Political buzz: Staten Island Republicans not ready to take sides yet in increasingly heated Trump-DeSantis b – SILive.com
Category: Republicans
| Media Search: |
Opposition demand caste-based census, skip Shindes tea party on eve of budget session – Hindustan Times
Category: Tea Party
The Dangerous Subtlety of the Alt-Right Pipeline
Category: Alt-right
In recent years, adherents to the alt-right, a radically nationalist and xenophobic faction of the American right wing, have increasingly made their presenceknown, both in the digital sphere and in the streets. But while the term alt-right may evoke images of its most prominent partisans white supremacists and neo-Nazis in practice, it is a much more dangerously complex spectrum of political views.
Despite this, most discussions of online radicalization focus largely around the descent into these extremist groups, and not the subtle ways in which the echo chambers and deliberate isolation of the alt-rights indoctrination networks operate. These networks, collectively known as the alt-right pipeline, are especially dangerous to young men, but a narrow discussion of the pipelines threat means that the full scope of the issue is rarely addressed. From the violent extremes to the tamer, but much broader, wing of the alt-lite (a faction dominated by popular conservative commentators and public firebrands), the same tactics are used to exploit and radicalize the rising generation. I speak from personal experience when I say that failing to address the alt-right pipeline as a complex and multidimensional issue only serves to make it stronger.
The conventional wisdom is that the alt-right pipeline targets white men who are angry at the world, a group that originally self-identified as involuntarily celibate, birthing the abbreviation incel. These observers rightfully point out the pervasive misogyny of the alt-right, and treat it as a vehicle and prerequisite for radicalization. While this interpretation of the alt-right, one that emphasizes the pipelines exploitation of latent misogyny and sexual frustration through male bonding gone horribly awry, is accurate in many cases, it cannot be applied to every case of alt-right internet radicalization. I, for example, was only thirteen when my fall down the pipeline began. My fatal element was not male rage but self-doubt.
For most of my childhood, I was incredibly susceptible to peer pressure. I developed a personal identity, but my public identity was often whatever I thought would fit in best. The problem was only exacerbated when I hit puberty. I was an atheist when my predominantly Catholic friends were bonding over teaching religious education classes at their churches, a progressive but only beginning to understand the importance of what that meant, and starting to come to terms with what I now know to be my bisexuality. At the time, I was unsure of who I was supposed to be, or even who I was.
This was around the same time that YouTube began to play a larger role in my life, and there, I found my gateway drug to the alt-right: Dave Rubin. In Rubin, I saw a vision of myself; he was an openly gay atheist man who called himself a classical liberal. I began watching the Rubin Report on YouTube religiously, and slowly but surely bought into his message: the modern lefts obsession with identity politics went too far. The assertion was straightforward enough for me to understand, and having next to no frame of reference with which to refute it, I did the only thing I thought epistemically sound: accept it as true.
I was working my way through Rubins content when I found his multi-part interview with alt-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, during which Yiannopoulos half-heartedly described African-Americans as being the last oppressed group in the United States. I had no experience with the nuance of condemnable views in American politics, so even Yiannaopouloss begrudging admission of any form of systemic racism was enough to convince me that he was worth more attention than I previously thought. With Yiannopouloss points going unchallenged, I was led to believe that his rhetoric held a legitimate place in the political spectrum. Once again, with no frame of reference to do otherwise, I accepted that I must have been wrong about him, and considered myself responsible for learning more about his perspective.
I gradually cycled through the videos that my new, extremely skewed frame of reference deemed acceptable, avoiding only the most flagrant content. By then, however, YouTube had worked its magic and determined what would appeal to me most moving forward. Videos recommended through the YouTube algorithm account for 70 percent of time spent on the site. Without thinking, I let the up next timer run down, and I was directed to the next video then the next, each more aggressive than the last.
And so began a months-long tumble down the alt-right pipeline, but I was never able to acknowledge that I was trapped. I still considered myself a progressive; in my mind, I was not buying into the alt-rights rhetoric, I was learning their arguments to make my progressivism stronger. But I was more easily persuaded than I knew, and even if my intentions were sound, Ben Shapiro spoke too quickly and Steven Crowder too aggressively for me to be able to process what I was hearing beyond a superficial level. My teenage mind could not keep up, and without any conscious understanding, I was cheering along with Jordan Peterson as he destroyed feminism and as SJWs were owned with facts and logic. Before I could think through what I had watched, I was onto the next video, and my internal understanding of the world became echoes of Louder with Crowder, the Daily Wire, and PragerU.Assuming I was merely developing a more nuanced understanding of the world, the true weight of what I was watching never set in with me. I began referring to myself as a social conservative, but never publicly. I figured discussing it with my friends was a non-starter; after all, in my mind, they had fallen victim to the machinations of the radical left. I was the enlightened one.
But even as I tumbled headfirst down the alt-right pipeline, I never fell far enough to seal myself into a true echo chamber. In fact, what I broadly defined as my social conservatism rarely left YouTube. The outside world continued around me unaffected; the only impact was in how I saw it. I certainly never shared these hateful views with anyone, because on some subconscious level, I still knew that they were unacceptable for a reason.
I resigned myself to the fact that I would forever be misunderstood, because the alt-right only knows, and therefore only teaches, two emotions: anger and fear. Both of these are generalized and are used to target, broadly, the unknown; anything the alt-right does not understand, like, or benefit from, it views as inherently dangerous. In my time, the prime example of this was the concept of intersectionality. I never learned the true definition of intersectionality, that racial, ethnic, and class identities intersect with one another and should be included in progressive movements. Instead, I learned Ben Shapiros definition, that according to current leftist orthodoxy, your opinion only matters relative to your identity.
I began to see the world the way those commentators saw it. I felt threatened where there was no threat, attacked where there was no attacker, and defensive of this new identity I had been given, an identity I had never wanted to have. The world I experienced and the world I saw were fundamentally disconnected. Overwhelmed, I sank into a depression. Their anger and fear had broken me, but it had not made me angry or afraid. It had just made me sad.
In the end, that disconnect was what saved me from sinking into the fascism and white supremacy of the alt-rights public persona. Real life is not as rapid-fire or one-sided as alt-right YouTube, and when I found my peers discussing the ideas that I had been indoctrinated to believe, I realized that the people I respected had clear and concise refutations to each of those ideas. The pipeline had given me definitions of things like intersectionality, social justice, and even feminism that were dangerously inaccurate, and when I actually began challenging the views pressed upon me, they fell like dominoes.
During my time in the alt-right pipeline, I found myself echoing reactionary talking points because I had been told to see conflict where none was necessary. I was inexperienced, and that made me the alt-rights perfect target.
If we as a society are to genuinely address the root causes of the alt-right pipeline, we must come to terms with what it actually is. While it often capitalizes on the worst of human impulses, it also capitalizes on naivete and ignorant innocence, regardless of age or circumstance. It looks different for everyone, from the veteran told to fear racial replacement by Tucker Carlson to the teenager who lingered too long on a promoted Will Witt video on Facebook. For those who know no better, the alt-right is a comprehensive and comprehensible way of understanding the world.
Refutations and rebuttals of alt-right talking points must also be adapted to the digital sphere. Right-wing pundits and commentators have the most popular podcasts, Facebook pages, and YouTube channels, meaning that they are often the first thing a person genuinely looking for political discourse will find. The alt-right has already adapted to the internet and is using their head-start to indoctrinate a generation. To combat this, viable alternatives to the alt-rights demagogic rhetoric must be available to discourage people from internalizing its narrative.
Lastly, the alt-right pipeline must be addressed as a public health issue. I was never happier when I found my identity in the alt-right than I had been before or than I am now. Caught in the alt-right spiral, I told myself the world misunderstood me, when in reality, I had just cut myself off from it. My mental health only recovered when I escaped the pipeline.
Falling down the alt-right pipeline is an intensely personal process, and it must be addressed as a personal issue. But more importantly, it must be acknowledged that the alt-right pipeline doesnt lead anywhere: It just keeps descending. And while that means it will become harder and harder to address with time, it also means no one is ever too far gone.
Returning from the alt-right pipeline was without question the greatest triumph of my adolescent life. Only then was I able to fully appreciate the rich diversity of our world and understand the nuances necessary to make genuine progress. More than ever before, too, I was able to understand myself, and fully embrace who I truly was, not the person the alt-right told me I should be.
The internet is still largely in its infancy, but the alt-right and its intermediaries have already been able to establish a funnel to create new acolytes. To combat it, we must first understand it, in all of its complexity.
Image by Ales Nesetril is licensed under the Unsplash License.
See the original post:
The Dangerous Subtlety of the Alt-Right Pipeline
Wikipedia’s 20, but how credible is it? DW 01/14/2021
Category: Wikipedia
Wikipedia, which has been referred to as a world treasure,turns 20 on Friday.According to research conducted over the years including a scientific study published by the journal Naturein 2005 and a report commissioned bythe site's Wikimedia Foundation in 2012 Wikipedia's entries are comparable in quality to those in prestigious encyclopedias such as Britannica. However, it is difficult to measure the consistency of information that can be altered at any time.
Sometimes, the quality of entries is a question of word count because longer articles will generally contain more details. Length, though, varies by language. For example, a sentence in French might contain more words than one in Kiswahili, which attachessubjects, objects and tenses to verbs. Measuring according to the file size of an entry is also of limited use because some alphabets take up more virtual space, Martin Rulsch, who works for the German section of Wikimedia and has volunteered for the site in various capacities for over 15 years, told DW.
Rulsch said quality must be gauged byindividual indicators. He said a large number of contributors alone did not necessarily translate to quality content. An article that was initially "researched in detail" and factually sound would not always benefit from several changes and addenda. Moreover, it is not easy to rapidly call up the number of authors in every language version, he said. So, it is not easy to measure the quality of Wikipedia according to a formula.
Poor spelling and grammar can be signs that an entry is substandard, saidNenja Wolbers a project manager at Germany's Digital Opportunities Foundation, which promotes online inclusion to combat the societal digital divide. She said users should pay attention to whether an article is neutral or expresses an opinion, and whether it provides a broad overview and presents different perspectives.
Users should be on the lookout for contradictions and should always check the sources, Wolbers said: "This is essential if I want to know if information is valid." She said it was important that quotations be referenced and that users check the sources. "It makes sense to simply click on the links," she said. Wolbers uses Wikipedia to get a general overview of a subject, but "this doesn't mean that I have a final answer."
"Users have to remember that Wikipedia is a site used by many authors," she said, "and it is possible to modify things quickly."
Articles about the same topics are written and edited independently of each other by authors in different languages. They may emphasize different aspects of issues; there might even be very different information. For example, entries about Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in March 2014, differ depending on the language. DW's fact-check team analyzed the German, Russian and Ukrainian entries. The German version called Crimea a "Ukrainian peninsula," while the Russian did not mention its belonging to Ukraine, though it acknowledged a territorial dispute. The entries contained most of the same basic factual information about the region, but the entries differed on more recent events: The Ukrainian version has a section called "Annexation of Crimea," but the Russian refers to the "Accession of Crimea to the Russian Federation." Most Russian entries on the topic fail to mention that the March 2014 referendum that led to Crimea's annexation was not considered legitimate by the government of Ukraine and many international institutions, which do not recognize the annexation either.
Rulsch cited the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, which flared up once again recently. "I've been seeing this conflict on Wikipedia for over 10 years," he said. "The issue is about definition whether it was genocide or not and who started it." Volunteers like him can work as mediators in such situations. "I don't think that there is truth and neutrality, but Wikipedia's goal is to get as close to these as possible and to strive towards them," he said. "If there is no neutral standpoint, then several standpoints can be presented."
Wolbers recommends that users use translation tools to read Wikipedia entries in other languages, as well as to seek other sources.
Several cases of politicians editing the entries about them have been reported. In Germany, the energy lobby has been accused of tweaking Wikipedia entries in order to "greenwash." Celebrities such as the US actor Lindsay Lohan have been declared dead. Wikipedia even has a list of fake entries in nine languages. A hoax article about a fictional extinct carnivore called a Mustelodon was online for 14 years and nine months at least according to Wikipedia. "The more obscure a topic is, the less likely people are to read it," Rulsch said, "and, the smaller the language version is, the greater the chance of manipulation."
There are mechanisms to prevent this, but Wikipedia often relies on users. "In theory, I could now spread conspiracy theories about antiquity, because not so many people would read them," Rulsch said. "But someone would notice if there were a link to another author, and then all my modifications would be examined carefully."
Rulsch is very familiar with non-German pages, as he is also a "steward," which gives him access to "small Wikipedias": language versions with less than 50,000 articles and fewer than 10 administrators, to whom he provides support. He said there was generally less inclination to manipulate entries in smaller versions because there were fewer readers.
To prevent manipulation, administrators can remove users who have violated the regulations. They can also protect articles so that only certain users can modify them. For example, the Bosnian-languageversion of the entry on the Srebrenica massacre of 1995 is protected, and the rights to edit various entries in English pertaining to sexual organs have been limited.
Over the years, Rulsch said, a system of quality control has been developed by language versions with large numbers of users. German entries have to be given a green light before being published, for example, and only registered users are allowed to create new articles in English. Bots are also used to sift out certain words, such as vulgar terms. There is also a transparency tool for users of all language versions, which gives a history of edits and deletions.
Sois Wikipedia a credible source? Many of the entries are well-documented, checked for quality and as opposed to reference books often completely up-to-date, but, 20 years after its creation, the online encyclopedia is not 100% reliable, because information can be manipulated, and sometimes almost undetectably.
Therefore, Wikipedia encourages users to be attentive and use their critical judgment.
To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video
This article has been adapted from German.
Excerpt from:
Wikipedia's 20, but how credible is it? DW 01/14/2021
Fully filling the fuel tank will not cause an explosion due to hot weather, clarify oil marketing companies in response to misinformation spreading on…
Category: Social Marketing