“The rising popularity of alternative social media app Parler is raising concerns over the spread of misinformation and potential for radicalizing users on a platform that’s taken a hands-off approach to regulating content,” reports The Hill’s reporter on technology policy: The app has been boosted by conservatives, surging since Election Day, as Republicans amp up allegations of anti-conservative bias from social…
Tag: extremism
Pakistan’s PM Asks Facebook To Ban Islamophobic Content
Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan called on Facebook to ban Islamophobic content on its platform, warning of a spike in radicalization amongst Muslims, hours after he hit out at the French president for “attacking Islam.” Reuters reports: Pakistan summoned the French ambassador in Islamabad as anger spread on Monday over President Emmanuel Macron’s reaction to the murder last week of a…
The Terrorist Group is Defeated and Routed. But Its Backup Plan Survives
The terrorist group is defeated and routed. But its backup plan survives. From a report: It all began on October 27, 2019. Rumour was, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, the leader of Isis, was dead. Nothing was confirmed, but already the jihadist world online was thrumming with excitement and trepidation. “I was walking through an airport,” Moustafa Ayad tells me. “Jet-lagged out…
Russia Lifts Ban on Telegram After the Instant Messaging Firm Expressed ‘Readiness To Counter Terrorism and Extremism’
The Russian government has lifted its largely ineffective two-year-old ban on the Telegram instant messaging service. From a report: In a message posted on its website, Russia’s media watchdog Roskomnadzor said it lifted the ban after Russian prosecutors reached an agreement with Pavel Durov, Telegram’s founder. Russian officials said Durov “expressed readiness to counter terrorism and extremism” content shared on his…
Facebook Expands Definition of Terrorist Organizations To Limit Extremism
Facebook on Tuesday announced a series of changes to limit hate speech and extremism on the social network, expanding its definition of terrorist organizations and planning to deploy artificial intelligence to better spot and block live videos of shooters. The company is also expanding a program that redirects users searching for extremism to resources intended to help them leave hate groups…
YouTube Removes 17,000 Channels For Hate Speech
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Hollywood Reporter: YouTube says it has removed more than 17,000 channels for hate speech, representing a spike in takedowns since its new hate speech policy went into effect in June. The Google-owned company calls the June update — in which YouTube said it would specifically prohibit videos that glorify Nazi ideology or deny…
Australia Plans To Block Domains That Host Terrorist Material During Crisis Situations
Australia laid out some of the country’s first concrete steps to make good on its promise of combating the spread of extremism online at this year’s G7 leader’s forum, Reuters reported Sunday. From a report: Officials said the government intends to cut off all access to any internet domain that fails to block terrorist material during a crisis event, and legislation…
YouTube’s Algorithms Blamed For Brazil’s Dangerous Conspiracy Video-Sharing on WhatsApp
Sunday the New York Times reported that YouTube “radicalized” Brazil — by “systematically” diverting users to conspiracy videos. Yet conventional wisdom in Brazil still puts the blame on WhatsApp, the Times reported in a follow-up story on Thursday shared by Slashdot reader AmiMoJo. “Everything began to click into place when we met Luciana Brito, a soft-spoken clinical psychologist who works with…
Facebook’s Ex-Security Chief Details His ‘Observatory’ for Internet Abuse
Andy Greenberg, writing for Wired: When Alex Stamos describes the challenge of studying the worst problems of mass-scale bad behavior on the internet, he compares it to astronomy. To chart the cosmos, astronomers don’t build their own Hubble telescopes or Arecibo observatories. They concentrate their resources in a few well-situated places and share time on expensive hardware. But when it comes…
Can Google Ads Change Your Beliefs?
The New York Times ran a disturbing opinion piece about Google by the founder of search engine marketing consulting firm Berlin SEM. In it he discusses counter-messaging ads offering “redirection”, where marketers “swerve your monetizable desperation. But we can also swerve something bigger: your beliefs, convictions and ideology.” There are advertisers in the digital marketing industry who want to find out…