Friday 29 August 2014

This service detects hate speech and subversive propaganda

On 25 August 2014, Elizabeth Harrington told us this at the Washington Free Beacon website:
“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’.”
What a fabulous way of describing the dissemination of truth the establishment doesn’t want the rest of us to know. Elizabeth continues:
“The university has received $919,917 so far for the project. The project stands to benefit both the research community and the public significantly,’ the grant states.”
The 'project' will ‘benefit.. the public?’ Yet another layer of internet censorship designed to prevent whole truth emerging will benefit Joe Average? Excuse me whilst I titter considerably.
“This service could mitigate the diffusion of false and misleading ideas, detect hate speech and subversive propaganda, and assist in the preservation of open debate,’ the grant said.”
Hate speech, eh? One wonders what kind of ‘false and misleading ideas… the service’ wishes to expunge from ‘open debate?’ In fact, One doesn’t wonder, one knows.
“‘Truthy’ claims to be non-partisan. However, the project’s lead investigator Filippo Menczer proclaims his support for numerous progressive advocacy groups, including President Barack Obama’s Organizing for Action, Moveon.org, Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, Amnesty International, and True Majority.”
See? (Though I don’t have a problem with Greenpeace and Amnesty International. At least, I don’t think I do)…
"The government-funded researchers hope that the public will use their tool in the future to report on other Twitter users.”
Aha! A snitching tool for the New World Order jobsworth then!

Why are we not surprised?

On Fox and Friends, Fox News' legal analyst, Peter Johnson, tells us this:
“They've actually come up with a whole algorithm to show how they plan to locate so-called hateful, subversive and misleading ‘propaganda.’ The Indiana professor who is leading the project, Filippo Menczer, had previously identified a list of hashtags that he believed fell under the categories of ‘far right’ and ‘polarizing’.”
Among the nine suspicious ‘far right’ categories listed were: #israel, #patriot and #mediabias. Not difficult to see where Filippo’s sympathies lie, is it? Fox and Friends added:
“Sounds a little Orwellian, no? Johnson Jr. noted that this effort reminds him of Joe McCarthy's hunt for Communists.” 
At his own blog, Menczer informs the world of ‘the truth about Truthy’ and rubbishes Fox and Friends’ take on his work, saying:
"Fox News and others continue to perpetrate their attacks to our research project and to the PI personally. Their accusations are based on false claims, supported by bits of text and figures selectively extracted from our writings and presented completely out of context, in misleading ways."
He then states what ‘the Truthy research project is not.’ It's not ‘a political watchdog; a government probe of social media;’ ‘an attempt to suppress free speech;’ ‘a way to define misinformation;’ ‘a partisan political effort;’ ‘a database tracking hate speech.’

All of which would be reassuring if it wasn’t for one thing: Filippo is getting a million dollar bung from the government for his non ‘partisan... database’ that won’t be ‘tracking hate speech.’ And the slaughterhouse shepherds don’t hand over such princely sums for baby wipes.

Filippo's response is disingenuous. However nice a guy he happens to be is of no consequence in the scheme of things. His benefactors will use his app to their best advantage. Such advantage is likely to be to the disadvantage of those social media cavaliers that the government doesn’t care for.

Filippo will know this. His protests and assurances, therefore, amount to very little.

In my humble opinion.

A hashtag ‘meme’ I regularly use at Twitter is this one: #LibLabCon. 

The Left, in particular, hate it and the Tories aren’t too keen either.

Try googling #LibLabCon. 2,460 results will say something very like this: ‘Twitter / Search - #liblabcon.’

Click on the first (or second, or third) link. Now you’re inside Twitter and observing a lists of posts, all of which contain the anti-establishment meme, #LibLabCon.

If you were to do this now, at 4.10 pm on Friday 29 August 2014, the first thing you’ll see are four graphics. All of which were entered (and created) by yours truly.

I guess the information contained in those graphics would be the kind of hashtag ‘hate speech,’ those who own Filippo Menczer’s handy little app might wish to ‘mitigate.’

5 comments:

  1. "The government-funded researchers hope that the public will use their tool in the future to report on other Twitter users.”

    This sounds similar to GIYUS ( Give Israel Your United Support), a tool used to rally pro Israel/Jewish interests. When I first became aware of this "megaphone desktop tool" a few years ago, it didn't surprise me, and I do believe that when you have a website/forum set out to present information useful to the general public, the forum will be bombarded by time wasting, obfuscating, trolls, or other websites pop up that are well funded and supported, intent on downplaying the website they wish to attack, for telling the truth.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Be interesting to see how many of them they can see off. Seeing as there are so many now and more and more are creating blogs and websites and telling tales on Mr Big therefrom.

      He makes life difficult from time to time but, whatever it is, you just sort it out and get back to work.

      World War III or a great plague might sort us out. Very little else.

      All the best.

      Delete
  2. Amnesty International have pointedly refused to argue the case of Holocaust deniers imprisoned for their views. IMHO AI are therefore contemptible lefty scum.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The bad guys get in everywhere these days. All establishment operations are beholden to Solly to some degree.

      Did I say everywhere?

      Everywhere but here and ten thousand other sites where the facts remain paramount.

      Delete
  3. Nice to see all those happy, smiley f***-you-Goy faces in one place.

    ReplyDelete