industryterm:online discussion

How Israeli spies are flooding Facebook and Twitter | The Electronic Intifada
▻https://electronicintifada.net/content/how-israeli-spies-are-flooding-facebook-and-twitter/27596

https://electronicintifada.net/sites/default/files/styles/original_800w/public/2019-06/yarden-ben-yosef.png?itok=AUeMqpWs

Act.IL is run by a former Israeli spy who has argued that his outfit is involved in “a new kind of war.”

While Act.IL publicly denies being supported by the Israeli government, the group’s chief executive has admitted in Hebrew to working closely with Israeli ministries, and in English that his staff are mostly former Israeli spies.

His name is Yarden Ben Yosef. Last year, he explained his group’s methods in an article for a journal aimed at Israeli diplomats. He lamented that – in #Gaza that May – “the Palestinian narrative prevailed in world media over the Israeli one.”

Israeli snipers had massacred more than 60 unarmed Palestinian protesters on a single day during the Great March of Return protests, injuring thousands more.

Ben Yosef advocated for “inserting ourselves” into online discussions, because readers nowadays see the comments section under articles published by websites as part of the story.

Using sophisticated “monitoring software,” he wrote, Act.IL closely watched news and social media the week before the opening of the new US embassy in Jerusalem – one of the triggers for the Palestinian protests.

Ben Yosef explained that “controlling the online media discussion became our top priority.”

He claimed victory in these efforts, successfully “bumping the pro-Israeli comments to the top of the list in 85 percent of the cases.”

#hasbara #propagande #Palestine

Godwin’s law - reductio ad Hitlerum
▻https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1f/Heinrich_Vogeler-Das_Dritte_Reich-1934.jpg

“As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches” that is, if an online discussion (regardless of topic or scope) goes on long enough, sooner or later someone will compare someone or something to Adolf Hitler or his deeds, the point at which effectively the discussion or thread often ends.
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Godwin’s law itself can be abused as a distraction, diversion or even as censorship, fallaciously miscasting an opponent’s argument as hyperbole when the comparisons made by the argument are actually appropriate. Similar criticisms of the “law” (or “at least the distorted version which purports to prohibit all comparisons to German crimes”) have been made by the American lawyer, journalist, and author Glenn Greenwald.

Godwin’s law does not claim to articulate a fallacy; it is instead framed as a memetic tool to reduce the incidence of inappropriate hyperbolic comparisons. “Although deliberately framed as if it were a law of nature or of mathematics,” Godwin wrote, “its purpose has always been rhetorical and pedagogical: I wanted folks who glibly compared someone else to Hitler to think a bit harder about the Holocaust.”

#discussion #rhétorique #internet #usenet #psychologie

The True Nature of an Internet Troll - Facts So Romantic
▻http://nautil.us/blog/the-true-nature-of-an-internet-troll

http://static.nautil.us/10976_31b5b7b61bc03a158c3c602c6ce6489b.jpg

Although the phrase “to troll” only recently entered the mainstream lexicon—partially thanks to the rise in popularity of online discussion forums like 4chan and Reddit, as well as massive multiplayer online games—trolling dates back to chatrooms in the ‘80s. Back then, “trolls” referred to online instigators of disparaging and, essentially, pointless arguments, or “flamewars.” Nowadays, however, trolling has evolved into a catch-all term, ranging from inflammatory YouTube comments and tweets all the way to targeted and sustained harassment (as well as jail time for the aggressors). Trolling is also on the rise. In 2014, over 1,200 people were found guilty under Section 127 of the United Kingdom’s Communications Act 2003, which makes it a crime to send, “by means of a public electronic (...)

Mike Godwin’s Law: from counter-memes to countering the FBI | Culture | theguardian.com

▻http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2013/oct/29/mike-godwin-nazi-analogies-meme-update#start-of-comments

Back in 1990 – before users referred to the internet as the World Wide Web and a negligible number of mavericks held discussions on Usenet newsgroups, the Well, and Bulletin board systems (BBS) – Mike Godwin, then an Austin law student, created one of the first internet memes.

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2013/10/18/1382113686568/Mike-Godwin-010.jpg

It was called “Godwin’s Law of Nazi Analogies”, and the assertion went like this:

“As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.”

After he seeded Godwin’s Law within various BBS threads, it caught on with ease, even morphing into different versions of the same basic idea, much like the ubiquitous “condescending Willy Wonka”, or, aptly, “Hitler’s reactions to things”. Now, anyone who wields “Godwin’s Law” in any forum knows they’re talking about pretty much the same thing, regardless of context.

#point_godwin