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Hatemongering Becoming A Problem On Orkut

Posted by Zonk on from the not-so-good dept.

jaquesparrow writes "Orkut is a well known beta experiment, an invite only environment based on social networks. Recently it has been reported that hate and racism is proliferating on Orkut. Besides the story in the Wilmington Star, the International Herald Tribune also has commentary on the situation." From the article: "For Google, the trouble on Orkut - which is still in beta, or test, form - could easily escalate. A prosecutor in Brazil, where the service is especially popular, has already initiated an investigation into some of the more virulent Orkut sites."

7 of 585 comments (clear)

  1. Seen this before... by jonbeckett73 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I used to run a website (ThoughtCafe) for writers where they could give feedback on each others work. I had to close it down in the end because a small minority wrecked it for everybody. It seems most "community" websites suffer from the same issue - the possiblity of one "rogue" person to pose as several personalities within the website - basically in order to start an argument with themselves in order to draw others in, and then feed the argument. We never found an adequate defence against it.

    --
    Jonathan Beckett http://www.pluggedout.com
    1. Re:Seen this before... by General+Alcazar · · Score: 5, Interesting
      One possible solution that I see might be some fairly vigilant overseerers employed by Google to filter this stuff out. Currently, they have a sort of light weight version of this, in that contentious members get put in "jail" for a variable period of time depending on what, I do not know. However, this is obviously not working that well. They might need to keep a lot of censors employed in order to be effective. The problem with this is that they then may become liable.

      Why not implement a type of self-censorship by the memebers of the sort that Slashdot uses? There certainly is enough hatemongering going on here, and Slashdot is far from perfect, but it seems to be evolving towards something that sort of works. Thoughts?

    2. Re:Seen this before... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Instead of banning someone from a forum, what about just flagging troublemakers and having their posts just be invisible to everyone else? The troll can still see their own posts and everything will appear normal, but it will seem like they are just being ignored.

      If you kick someone off, they'll find an alias and new IP and return for more attention. If they think they are just being ignored, they'll find somewhere else to play.

    3. Re:Seen this before... by Chriscypher · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I've seen people do similar at parties. The 'rogue' joins a small group, steers the conversation towards some topic, then exits on to to the next small group to repeat. The party takes on the general tone of the agitator. I confronted one agitator who fessed up. He did it for fun. He liked to see how far he could turn the party. What I found distressing in this instance was he would steer conversations towards the morbid. Also, no one else at the party was aware of his actions.

      This also sounds a bit like what a friend used to do in chat rooms on AOL. People would go there looking for some hot chat, and he would deliberately weird them out for fun. He would weird them out with conversation so bizarre, they were incredulous they had found such a nutcase. I found this hilarious to read as a third-party, and it probably did the target some good, as they will be forewarned about anonymous fiends on the other side of their chat.

      Social manipulation is nothing new; this style of agitation once restricted to face-to-face interactions has become empowered in online social groups or forums.

      --
      "You have liberated me from thought."
  2. freedom of speech and all that by rve · · Score: 4, Interesting

    As I understand it from the article, these hate mongering forums on Orkut are invitation only private thingies where people express their private hate mongering expressions to their fellow hate mongers. What exactly is the problem here?

    Now if they were to barge in on other forums and express those opinions, it could be considered harassment, and that really is a problem, and probably also illegal is your country, but as far as I know expressing unpleasant opinions in private is considered legal.

  3. People are missing the point by 26199 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    These groups are formed and peopled by people who share an extremist viewpoint. In normal society, extremists are moderated by contact with people who aren't extremists. In a society like Orkut, extremists come into contact with more and more people who share the same view. This could potentially cause them to become even more extreme in their views or even spur them to action.

    This is the problem. It's not really about free speech and censorship; it's about what happens when you have a social system which encourages extremism, instead of one which works to moderate behaviour.

  4. Mixi.jp (Re:Regarding Orkut) by interactive_civilian · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Jugalator said:
    Why would anyone want to become member of a small randomly put together community by invitations? What do they discuss?
    Well...I am a member of Mixi.jp, a Japanese inivitation-only social networking site. It is a bit exclusive in that you really can't use the site unless you can read Japanese, but perhaps that keeps a lot of would-be trolls out (though there are plenty of Japanese trolls out there).

    Anyway, it seems to me like a successful version of what Orkut should be. I use it almost religiously and it works well because the majority of users are actually rather close to each other (few hours by train at the most in most cases) so we can actually meet in real life. My list of friends is a little small (32 at the moment) but I have met all but 3 of those people IRL. Of those three, one lives in the US, one lives in Hokkkaido (I'm in Tokyo) and the other...well, timing just hasn't worked out yet.

    Anyway, the point of my post is that in some cases, these "small randomly put together communities" work quite well and can be an excellent supplement to IRL (note: I did NOT say replacement). I've gotten some good snowboarding buddies, some good music buddies, some good photography buddies, etc. Hell, I even met a really attractive girl that will hopefully be my next girlfriend (2 months without getting any is starting to drive me crazy...broke up last december ;_; )

    So, these sites can work. I think Orkut's problem is that it is just too big and unfocused.

    --
    "Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks