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Hatemongering Becoming A Problem On Orkut
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."
Inevitable as humanity continues to grow and expand. It's not a cause but a symptom of overpopulation.
no one takes the time to stop and smell the Orkuts?
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
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.
Because a forum dedicated to a certain topic shouldn't be flooded by inane and pointless racist remarks. Such a forum is privately owned, and freedom of speech is up to the owner, and it can definitely stirr up and ruin the experience for regulars if the problem becomes too large.
Hell, look at Slashdot. What if there weren't moderations, how many GNAA and Goatse ascii drawings wouldn't there be in every topic on the front page?
Hey, everyones saying...
"oh i saw them on blogs", "i saw them on site x, y and z"....
No ones noticed that we have this ALL the time on slashdot? How do we fix it? We leave a warning for all, and then we ignore it. Simple as pie.
The fact is racistism, and all *ism's will NEVER go away, but this doesn't mean that you can't choose to not care about them. These people have nothing better to do with their lifes, pity them, they are the ones that become nothing.
Slashdot, would be totally, totally ruined (far worse than people claim it is) if people took any notice of the trolls, but the whole fact that we DONT means they dont get anywhere.
People are racist in the streets, some people do it without even thinking about it, and would never do it if they realised they were. It happens, why can't humanity get over it?
Because humanity, wishes to be pefect, when people finally accept that we ARE a flawed race, then we might finally start bonding together.
Someone said "its from the cause of overpopulation". Nope, your wrong... Its from people creating value of other people. Its from people having something, someone else wants. No person really hated someone else for the colour of their skin, they hated them for some other reason, yet people are stupid and they look for hte easilest flaw to blame, which in most cases is the fact that someone has differently coloured skin.
I ware glasses, and people used to use this as a method of getting to me, it was actually the fact that i did damn well in school, even when i had only 50%~ attendance, and they were jelious. Yet the only way they could get at me, would be making jokes about my glasses. They couldn't cope when i made jokes about my glasses too, when i would turn around and use them as an aerial for the radio which wouldn't work. It would confuse them to have someone putting them selfs down.
Im not saying that anyone should go "Hey look, im black, i might as well set my self on fire" or anything stupid like this. This isn't the point, the point is there is many underlying issues, which causes this hatrid, most of the time, the person effected cannot change this either, as they mostly didn't cause the problem in the first place. So they have to look on and say "What can i do? Nothing.... so i ignore it".
it might anger them to see someone writing these things, but its not like they could ever change this person, so why waste time worrying about it. It wont change the world, it wont stop kids bullying others over stupid little things like this.
Ignore it, it might not go away, but at least then it wont effect you?
- http://www.milkme.co.uk
When all other technology is moving to isolate us into our own cozy little worlds, you are surprised?
:)
Blogs give you the news you already agree with. IM has only your buddies. Cellphones let you walk around the world talking to people you already know, avoiding all new people. I could go on.
Cozy isn't it. Problem is, now noone has ANY need for real social skills, personality, or the ability to deal with different views.
Why in my day, we telnet'd into a BBS and met people from all over the world! "Chatrooms" (read: bot nests) only come in local and special interest these days.
At least here on Slashdot all us geeks are safe in our dupe friendly Microsoft unfriendly world
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
Why would anyone want to become member of a small randomly put together community by invitations? What do they discuss? Won't the discussions get more feedback in more open communities? Is it because they feel the added privacy makes it easier to reveal private information? But then you need to trust all Orkut members, and many will have been invited by persons you don't even know.
:-)
Hmm, it just feels like a community for people who wish to be "cool" to me, but regardless how I look at it, I always end up as seeing it as a useless idea?
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Here is a post from an insider giving some of his oppinions about what's going on:
http://media.orkut.com/articles/0100.html
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.
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
they are identifying themselves to the world and to the intelligence services "come and get me, we're dumb enough to tell you who we are and dumb enough to _write down_ what we _really_ think".
You're all for the prosecutions of thought crimes, I see.
I'm living in a country whose founding act was 56 people doing exactly what you're laughing at: listing exactly what they thought and putting their names on it, all but asking to be punished for the document. Part of what they believed in was that everybody had the same right to find happiness as the next guy, which means that holding an opinion, no matter how detestable, shouldn't be a crime and shouldn't be punished.
It would appear that you are not of the same belief.
The people that post racist remarks anonymously aren't really racists for the most part...they're simply trying to upset people and "rage" the forum ala myg0t.
They want to piss people off and the quickest and most effective way is to post racial remarks.
Real racists...and belive me I grew up in a racist environment with Klan rallies going on about a mile from my house...are usually up front about their racism and shout it out non-anonymously.
Now, there are exceptions of course.
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
Trolling isn't power. It's the sign of a kid holed up in a basement since he's gotten his butt kicked ten too many times for being unable to keep his sociopathic mouth shut. You think it's cute. Everyone else on the planet thinks it's a maladjusted waste of time. That you find it to be high entertainment says much more about you than your "audience".
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Are you insane, or just provincial?
Look, in countries with real ethnic tensions---Yugoslavia, Iraq---a large proportion of the people will, every so often, get up and kill their neighbors, who've lived next to them for centuries.
In America, once a group of funny-speaking immigrants (Bosnians, Irish, whatever) has been here for two generations or so, they're just as white as everyone else. Our remnant bigotry comes from the notion of race, which is sort of like "ethnicity for dummies", as it depends on being able to identify someone from fifty paces.
And I should point out that we have racial tensions in big cities which are thickly developed, and which are frequently (Los Angeles) terribly segregated. Note that Los Angeles was the site of the most recent significant civil unrest in America.
America may have bigotry, but we do not have bigotry like they have in other places. It's more dumbed-down. How predictable.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
You can pretend that these thoughts don't exist all you want. But they do exist. And you, like everyone else, have them.
Speak for yourself. I've noticed that many racists try to justify their hatred by claiming that everyone feels the same way. I suppose people just want to feel "normal" and not the exception. Well, let me tell you something: You are the exception. Racism is a learned behavior and you are a part of an increasingly small minority of indoctrinated people.
Your "science" is also horribly flawed. Here are a choice quote from the AAA:
Evidence from the analysis of genetics (e.g., DNA) indicates that most physical variation, about 94%, lies within so-called racial groups. Conventional geographic "racial" groupings differ from one another only in about 6% of their genes. This means that there is greater variation within "racial" groups than between them. In neighboring populations there is much overlapping of genes and their phenotypic (physical) expressions.
After all, I am strangely colored.