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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, Funny) by jmorris on Tuesday August 27 2019, @04:05PM (6 children)
Because they live on our soil, yet are not us. The Progressive is not, and has no desire to become, an American. They are enemies, of the domestic sort. They have made their intentions clear, read in this very thread, icanread sums it up. They are a cult and "Death to the unbelievers!" is their creed. How many times does someone have to shout their intent to destroy you before you allow the idea into your head, "Ya know, these Progressives sure do seem to hate us, maybe they mean us harm? Perhaps we should begin organizing a defense?"
And yeah, the Revolution always eats itself eventually, ask the Feminists who are are being unpersoned as TERFs. But we don't have long enough to wait for them to turn on and destroy themselves, we will all be long dead before that happens.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 27 2019, @05:19PM (2 children)
"Ya know, these Progressives sure do seem to hate us...."
It's not you personally I hate. You just aren't that important to me. It's your views that I find odious. Sorry to burst your bubble.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 27 2019, @11:02PM (1 child)
Yet you take the time to respond. Me thinks you lie.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 28 2019, @06:41AM
To tell him that I think his ideas are odious, yes. And it took me all of a couple of minutes to do it, so it really wasn't that much time.
How so? I'm not following you.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Tuesday August 27 2019, @08:13PM (2 children)
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Oh! The old "Blut und Boden"! [wikipedia.org] You're not even a neo-Nazi, jmorris! How old school and counter-cultural of you! Perhaps you also want to throw in a "Gott mit uns" [wikipedia.org] and a "Lebensraum!".
No, you are not of American soil, just because you have soiled yourself, jmorris. Even the Germans have realized that the whole "Boden" thing is claptrap. Fascists are not patriots. They are collaborators.
"America, Love it or Give it Back!"
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Wednesday August 28 2019, @02:13AM (1 child)
Only two sorts of Nationalism known. "Blood and Soil" Nationalism, nations == peoples. That is the classic model. The new model was Civic Nationalism, the America is an Idea and anybody who accepts the idea is welcome to join. But of course that was just a lie invented by people who want us dead.
Allow me to demonstrate. I have posed this question for some time to Civic Nationalists, none have EVER replied. This thread will not be an exception.
If America is an idea, if all who embrace the idea are worthy to be admitted to our ranks, let us dispense with the tedious business of carefully defining the creed they must all swear loyalty to. ASSume that detail can be worked out. No, the question that ends the conversation is this: What do you propose be done with those who loudly and with great conviction denounce the idea, the creed, the concept of the America given to us by the Founders? What of those with citizenship papers? What of those born here, nay even Natural Born?
And speak not of the opinions of modern Germans, they are an extinct people, their new ideas have killed their race.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Wednesday August 28 2019, @08:16AM
Ferkin palefaced invader! It is not your soil, boyo! Go back to where your ancestors came from, jphillipmorris!