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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: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 27 2019, @05:44PM (8 children)
It's happening, but not on any significant scale.
(Score: 3, Informative) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday August 27 2019, @10:23PM (7 children)
50 people murdered in Christchurch in one afternoon sounds significant to me.
Fewer than 6 million I suppose, but you need concentration camps for that sort of scale.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 27 2019, @11:06PM (6 children)
No, in a world with billions of people (and over 300 million in the US), that is insignificant. More so if you look at the total deaths per year from such events, so even though 50 dead in one attack sounds like a lot, it isn't in the grand scheme of things. Even 9/11 was insignificant, to the point where the damage caused to ourselves by us responding to 9/11 was many thousands of times worse than the attack itself, and the damage from that response just continues on. That's what happens when you react to terrorism by taking away people's liberties.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday August 28 2019, @12:30AM (1 child)
Sorry, but that's wrong and also wrong.
The Christchurch shootings didn't happen in a world of billions of people, and didn't happen in the US at all.
It happened in a city of fewer than 300,000 people, which has a murder rate of about 5 per year.
So, to recap. One Nazi did 10 years worth of murders in a small city in one afternoon.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 28 2019, @05:49AM
Christchurch is a perfect counter-example to your argument. The person who shot up the mosque there was not even from the same country. He chose that location, traveled to it, and then shot it up. It's the exact same thing with El Paso where the shooter was again not a native, somewhat ironically. You're looking at a literally global phenomena and you're left with a handful of incidents. I don't think people understand the scale of violence in the past.
Let's look at two things, 9/11 and the Holocaust. 9/11 killed 2,996 people including the 19 attackers. The latest figure for the Holocaust is around 6 million. The Holocaust would have been equivalent to a 9/11 scale of death happening every single day for 2023 days. That's a 9/11 scale event each and every day for more than 5 years. And that actually dramatically understates the damage since populations have increased dramatically since then. If you scale these events up to modern population sizes you end up with the Holocaust being equivalent to a 9/11 scale event happening each and every day for more than 18 years. That is, a child who is just born will reaching voting age with a 9/11 event happening literally every single day of his life - against a single demographic.
To hyperbolize these idiots with a manifesto and a gun as anything more than that is just absurd. It's just the media trying to rile up fear and emotions for clicks.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday August 28 2019, @01:38AM (3 children)
Tell me, would it be "significant" enough if it was your family it happened to, or you?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 3, Touché) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday August 28 2019, @02:35AM (2 children)
The worst year New Zealand has ever had for murders was 1987, with 24.
A Nazi from Australia doubled that in one afternoon, but A/C idiot above thinks that is "not significant".
Sometimes the level of debate on this site is disappointing.
Here's link to the Police's list. [police.govt.nz]
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 28 2019, @03:17AM (1 child)
Just wait until the muzzies hit critical mass there. You'll reminisce wistfully of the old days when there was only 50 in a mass killing event.
(Score: 2) by rylyeh on Wednesday August 28 2019, @04:25AM
Seriously son - the 'muzzies'!?!?
The only Muzzy I know eats clocks.
You going to need a gallon of 'Preparation H' to soothe that inflamed territorial imperative.
"a vast crenulate shell wherein rode the grey and awful form of primal Nodens, Lord of the Great Abyss."