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Anti-racism sites hit by wave of cyber-attacks

bbc.com

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Re: Anti-racism sites hit by wave of cyber-attacks

#91

Post by thwarted »

zozbot234 wrote: post #85
save_ferris wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The technology moved faster than our monkey brains could keep up. I think it’s important to remember the ways in which the internet has evolved that got us here. It’s not just a question of speed, but of incentives. The internet has long been a tool for huge tech companies to build businesses that can only exist as long as they remain largely unchecked and unregulated, and the stock market has cheered these efforts…

"Weaponized" speech is an Orwellian phrase. You can weaponize weapons, but legitimate speech (outside of clear and present danger, like inciting lawless action or shouting "Fire" in a crowded theater) should always be responded to with speech.

It's not the content of the speech itself that is weaponized, it's sheer volume of speech that needs to be responded to that makes it weaponized. And the volume (amount) of speech that must be responded to is so great that even the concept and need to "remain vigilant" against it is a challenge.

Re: Anti-racism sites hit by wave of cyber-attacks

#92

Post by eropple »

Covzire wrote: post #59
eropple wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In addition to green usernames, a pretty common tell is the "Latin"(-ish) username. The white supremacist segment of the population loves it some Rome. It is by no means indicative, but over time, if you pay attention, you end up with a bunch of heuristics that can help you identify good-faith arguments versus malicious ones.

We have to start avoiding latin names in things now? Fuck that. Are you sure you're not generalizing a bit too much?

Assuming you are saying this in good faith--EDIT: and, speaking of heuristics, I looked at your posting history and I will confess to some skepticism about the assumption but somebody who has the same question in a more genuine way may be curious as to the answer!--there are a whole lot of white-supremacist dirtbags out there and they want to hurt decent people and, more importantly, waste their time and energy. That makes good filters important because otherwise they will sap your time and energy and make you less effective at the things you want to be effective at. Things like these are heuristics; they help you filter down the garbage. When you see consistent results when some dude with a Latin name (especially an obvious new account) comes into your mentions Just Asking Question over and over again, you, y'know--notice.

Puffy Latin names, anime avatars, new accounts, that kind of thing? One is not necessarily a tell. More may be, and depending on how much of that you see, you may need to tailor your filter to accept false negatives 'cause the alternative is to get brainworms.

(For an example of what is not a heuristic, consider 1488 or "Deus vult"--that's just racist agitprop.)

Re: Anti-racism sites hit by wave of cyber-attacks

#93

Post by 082349872349872 »

scottlocklin wrote: post #88

As usual with this sort of "people doing things online" thing; a completely vacuous conspiracy theory. Here is the actual source article: https://blog.cloudflare.com/cyberattacks-since-the-murder-of... Here is the plot showing something allegedly different happening this month: https://blog-cloudflare-com-assets.storage.googleapis.com/20... What's the p-value on a t-test of difference there, cloudflare spooks? By eye…

thanks for the source article; it has the same graph as the BBC article, and references https://www.cloudflare.com/galileo/

Re: Anti-racism sites hit by wave of cyber-attacks

#94

Post by [deleted] »

Covzire wrote: post #89
krapp wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feel free to stand in line behind the people upset that white supremacists ruined the swastika (for half the planet), the toothbrush mustache, Norse mythology, American conservatism, the name Adolf, social media, leather trenchcoats, and various numbers and memes and direct your outrage at the proper target when your number is called.

Or we can stop building new stereotypes and using generalities in silly ways.

[deleted]

Re: Anti-racism sites hit by wave of cyber-attacks

#95

Post by krapp »

Covzire wrote: post #89
krapp wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feel free to stand in line behind the people upset that white supremacists ruined the swastika (for half the planet), the toothbrush mustache, Norse mythology, American conservatism, the name Adolf, social media, leather trenchcoats, and various numbers and memes and direct your outrage at the proper target when your number is called.

Or we can stop building new stereotypes and using generalities in silly ways.

We can't and won't, because that's not the way humans or human cultures work.

Re: Anti-racism sites hit by wave of cyber-attacks

#96

Post by takeda »

simonh wrote: post #68
vsareto wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>but there's an actual anti-fascist movement happening as well. Movement as in organized movement, or just more people identifying as antifa?

Antifa are very well organised and very much a real thing. Of course like minded people get involved locally as well, so there are probably a lot more people 'identifying as Antifa' than long term Antifa people, but they are a persistent organised group and some people are into it full time. Luis Enrique Marquez is a well known example.

Antifa doesn't really have leadership, it doesn't even have set of rules to follow. There are even disagreements between people regarding their approach.

It is just bunch of smaller groups that use the term to identify themselves.

Re: Anti-racism sites hit by wave of cyber-attacks

#97

Post by gleenn »

scottlocklin wrote: post #88

As usual with this sort of "people doing things online" thing; a completely vacuous conspiracy theory. Here is the actual source article: https://blog.cloudflare.com/cyberattacks-since-the-murder-of... Here is the plot showing something allegedly different happening this month: https://blog-cloudflare-com-assets.storage.googleapis.com/20... What's the p-value on a t-test of difference there, cloudflare spooks? By eye…

That does read more like a Cloudflare advertisement, and they definitely don't add much in terms of who's being attacked. The graphs are pretty misleading with titles mentioning "since George Floyd's death" which would certainly give you the impression there is a relation but their data doesn't seem to back up that claim directly.

Re: Anti-racism sites hit by wave of cyber-attacks

#98

Post by save_ferris »

zozbot234 wrote: post #85
save_ferris wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The technology moved faster than our monkey brains could keep up. I think it’s important to remember the ways in which the internet has evolved that got us here. It’s not just a question of speed, but of incentives. The internet has long been a tool for huge tech companies to build businesses that can only exist as long as they remain largely unchecked and unregulated, and the stock market has cheered these efforts…

"Weaponized" speech is an Orwellian phrase. You can weaponize weapons, but legitimate speech (outside of clear and present danger, like inciting lawless action or shouting "Fire" in a crowded theater) should always be responded to with speech.

The problem nowadays is that it’s getting harder to separate legitimate speech from automated amplified speech.

Those who are able to build networks of bot accounts are able to deeply undermine discourse in dangerous ways, and social media platforms aren’t financially incentivized to deal with it.

Twitter could tell us right now how many bots are on the platform, but they never will because it could tank their stock.

As long as platforms can be manipulated by automation, this intentionally destructive speech will continue to proliferate.

Re: Anti-racism sites hit by wave of cyber-attacks

#99

Post by kitotik »

thrwaway69 wrote: post #77
crazygringo wrote: post #56

I was under the impression that these kinds of kids and hackers DDoS-ing sites for fun or activism were virtually all socially liberal, so attacks on government and military websites make sense to me. But I'm truly surprised to see anti-racism sites suffering from these attacks. Is there really a racist contingent of hackers out there? I just never thought of the two going together. Or is this more likely to be more…

I think they don't care as long as lulz. Don't think too much about what kids like to do in free time.

I’ve never understood this train of thought that kids have no meaningful thoughts or points of view.

It’s not like adulthood has some magic turning point where ignorance turns to enlightenment.

I’d wager that far more adults are manipulative, pathological liars than kids tend to be.

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