Slashdot Mirror
The Washington Post Asks: Should 8chan Be Considered a Terrorist Recuiting Site? (washingtonpost.com)
An anonymous reader quotes the Washington Post:
As most of the world condemned last week's mass shooting in New Zealand, a contrary story line emerged on 8chan, the online message board where the alleged shooter had announced the attack and urged others to continue the slaughter. "Who should i kill?" one anonymous poster wrote. "I have never been this happy," wrote another. "I am ready. I want to fight...." The persistence of the talk of violence on 8chan has led some experts to call for tougher actions by the world's governments, with some saying the site increasingly looks like the jihadi forums organized by the Islamic State and al-Qaeda...
8chan's founder, Fredrick Brennan, said Jim Watkins [8chan's sole administrator] owns other Internet businesses and has built a technical fortress to guard 8chan from potential takedowns: He owns nearly every component securing the site to the backbone of the Web, including its servers, which are scattered around the world. "You can send a complaint, but no one's going to do anything. He owns the whole operation," Brennan said. "It's how he keeps people confused and guessing...." Watkins is content to lose money, Brennan said, because he sees it as a pet project: "8chan is like a boat to Jim. It doesn't matter if it makes money. He just enjoys using it...."
8chan, however, is shielded in another way: the U.S. web-services giant Cloudflare, which helps websites guard against "distributed denial of service," or DDoS, attacks that online vigilante groups have used to target 8chan in the past.
The Post reports that Brennan "worries there are no true technical solutions beyond a total redesign of the Web, focused around identification and moderation, that could undermine it as a venue for free expression." Brennan tells the Post that "The Internet as a whole is not made to be censored. It was made to be resilient. And as long as there's a contingent of people who like this content, it will never go away."
On Tuesday, 8chan posted tips on Twitter for what to do "If your ISP is blocking a website you'd like to browse" -- a tweet which is now pinned to the top of its feed.
8chan's founder, Fredrick Brennan, said Jim Watkins [8chan's sole administrator] owns other Internet businesses and has built a technical fortress to guard 8chan from potential takedowns: He owns nearly every component securing the site to the backbone of the Web, including its servers, which are scattered around the world. "You can send a complaint, but no one's going to do anything. He owns the whole operation," Brennan said. "It's how he keeps people confused and guessing...." Watkins is content to lose money, Brennan said, because he sees it as a pet project: "8chan is like a boat to Jim. It doesn't matter if it makes money. He just enjoys using it...."
8chan, however, is shielded in another way: the U.S. web-services giant Cloudflare, which helps websites guard against "distributed denial of service," or DDoS, attacks that online vigilante groups have used to target 8chan in the past.
The Post reports that Brennan "worries there are no true technical solutions beyond a total redesign of the Web, focused around identification and moderation, that could undermine it as a venue for free expression." Brennan tells the Post that "The Internet as a whole is not made to be censored. It was made to be resilient. And as long as there's a contingent of people who like this content, it will never go away."
On Tuesday, 8chan posted tips on Twitter for what to do "If your ISP is blocking a website you'd like to browse" -- a tweet which is now pinned to the top of its feed.
Because that's where we're headed. No one will be anonymous anymore. We must all think and act the same.
Sure, but only if Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Whatsapp, Hotmail, Gmail, and all radio and TV broadcasts are also considered terrorit rectruitment sites. Otherwise it just seems like scapegoating and hypocrisy. Though that's pretty par for the course I guess.
The real question is: Should the Washington Post be considered Jeff Bezos Blog?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Surely driving them even further underground will only make things better!
Oh, quit being such a fucking snowflake. Why are so many conservatives little more than trolls who see every silly little thing as proof of a worldwide conspiracy against them?
That icon comes and goes pretty much at random. I've seen it on any number of stories, irrespective of the political status of the subject matter. Unfortunately for conservatives, they're more often the ones threatening or encouraging violence, and therefore more likely to be called out.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
Woke: The Internet is a terrorist recruiting site.
This thing is a lot more complex than just "antifa vs nazi", and trying to simplify like that only make the situation a lot worse.
For example, the christchurch shooter is an "acceleracionist", basically someone that tried to do very specific actions to make a civil war between the left and right happen.
The targets he picked, the memes he used, everything planned from the ground up to make the far left activists have more power and overreact with it, causing an overreaction from the right and so forth, and sadly the NZ government fell for his bait, sink and line.
And finally, nothing justifies violence unless it's a direct immediate threat, If a nazi or an antifa or muslim or poodle fanatic is threatening your life directly such as pointing a gun at you, then you can stop him/her/(a shitton of pronouns), otherwise it's the job of the police to deal with it.
to reign in the worst elements of their community. By all accounts 8Chan bills itself as a haven for those sorts.
There are arguments to be made that 8chan shouldn't be considered a terrorist recruitment site. For example, that it's not their intended purpose and that any recruitment taking place is a side effect of their laissez faire approach to moderation. But it's not a fair argument to make that because a terrorist recruiter can post to Facebook that means 8chan's automatically off the hook. Facebook would very quickly ban the individual if there was even a whiff of potential violence. 8chan wouldn't take down a post unless there was a very, very clear violation of law (and there's accusations that even then they'll turn a blind eye).
Also, I think we're conflating up "Should be considered a recruitment tool" vs "is actively recruiting terrorists". There's a big difference. For the former it means the FBI keeps a closer eye on what goes on. For the latter it means the FBI/CIA/Military/local police (depending on the country) raids the place.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I went looking for the video to satisfy my morbid curiosity, but it was being aggressively removed from my usual haunts, so I went to voat knowing that would be one of the few places not censoring links to it.
I discovered that most of their links were already dead, and that the comments were almost unanimously celebrating the murders. I lost my interest in seeing the video, having even that little in common with those cretins was too much.
And I thought, these are the people who traffic in the conspiracy theory that thousands of American Muslims were celebrating 9/11. But here they are, literally cheering a terrorist, doing the thing that they imagine others doing to rationalize their racism. Not only are they no different than an Islamic terrorist sympathizer, they're no different than the Islamic terrorist sympathizer that their imaginations have constructed. It's like they want to be recruited into terrorism. They don't necessarily hate radical Islam, they envy it.
The alt-right isn't a political movement, it is a sickness that needs to be eradicated. We should treat them the same way we treat members of Al Qaeda and ISIS. When they whine about free speech, we remind them that enemy combatants don't have rights. This will infuriate them, and every time they lash out with more terrorism, the government has another excuse to hit them even harder. Eventually there won't be any fight left in them, or there won't be any left.
dedicated to making the members of the right wing feel as though they're under attack. That's because once you convince somebody that they're under attack and really drive home the fear of it you can get them to do damn near anything.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Should the Washington Post be considered a terrorist recruiting site?
Should Fox "News" or InfoWars be considered a terrorist recruiting sites? Seems more people have been incited to violence watching them. For example: Cesar Sayoc (mail bomber from FL), Edgar Welch (Pizzagate shooter from NC) ...
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
In March, conservative radio host and Infowars website operator Alex Jones apologized for promoting the Pizzagate conspiracy. Jones posted a six-minute video on his website in which he read a prepared statement saying that neither the restaurant nor its owner, James Alefantis, had anything to do with human trafficking. The statement came after Alefantis’s attorneys had requested a retraction.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
it's job. There's too kinds of Alt-righter. First, there's the leadership, who's just taking advantage of the rank and file to make money.
Then there's the rank and file. They're almost entirely made up of young dudes (usually white) who lost factory and blue collar jobs to outsourcing and don't really have a place in society anymore.
It's why the left is pushing the "Green New Deal". It's a jobs program to neuter the right wing's main source of power (disaffected working age men). The "Green" part is mostly incidental. It's there to steal votes from the Green Party so they can't be used by the right wing to spoil elections.
With very few exceptions give a man a job and a woman and he'll settle the fuck down. Mix in an education and he won't fall for demagogues. There will be exceptions (Osama Bin Laden comes to mind) but they won't have enough followers to get anything done before they get caught.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
The answer to crazy conspiracy theories is not censorship. It is information.
In the United States, because of our cherished First Amendment, there is no such thing as 'Hate Speech'. There is just speech, which is protected. If you don't like what someone is saying then don't listen to them. If you believe that their speech poses a danger to society then use your right to free speech to convince everyone else why they are wrong.
The answer to crazy theories and disgusting rhetoric is intelligent debate. It is not shouting people down, getting people banned, or preventing speech.
When you shut people down and prevent them from speaking what you have done is to leave them only one avenue by which to express themselves, and that is violence.
The monster in NZ states in his manifesto exactly what his plan was. The purpose of his attack was only peripherally to kill people he didn't like. His attack wasn't even directed at NZ, though they have been following his plan as if they were co conspirators of his. His attack was directed at the U.S. His purpose was to push the left into banning weapons, censoring speech and taking away rights, because he knew the left doing this was likely to cause the right to stubbornly resist such actions. Initially politically and legally and eventually violently, should the left persist in their actions to curtail rights. NZ is moving right along that path.
Meanwhile, as everyone here can attest, people who want to see the banned information can see it because The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it. (John Gilmore)
Should Washington Post be considered a journalistic endeavor?
The WashPo is without question a propaganda piece for the left and Democratic party. It should have to adhere to the laws of any other PAC. It is harmful to a democracy when "Journalists" with a clear political agenda are afforded such protections and status.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Any reasonable person can see they are not in least bit unbiased in their reporting or coverage.
Should Fox "News" or InfoWars be considered a terrorist recruiting sites?
Nope. Making enemies lists and trying to find excuses to censor web sites is bad. The Washington Post and Vox Media should know better.
We should seriously consider if Infowars and Fox News bare any responsibility. They get away with it by not directly inciting violence but instead spending years and years promoting conspiracies in the guise of "news" and ramping up hatred of certain groups (usually immigrants and "the left").
Their favourite trick is talking about how all these awful things will surely drive someone to violence eventually, which obviously they don't condone wink wink but the race war uprising will definitely start any day now so be prepared!
It's very difficult to deal with because it's rare for there to be a direct link or any solid evidence. And even when there is, like the Christchurch terrorist, those responsible can (probably legitimately) say they never intended it to justify violence and it's all the other radicalization on 8chan that should take the blame.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Orwell was talking about authoritarians, you know... the other axis. A lot of people forget that there's more than the left/right spectrum, and just pretend that the left is libertarian and the right is authoritarian. Authoritarian Left exists, Libertarian Right exists.
You'll find that as far as politics goes, most people are much more willing to get along on the left/right divide than they are on the authoritarian/libertarian divide. Turns out that authoritarians hate people that prefer personal freedoms and people that prefer personal freedoms disagree with people that want overreaching governments.
Do you honestly believe this? That random kids are going to be watching his massacre video, listen his "subscribe to pewdiepie" comment, and that's how they're going to be introduced to a network of alt-lite individuals?
No, it was bait. Pewdiepie is big, the #1 youtuber, has famously had major efforts put towards deplatforming him, and most importantly, people can't seem to shut up about any little thing he does. The shooter said it because he knew people wouldn't be able to resist talking about it, which draws attention towards the actual video, his actions, his purpose, and his ideas, which is the whole point of terrorism.
The answer to crazy conspiracy theories is not censorship. It is information.
The problem is that we are failing to counter this stuff with information. Can you suggest how we can do better, so this sort of thing stops happening?
Facebook and Google have tried presenting information when people view or search for this stuff, but found it largely ineffective. In fact Google found that many of the conspiracy theories incorporate a narrative that the truth is part of the conspiracy to deceive people, so facts sometimes just make the person more convinced of the lies.
The only thing that has been shown to really work (other than censorship) is de-radicalization, which usually involves starting on their terms and using their frame of reference to deconstruct their beliefs. Unfortunately due to moderation and/or being swamped on anonymous forums it's extremely difficult to do online.
His attack was directed at the U.S.
No, that is complete bollocks. His attack was similar to Anders Brevik's, designed to make people "wake up" to the "great replacement" white genocide. He said he expected to be seen the same way as Nelson Mandella, a terrorist on the right side of history and eventually released from jail when people realize his claims are all true. Part of the point of killing so many people was to make it nearly impossible to ignore and censor his message, since that what he believed was stopping people taking action against the Jews behind the "great replacement".
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
8chan, 4chan and those other boards are merely a random collection of trolls and other people that are able to speak out more freely in those channels.
Don't worry about those channels - all that's written is public. Worry about the recruiters that instead attract candidates in more clandestine form - especially in small gangs with members from the same culture. That's where the real terrorist recruiters catches their prey.
What remains are the "lone wolf" types, but only a small fraction of them are really acting upon what they write.
And for intelligence agencies the chans are a great source of information - sometimes news and patterns appears there before anywhere else. Especially patterns - like if those forums suddenly don't get any posts at all from a certain country you'd know that something is up.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
because the bastards want cheap programmers, and they don't want it getting around that learning to code isn't a valid career path.
Twitter pushes the same right wing corporate narrative as all media outlets. I'm a lefty. They're not on my side. They're on Mark Zuckerberg's side, and the other billionaires. Anything that gets in the way of pushing money and power gets banned. The alt-right aren't really getting banned. A few of your guys took the violence thing a bit too far and scared them, but twitter's still full of them. They just toned down the violent rhetoric a tad is all.
You're being used. Sooner you realize that the better. I know of only a handful of politicians who aren't trying to use you. Bernie Sanders is the main one. Freedom is economic freedom. Until everyone has that then we're all going to be at each other's throats while the rich and powerful laugh at us all the way to the bank.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
The answer to crazy conspiracy theories is not censorship. It is information.
We have more information than ever with positive information countering conspiracy theories in a shitload of supply. The problem is fundamentally that the information is not being absorbed. People see crazy shit at random and get sucked into that idea. They then seek out more information on it typically applying observer bias as they go. They then quickly get sucked into the echo chamber of stupidity.
Many minds are weak. It's not possible to solve this problem with information. If it were then conspiracy theories wouldn't gain traction in the first place.
Well, you could lock down mass immigration.
Should Fox "News" or InfoWars be considered a terrorist recruiting sites?
I avoid InfoWars, so I won't speak to them, but while I wouldn't call Fox News content a terrorist recruiting tool no matter how slanted they can be, they do host a comment section which doesn't have a problem with comments like "Lynch Ilhan Omar". I saw that one today and it had been up far too long for them not to have had a chance to remove it..
In the last week I have seen people justifying the attack on the mosques in New Zealand and of course there's the usual drumbeat of hate towards liberals/marxists/communists/socialists/RINOs which all seem to be synonyms to the majority of people commenting there.
The idea of shooting illegal aliens...I mean "invaders" on sight is a very common and popular position (based on the "Likes" those comments get).
They do exercise editorial control over their comment section and often delete posts and even shadowban people. I've also seen them remove comments from stories altogether when they got too crazy or not even allow them in the first place (e.g. stories about Jussie Smollett). He may have perpetrated a hoax by claiming to be a victim of a hate crime, but there is no shortage of people commenting on Fox who apparently would love to see it actually happen.
But Fox stories get so many comments, they will probably just claim they can't police them . But I don't buy that. I believe they know exactly what's going on.
It gets eyeballs and I have no doubt that it gets a lot of 8chan users as well.
Does this rise to the level of a "terrorist recruiting site"? Probably not. People are just speaking their opinions. Free speech? Does calling for the lynching of an elected Congresswoman rise to the level of inciting violence? I'm not going to play lawyer, but if someone said that about the President, I would expect it would be deleted quickly and the Secret Service would follow up.
They certainly have the potential to "inspire" someone, although if you're crazy enough anything might do that.
Funny how the same people backing the movement that's made it physically unsafe to be jewish on almost any college campus and in much of Europe would resort to using us as a political prop in something we're not really even mentioned in.
The shooter barely mentioned jews at all, and he flat out said that his goals were exactly what Terry described. Terry's not making this up, the shooter TOLD us what he wanted. Why do you think they're censoring his manifesto so hard instead of obsessing over its ever word like with every other shooter before this? Because this time he flat out said he was using the media as his real weapon. He even openly admitted he didn't really care about muslims and just picked mosques because he knew the left would go insane over it.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
People are looking for places where they can say what they feel like (that's real freedom of expression) and 8chan has become such a place, like 4chan used to be.
When we live in a world where a comment to a news story about yet another hostage/terrorist drama with Islamist bad guys can cause 30 days in Facebook jail. Here's the details and the 'horrible hate speech' it contains: "No, a story like that simply reflects real life where Muslims do most of the terrorist killing in the world today, vastly outnumbering all other kinds of terrorists when it comes to both number of dead and number of incidents."
It's not made up or exaggerated in any way. It's simply uncomfortable facts. Just in the week around the Christchurch attack where 50 Muslim people got killed, about 120 people got killed in a number of Islamist attacks on christian and catholic churches in both Africa, The Middle East and the predominantly Muslim areas of East Asia - and it was a relatively quiet week...
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
It's a core part of the Great Replacement conspiracy theory. The "Global Elite" is just code for Jews.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I've seen his videos, that's exactly what he is saying.
I note that you don't actually state what he specifically is arguing. That's because you are not Jordan Peterson and not as good as him at avoiding being nailed down on specifics, and you know that if we get into this debate I'll push you until you can't avoid admitting it's what he is saying.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
PewDiePie is a well established alt-lite gateway. He was following a large number of alt-right people on YouTube until the terror attack, at which point he deleted them all. If it was nothing then why delete them?
Come on, you can't be that naive. He subscribes to all those alt-right channels, has some of them on as guests, uses their rhetoric and language in his own videos (claiming it's a joke) and then follows them into the same history-scrubbing panic once the terror attack hits.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC