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The best medicine against online disinformation is an informed society that's thinking critically. The problem is there are no shortcuts to universal education.
Enter Finnish Public Broadcasting Company, Yle, which is hoping to harness the engagement power of gamification to accelerate awareness and understanding of troll tactics and help more people spot malicious internet fakes. It has put together an online game, called Troll Factory, that lets you play at being, well, a hateful troll. Literally.
The game begins with a trigger warning that it uses "authentic social media content" that viewers may find disturbing. If you continue to play you'll see examples of Islamophobic slogans and memes that have actually been spread on social media. So the trigger warning is definitely merited.
The game itself takes the form of a messaging app style conversation on a virtual smartphone in which you are tasked by the troll factory boss to whip up anti-immigrant sentiment. You do this by making choices about which messages to post online and the methods used to amplify distribution.
Online disinformation tactics intended to polarize public discourse which are depicted in the game include the seeding of conspiracy theory memes on social media; the exploitation of real news events to spread fake claims; microtargeting of hateful content at different demographics and platforms; and the use of paid bots to amplify propaganda so that hateful views appear more widely held than they really are.
After completing an inaugural week's work in the troll factory, the game displays a rating and shows how many shares and follows your dis-ops garnered. This is followed by contextual information on the influencing methods demonstrated — putting the activity you've just participated in into wider context.
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/13/this-game-uses-troll-tactics-to-teach-critical-thinking/
(Score: 5, Insightful) by janrinok on Sunday September 15 2019, @07:52AM (5 children)
No - only if you are frightened by it. A phobia is a fear, not a dislike of something. And many people are (unnecessarily in my view) frightened of Islam. They believe that every Muslim is a terrorist who wishes to kill them, whereas, like any other religion, the majority of Muslims are just normal people like you or I while a very small number of them are extremists.
It is exactly the same with every other religion.
This is NOT an invitation to begin a religious crusade in this thread - lets move on.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 15 2019, @09:53AM (2 children)
They didn't call it "The Red Scare" because people had rationally considered the theoretical tenants or practical application of Communism and decided to reject it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 15 2019, @04:15PM (1 child)
Not wanting to starve to death seems rather rational to me. I think there was this thing that happened in China and the Soviet Union.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Thexalon on Monday September 16 2019, @01:19AM
Arguing "Communism is bad because it caused starvation for millions of Chinese and Ukrainians." is not the same as "Communist spies are lurking all around you, ready to sneak into your nuclear bomb shelter to murder your family." The US government pushed the second line of thinking, not the first.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 15 2019, @04:11PM (1 child)
Of course, that’s why the Middle East is so peaceful and they’re so accepting of the LGBTQIAAP community. In fact can you name a majority Muslim country that is? I wonder if gays are islamophobic if they don’t come out in those countries. Much food for thought.
(Score: 4, Informative) by janrinok on Sunday September 15 2019, @04:33PM
Is Russia an Islamic nation? It wasn't when I last lived there. But they treat the LGBT community badly as well. Perhaps, then, the cause is not religion. Just because a nation has different laws to your own, views the world differently or has a majority of a people with a different religion doesn't make them wrong. We might ( and I do ) think that they could treat people better but each nation is free to choose its own path in the world. If you want to see change you can either move there and use your vote, or try to use your national influence to get them to change. Otherwise, your views are simply that - your views.
Until relatively recently the LGBT communities in the western world were also treated badly, and they are still are in the USA and Europe to this day but things are getting better - was that because they were full of Muslims, or because they hadn't yet developed a sense of justice and freedom for all people?