Slashdot Mirror
Network Scientists Discover the 'Dark Corners' of the Internet
KentuckyFC writes "Network theorists have always simulated the spread of information through the internet using the same models epidemiologists use to study the spread of disease. Now Chinese scientists say this isn't quite right--it's easy to infect everybody you meet with a disease but it's much harder to inform all your contacts of a particular piece of information. So they've redone the conventional network simulations assuming that people only ever transmit messages to a certain fraction of their friends. And their results throw up a surprise. In these models, there are always individuals or clusters of individuals who are unreachable. These people never receive the information and make up a kind of underclass who eke out an information-poor existence in a few dark corners of the network. That has implications for organizations aiming to spread ideas who will have to think more carefully about how to reach people in these dark corners. That includes marketers and advertisers hoping to sell products and services but also agencies hoping to spread different kinds of messages such as safety-related information. It also raises the interesting prospect of individuals seeking out the dark corners of the internet, perhaps to preserve their privacy or perhaps for more nefarious reasons."
Network scientists don't get around much.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
According to the feds, that's just two ways of saying the same thing.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
I don't really understand what they mean. Are they implying that there are entire pygmy tribes somewhere that spend their entire day on IRC? That somewhere there's a bunch of Tunisian goat-herders that only get their news through Usenet?
If this is the case, who cares, and why?
Really just by posting something on the internet, you can't actually get everybody on the internet to know about?! Somebody had to research this? Suddenly I love my job that much more.
Because we have our own asocial networks.
FTA: "...spreading efficiency is highly correlated with the network heterogeneity..."
Basically obvious, but is this a negative or positive correlation? For example, disease spread has a positive correlation with decreased heterogeneity. Does their model follow or depart from this? Probably follows, but inquiring mind wants to know!
... mainstream media propaganda.
even today there are people out there who have a knowledge deficit and still believe the propaganda of the mainstream media - because they simply live in these 'dark corners' and are never exposed to the information they are unaware of - and if you're not aware of it how can you search for it?
that it's a CHINESE researcher in CHINA that is studying the 'dark' (as in unreachable, not horribly bad, illegal, etc) corners of the internet.... when his own homeland is basically one big dark corner comprised of a billion people. yes, the chinese 'intranet' gets information, but it is the information the chinese government wants you to know.. not what's really 'real'
How is staying "information poor" going to help your nefarious purpose?
"Jafar! We need to build a bomb. Now, what I want you to do is go n the internet and find..."
"Yeah, yeah, I don't need the internet. I got this. Don't worry."
"Wait! Why are you smoking while working on th-"
*BOOM*
If only Jafar had not been information poor, he'd have known that smoking while working with low grade explosive chemicals was unwise.
But seriously, how is a lack of information going to benefit someone plotting criminal deeds? How is it a benefit to them at all? this is scaremongering, its FUD and it needs to stop.
Perhaps Malcolm Gladwell had better update his book, "The Tipping Point". It's about how fads, crazes and fashions take off. In the book, he doesn't mention people who remain impervious to such things. They are indeed an interesting group.
I learned that ages ago. I didn't get a single ILOVEYOU email when everybody else at the university received countless. Obviously I'm a dark corner.
Why people never read the article and instead comment title/description? This article is not about warez and pron but about network theory.
I thought they were talking about 4Chan. Imagine my surprise they weren't.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
First of all, by "internet" they mean social networks like Facebook and Twitter and the interpersonal communication between people. Second, they have created a simulation, but it's not clear how it actually correlates to the real world. The key thing is they have the concept of "exhausting" sources, so once a person has communicated something, they won't receive or communicate that information again. Obviously that's not the case in the real world, because some people are more interested in certain pieces of information and will continue propagating them much longer than others, potentially seeding enough to compensate for the "exhaustion" of other average users.
Further, social networks all have a backlog where previous posts can be viewed (particularly true with FB), thus a person still "transmits" a given piece of information indefinitely as other people view their wall going back far in time. Thus it is always possible for a "dark corner" of the "internet" to always catch up by seeing a piece of information in that way instead of only real-time.
Better known as 318230.
Ponder it for a bit.
WWW != internet. It is merely a sub-set.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I suppose this would be similar to rural backwaters. Those middle of nowhere places where people labeled hicks, red necks, libertarians, tea baggers, and the like live cut off from the realities of the other 95% of the world surrounding them. Places where education is more about athletics than academics and knowledge is substituted with opinion.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
Some people don't want to be marketed or advertised at, so they avoid these gateways. Maybe you should be a kind asshole and not find a way to these "dark corners."
The G
It appears that my aggressive spam filter is now a "dark corner of the Internet."
The places where you're being bullshitted and force fed shit until you don't even WANT to look for information anymore?
Did someone get grant money to come up with this "DUH, you don't say..." conclusion?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Like the cluster of sites on each extreme of the political spectrum that become completely detatched from reality because they only ever get information from each other.
Is a national passtime in the US.
Assuming they are not uncomfortable or in need, they are not an underclass. In fact, they may be an uberclass.
I know some super-rich people (a few, not many) and all of them don't really bother with the internet. One of them told me, "Look, I pay people to deal with that bullshit." That struck me as interesting. Many people today *must* be informed and online. It's the only way to keep up. But if you're worth a Billion Dollars (or even hundreds of millions), you basically don't have to give flying fuck about that. You can jet down to the Bahamas for the winter, and then scoot north for the summer. You can work on your golf game. One friend spends a lot of time making bad paintings. He knows they suck, but he simply enjoys making them. And he can afford to make them and show them to his friends, and not even bother exhibiting - a waste of time. He's never on the internet and doesn't really care.
That's what real wealth brings - freedom FROM the internet.
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
You know you were thinking of it while you read the title.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
The paper is all about social networks, and has way too many wrong or uninteresting assumptions to be of any real use as is.
However, there are really unreachable areas of the Internet, because of too long routing paths. These areas change depending on where you are (network-wise), for obvious reasons...
Not to mention the dark internet, areas that are walled-off or partitioned (don't confuse them with the darknet overlay networks).
"It also raises the interesting prospect of individuals seeking out the dark corners of the internet, perhaps to preserve their privacy or perhaps for more nefarious reasons."
Nefarious reasons is always a subcategory of 'to preserve their privacy'. But more and more it is a small subsection as interest in privacy grows.
We should learn what we need to know about issues, before we decide what we need to feel about them.
...make up a kind of underclass who eke out an information-poor existence in a few dark corners of the network.
...preserve their privacy or perhaps for more nefarious reasons.
...have scripts to kick out adbots.
...there's always ten percent who don't get the word.
Good, as i like my little dark corner of the world where those leeches don't exist.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I'm always the last to hear about anything. :-/
But seriously, I often find that people assume I'm better connected than I actually am. I'm the tech guy, so people figure I already heard about stuff before they did anyways. While that is true it's only in a specific subset of information. .. Things posted about on Slashdot.
So by all means please do repeat stories of things that broke last week because if it's not here I have no idea.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
"Don't worry, with my new internet, all those uninformed webcrawlers will get network coverage, meanwhile you do not have to give up your internets or your ISP doctor."
Dark Matter, Dark Energy, Dark Corners, this science fad has got to end!
Table-ized A.I.
Last April I was enjoying a quiet weekend working in my yard and house. That Tuesday I realized that I had 12 messages on my phone from friends and relatives hoping I was OK.
OK from what? The Boston Marathon Bombings.
You know, if the world can't come up with something more compelling than terrorists and Justin Beiber and being tentacle-raped by the NSA, fuck it - my phone is off the hook. I don't need it. Go screw yourselves with a Dremel tool.
The dark corner is well known. It's called 4chan.
How did they find those Dark Corners without reaching them? One knows how to reach the non-reached. For nothing is secret, that shall not be made manifest; neither any thing hid, that shall not be known and come abroad. (Luke 8.1)
They are talking about the otherkin community.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otherkin
So the message is that the Internet as a whole has some potential to resist the disease of advertisers, government, and privacy advocates. (Or anyone who wants to force their "information" universally.)
And the problem is?
Simple fix: clue 'em to Slashdot.
Am I the only one slightly disturbed by the ".. protected their privacy or ... more nefarious reasons" line? Since when has "privacy" been a "nefarious" behavior?
The scenario created by these researchers does not take into account information that is received yet purposefully ignored, information lost and rediscovered, or how information can be received more than once, in multiple formats and/or revisions, as well as their flawed case where a node can only transmit once. There is nothing real world about this study and the few correct points the article makes is merely common sense that any average person could have concluded by a few moments of simple thought on the topic. This research is flawed by its own sterilized environment and merely reaches an elementary assumption at best. They could conceive a more accurate understanding of the dissemination of data by simply going to the public library and studying the history of religious text and how any particularly well known piece of 'data' has spread over time, yet still has not been dispensed completely to all potential 'nodes' in its original form. And finally, the term 'dark corners of the internet' is ridiculous, especially considering all of their charts indicate that they assume the internet and everything "inside of it" is round. Looks to me like someone is just milking some grant money on this one until maybe they get lucky and stumble upon some idea that is actually concrete.
Those dark corners sound like they may not have been infected by advertising, youtube, facebook and twitter! The good internet! As it was in 1991. Ah those were good times. The internet now is barely worth bothering with.
01/01/01
... when they didn't even run latex twice to get the references right in the PDF on arxiv
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Who_concert_disaster. White people. 11 dead, 26 injured. Over a rock show.
Leave us alone!
By the definition given of "dark corners" (i.e. formed of people who are not well-connected) then a well-connected person moving into a dark corner will just light it up.