Facebook Fueled Anti-Refugee Attacks in Germany, New Research Suggests

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/21/world/europe/facebook-refugee-attacks-germany.html

by pjc50 • 8 years ago

84 40 8 years ago

Pigo2• 8 years ago

I guess the telephone fueled the Nazi party and the telegraph fueled General Custer.

mberning• 8 years ago

I agree. This is a braindead article. They admit in the opening paragraphs that social media is only tied to 10% of anti-refugee violence. What about the other 90%? Maybe there are some bigger issues going on and Facebook is just one of the tools involved.

Spooky233• 8 years ago

I suppose that makes you feel better to know that you’re one of the 10% beat up because of some social media drivel.

paganel• 8 years ago

Slightly related, but radio did in fact fuel Hitler and the Nazi party. From this wiki page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksempf%C3%A4nger):

Most famously, Hitler's architect and Minister for Armaments and War Production, Albert Speer, said in his final speech at the Nuremberg trials:
Hitler's dictatorship differed in one fundamental point from all its predecessors in history. His was the first dictatorship in the present period of modern technical development, a dictatorship which made the complete use of all technical means for domination of its own country. Through technical devices like the radio and loudspeaker, 80 million people were deprived of independent thought. It was thereby possible to subject them to the will of one man..

Pigo2• 8 years ago

Yeah, I have no doubt that it did. Powerful tools can be a double edged sword. A method of communication doesn't put evil in someone's heart.

Maybe they'll find a way to boot them off Facebook, but then they'll just use vk or another platform I'd assume. The same platform that allowed some bad actors to fester allowed us to be aware of their presence, write articles on how it happens, and become more aware of how hate breeds from cultural conflict.

Spooky233• 8 years ago

Why do you think broadcast media was regulated?

Radio and video in particular is and was a threat to the democratic process because it magnifies the power the demagoguery.

Turn on AM radio sometime. It’s a sea of bizarre right wing syndicated propaganda 24/7. It’s no coincidence that the rise of unhindered broadcasting is correlated with modern fascism.

woah• 8 years ago

You’re literally advocating for censorship

maeln• 8 years ago

The difference is that telephone and telegraph are "neutral" content deliverer. On most social media, the algorithm of the company decide what you will see.

The telephone cannot force me to see more anti-immigration content. Facebook algorithm can.

pjc503• 8 years ago

Radio was partially responsible for the Rwanda genocide: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_T%C3%A9l%C3%A9vision_Lib...

theBobBob• 8 years ago

Would a better way of describing it be: "People Used Facebook to fuel Anti-Refugee Attacks in Germany." You could say that Facebook isn't doing enough to prevent people fuelling attacks but you could also say that the police aren't doing enough either.

Miner49er• 8 years ago

It's a little different then that. The problem here is echo chambers. Echo chambers allow people to push eachother further and further away from mainstream views. Eventually this extremism leads to violence. Facebook's algorithm's seem to be designed to create echo chambers. Not only that, but their algorithms favor posts that lead to strong emotions. This study shows that this creates an environment that breeds violence.

sornaensis• 8 years ago

The internet has been a series of echo chambers practically since its inception. That's how human society works most of the time.

You don't need algorithms for that. People will just naturally delete or block people they don't like seeing content from. And they will join communities containing people and content they do like seeing. e.g. Stormfront, which was founded in 1996.

The difference now is that it's just a lot easier for the common person to find one for themselves with the expansion of internet access and ease of use. And common people are just honestly not as progressive as the average person involved in computing technology.

wslh• 8 years ago

Google clearly also favors echo chambers nowadays. In the beginning there were discrete resuñts about a topic but now the info layers about super specific topics male difficult to came up with alternative information.

pjc503• 8 years ago

"Echo chamber" seems to be the wrong word; the problem seems to be more like who gets the megaphone. The article talks about "superposters".

"even if only a minority of users express vehement anti-refugee views, once they dominate the newsfeed, this can have consequences for everyone else"

Do this kind of thing in the real world and generally it's met with silence; uncomfortable, disapproving silence. Or people organise tiny pro-racist demos and are outnumbered by counter-protestors.

On the internet, a silent majority is invisible. To stop these people dominating the newsfeed, you have to actively drown them out, which means being louder and more effectively clickbaity for the algorithm that decides how loud you get to be.

(We should also not over-estimate the mainstream; it's probably very mainstream to have misgivings about refugees, but that's a long way from actual violence.)

justwalt• 8 years ago

Seems to me the wording was chosen to put Facebook as the first word for more clicks.

DanBC• 8 years ago

We've known, for many years and from millions of dead people, that fascism needs the media. Without the media you don't get the widespread mass dehumanisation of people as vermin or cockroaches, and you get less violence against those people.

MaysonL• 8 years ago

Here's a statement of the research: places where the Facebook usage was one standard deviation higher than median had a 50% higher than average rate of anti-refugee violence. Based on studying all 3,335 attacks over 2 years. See cstross's tweet: https://twitter.com/cstross/status/1031873629489963008

tropo• 8 years ago

This is clearly a case where "correlation is not causation" must be considered.

Suppose that refugees love Facebook. If so, then places with refugees will have more Facebook usage. Anti-refugee violence can only occur where there are refugees. We thus would expect that Facebook usage would be higher in locations with more anti-refugee violence.

Another explanation is that old people are less likely to engage in violence and also less likely to use Facebook.

mcphage• 8 years ago

You could say that Facebook isn't doing enough to prevent people fuelling attacks but you could also say that the police aren't doing enough either.

Is there a demonstrated positive correlation between the police (what do you mean here—number of police, level of funding, level of civilian support?) and anti-refugee attacks? If not: what's your point?

droopyEyelids• 8 years ago

The point this article (and the research behind it) try to make is that the Filter Bubbles social media sites rely on to drive engagement are themselves inherently harmful.

If true thats the closest thing we’ve see to an attack on the heart of facebook.

black_puppydog• 8 years ago

I like that they at least address the causality vs corellation question. I didn't read the whole 80 pages, but just considering it explicitely is a big step further than many empirical papers go. :)

MilnerRoute• 8 years ago

Russia has been active on social media to try to weaken NATO -- and one of their specific tactics has been stirring up anti-refugee sentiments.

While this has been well-documented, I think people have been hesitant to consider that as part of what's happening in Germany.

mdimec42• 8 years ago

Why is this on "hacker news"?

megous• 8 years ago

Because techies should be considering consequences of their creations.

mdimec42• 8 years ago

Ok that is fair.

But echo chaiber argument goes both ways. And if there is no discussion and iniciative to solve priblems becose everyone including police is afraid to be perceived as "racist", then sadly violence is unavoidible.

Facebook Fueled Anti-Refugee Attacks in Germany, New Research Suggests

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