4 ms·

She buys into an assumption that the hate speech is grassroots, meaning that it is from ordinary citizens. There is a lot of evidence that much comes from powe

She buys into an assumption that the hate speech is grassroots, meaning that it is from ordinary citizens. There is a lot of evidence that much comes from powerful parties such as governments and political actors, who seek to promote conflict, division, and/or the far right (EDIT: and others too, but the far right seems especially prominent). For example, one report I read said that the Russia government's Facebook activity for the 2016 U.S. election focused "overwhelmingly" on race,[0] and recently I read that Russian government Twitter bots sent thousands of tweets criticizing NFL anthem protestors.[1] I'm going to try to find the links and add them. (None of this is surprising: During the Cold War the Soviets tried to aggravate U.S. racial division; for example, a former officer said that they would send racist hate mail to African-American leaders, then 'leak' to the press that the leaders had received hate mail.) The real question is how powerful the technology is. How effectively can you manipulate public opinion? I hardly see that issue discussed. [0] https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/05/11/what-we-found-facebook-ads-russians-accused-election-meddling/602319002/ https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/05/11/what-we-found-... More coverage: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/30/facebook-russia-fake-accounts-126-million https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/30/facebook-... [1] https://www.si.com/nfl/2018/10/22/russian-twitter-trolls-nfl-national-anthem-protests-bots https://www.si.com/nfl/2018/10/22/russian-twitter-trolls-nfl... which links to https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-russian-trolls-inflamed-nfls-anthem-controversy-1540233979 https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-russian-trolls-inflamed-nfl... EDIT: Minor edits to make my comments more consistent with the citations.

core-questions 8y ago
Something tells me you haven't spent any time in the gutters of the Internet if you really think all controversial speech is funded. Plenty of people hold opinions that you might want to censor. The "they're all russian bots!" meme is getting old, and doesn't actually bear scrutiny in reality. If you don't believe me, then go and spend some time in the darker parts of the internet to see what the discourse is like. Engage with the people there if you're feeling brave.
- forapurpose 8y ago
  > if you really think all controversial speech is funded Not what I said at all. That Russian grassroots propaganda campaigns exist certainly does bear up to scrutiny.

core-questions 8y ago

Something tells me you haven't spent any time in the gutters of the Internet if you really think all controversial speech is funded. Plenty of people hold opinions that you might want to censor. The "they're all russian bots!" meme is getting old, and doesn't actually bear scrutiny in reality. If you don't believe me, then go and spend some time in the darker parts of the internet to see what the discourse is like. Engage with the people there if you're feeling brave.

forapurpose 8y ago
> if you really think all controversial speech is funded Not what I said at all. That Russian grassroots propaganda campaigns exist certainly does bear up to scrutiny.