5 ms·

It wont work. Lunatics find their way to get together and talk. Call it Telegram group or Whatsapp.

ragona 7y ago
I'm not sure that's true. Surely organizing lunatics is approximately as hard as organizing any hobby group, and low friction is a huge deal in creating and retaining a community. If it's easier to create and maintain groups of incredibly niche communities due to convenient places to digitally congregate, and I believe that it is, then it's also easier if your particular hobby is heinous. By pushing this shit into the darkness you end up with some humans who fail to find that darkness and are thus not radicalized. (Or that's the theory, at least.)
542458 7y ago
I think that’s a little defeatist. While sites like this will always be able to exist as tor hidden services or whatever, being available over https with a normal domain name massively increases the reach these sites have. Furthermore, there’s a big element of “performing for an audience” that these shooters tend to have, given the posted manifestos that include community in-jokes, so the reach that a site has makes it much more appealing for mass shooters.
chillwaves 7y ago
This article suggests otherwise. > What they found was encouraging for this strategy of reducing unwanted activity on a site like Reddit: > Post-ban, hate speech by the same users was reduced by as much as 80-90 percent. Members of banned communities left Reddit at significantly higher rates than control groups. > Migration was common, both to similar subreddits (i.e. overtly racist ones) and tangentially related ones (r/The_Donald). However, within those communities, hate speech did not reliably increase, although there were slight bumps as the invaders encountered and tested new rules and moderators. https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/11/study-finds-reddits-controversial-ban-of-its-most-toxic-subreddits-actually-worked/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/11/study-finds-reddits-contro...
- vidarh 7y ago
  An interesting round of "invaders encountering and testing new rules" was when far right mods tried a takeover of /r/libertarian. /r/libertarian has always had a level of interesting with groups like /r/The_Donald, and has been full of right wing memes, but is also full of left wing libertarians (the original libertarian - Joseph Déjacque, was an anarcho-communist - left and right libertarian mostly split along the view on whether enforcement property rights are an unjustified state intervention leading to loss of liberty, or a necessity to ensure liberty), and new mods were added that started banning left-wing libertarians all over the place, even for things like just mentioning Joseph Déjacque. Amusingly, they went too far, and the original founder of the sub came back, revoked their mod privileges and put in place a new "head moderator" who was an anarcho-communist, so it backfired spectacularly. Though the new head moderator did take care to appoint moderators that represented a cross-section of the community, and things went somewhat back to normal, the explicit support inherent in having a left-wing head mod did embolden a lot of left wing users of the sub to post more commentary countering the right wing posts to a greater extent.

I'm not sure that's true. Surely organizing lunatics is approximately as hard as organizing any hobby group, and low friction is a huge deal in creating and retaining a community. If it's easier to create and maintain groups of incredibly niche communities due to convenient places to digitally congregate, and I believe that it is, then it's also easier if your particular hobby is heinous. By pushing this shit into the darkness you end up with some humans who fail to find that darkness and are thus not radicalized. (Or that's the theory, at least.)

542458 7y ago

I think that’s a little defeatist. While sites like this will always be able to exist as tor hidden services or whatever, being available over https with a normal domain name massively increases the reach these sites have. Furthermore, there’s a big element of “performing for an audience” that these shooters tend to have, given the posted manifestos that include community in-jokes, so the reach that a site has makes it much more appealing for mass shooters.

chillwaves 7y ago

This article suggests otherwise. > What they found was encouraging for this strategy of reducing unwanted activity on a site like Reddit: > Post-ban, hate speech by the same users was reduced by as much as 80-90 percent. Members of banned communities left Reddit at significantly higher rates than control groups. > Migration was common, both to similar subreddits (i.e. overtly racist ones) and tangentially related ones (r/The_Donald). However, within those communities, hate speech did not reliably increase, although there were slight bumps as the invaders encountered and tested new rules and moderators. https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/11/study-finds-reddits-controversial-ban-of-its-most-toxic-subreddits-actually-worked/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/11/study-finds-reddits-contro...

vidarh 7y ago
An interesting round of "invaders encountering and testing new rules" was when far right mods tried a takeover of /r/libertarian. /r/libertarian has always had a level of interesting with groups like /r/The_Donald, and has been full of right wing memes, but is also full of left wing libertarians (the original libertarian - Joseph Déjacque, was an anarcho-communist - left and right libertarian mostly split along the view on whether enforcement property rights are an unjustified state intervention leading to loss of liberty, or a necessity to ensure liberty), and new mods were added that started banning left-wing libertarians all over the place, even for things like just mentioning Joseph Déjacque. Amusingly, they went too far, and the original founder of the sub came back, revoked their mod privileges and put in place a new "head moderator" who was an anarcho-communist, so it backfired spectacularly. Though the new head moderator did take care to appoint moderators that represented a cross-section of the community, and things went somewhat back to normal, the explicit support inherent in having a left-wing head mod did embolden a lot of left wing users of the sub to post more commentary countering the right wing posts to a greater extent.