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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: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 27 2019, @04:00PM (8 children)
Unbelievable that people conflate the platform with the government and fail to recognize that with no scarcity the person owning the platform has every right to determine what speech shall appear upon it. That is freedom of speech. Suggesting that the owner of the platform must allow anyone who wants to get on it to spout off is a restriction upon the platform owner. (Airwaves for broadcasting are a different question - only so much bandwidth so that is held as a public trust and some consideration must be given to that).
Switching gears to governmental restrictions, the Constitution is not a suicide pact. Child porn, among other materials, does not have to be allowed in the name of freedom of speech. A webboard advertising contract murder does not have to be allowed in the name of freedom of speech. Although I am very sympathetic to the idea that if it is not criminal behavior then one should not prohibit it.
Of course it's all fine and dandy until you realize that the Internet is a place where any person may have their own platform to say whatever they want to.
Now ISP restrictions on who is allowed to have a site and what it contains is indeed a problem. Items 3 and 4 above are indeed a problem - this is using fire to stop the arsonist.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Tuesday August 27 2019, @05:11PM (4 children)
The metaphor I've been using to describe it: Someone comes around and slaps a bumper sticker on your car. And if you try to either remove it or cover it up, they start saying "That's not fair, I have freedom of speech!!"
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 27 2019, @06:37PM (3 children)
That kind of falls apart when you have companies as large as Youtube, Facebook, and Twitter, which have becomes public squares of sorts, and which routinely bribe our government. However, I don't think that forcing them to accept all speech via government regulation is the answer. All of those companies are toxic to begin with for other reasons (privacy), so no one should use them anyway. We need real decentralized platforms, not centralized trash that facilitates mass surveillance.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 27 2019, @09:57PM (2 children)
No, they are not "public squares". They are private auditoriums and the owner controls the door. Just because they are popular does not make them public.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 27 2019, @10:59PM
So is the phone company. Guess what? They got themselves all sorts of regulated because these exact reasons. Title I exists because of this exact argument.
If you want a Title I like thing for the internet. This is *exactly* how you go about it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 28 2019, @02:53PM
No, the issue is that historically Google has sold themselves as a public forum and refused the assertion that they are a publisher for legal purposes. I don't have a problem with google being a public forum, but that means they can't block/regulate content. If they want to be a publisher thats fine, but they get to be sued for allowing violent/whatever content on their site.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 27 2019, @08:36PM (2 children)
Unbelievable that people fail to recognize that with no scarcity the person owning the apartment building has every right to determine what people shall live in it.
That is freedom of association. Suggesting that the owner of the building must allow anyone who wants to live in it is a restriction upon the platform owner.
Don't like that analogy? How about allowing Verizon to cancel your service because that don't like that you're a registered Democrat? What about if Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint and AT&T all decide they no longer want to support the communication of Democrats? You can always start your own phone service or just use Skype, right?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 27 2019, @10:16PM (1 child)
Not sure if we are talking at cross purposes of if that is sarcasm. I am saying it is not right for an ISP to deny you Internet service because of your beliefs. You ought to have a right to internet service so long as you are not hosting child porn or selling WMD, etc.
Facebook, Twitter, Google Hangouts, etc. (the platform) has every right to deny or discontinue your account. You do not have the right to force them to allow you to say whatever you want on their service.
Your housing analogy may be flawed or we might be saying the same thing. A person owning an apartment building does have the right to determine what people shall live in it, so long as the owner is not discriminating based on legally protected classes. Color. Disability. Family Status (except for the Senior Citizen exemption). National Origin. Race. Religion. Sex. States may define additional characteristics like prior criminal history and sexual orientation. To borrow your later analogy, an apartment owner can indeed refuse to rent to you if you're a Democrat or if you're not a millionaire. Housing isn't communication.
You are free to build your own social media platform and your ISP should be required to host it so long as you can pay for the hosting service. (But not a common carrier so I guess the ISP can discriminate which is not fair). You are free to promote your platform and make it as popular as the other private social media services.
Your phone analogy is also misleading. Phone companies are common carriers. You do have a right to access their network to call 911 even if you are not their customer. They cannot refuse you service without valid reason. You are still free to establish your own phone service if you can afford to do so and can get a seat at the table, at which time you will be a common carrier. Not sure if the big boys have to lease you time on their lines but it wouldn't surprise me if they do. And, in any event, that supports my argument that the ISP has to give you service but nobody has to answer your calls.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 28 2019, @04:33AM
You are picking nits. The government places restrictions on these businesses because they are deemed necessities by the general population and restricting access to them is deleterious to them. Protected classes are only protected because they have a history of discrimination based upon their membership in that class. The rush to destroy, deplatform, unemploy and silence people based on their political views is the new acceptable discrimination. If people do not come to their senses soon, there will be the inevitable push to make this a protected class as well.
And you are free to build your own cell service and your electric provider should be required to power it so long as you can pay for it. (/s)
The legal protections of phone service are only because of the perceived necessity in modern society. Calling your social media companies platforms as though it is inherently sacred and magically exempting them because you like the status quo does not mean they will stay that way. Social media companies are treading thin ice and unless they recognize that deplatforming based upon their feelz is bad juju will find them soon facing down the barrel of phone company-like regulation. When a social media platform becomes so big that membership becomes a defacto requirement of modern living, there is no difference to other common carrier regulation.