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This is correct. > The Australian white supremacist who killed 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand was radicalized by YouTube, according to a

This is correct. > The Australian white supremacist who killed 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand was radicalized by YouTube, according to a 792-page report on the March 2019 shooting. https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/8/22162779/christchurch-shooter-youtube-mosque-radicalized https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/8/22162779/christchurch-sho...

Noumenon72 6y ago
I have a feeling he'd say that was ridiculous, based on this quote from his manifesto: Q: Were you taught violence and extremism by video games, music, literature, cinema? Yes, Spyro the dragon 3 taught me ethno-nationalism. Fortnite trained me to be a killer and to floss on the corpses of my enemies. No. People are more intelligent than these criticisms give them credit for. Their beliefs come from opinions and thoughts, not just from above. See Ross Douthat's recent column, "Why Do So Many Americans Think the Election Was Stolen?" "The potency of this belief has already scrambled some of the conventional explanations for conspiratorial beliefs, particularly the conceit that the key problem is misinformation spreading downward from partisan news outlets and social-media fraudsters to the easily deceived. As I watch the way certain fraud theories spread online, or watch conservatives abandon Fox News for Newsmax in search of validating narratives, it’s clear that this is about demand as much as supply. A strong belief spurs people to go out in search of evidence, a lot of so-called disinformation is collected and circulated sincerely rather than cynically, and the power of various authorities — Tucker Carlson’s show or Facebook’s algorithm — to change beliefs is relatively limited." https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/05/opinion/sunday/trump-election-fraud.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/05/opinion/sunday/trump-elec...
- uoaei 6y ago
  I invite you to read up on the psychological effect known as "priming." Top-down disinformation primes the minds of the less-scrupulous, who then seek to rationalize and harden their half-baked beliefs through their everyday experiences.
  - Noumenon72 6y ago
    When you read up on priming you will discover that it is something people want to believe in, but does not replicate scientifically. https://replicationindex.com/2017/02/02/reconstruction-of-a-train-wreck-how-priming-research-went-of-the-rails/ https://replicationindex.com/2017/02/02/reconstruction-of-a-... People used to believe in brainwashing too. We like to think people who disagree with us are easily swayed idiots. It keeps our opinions safe and justifies censoring their opinions instead of engaging with them.
- throwaway2245 6y ago
  Please do not quote a spree killer as an authoritative source.
  - Noumenon72 6y ago
    He is an unreliable narrator, for sure. But more than his claim about whether he was brainwashed, does he sound like the kind of person who just mindlessly clicked from Youtube to Youtube, accepting every claim uncritically? Does he sound like the kind of person who can't be trusted to think for themselves? Engineer is a common profession for terrorists. Regular, thoughtful people can radicalize themselves, and censoring the masses to stop that is a power grab in search of a problem.
    - TimPC 6y ago
      Everyone has to be trusted to think for themselves. We can put barriers in place to harmful actions resulting from those thoughts but I would not want to live in a world so dystopian and authoritarian that we intentionally take away someone's ability to think.
    - throwaway2245 6y ago
      I find this grossly offensive. Please, please, stop quoting and attempting to normalise a serial killer.
      - FpUser 6y ago
        He is not trying to normalize a serial killer. He is trying to show that his action are not the results of watching youtube. I do not think there is any reason to be offended.
      - Noumenon72 6y ago
        I don't really get this. People regularly quoted Osama bin Laden's statements about how he did 9/11 to force the US into overreacting. It may have "normalised" him to see that he had rational reasons for what he did, rather than being a religious maniac. But it didn't make it right, and it didn't lead to people flocking to his cause. If it had been censored, we might have had more people believing the harmful "religious war" frame, just from not knowing any better. "All that we have to do is to send two mujahedeen to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al Qaeda, in order to make generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic and political losses without their achieving anything of note other than some benefits for their private corporations" -- Osama bin Laden
inglor_cz 6y ago
So, this is one example of many, many users who haven't killed anyone. If "one incident is too many", then marijuana must stay strictly illegal and violent video games must be banned, because both have nonzero body count IRL. Remember Harris and Klebold?

Noumenon72 6y ago

I have a feeling he'd say that was ridiculous, based on this quote from his manifesto: Q: Were you taught violence and extremism by video games, music, literature, cinema? Yes, Spyro the dragon 3 taught me ethno-nationalism. Fortnite trained me to be a killer and to floss on the corpses of my enemies. No. People are more intelligent than these criticisms give them credit for. Their beliefs come from opinions and thoughts, not just from above. See Ross Douthat's recent column, "Why Do So Many Americans Think the Election Was Stolen?" "The potency of this belief has already scrambled some of the conventional explanations for conspiratorial beliefs, particularly the conceit that the key problem is misinformation spreading downward from partisan news outlets and social-media fraudsters to the easily deceived. As I watch the way certain fraud theories spread online, or watch conservatives abandon Fox News for Newsmax in search of validating narratives, it’s clear that this is about demand as much as supply. A strong belief spurs people to go out in search of evidence, a lot of so-called disinformation is collected and circulated sincerely rather than cynically, and the power of various authorities — Tucker Carlson’s show or Facebook’s algorithm — to change beliefs is relatively limited." https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/05/opinion/sunday/trump-election-fraud.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/05/opinion/sunday/trump-elec...

uoaei 6y ago
I invite you to read up on the psychological effect known as "priming." Top-down disinformation primes the minds of the less-scrupulous, who then seek to rationalize and harden their half-baked beliefs through their everyday experiences.
- Noumenon72 6y ago
  When you read up on priming you will discover that it is something people want to believe in, but does not replicate scientifically. https://replicationindex.com/2017/02/02/reconstruction-of-a-train-wreck-how-priming-research-went-of-the-rails/ https://replicationindex.com/2017/02/02/reconstruction-of-a-... People used to believe in brainwashing too. We like to think people who disagree with us are easily swayed idiots. It keeps our opinions safe and justifies censoring their opinions instead of engaging with them.
throwaway2245 6y ago
Please do not quote a spree killer as an authoritative source.
- Noumenon72 6y ago
  He is an unreliable narrator, for sure. But more than his claim about whether he was brainwashed, does he sound like the kind of person who just mindlessly clicked from Youtube to Youtube, accepting every claim uncritically? Does he sound like the kind of person who can't be trusted to think for themselves? Engineer is a common profession for terrorists. Regular, thoughtful people can radicalize themselves, and censoring the masses to stop that is a power grab in search of a problem.
  - TimPC 6y ago
    Everyone has to be trusted to think for themselves. We can put barriers in place to harmful actions resulting from those thoughts but I would not want to live in a world so dystopian and authoritarian that we intentionally take away someone's ability to think.
  - throwaway2245 6y ago
    I find this grossly offensive. Please, please, stop quoting and attempting to normalise a serial killer.
    - FpUser 6y ago
      He is not trying to normalize a serial killer. He is trying to show that his action are not the results of watching youtube. I do not think there is any reason to be offended.
    - Noumenon72 6y ago
      I don't really get this. People regularly quoted Osama bin Laden's statements about how he did 9/11 to force the US into overreacting. It may have "normalised" him to see that he had rational reasons for what he did, rather than being a religious maniac. But it didn't make it right, and it didn't lead to people flocking to his cause. If it had been censored, we might have had more people believing the harmful "religious war" frame, just from not knowing any better. "All that we have to do is to send two mujahedeen to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al Qaeda, in order to make generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic and political losses without their achieving anything of note other than some benefits for their private corporations" -- Osama bin Laden

inglor_cz 6y ago

So, this is one example of many, many users who haven't killed anyone. If "one incident is too many", then marijuana must stay strictly illegal and violent video games must be banned, because both have nonzero body count IRL. Remember Harris and Klebold?