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Four steps we’re taking today to fight online terror

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Re: Four steps we’re taking today to fight online terror

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are Leftist movements in the US that are arguably just as violent as those on the alt-Right. What's the chance that these policies apply to both sides equally? Given the history, I'd say not much. And I don't think that's a good thing. EDIT: Unless someone is saying that AntiFa ISN'T violent?

The recent controversies at Evergreen College provide an illustrative example. Videos of student protestors bullying professors, ala Maoist Cultural Revolution style, were taken down due to issues with "bullying". It's worth noting that these were original videos uploaded to YT by the protestors themselves!

Also worth noting that the videos were probably taken down less for "bullying" and more because they made the protesters look horrible, too.

Re: Four steps we’re taking today to fight online terror

#52

  to fight online terror

  1. identify extremist and terrorism-related 
     videos

  2. increase the number of independent experts 

  3. a tougher stance on videos

  4. expand its role in counter-radicalisation 
     efforts
But I'm not terrified by things that happen online. Least of all videos of events in the past.

And, to be honest, I've seen plenty of NSFW videos.

Let's not kid ourselves. Terrorism has pretty much nothing to do with videos. Radicalization has more to do with the social realities faced on the ground, day after day, as we live our lives. Alienation and the misery of slums, and hopelessness of monotony without progress, are what lead to terror.

The true effects of propaganda are over-stated and over-imagined.

Re: Four steps we’re taking today to fight online terror

#54
post #29

In the west terrorism works trough media exposure. Fighting it in media is good strategy. Violence itself is ridiculously low volume per capita. If traditional media would step in, it would be major win. Instead of having symbiotic relationship with terrorism, where they hype up the terror, they could stick to reporting the facts and situation and not providing non-stop terror-porn entertainment to audience. Once peo…

Yes. This is most obvious when comparing say an "ISIS inspired gun attack that killed 3 people" vs a ransom mass shooting attack where 20 died. The former is way more mediatized reported on, while on the latter it's recommended "not to politicize the event." But for the terror attack every war-nut and surveillance nut come out to call for bigger military budgets and more surveillance.

Re: Four steps we’re taking today to fight online terror

#55
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Supporting violence and hate isn't acceptable in any other format, why should the Internet be excluded.

It absolutely is acceptable. There's a lot of hate being stirred towards ISIS, and violence is supported quite openly in the media, and also used in the real world. The west has enemies and stirs up hate and uses violence to target them, adding to the mayhem in the middle east, killing 10s of thousands of people every year. Violence is very acceptable for the western democracies. You have to be willfully ignorant not…

You're confusing is with ought. Violence is only acceptable in very reasoned, measured manners, and only to achieve clear and decisive goals. Hate is not acceptable anywhere. Outrage, maybe.

Re: Four steps we’re taking today to fight online terror

#56
I truly hope these changes will include the US and Allied forces combat footage.

I've seen videos on YouTube contain some of the most shockingly needless violence with complimentary cheering and derogatory language used by British and US soldiers (often directed towards foreign people) one can imagine, disturbing.

It seemed like footage aimed at radicalising people to me.

Re: Four steps we’re taking today to fight online terror

#57

This is a terrifying step for the internet. These kinds of step lay the groundwork for censorship but fail to consider the impact of these changes in the event that the bad guys come into power or gain influence of these management systems.

Supporting violence and hate isn't acceptable in any other format, why should the Internet be excluded.

While your statement is quite vague it is no less completely inaccurate. "Supporting violence" is subjective and ambiguous. Are action movies and video games supportive of violence? How about war documentaries?

Furthermore, while "hate" speech is not the best use of our ability to communicate it does fall under the protection of free speech - at least in the United States. In some groups hate speech (however it is you describe it) is acceptable.

Just as you are free to not associate with those groups the internet should be free to express the ideas you disagree with.

You don't have the freedom to interfere or disrupt the freedoms of others.

Re: Four steps we’re taking today to fight online terror

#58
post #3
post #2

They say they are fighting "violent extremism online" but how can you be violent online? That's a physical thing. Instead, they outline four points for greater censorship of videos.

Which is Google's right to do. Let ISIS or White Nazi rebirth club set their own video hosting services up instead of piggybacking on something they are ultimately trying to destroy.

Ok, fair enough. It's Google's sandbox, they can do what they like.

So let's say ISIS and the Neo-Nazis get their own video hosting services, since there probably aren't enough of either to make that infeasible, and they already have plenty of venues for hosting their own material. Then what?

What problem does removing that content from Google actually solve? The internet detects censorship as damage and routes around it, remember - stopping the propagation of anything people want to publish is impossible by design.

Re: Four steps we’re taking today to fight online terror

#59
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you ignore the specifics of the content I would agree with you. Now, when this expands to other subject areas, then it is a different story for sure.

"Third, we will be taking a tougher stance on videos that do not clearly violate our policies — for example, videos that contain inflammatory religious or supremacist content...." They go on to say that this type of speech won't be exactly blocked, but basically made harder to find. It's not quite big brother, but I suspect nothing like that happens all at once. "Inflammatory religious" in particular, feels like a pr…

Inflammatory: (especially of speech or writing) arousing or intended to arouse angry or violent feelings.

Religious speech is not inflammatory just because some people strongly disagree with it.

Re: Four steps we’re taking today to fight online terror

#60
post #30

Democracy has it's flaws, but I don't know any other system that works better for society today. One of democracy flaw is balance between freedom and safety, you can't have both. You can easily resolve this (terrorism) problem in totalitarian regimes (look at Kadyrow and Chechen Republic) but whole society will pay price for that. On the other hand it's easy to criticize any censorship like moves but radical islam id…

> You can fight terrorists, kill them but you can't kill the ideology. If you can't kill ideology you need to control it's spreading. What tools do we have to do that aside from moderating content?

I'm somewhat hopeful for the "Redirect Method" method mentioned in the article. If the other content is not ridiculing and inflammatory, but reasonable, and fact based and balanced, it may actually work and be a good thing for some people.

> UK attacks or any other attacks, ask yourself, what you would give up to get your dead child back.

There's no getting back. Questions should be asked by regular people who didn't experience any harm yet. And also it should not only be selfish questions, but questions like "What harm I'm willing to inflict on others (inside and outside of my country) in the name of my supposed protection?"

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