The Taxonomy of Trolls

This seems to be the link: https://qz.com/1056319/what-is-the-...ws-a-disparate-group-that-is-quickly-uniting/

From the linked article

We’re witnessing the radicalization of young white men through the medium of frog memes.

Click to expand...

If that ain't among the most pathetic things I've read in a while I don't know what is.

Very interesting read. Thanks for posting about it and providing the link.

How unutterably depressing.

It is depressing. But I know people with such scummy beliefs have always existed.

Yeah, the Internet allow them to collect & concentrate & fester. But, it does the same for all other minority groups and interests as well. So, there's that at least. I might live in the most flying-spaghetti-monster-forsaken place, that disagrees with everything I believe in, but I can find like-minded people online.

The other interesting thing in that analysis besides establishing a taxonomy of trolls is the expanding use of data mining.

I also wonder which of those groups or percentage of each might be bots, especially given the data mining looked at frequently used words and phrases.


Here are some additional articles on bots involved in the social media surrounding the alt-right.
How to Spot a Social Bot on Twitter

Back in 2011, a team from Texas A&M University carried out a cyber sting to trap nonhuman Twitter users that were polluting the Twittersphere with spam. Their approach was to set up “honeypot” accounts which posted nonsensical content that no human user would ever be interested in. Any account that retweeted this content, or friended the owner, must surely be a nonhuman user known as a social bot.

The team set up 60 honeypots and harvested some 36,000 potential social bot accounts. The result surprised many observers because of the sheer number of nonhuman accounts that were active. These bots were generally unsophisticated and simply retweeted more or less any content they came across.

Since then, social bots have become significantly more advanced. They search social networks for popular and influential people, follow them and capture their attention by sending them messages. These bots can identify keywords and find content accordingly and some can even answer inquiries using natural language algorithms.

That makes identifying social bots much more difficult. But today, Emilio Ferrara and pals at Indiana University in Bloomington, say they have developed a way to spot sophisticated social bots and distinguish them from ordinary human users.

Click to expand...

Research links pro-Trump, anti-Macron Twitter bots

Through an analysis of nearly 17 million Twitter posts made between April 27 and May 7, Ferrara and his team turned up roughly 100,000 Twitter users engaged in conversation about the leaked emails from Macron’s campaign, about 18,000 of which they determined to be bots — social media accounts controlled by computer scripts that masquerade as human users.

A large majority of the users engaged in the conversation, he said, had a history of showing support for Trump, Republican or far-right narratives. Many of them were also English speakers, he said.

The scale of the bot operation in the French election, Ferrara observed, was much smaller than that related to the 2016 presidential election. He detected between 400,000 and half a million Twitter bots engaged in the U.S. political discussion, most of them pushing pro-Trump or far-right narratives. A minority of the suspected bots supported Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Click to expand...

Sometimes crowdsourcing can efficiently mine data:
Donald Trump’s Twitter Following Might Include More Than 4 Million Bots

Ever since assuming office, Trump had added almost 7 million new followers, but over 4 million of those new accounts didn’t feature a profile picture, but rather an egg avatar, which is a usual sign of a fake account. According to Twitter Audit, only 55 percent of Trump’s Twitter followers are real accounts, meaning 15 million of his #MAGA followers are phony.

Click to expand...

You can bet if lack of an image identifies a bot, that bot creators will quickly remedy that tell.


Back to the thread, I think I'll do a little research on Tim Squirrell's Alt-Right Open Intelligence Initiative research.

That's an interesting article. Depressing but interesting.

I'm curious whether or not these patterns of word use carry over to other parts of the web, when members of these groups go a trolling elsewhere, or do they generally disguise their language in other settings? I don't spend a lot of time on un-moderated forums, and I don't tend to read the comment threads of my more conservative FB friends' posts anymore.

More data mining fun: Wired: MAPPING THE MOST AND LEAST TROLL-RIDDEN PLACES IN THE U.S.

To find out exactly how bad the bad behavior is, we partnered with Disqus, an online commenting platform (disclosure: WIRED.com uses it) to quantify the problem. Cofounder Daniel Ha says toxic posts have been an issue from day one, and he sees it as a human problem, not a technological one: “It’s never really going to go away.” The company analyzed 92 million comments over a 16-month period, written by almost 2 million authors on more than 7,000 forums that use the software. (So sites like Infowars and the Wirecutter are included, but Facebook and Twitter are not.) The numbers reveal everything from the trolliest time of day to the nastiest state in the union.

Click to expand...

The most shocking finding:

Park Forest, IL
The most toxic city in the US, where 34 percent of comments are hostile. But 99 percent of those come from just two authors.

Click to expand...

I grew up in Norwalk which borders Bellflower:

Bellflower, CA
Bellflower wins the distinction of being the most unlike its neighbors; while it isn’t the most toxic city in the US, it is 335 percent more toxic than the rest of California.

Click to expand...

Maybe there are some bot sources posting from there.

I'm shocked that the word libtard wasn't mentioned in the article. That's a really popular term.

Night_Writer said:

I'm shocked that the word libtard wasn't mentioned in the article. That's a really popular term.

Click to expand...

Maybe they all use that term with similar frequency. it might also be used a lot by more casually trollish people who are hostile to liberalism but not formally associated with any particular hate group. If so, it wouldn't be terribly useful for distinguishing between hate groups online.

That article is sobering. The comment about a generation of young, white males being radicalized via frog memes made me think of some close friends of mine. They are pretty liberal themselves, but their twenty-year-old son is expressing some really right-wing and intolerant views (and yes, he likes Trump), and it's clearly a result of time spent with these charming people online.

The sad thing is, he's kind of a mess: doesn't want to go to college, not finding a career path, or even a steady job, moving in and out of his parents' home (last time he was kicked out by his roommates for his extreme political views), and suffers from anxiety disorders that are so severe they make him physically ill at times. He's not a horrible kid, can be quite nice actually, but he's angry and anxious.

He's a lot like his dad was at the same age, actually, but his dad lacked the anger and intolerance, and actually became increasingly liberal as he matured. His dad dropped in and out of college through the 80s, but he finally buckled down and is now a teacher. The kid's mom has always has struggled with social anxiety issues, and the son probably gets the anxiety from her. The biggest difference, from what I can see, is that the son had a lot of "screen time" from a very young age. Unlike his parents, his peer group has mostly been accessed online, and he's far more comfortable in an online setting than face to face.

The internet doesn't create hate groups, but it sure makes it easier for them to suck people in. And it's much easier to buy into stereotypes about groups of people if you haven't had many face-to-face interactions with them.

Many (most) kids who grow up online end up being okay, some don't.

The biggest thing going on is "edgelording", the building up of a fantasy where you are powerful by being able to get reactions from others. Those with social anxiety can be vulnerable to this when they go onto the internet. But the beginning of the loop is when they are angry and would rather have others feel angry for them. Those who edgelorded five years ago were typically flying under the "libertarian" banner. Today, they are flying under the "alt-right" banner. Perhaps the numbers of young men needing to edgelord is stronger today than it was five or ten years ago. But I don't have numbers.

Xelebes said:

The biggest thing going on is "edgelording", the building up of a fantasy where you are powerful by being able to get reactions from others. Those with social anxiety can be vulnerable to this when they go onto the internet. But the beginning of the loop is when they are angry and would rather have others feel angry for them. Those who edgelorded five years ago were typically flying under the "libertarian" banner. Today, they are flying under the "alt-right" banner. Perhaps the numbers of young men needing to edgelord is stronger today than it was five or ten years ago. But I don't have numbers.

Click to expand...

It is interesting that it is mostly men, especially younger ones, involved in this. Overall, younger people are more liberal than older people. Before this election, my image of the alt right was a bunch of scared, old white guys (and sometimes their loyal wives or a few angry white women in their own right) who don't like how frankly diverse America has become since their youth, along with the ones who are pissed about their kind of Christianity being the glue that holds America together. That was what many of us thought of as the archetypal Trump voter--angry, scared older white people.

But it sounds like the "alt right" is increasingly a movement of young, white men. And the article I read about Spencer suggests that the alt right (at least his branch of it) isn't terribly religious, though they think Christian culture was a glue that once held western society together and now needs a replacement in white nationalism. So is the alliance between the far right and Christianity going to break down eventually?

I guess the sometimes self-contradictory nature of the alt right is because there are these different hate groups--libertarians (not saying those are a hate group in their basic form, but some have simply embraced libertarianism as an excuse for looking at less privileged groups as deserving of their marginalized status), racist groups, men's "rights' groups, fundamentalist Christian groups and so on that have some intersection on what they want. For instance, the men's rightists and the Christian groups both want to oppress women, if for different reasons. And the racist groups and libertarians both love their guns, though for different reasons. And the cognitive dissonance associated with holding incompatible views may eventually twist someone's rationale for what they believe and why.

This chart, linked to the article in the OP, is interesting, because it lists some of these groups and highlights what they want and who they hate most.

https://qz.com/1057835/a-taxonomy-of-american-far-right-hate-groups/

But if young people are getting sucked into these movements, then we can't hunker down and wait for the last haters to die off. The good news is that white men are and will continue to be, a minority in this country. Even if every, single white male gets sucked in by this movement (and obviously they won't all be), they can't take over unless the rest of us let them.

Roxxsmom said:

So is the alliance between the far right and Christianity going to break down eventually?

Click to expand...

My suspicion is that for the moment, it is not going to break off. The LA Times has an op-ed which points out the moral bankruptcy of the (politicised) evangelicals.

What galvanized Jerry Falwell and other leaders in the 1970s was not abortion, which they considered a “Catholic issue.” They mobilized instead to protest the rescission of tax-exempt status at Bob Jones University and other “segregation academies.” (Falwell had opened his own segregation academy in Lynchburg, Va., in 1967.) Only later, in advance of the 1980 election, did Weyrich and others recognize that abortion could mobilize grass-roots evangelical voters.

Click to expand...

Not helping:

The Hill: Russia’s propaganda machine amplifies alt-right

Russia’s army of media influencers, social media bots and trolls has increasingly amplified alt-right and far-right narratives in the United States since the 2016 presidential election.

Russia’s efforts to push propaganda and disinformation, experts say, are nothing new and extend beyond the U.S. to nations in Europe. But they have seemed to evolve in recent months, increasingly infiltrating and engaging with alt-right and far-right Americans online.

Click to expand...

While this is a bit peripheral to the taxonomy of internet trolls, it is definitely related to the alt right (and I've no question that many of these trolls are Brietbart readers). I caught this piece about Steve Bannon on PRI's The World earlier, and he's even scarier than I thought. He's embraced his worldview with open eyes and with much research. He's not "just" a big, fat ignoramus who stumbled across his views randomly. I've often found myself wondering whether people who spout right-wing propaganda in the name of patriotism have heard of the enlightenment and how it basically engendered our modern society with all its precious freedoms. I've often thought that if they could only study the history of western thought, they'd realize how at odds their world view is with the trajectory western civilization been on for centuries.

The answer is yes to the first question and no to the second, at least in Bannon's case. He's studied philosophy extensively, and the man thinks the enlightenment and movement towards greater tolerance, diversity and so on is a bad thing. It's hard to say how many of his readers and followers share his background and perspective, but we can no longer assume that so-called neo conservatives share the basic respect for democracy and the constitution that had arguably unified most Americans across the political spectrum prior to the late 20th century.

I used to think that conservatives and liberals wanted many of the same things and shared a basic respect for our Constitutional principles, even if we had very different ideas about the best way to get these things and had different ideas about how to interpret the constitution.

I don't think so anymore.

And this gets to the crux of what makes me sick and anxious. How can we find common ground and compromise with people who not only aren't (metaphorically speaking) on the same page, but aren't even residing in the same library? And how does one tolerate the beliefs of someone whose "sincerely held political and religious views" are that people like many of us should be oppressed, or maybe even exterminated? And how do I stop my fear of these people and what they intend for me from turning into boiling hatred?

One of the the things they intend is for you to become dominated by your boiling hatred. It (boiling hatred) makes a person more manipulable, in that we become more likely to react without thinking, to use exaggerated language - and language shapes reality - and general become more like them.

I'd be less for studying them and more for ignoring them, seeing as trolls are, by definition, people who provoke for the sake of getting attention.

Layla Nahar said:

One of the the things they intend is for you to become dominated by your boiling hatred. It (boiling hatred) makes a person more manipulable, in that we become more likely to react without thinking, to use exaggerated language - and language shapes reality - and general become more like them.

Click to expand...

Which is exactly why I am resisting this as best I can.

Though their boiling hatred hasn't stopped them from taking over one of the two major political parties in the US.

I do hope that as the far right has become more successful that they might fall prey to some of what's been a problem for liberals all along: the diversity within their movement (in this case it's more ideological than cultural) may make it harder and harder for the party to cater equally to every subgroups's desires and needs. So maybe they'll become more apathetic and flightly as voters, losing interest in candidates who don't specifically represent their subgroup or focus on their specific peeves, the way people who fall under the democratic banner have been.

The biggest way to circumvent Bannon is not imagine the work built on the Enlightenment as a trajectory, a constant motion to somewhere. And why? Because if what leadership deems its goal is a constant motion to somewhere, there will be people who will detract. People who feel that they are being pushed under to make way for someone else's eventual goal. In much the same way that the Ukrainian farmers who would be dismissed, given an official shrug and a deprivation that would produce devastating famines. In a curt way, what Bannon espouses is for something which he sees as a tangible goal with an endpoint. There is some leading and then there is a stop.

I'm personally for a leadership policy that does not believe its act is a constant action towards a goal, but rather a positive pressure of change that stems inhuman forces from towing us under. That is, change is enacted to keep things the same rather than change for the sake of change.

AW Admin said:

Which is one way we can help. Link to factual takedowns; not rhetorical face-offs, facts.

As obnoxious as the loud bullies and hate-mongers are, remember that there are people of good will who are scared and quiet. Post for them.

Click to expand...

I hope that my talking about how propaganda and marketing works and how it is prevalent in our lives will lead people to recognize when they are being sold a bill of goods. Media and marketing literacy can be akin to immunizing folks.

Xelebes said:

The biggest way to circumvent Bannon is not imagine the work built on the Enlightenment as a trajectory, a constant motion to somewhere. And why? Because if what leadership deems its goal is a constant motion to somewhere, there will be people who will detract. People who feel that they are being pushed under to make way for someone else's eventual goal. In much the same way that the Ukrainian farmers who would be dismissed, given an official shrug and a deprivation that would produce devastating famines. In a curt way, what Bannon espouses is for something which he sees as a tangible goal with an endpoint. There is some leading and then there is a stop.

Click to expand...

It's always easier to destroy something than to create it, which is one reason why the Right has been so successful. It appears that their main goal is to destroy all the progress towards social, political and economic equality and inclusiveness that has occurred in the past century or so, and to allow people to sort things out on their own. This will result in those who are in the minority, those who are weaker or more vulnerable, or those who are economically on the edge, being reduced to their historical status as second class (at best) citizens.

I'm personally for a leadership policy that does not believe its act is a constant action towards a goal, but rather a positive pressure of change that stems inhuman forces from towing us under. That is, change is enacted to keep things the same rather than change for the sake of change.

Click to expand...

This sounds like a rather conservative goal, as keeping things the same essentially means more treading water for those people who still haven't achieved economic or social equality or full protection under the law. I don't think this is what you mean, so I'm puzzled by this statement.

It is a rather understated statement. If the "same" is a plate of food on the table and a roof over the head, you make those changes so you can get more of the same. If the "same" is something more contrived and to the benefit of the few, then that "same" deserves to be questioned and perhaps undermined.

Xelebes said:

It is a rather understated statement. If the "same" is a plate of food on the table and a roof over the head, you make those changes so you can get more of the same. If the "same" is something more contrived and to the benefit of the few, then that "same" deserves to be questioned and perhaps undermined.

Click to expand...

Many things that are to the benefit of the few, such as (say) the rights of Transgender people to use the restrooms of their choice, or to serve in the military with equality, are still important goals, imo.

And one could argue that, since America really is "from many, one" protecting the rights of different minority groups, no matter how small, is protecting the rights of all.

Are they only a benefit to the few? What is the alternative?