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Investigating Hate Speech

Does this worry you?

  • No, its just an innocent experiment

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    16
  • Poll closed .

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Interesting study, our tax money at work, or is it more? Would private funding make me, or perhaps you, less suspicious?

The federal government is spending nearly $1 million to create an online database that will track “misinformation” and hate speech on Twitter.
The National Science Foundation is financing the creation of a web service that will monitor “suspicious memes” and what it considers “false and misleading ideas,” with a major focus on political activity online.
The “Truthy” database, created by researchers at Indiana University, is designed to “detect political smears, astroturfing, misinformation, and other social pollution.”
The university has received $919,917 so far for the project.
Feds Creating Database to Track
 
It wouldn't surprise me at all, and I hate the very idea.
 
My question would be:
Who decides whether the communication is "hateful" or "misinformation"?
 
The links provided in the article cited in the OP do not support some of the claims of the article. This is a a link to a FAQ for the project Truthy There is no mention of hate speech at all. It is not a government project, it is an Indiana University project that received some government funding. One of the most significant aspects is that helps readers identify disguised mass postings.

Government, political groups and businesses are getting into advanced techniques for spreading information and disinformation. Don't believe anything unless you know something about the source of a claim.

"Truthy is a research project that helps you understand how memes spread online. We collect tweets from Twitter and analyze them. With our statistics, images, movies, and interactive data, you can explore these dynamic communication networks.

What is a meme?

A meme is an idea, value or pattern of behavior that is passed from one person to another by imitation. In the Truthy system, a meme can be a #hashtag, @mention/reply, URL, or phrase....

....How do you pick the memes for the Election Coverage tool?
Memes are picked based upon their relevance and popularity (determined by tweet volume).

For the 'Candidates' election coverage selection, we have chosen the top four memes (by tweet volume) that contain "obama" or "biden" to signify the left, and those that contain "romney" or "ryan" for the right.

For the 'Politics' selection, we determined the memes based upon the following criteria:

#p2: Most popular left-leaning meme
#ows: Most popular co-occurring left-leaning meme
#topprog: Second most popular co-occurring left-leaning meme
#dems: Official hashtag for democrats

#tcot: Most popular right-leaning meme
#teaparty: Most popular co-occurring right-leaning meme
#tlot: Second most popular co-occurring right-leaning meme
#gop: Official hashtag for gop..."

This article seems accurate and unbiased: Truthy.indiana.edu to search, identify smear tactics, Twitter-bombs through election runup

This one mentions other projects that deserve more concern than this particular one: US military studied how to influence Twitter users in Darpa-funded research | World news | theguardian.com
 
My question would be:
Who decides whether the communication is "hateful" or "misinformation"?

Those who control and maintain the system & database.
 
My question would be:
Who decides whether the communication is "hateful" or "misinformation"?

This is the key. Who decides that, and what will the information be used for, will it go further than this?
 
The links provided in the article cited in the OP do not support some of the claims of the article. This is a a link to a FAQ for the project Truthy There is no mention of hate speech at all. It is not a government project, it is an Indiana University project that received some government funding. One of the most significant aspects is that helps readers identify disguised mass postings.

Government, political groups and businesses are getting into advanced techniques for spreading information and disinformation. Don't believe anything unless you know something about the source of a claim.

"Truthy is a research project that helps you understand how memes spread online. We collect tweets from Twitter and analyze them. With our statistics, images, movies, and interactive data, you can explore these dynamic communication networks.

What is a meme?

A meme is an idea, value or pattern of behavior that is passed from one person to another by imitation. In the Truthy system, a meme can be a #hashtag, @mention/reply, URL, or phrase....

....How do you pick the memes for the Election Coverage tool?
Memes are picked based upon their relevance and popularity (determined by tweet volume).

For the 'Candidates' election coverage selection, we have chosen the top four memes (by tweet volume) that contain "obama" or "biden" to signify the left, and those that contain "romney" or "ryan" for the right.

For the 'Politics' selection, we determined the memes based upon the following criteria:

#p2: Most popular left-leaning meme
#ows: Most popular co-occurring left-leaning meme
#topprog: Second most popular co-occurring left-leaning meme
#dems: Official hashtag for democrats

#tcot: Most popular right-leaning meme
#teaparty: Most popular co-occurring right-leaning meme
#tlot: Second most popular co-occurring right-leaning meme
#gop: Official hashtag for gop..."

This article seems accurate and unbiased: Truthy.indiana.edu to search, identify smear tactics, Twitter-bombs through election runup

This one mentions other projects that deserve more concern than this particular one: US military studied how to influence Twitter users in Darpa-funded research | World news | theguardian.com


That all sounds great at first glance. Meme, misinformation, opinion, opinions leaning left or right leaning, opinions that are welcome, or not.
 
The land of the free is quickly becoming the land of the meek.

Jeez...a few more terrorist attacks on America and the masses will become so scared and spineless that they will have to ask the government when to have a bowel movement.
 
They should also restrict violent movies -- they probably contribute to the 12,000 murders per year committed in USA.
 
Murder rate in USA is declining but still high. It is much higher then in Europe.

Given how popular violent and horror movies are it comes to no surprise.
 
Interesting study, our tax money at work, or is it more? Would private funding make me, or perhaps you, less suspicious?


Feds Creating Database to Track


First, it is FUNDED by the feds. It's not a research project BY the fed. govt. There's a difference. Universities apply to the fed each year for funding for a lot of research projects. Some are granted, some are denied.

I see this as a good thing. Knowledge of how information is transmitted, or just about anything, is a good thing.

But let's face it. If the information is out there on the internet, it can, and will, be gathered, categorized, analyzed. It is already being done by Google and other giant enterprises.

The one thing such research might show is how a riot gets started, and it may someday prevent a dangerous riot. Twitter is how some of the Middle East takeovers by terrorists were started and organized and recruited through.

Also, if "machinery," as the University of Indiana (the university whose research program this is) article called it, is what starts rounds of certain hate speech, protests, riots, lootings, criminal activities, or character assassinations, we should know that. That is NOT individual citizens expressing themselves. It is a private machine, created by some group, to cause a certain effect.
 
First, it is FUNDED by the feds. It's not a research project BY the fed. govt. There's a difference. Universities apply to the fed each year for funding for a lot of research projects. Some are granted, some are denied.

If the government is aware of something, and they find it useful, they will use it no matter patent applications or anything else. Personally, I worry about any type of gathering system that the government can use to use against the very people they are supposed to be serving.

Sorry but the NSA has pretty much destroyed ANY support that it once had from me and I will not trust them with any type of gathering device/program/ability. Now they're going to have to EARN my trust and the way things currently are....they don't have a chance in hell of it happening.

And for those partisan snipes that are sure to follow due to what I said........:roll: yeah, whatever. :roll:
 
They should also restrict violent movies -- they probably contribute to the 12,000 murders per year committed in USA.

I know... people actually believe anything, even dumb stuff like this! :lol:
 
Murder rate in USA is declining but still high. It is much higher then in Europe.

Given how popular violent and horror movies are it comes to no surprise.

Because we all know that they don't watch violent movies in Europe or play violent video games in Japan... :lol:
 
If the government is aware of something, and they find it useful, they will use it no matter patent applications or anything else. Personally, I worry about any type of gathering system that the government can use to use against the very people they are supposed to be serving.

Sorry but the NSA has pretty much destroyed ANY support that it once had from me and I will not trust them with any type of gathering device/program/ability. Now they're going to have to EARN my trust and the way things currently are....they don't have a chance in hell of it happening.

And for those partisan snipes that are sure to follow due to what I said........:roll: yeah, whatever. :roll:

I guess I'll just repeat what I said....it's NOT the government's research. It's research by the University of Indiana. They, like many other universities, were able to obtain funding for their project. The project will be owned by, analyzed by, and profited by the university, if any of those things apply. The fed govt would have access, too.

Results of research projects are usually published in journals.

This is not a secret gathering mission by the federal government, as you seem to think. Those things don't get advertised in the news, and pay a public university to do it and publish the results!

Google is probably more dangerous in the respect of gathering information on people. Far more dangerous. Their data is not public and is used for purposes only the company knows about.

There's nothing scary about the research program, to me. I don't know why anyone would have a problem with it. It's simply a program to analyze PUBLIC tweets. That's it. YOU could do that yourself, if you created a program to gather the info. In fact, some private companies are probably already doing similar things, for profit/advertising purposes. It's not like the Patriot Act, which IS authority for the federal government, and allows the government to listen in on your private conversations, grab your private e-mails from your devices, get your medical records, and have access to all sorts of private information about you. THAT is a violation of the First Amendment. There is some loosy goosy subpoena requirement, but they only have to worry about that AFTER they commit the violation, and they just get a judge to rubber stamp it.

Were you against the Patriot Act? I was. I actually had nightmares about it. It was so much like Germany pre-WWII that it was scary how easily the public handed over their rights out of fear. So easy. An acquaintance said, "But there's a good reason for it." I responded, "Oh, yes. There is. There is always a good reason to violate our privacy rights. If there weren't, it wouldn't be so easy to scare the people into giving up their rights. But having a so-called good reason is no reason to violate our privacy rights. It's a constitutional right that is not supposed to be taken away."
 
Lots wrong with this, the speech police aren't just the govt-they are also the left-in fact Im guessing thats exactly who is sponsoring this.

Liberals and govts dont seem to like free speech. Anyone backing this should be run out of town.
 
I guess I'll just repeat what I said....it's NOT the government's research. It's research by the University of Indiana. They, like many other universities, were able to obtain funding for their project. The project will be owned by, analyzed by, and profited by the university, if any of those things apply. The fed govt would have access, too.

Results of research projects are usually published in journals.

This is not a secret gathering mission by the federal government, as you seem to think. Those things don't get advertised in the news, and pay a public university to do it and publish the results!

Google is probably more dangerous in the respect of gathering information on people. Far more dangerous. Their data is not public and is used for purposes only the company knows about.

There's nothing scary about the research program, to me. I don't know why anyone would have a problem with it. It's simply a program to analyze PUBLIC tweets. That's it. YOU could do that yourself, if you created a program to gather the info. In fact, some private companies are probably already doing similar things, for profit/advertising purposes. It's not like the Patriot Act, which IS authority for the federal government, and allows the government to listen in on your private conversations, grab your private e-mails from your devices, get your medical records, and have access to all sorts of private information about you. THAT is a violation of the First Amendment. There is some loosy goosy subpoena requirement, but they only have to worry about that AFTER they commit the violation, and they just get a judge to rubber stamp it.

Were you against the Patriot Act? I was. I actually had nightmares about it. It was so much like Germany pre-WWII that it was scary how easily the public handed over their rights out of fear. So easy. An acquaintance said, "But there's a good reason for it." I responded, "Oh, yes. There is. There is always a good reason to violate our privacy rights. If there weren't, it wouldn't be so easy to scare the people into giving up their rights. But having a so-called good reason is no reason to violate our privacy rights. It's a constitutional right that is not supposed to be taken away."

So you don't think that the government wouldn't take this program, perhaps modify it a bit, and use it for their own purposes? Even despite what you say here about the patriot act and such? Interesting.

As far as the PA goes, yes I was against it. Still am. And it is also the excuse the NSA used in front of the rubber stamp judge to violate our rights. I never fell for the whole "well if you're innocent then you have nothing to worry about crapola.
 
Definitely a concern. I dislike hate speech as much as the next guy, but come on now, big brother...
 
What if the next guy is me?

There has been no evidence supporting the claim that they are monitoring hate speech. It appears to be a lie. See my previously posted links for evidence.
 
I dont believe in hate crimes and hate speech. (That may be belief on the part of the person but it should not be reflected differently in charging or sentencing.)

And I'm a liberal.
 
The land of the free is quickly becoming the land of the meek.

Jeez...a few more terrorist attacks on America and the masses will become so scared and spineless that they will have to ask the government when to have a bowel movement.

 
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