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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: 3, Interesting) by jmorris on Tuesday August 27 2019, @05:47PM (6 children)

    by jmorris (4844) on Tuesday August 27 2019, @05:47PM (#886256)

    Maybe you, at least ironically, begin to get it. Although generally, even on Gab or [48]chan, calls for violence against specific named individuals will get your account[1] terminated, as one of the named individuals I'm going to call for waiving that in the interest of opening a debate.

    You have made the proposal, back it up with convincing arguments before you get laughed at as a silly person. Is it really your position that you think anyone who disagrees with you should be put to death? You won't find that sort of intolerance on the Alt/New/Far/Right. We have knock down drag out arguments on just about anything and nobody worries about actually being knocked down or drug out and shot. Or deplatformed, at least by anyone on the Right. So lets ask the studio audience, where do YOU want to have a discussion? In ikanread's world where he feels like he can shoot you for disagreeing with him or mine, where the worst that will happen is I might say your ideas suck and your shit is all retarded? Of course I'll also point you to resources to let you see for yourself that your ideas do in fact suck, and that usually hurts worse than a punch in the face by Antifa. So I know it is a hard choice I'm offering.

    [1] Yeah you don't have an 'account' on a chan, but your IP will be banned.

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  • (Score: 2) by ikanreed on Tuesday August 27 2019, @06:00PM (5 children)

    by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday August 27 2019, @06:00PM (#886270) Journal

    Just sub out "those users, you know who who are making nazi points in this thread". It doesn't actually change anything about the nature of the argument besides specificity.

    It's like "kill jews" is somehow better or less actionable than "kill this specific person". It takes a psycho monster to hold that view.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 27 2019, @06:34PM (4 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 27 2019, @06:34PM (#886291)

      Sorry bro, you lost all credibility when you called for the death of our fellow soylentils.

      You're not even contributing to the original discussion any more, this is just ad hominem nonsense.

      • (Score: 2) by ikanreed on Tuesday August 27 2019, @06:50PM (2 children)

        by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday August 27 2019, @06:50PM (#886301) Journal

        That's the fucking point you simp. It's a highlight that there are sound and reasonable barriers to free speech that are fairly recognizable once dumbass mcgee is in the crossairs.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 27 2019, @08:16PM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 27 2019, @08:16PM (#886351)

          No. The point is you have no credibility because of the things you espouse.

          No one is going to censor your post or ban you for your indiscretion.

          No one is going to dismantle your little tower of hate.

          We're just going to write you off as a nutjob and disregard your point of view.

          How's that for highlighting the point?

          • (Score: 2) by ikanreed on Tuesday August 27 2019, @08:21PM

            by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday August 27 2019, @08:21PM (#886356) Journal

            Still sounds pretty dumb, to be entirely honest.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 30 2019, @09:12PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 30 2019, @09:12PM (#887923)

        But it is not the first time that Runaway1956 has done that.