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Synagogue Shooting in Pittsburgh October 27 2018
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I think it's two different things. People used the TV as a babysitter. The internet gets used as a parent. People tend to let kids use the internet as a teacher, often unsupervised, and more than that often as a means of socialization, also unsupervised. I know what I've gotten up to on the internet, I definitely do not want my kids doing any of that for a long, long time. And for my kids, the kind of hate speech they're likely to hear will be a bit more personal than it would for many. All I need right now is for my son to hear someone say "fucking kike" while playing some stupid game online.
I ran into a young Jewish guy in the store after picking my son up for school. My son was in his uniform complete with kippah and tzitzit, and the person asked what school he was in. I looked at him for a sec and he said "it's okay, I'm Jewish, I teach Hebrew school at [local synagogue]." We'd gone there before, I asked him if they'd changed anything in the last few weeks. He said not really; their security was already so strict and they often have an officer parked in the lot there. He also said he'd had a long talk with his students, all of whom are over 10. They talked about what they'd heard, how they'd been feeling, and he checks in. It's hard to explain that to a kid. They all know about that kind of thing by that age, but none of them had been so close to such a large tragedy. "Grandma survived a concentration camp 75 years ago" or even "was chased out of Poland 40 years ago" are big but not quite as immediate in their lives as "11 people were shot dead yesterday for being at a synagogue because people still think Jews are sent by satan to usher in evil" or whatever the fuck. It's also about the age where they begin to realize that "Jews" means "them and their friends," and chances are quite a few of them have family in that part of the country too. I guess we've all gotta learn at some point. :P
Like even if the kid starts out watching Crash Course history or something that's at least reasonable for them to watch alone, there's no telling when youtube will go "Hey you're watching these videos that we've tagged as having something to do with religion and history. Perhaps next, you'd like to watch "EXPLAINED: The secret historical Jewish plot to destroy America with communist gays"". And if the kid's just going on as "I use youtube to learn" and "I use youtube to watch my favourite streamers win at fortnite", it can be difficult to understand "Well this video that looks legitimate and was suggested by youtube as similar is actually just a hate video". And it takes a much higher parental involvement to be able to say "Oh shit PragerU's on the suggested, abort!", especially if they're watching 5-minute videos or something
It's also really hard because even if the parent is clued in enough to check and see that their kid is only watching videos about how to play their favorite game or about their favorite superhero movies, they may not be culturally aware enough to check to see if these videos themselves aren't awash in hate speech and white supremacist ideology. A lot of bad ideas are purposefully being transmitted in cultural spaces that seem benign from the outside.
It's pretty clear that the core reason for the growth of hate online is that the people running these businesses are okay with hate.
Yeah it's really bad, and I've seen both of these things. I'm glad the political ads are gone for the moment. I've considered trying to make an account with a playlist where I can whitelist the playlist and block access to other things. Fortunately the antisemitic stuff that we ran into was when he was like 2 1/2 and mostly watched stuff about monster trucks and making slime and stuff. He's still only 5 so he doesn't quite understand this stuff yet, but he's getting closer every day. I hate to bother with youtube red because honestly I don't care that much about ads for mattresses and laundry detergent, but I'm starting to weigh the benefits and risks of ads being terrible a bit more carefully. I'm upset that youtube allows political ads to begin with, that they would allow that kind of political ad, that they would allow it directly after a shooting related to that kind of garbage, and that they would do any of that during a kids' show about science. On one hand it pays them to fucking suck, but on the other that's where the kids' science shows are.
And of course the cops shrug and go "First Amendment, dontchaknow," despite the fact that that exact situation is the canonical example of when that kind of thinking doesn't apply..
I miss when videos of Peppa Pig getting her teeth pulled out was the worst I had to watch out for.
https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197970666737/
Once he put on one of those videos about making that slime with Elmer's, and I was sitting next to him on my own PC listening and looking over sometimes and thinking 'this mom is doing a fun activity with her kid, that's nice.' Then I heard something to the effect of "stay tuned for a message about Jesus" and I nope'd that video off so fast I thought my chair would fall over behind me. Why can't it ever just be about the slime.
This was awesome to read though:
I am honestly so glad that it all ended up back with protesting the treatment of migrants and children and trying volunteer aid where possible. This happened not only in spite of the shooting, but because of the motivations behind it. It inspires me.
Worst I've seen are links to videos with titles like "SJW Arguments DESTROYED!"
People see ads on Youtube at all?
If you watch stuff like SciShow or Scott Manley on YouTube, you'll get recommendations like SciManDan and Mick West debunking stuff. If you watch those you will start getting flat Earth or chemtrail videos because YouTube's algorithm doesn't know the difference between science and pseudoscience when they share keywords.
If you click on one of those, it's over. The algorithm has labeled you a looney tune and it's all bullshit all the time. Queue up a lullaby for your baby and the related videos are No Forests on Flat Earth and Nibiru Summoned by Jewish Sorcerers to Kill Jesus.
Enough of the more innocent looking ones are hilarious, too, so once you watch the one you will want to watch more of the really silly ones, which just cements the algorith's new evaluation of you and soon it shifts to more and more sinister topics. When it comes to bunk all roads eventually lead to Nazi if you stay on them. Even predominantly liberal conspiracy theories eventually get to Israel and wrap around to the other end.
The same process works coming from Star Wars or Marvel if you click on on of those "SJW destroyed" videos, but those are usually transparent and never funny, so paths like that are harder to take. But if you watch one or two for context on somebody's response, you're doing the same algorithm damage.
At some point YouTube stopped letting you manipulate the algorithm. You can still sanitize your history, but it doesn't seem to work anymore. You can keep telling it not to show you stuff, but the algorithm can't tell "Comicsexplained: Jane Foster Thor gives up Mjolnir" from "Marvel Boss Jews Admit SJW Fail, Kill CuntThor."
Not ads
Links to videos
Like a kids sees "SJW Arguments DESTROYED!" and has no clue what SJW means and arguments seem bad but holy shit DESTROYED!? ok I'll click and then the next batch of linked videos goes deeper down the rabbit hole and then suddenly some dumbass 13 year old, who in their defense is kind of supposed to be a dumbass because they're 13, is mainlining Prager U and Infowars because Youtube can't be bothered to make sure that doesn't happen.
Thankfully, we have some needed sanity on the First Amendment and hate (from my neck of the woods, surprisingly):
The part I find heartening is the judge's rejection of the "houcoudaknowed" defence, pointing out that anyone reasonable could see exactly what Anglin intended with publication of Gersh's information.
I remember the first time someone linked me a PU video going "I don't understand what this is about?!?", I had to sit there and watch it for like six minutes before it fully sank into me that it was a video promoting misogyny while using the language of feminism to do it (men should be manly and do manly things, while women should sit at home and be cared for). It had a woman doing the presentation and everything! I could totally see a young kid falling for it completely, and I found it even grosser than vids which are at least open about their bigotry from the get-go.
Well there are a number of women who also identify as MRAs (probably not many, though). I was looking for a podcast a friend recommended for me once and accidentally stumbled on one with a similar name hosted by two female MRAs.
I'm pretty sure that Google/Youtube know that I'm a single straight white agnostic male in my mid thirties with an interest in gaming and a middle class income, and it loves to suggest videos it considers appropriate to my demographic. It's pretty much the worst thing.
Maybe she, eventually, would have had a point, but i never went that far because if she did have an actual point, it was buried deep (and almost certainly wasn't, from my quick google of the speaker and her past works).
It can be pretty difficult to know just from the title, or the source, if the video is going to be something close to sane, or just straight up bullshit.
Gaming reviews can easily lead from people talking about mechanics, game balance, bugs and user interface, to talking about how women are ruining everything by simply existing.
Videos about science will almost inevitably lead, without some curating, to full blown fascist and/or white supremacy indoctrination.
Videos about atheism and/or scepticism will lead to both.
After watching a few Star Wars videos on Youtube, for WEEKs I got an endless stream of "SJW cucks DESTROY STAR WARS" in my recommended videos. And no matter how many times I flagged them, I still got them.
It's almost like YT makes money off of cheap controversy.
I just want to watch the history of Kyle Katarn goddamn it.
C.S. Lewis used to approach the problem of "the unimaginable suffering of mankind," by pointing out that if you have 20 people on a bus who have a toothache, you do not end up with some kind of "mega" toothache that is unknowable in its depth, even if it may *seem* that way.
That same idea is also used to confirm one's own biases through peer observation. Oh look, "these" people have the same crazy beliefs as I do, we can't *all* be wrong can we? That would be crazy.
-Winston Smith
“Freedom is the freedom to say SJW beta cuck chemtrails ZOG."
-Way too many actual people
Yes. They, and other sites, are basically arms dealers in a culture war.
Cheap controversy generates clicks. That basic principle permeates every aspect of the internet, including reputable news outlets (see Trump coverage since 2016). So when you train a machine to recommend videos in whatever way maximizes the click through rate, it's very quickly going to start leaning on clickbait just like everybody else.
Are you talking about Microsoft's AI, Tay?
Wiki link here
This stuff isn't just happening because some mysterious corporate black box, or even because Youtube knows that I'm a western secular white dude in his mid-thirties therefore list-of-attributes-here.
It's possible for people to game those algorithms with whatever firehose of content they happen to be throwing someplace. Tay was incompetently designed, sure, but the nastier parts of the internet deliberately trained it to get the outcome they wanted.
It's the same with sites like Youtube that are built around fuzzily defined recommendation algorithms. If half the new space-related videos coming up this month are people pushing flat Earth or telescope denialism, those are going to show up in the relateds for sane space content. If a bunch of new high-traffic videos about comics are Comicsgate people or similar frothy neckbeards, you're going to see those coming up if you're looking at videos about comics in general. If a bunch of videos about how The Jews are destroying Western civilization because reasons successfully masquerade as history, people browsing history videos on certain topics will see those.
If some of those videos are being posted by a popular Youtuber, whether because he's a true believer or because he's realized pandering to far-right crowd gets bigtime clicks, that pushes things related to that up even further.
If people aren't posting those videos, but making a point of viewing them as often as possible in order to bump up their view counts, that also pushes them up even further. (It's super easy to astroturf that kind of thing too.)
People are very deliberately taking steps to ensure that kind of thing happens to a variety of audiences. A good chunk of the reason why it's increasingly easy for people to be radicalized online is because other people are trying to design their experiences so as to make that happen.
Now, the fun question is whether Youtube and similar sites are going to stop pretending they aren't entirely aware that this is going on before too many other people get killed as a result of it.
It's been bothering me a lot lately. I'm not in a position to have much input into what my nephew does online, but he's right in the middle of several demographics those shitlords target for this kind of thing and I worry that at some point in the next few years I'm going to end up in a position where I'm going to have to start getting Sisyphean trying to address ideas he's likely to start picking up soon that are way too close to the kind that caused this thread to exist.
And those "hey what's this" videos? They often came pretty damn close to saying "fuck Jews" and still people would tell me it wasn't antisemitic because it can't be if it's true. And of course it isn't true, but any time I would point to something that proves it isn't I'd just get some variation on that's what they want you to think. There is so much out there about ending oppression of all races and religions by killing Jews, and somehow it doesn't sound like antisemitism to them when they've said it out loud.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
You definitely don't have to tell me. There's Relational Fuckery(tm) and three time zones' distance that's making that difficult at the moment. That'll hopefully improve over the next couple of years, but I'm still bracing for some extended periods of Aaaaaaaaaaargh in the meantime.
Those are one of the easier/more irritating ways to control the narrative on some sites. Someone posts a ten minute video, nine members of that person's hatedom do half-hour rants or "reaction" videos in response, and all Youtube really sees is "this subject has 280 minutes worth of content, and someone looking at any of it is clearly into the rest, right?" And all someone who doesn't really know what's up sees is "someone did a video on X and wow, everyone is explaining why they're wrong!" (assuming they even see the video that set it off to begin with, of course).
I dunno anymore. Short of "maybe we should roll the savefile back to ARPAnet and try again" I'm not sure what there is to do about it outside of the individual level, and rambling about it further's probably dragging this thread into the weeds of media awareness/policy rather than the main issue, so...