

      "If you don't tolerate my intolerance you're intolerant, you hypocrite!" is pretty much the Ur example. You fool no one, and this huge wall of text of yours is disingenuous horseshit. I, too, wish philosophy and logic were in public school curricula, so that no adult would ever make such a stupid fucking argument. Good *day* sir.

      --
      I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 30 2019, @04:28AM (3 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 30 2019, @04:28AM (#887642)

        So what's your counterpoint? That intolerance is somehow tolerance?

        As others have pointed out elsewhere, it's not even a paradox, it's an observation that if you have a broken system in which the intolerant can seize power (e.g. Hitler in Weimar Germany) then giving the intolerant free rein would be unwise. The political scientist however points out that it means that, intolerance be damned, you have a broken system.

        At best, Popper's observation motivates enshrining civil liberties, once you examine the implications.

        • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday August 31 2019, @01:31AM (2 children)

          by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Saturday August 31 2019, @01:31AM (#888022) Journal

          Er, no, my point is that any idiot who thinks "Ha ha, by being intolerant of my intolerance you're a hypocrite!" is an actual argument is somewhere between "marzipan teapot" and "skiing down a mountain of broken glass" on the stupid-o-meter.

          I suppose that the observation in question here is a *consequence* of the fact that allowing something based on a stolen-concept fallacy to go forward has bad real-world consequences is true? It's a few degrees of separation to go from this directly to enshrining civil liberties though, and I can think of more immediate arguments to do that.

          --
          I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 31 2019, @02:06AM (1 child)

            by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 31 2019, @02:06AM (#888045)

            Intolerance of intolerance isn't necessarily hypocrisy, unless one preaches tolerance as the result. Manifestly, by obvious counterexample, it's not. To pick on the old hippy slogan: Fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity. Insert statements concerning tolerance ad libitum.

            The question then simply is one of which books (and ultimate, saith the poet, people) one wishes to burn.

            Those reactionary freaks who don't want to burn books are therefore tolerant of the intolerant, and the question that Popper then brings up is whether or not they're being reckless. Popper answers that by implication - what is the regime under which they live?

            • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday August 31 2019, @02:21AM

              by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Saturday August 31 2019, @02:21AM (#888055) Journal

              You're missing the point again: tolerance and intolerance are like matter and antimatter. Mix them and the entire system annihilates itself. They are antitheses. You can't have both; like the matter/antimatter split, the only stable state of affairs is a predominance of one over the other to the point that the other exists in vanishingly small, sequestered amounts.

              I know which one I'd rather see predominate.

              --
              I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
  • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday August 28 2019, @12:17AM (2 children)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday August 28 2019, @12:17AM (#886514) Journal

    “Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster... for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you.”

    ― Friedrich W. Nietzsche

    You weren't wary enough, ikanreed.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 28 2019, @08:44AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 28 2019, @08:44AM (#886704)

      OMG! Ikanread has stared too long, and turned into Runaway mouth! The Horror, The Horror, and more Horror!!! But then, if there are two redneck hillbilly racist Trump supporters, perhaps they will turn on each other, and the world will be better off. Jmorris and KLM have already turned on Runnerway. Sad, what they said about him. With allies like that, who needs to be as ignorant as Runaway1954?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 30 2019, @04:31AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 30 2019, @04:31AM (#887643)

      Honestly, I think that's already what happened to Antifa. By looking for fist-based solutions to brain-based problems, they fooled themselves into thinking that they were virtuous.

      They seem immune to the idea that bystanders see two collections of violent assholes grappling with each other to find out who's King Asshole.