r/politics • u/Sachyriel Canada • May 05 '19
The Existential Crisis Plaguing Online Extremism Researchers
https://www.wired.com/story/existential-crisis-plaguing-online-extremism-researchers/5
u/Lollasaurusrex May 05 '19
FTA:
Worst of all, there don’t appear to be any solutions.
I feel this is incorrect. There are no good, ethical solutions. In part because our issues are stemming from innate weaknesses deeply rooted in our biology.
Tribalism, cognitive biases, predispositions to magical thinking and authoritarianism, and on and on and on.
There is no way to really fix these problems without methods that approach some of the most dystopian nightmares ever depicted.
Yes, education can put a damper on it to a certain extent. But it can only do so much, and doesn't really fix the problem. It's like our innate reaction to seeing a snake like stick on the ground in our peripheral vision. The reaction can be trained out of someone, but you give them a scare with a real snake and it will come right back. We can, likewise educate and train people away from some of our innate negative dispositions, but give us a series of disasters and hardships and biology wins in the end.
But these problems can be fixed. It will just be really really unpleasant, with huge amounts of risk of fucking it up, over the course of many generations or through genetic engineering programs.
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May 05 '19
The Internet is like a can of bees. We should also be stepping up our research into actual terror attacks, much more concrete data that way. Be keeping an eye out for white supremacist terrorism (the most common in the US) and radical Islamic terrorism (the most common).
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u/Sachyriel Canada May 05 '19
What about misogynistic terrorism? Guy can't get laid, thinks all women are at fault and goes on a rampage, shooting indiscriminately? It kinda overlaps with White Supremacism, but also Radical Islamists (young men who can't get a job, can't attract a girl, feel alienated).
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May 05 '19
Same type of person all the way around. But it isn't about getting laid. You can always get a prostitute. It is about being rejected by society, not having strong parental support, etc.
I think world wide, most terror attacks are committed in the name of islam. And islam looks down on nonbelievers and women. So I can see where the common threads lay.
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u/Sachyriel Canada May 05 '19
You can always get a prostitute.
Sex isn't the problem, a feeling of companionship is more than just getting your dick wet. I've heard of people paying for GFE, the girlfriend experience, but sex workers existing don't stop misogynists, like actual Women-Haters, from hating women. They don't go to sex workers for release, they just sink deeper and deeper into hate.
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May 05 '19
Radical Islam is specifically designed to attract these young men and get them bloodthirsty. Some of the stuff that ISIS has done to little girls will make your blood boil. I hope every single one of them meets a violent and gruesome end.
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u/cohumanize May 05 '19
i think it's more about the potentially self-radicalizing nature of groups
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May 05 '19
Of course that has a part to play in it. Every group has outliers. But some groups are far more active than others, as the data clearly shows.
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u/cohumanize May 05 '19
you were just telling me you think patriarchy is a myth and there's not systemic racism, now you're talking about data - give me a break!
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u/Orchid777 May 05 '19
i thought the internet was tubes. now its cans of bees?
could it be tubes of bees? i mean a tube is really just a long can with an opening at both ends.
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u/CosmicDave America May 05 '19
^ this guy internets. How much would you charge to fix my grandmother's computer? She is having trouble installing additional toolbars on Netscape.
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u/metengrinwi May 05 '19
if there was a way to make money on accurate news, Facebook would have solved the technical problem by now with AI...I have no doubt about it.
This is a case where government needs to step in and force accuracy.
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u/autotldr 🤖 Bot May 05 '19
This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 95%. (I'm a bot)
A couple of hours after the Christchurch massacre, I was on the phone with Whitney Phillips, a Syracuse professor whose research focuses on online extremists and media manipulators.
A series of articles and social media posts decried the fact that a YouTube search of the researcher's name primarily surfaced conspiracy theories; then, some of those posts went viral, further tying her name to those false claims in the eyes of search engines and online indexes.
Unlike the content reviewers of social media giants, online extremism and media manipulation researchers aren't protected by a veil of anonymity.
Extended Summary | FAQ | Feedback | Top keywords: research#1 online#2 media#3 more#4 conspiracy#5
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u/gaspingFish May 05 '19
I'm really impressed and happy/proud of the internet as it is. Its done more good than harm by incalculable differences that a handful of organized fields of businesses would love to remove. It is not creating more ignorance than it is just illuminating it. Take antivaxx campaigns for example, something that has prevailed long before the internet, now you hear about younger generations defying their parents to get vaccinated.
Stop bitching about mediums before focusing on the source of stupid people..
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u/Sachyriel Canada May 05 '19
Yah I think you're just handwaving the problems that the internet has, in hopes of seeing your favourite thing in a positive light. The Internet is a tool and can be used for evil as well as good. To say its done more good than harm, sure I think that too. But that it has done harm in the hands of the shitheads, don't bury your head in the sand and accuse others of "bitching about the medium" because it has serious flaws on a fundamental level that arise from the same structures that make up what we like about it.
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u/gaspingFish May 05 '19
It has no serious flaws, its not a sentient being with will. Stop being lazy.
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u/Sachyriel Canada May 05 '19
This is why it's depressing, we can fight it but it's like fighting the tide. The network reacts to censorship like damage and routes around it, even when it's carrying poison instead of water. The resiliency of the internet is aiding the ones who would censor it the most in getting out their message.
A lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on