[Discussion] The Inconceivable Power of Trolls in Social Media

This is a follow-on to the nearly two year old topic "Trouble at the Kool-Aid Point." The intention is to provide a place to discuss the unreasonable power social media trolls have over women and minorities, with a primary focus on video games (though other examples are certainly welcome).

mildly sarcastic, the best thing you can do as a parent of a teenager is to pretend to love vaping and conspiracy propaganda. It won't be cool anymore.

"At your age I thought the Earth was round too, you'll grow out of it."

No joke, I think that without GWJ that there were times in my life where I could have EASILY been sucked into one of those places.

As a teen I listened to a little bit of right-wing radio and in college I spent a couple of years as an anarcho-capitalist after falling under the influence of Gene Burns and whoever else was on Boston talk radio in the early 90s. (I may have been the only one who had never read any Rand.) But I grew out of it, and *usually* I don't have *too* much trouble with kids believing stupid sh*t while they're young.

But I'm really starting to wonder about that now, since it's far easier to just mainline toxicity 24/7. And it seems now that the beliefs are more actionably dangerous- at the time I could be kind of an asshole about government is tyranny and taxation is theft and that crap, but I was nowhere close to believing (((globalists))) were sabotaging people like me, or women hated me because of Chads, etc.

Teen arrested for alleged threats targeting black, minority students at a Charlottesville school

NBC wrote:

A 17-year-old boy was arrested Friday for allegedly making online threats against black and Hispanic students at a high school in Charlottesville, Virginia, police said.

The arrest came after the Charlottesville City Schools said it would be closing all of its public schools for the second day in a row Friday as police investigated the message.

The district also closed schools Thursday after a message was posted on the fringe internet message board 4chan targeting minority students at Charlottesville High School and telling white students to stay home.

Charlottesville Chief of Police RaShall Brackney said at a news conference Friday afternoon that the teen, who was not named, identifies as Portuguese and is a resident of Albemarle County.

Authorities said during their investigation into the threat, which referred to the "ethnic cleansing" of black and Hispanic high schools students, they learned who posted the message on 4chan and executed a search warrant for the teen's arrest.

He faces a felony charge of threats to commit serious bodily harm to persons on school property and a misdemeanor charge of harassment by computer.

Is law enforcement actually starting to pay attention to these little sh*ts?

BadKen wrote:

Is law enforcement actually starting to pay attention to these little sh*ts?

You mean, like, for recruitment purposes?

BadKen wrote:

Is law enforcement actually starting to pay attention to these little sh*ts?

When they cause a school district with 4,500 students to shut down for two days they kinda have to.

ClockworkHouse wrote:
BadKen wrote:

Is law enforcement actually starting to pay attention to these little sh*ts?

You mean, like, for recruitment purposes?

Well, the US military can't take in *all* the white supremacists.

BadKen wrote:

Is law enforcement actually starting to pay attention to these little sh*ts?

They better. The last thing we need is these little developing sociopaths thinking they have some kind of real-world power.

NathanialG wrote:

No joke, I think that without GWJ that there were times in my life where I could have EASILY been sucked into one of those places.

Same. I mentioned it somewhere here before, but there was a point in my life where I could've totally become something akin to an MRA douche/incel. But every time I heard about those people, they seemed so singularly abhorrent that I remember thinking "these people can't be right, they're colossal assholes."

But they've got slicker new packaging now, wrapped in internet irony where it's always a joke until it isn't. And so, even though they're arguing for a world more like America in 1920, they can brand themselves as "punk rock rebels" fighting conformity.

qaraq wrote:
BadKen wrote:

Is law enforcement actually starting to pay attention to these little sh*ts?

They better. The last thing we need is these little developing sociopaths thinking they have some kind of real-world power.

Like the presidency, judiciary, and one of the houses of Congress?

Prederick wrote:
NathanialG wrote:

No joke, I think that without GWJ that there were times in my life where I could have EASILY been sucked into one of those places.

Same. I mentioned it somewhere here before, but there was a point in my life where I could've totally become something akin to an MRA douche/incel. But every time I heard about those people, they seemed so singularly abhorrent that I remember thinking "these people can't be right, they're colossal assholes."

But they've got slicker new packaging now, wrapped in internet irony where it's always a joke until it isn't. And so, even though they're arguing for a world more like America in 1920, they can brand themselves as "punk rock rebels" fighting conformity.

Even right now, my life ticks a lot of boxes on the MRA/Alt-Right/Incel/MGTOW checklists. I think that there are two main concepts that keeping me from drifting that way. They are the fundamental understanding that: (1. I am to responsible for all of my own personal faults and failures and (2. sometimes life happens and there is nobody to blame.

There is no boogeyman. The universe is indifferent to me and my needs. God helps those that help themselves.

Grenn wrote:

Even right now, my life ticks a lot of boxes on the MRA/Alt-Right/Incel/MGTOW checklists. I think that there are two main concepts that keeping me from drifting that way. They are the fundamental understanding that: (1. I am to responsible for all of my own personal faults and failures and (2. sometimes life happens and there is nobody to blame.

There is no boogeyman. The universe is indifferent to me and my needs. God helps those that help themselves.

That's what pulled me out. Between them all being just the worst, most bitter people I'd ever seen, I came to a realization. There were, conservatively, about 3 billion women on the planet, and one of me. Hell, even if I limited it to my area (NY-Metro), there were conservatively about 1-2 million women in my age range living within driving distance. It seemed insane that to think the the odds were there was something wrong with a million of them, but not me.

YouTube reportedly ignored extremist content for fear of throttling engagement

Reportedly, "scores" of YouTube and Google employees raised concerns about incendiary content on YouTube. Some also offered solutions—one engineer suggested removing videos from recommendations that were "close to the line" of the company's takedown policy, while another employee wanted to track toxic videos in a spreadsheet to monitor how popular they became over time. YouTube did not take these employees up on their suggestions and continued to turn a blind eye to many types of extreme content.

While none of these rebuttals seem to be documented on paper as official policy, employees were reportedly discouraged from being proactive. YouTube lawyers told employees who were not assigned to moderation tasks to not research toxic content on their own.

If their lawyers were saying that sure sounds like "policy".

Facebook Tells Congress New Zealand Shooting Video Wasn’t ‘Gruesome’ Enough to Flag

The Daily Beast wrote:

On March 27, representatives from four social media companies gathered with members and staff of the House Homeland Security Committee for a briefing. The focus: how the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism—an industry group composed of Facebook, Twitter, Google, and Microsoft—had responded to the New Zealand shooting. The shooter killed 50 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, and live-streamed the massacre; the livestream stayed online for an hour, until New Zealand law enforcement asked the company to take it down. Users successfully re-uploaded the video of the murders onto Facebook hundreds of thousands of times.

The members of Congress who gathered for a closed-door briefing had lots of questions for Brian Fishman, Facebook’s policy director for counterterrorism. One of the biggest: Why didn’t Facebook’s counter-terror algorithms—which it rolled out nearly two years ago—take down the video as soon as it was up?

Fishman’s answer, according to a committee staffer in the room: The video was not “particularly gruesome.” A second source briefed on the meeting added that Fishman said there was “not enough gore” in the video for the algorithm to catch it.

It's also just super great to know that 1.5 million assholes re-uploaded the video.

Dear Facebook,

You are not helping yourself.

Sincerely,
Human persons.

YouTube’s Comments Section Is a Cesspool, but Advertisers Aren’t Going Anywhere

“For the cost and for the scale, it’s hard to beat depending on the audience you are trying to reach,” said one media agency source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity so as not to risk business relationships with Google. “They have a lot of scale, especially for younger audiences. If you’re trying to do preroll, they have good ads. It’s still an attractive place for people to be from that perspective.”

Paul Verna, senior analyst at eMarketer specializing in the digital industry, said he’s not surprised. As long as it’s profitable, Verna posited, advertisers will stay put.

Much of the focus on YouTube’s approach to cracking down on extremism and hate has centered on the contents of the videos. Major advertisers have twice pulled ads from the site over concerns about extremist content their ads have run in front of, but they have always quietly returned.

More, from one of the reporters:

one source said that he's "disappointed, but not surprised" that youtube hasn't taken more steps to address the platform's issues. "almost every youtube person i've spoken to is some shade of a moron," he told me

"they definitely can and should do better at this, if only they made it a larger priority," he added. "i don't know why they don't, aside from pure greed"

it was really eye opening talking to one guy who was like "i don't let my kids use this site because i'm terrified about what they might find," and then in the same breath say that he regularly advises clients to dump thousands on the platform

what's worse is that if any of these execs took a moral stand against youtube, they'd be fired on the spot. "We run hundreds of thousands of not millions of impressions by day," one advertiser said. "we can't just pull those numbers anywhere else"

One source said that he's "disappointed, but not surprised" that youtube hasn't taken more steps to address the platform's issues. "almost every youtube person i've spoken to is some shade of a moron"

Roffle!

if any of these execs took a moral stand against youtube, they'd be fired on the spot.

Yet again, the invisible hand pushing us off a cliff.

The only thing YouTube will demonetize is anything with the word "trans" in the title or tags.


The first picture of a black hole made Katie Bouman an overnight celebrity. Then internet trolls descended.

Katie Bouman, a researcher who helped create the first image of a black hole, quickly gained internet fame Thursday for her role in the project after a photo of her went viral.

But internet trolls soon followed, questioning Bouman’s work and floating false claims that she did not have much of a role in the project. Colleagues rallied to her defense, but the situation highlighted the vitriol that women continue to face on the internet, and the continued vulnerability of major internet platforms to trolling campaigns.

Bouman, a postdoctoral fellow who will soon be an assistant professor at the California Institute of Technology, noted in a Facebook post Wednesday that “no one algorithm or person made this image” and published a photo of the many people she worked alongside.

That said, the reporter's Tweets are just fantastic.

Instagram/Facebook simply did not respond when we flagged to them that an incel was running an “official” account that was the top search when users looked up Katie Bouman, the woman whose algorithm found the first picture of a black hole this week.

Update: They just got back to me asking me what her real account is. Do people have to have an Instagram account for the company to take down the incel account clearly impersonating them?

Do they have any sort of process there at all?

They're so f*cking bad at this, so consistently, obviously, monumentally f*cking awful that it's increasingly difficult for me to apply Hanlon's Razor here.

We know it's not adequately explained by stupidity. If that were the case they wouldn't be so dismissive of the problems even existing or resistant to fixing them in the rare occasion they acknowledge them.

Do people have to have an Instagram account for the company to take down the incel account clearly impersonating them?

Everyone in the US has an Instagram account. They are issued with SSNs now, right?

BadKen wrote:
Do people have to have an Instagram account for the company to take down the incel account clearly impersonating them?

Everyone in the US has an Instagram account. They are issued with SSNs now, right?

Has anyone done up a short story or some world-building around something like social media replacing SSN or similar? That could be interesting, though maybe already passé.

muraii wrote:
BadKen wrote:
Do people have to have an Instagram account for the company to take down the incel account clearly impersonating them?

Everyone in the US has an Instagram account. They are issued with SSNs now, right?

Has anyone done up a short story or some world-building around something like social media replacing SSN or similar? That could be interesting, though maybe already passé.

Already a reality in China

There’s also the novel those borrowed from, Cory Doctorow’s Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom.

Also an episode of The Orville.

Saying that the aftermath of the Notre Dame fire on social media has been a complete avalanche of actual "Fake News" would be a understatement.