Kek, Cucks, and God Emperor Trump

The Something Awful Forums > Main > General Bullshit > Kek, Cucks, and God Emperor Trump

Helical Nightmares: Apr 30, 2009

I didn't make that up. That is the legitimate partial title of a sincere academic paper investigating /pol/ and mathematically modeling their raids on Youtube.

Kek, Cucks, and God Emperor Trump: A Measurement Study of 4chan�s Politically Incorrect Forum and Its Effects on the Web

Still reading through this paper but I figured you goons would find it interesting. No, Something Awful is NOT mentioned as far as I have read.

Someone do me the favor of getting the figures into jpgs please because some of them are hilarious.

Nature interview with the author

http://www.nature.com/news/shining-a-light-on-the-dark-corners-of-the-web-1.22128?WT.ec_id=NEWSDAILY-20170612

quote:

Shining a light on the dark corners of the web

Cybercrime researcher Gianluca Stringhini explains how he studies hate speech and fake news on the underground network 4chan.

Gianluca Stringhini spends his days in some of the shadier corners of the internet. As a cybercrime researcher at University College London, he has studied ransomware, online-dating scams and money laundering. In May, his team published two papers exploring how hate speech and fake news are spread around the Internet, focusing on the notorious but popular 4chan message boards.

In a conference-proceedings paper, the researchers analysed 8 million posts on 4chan�s /pol/ (�politically incorrect�) board, and traced how its users �raid� other websites by posting inflammatory comments1. And in a preprint posted to the arXiv server2, they traced interactions between 4chan boards and other online communities, such as Twitter and Reddit, to examine how sites share links from known fake news sites, or from what the team calls 'alternative' news sources such as RT (formerly Russia Today). Stringhini talked to Nature about his research.

What made you decide to research 4chan?

Nobody is really looking at these communities, but there is a lot of anecdotal evidence suggesting that they have an impact in the real world by spreading certain types of news. So we wanted to understand whether this is true, and to what extent they actually influence the rest of the web.

We started by just looking at 4chan. We selected /pol/, the politically incorrect board, which is where most alt-right users gather and discuss their world-views. We started by trying to understand the dynamics of these populations and this service. 4chan is very different from most other online sites in that it is both anonymous and its posts are ephemeral: they are deleted after a short while.

How did you go about it?

We applied a number of techniques. We used a database containing hate words to understand what are the most prominent hate words, what is the incidence of hate speech and so on.

The percentage of /pol/ posts containing hate speech is 12%, whereas on Twitter it�s 2%. It is reasonably higher, let�s say. It's not perfect, because we used a keyword-based list, so we might actually be missing some hate speech that doesn�t just fall into these pre-compiled categories. After understanding how this works, we started looking at how 4chan, and /pol/ in particular, influences the rest of the web.

And this is the subject of your paper1 on �raids� from 4chan to other websites? Was this something you already thought was happening?

Yes. The limitations on what members of the research community have done so far are that they looked at the services in isolation. There is a lot of work towards understanding how attacks happen on Twitter, on YouTube, on Facebook. But there is not a lot of work on the source of these attacks, or their causes.

Because /pol/ is such a hateful platform, we saw empirically that often, people would post hyperlinks to YouTube videos that went against their world-views. They could be videos advocating for gender equality, feminism, tolerance. And then they would call for members to go and attack these people.

And so we would have a signal on 4chan that this link had been posted and people would be talking about it. And then we could see whether we could observe an effect on the YouTube comments to that video. We basically applied signal-processing techniques that have been used in radio signals to understand how synchronized these two signals are. There was a strong correlation between comments on YouTube spiking within the lifetime of a 4chan thread, and the amount of hate speech in those comments. This gave us evidence that these raids are really happening, and this will be grounds for future work. Now the question is, �So what?� What do we do about it?

Can anything be done?

This gives us an opportunity to identify videos that are at risk of being attacked. If YouTube only uses its own platform to identify raids, it can basically identify them as the raids are happening. But if it were looking at something else as well � an indicator that somebody is talking about this video in a hateful manner on a different platform � maybe it should start monitoring the comments more carefully. Or maybe, given that these threads on 4chan have a short lifespan, YouTube should disable comments on the video for the length of the lifespan.

In your paper on the arXiv2, you show that 4chan boards can influence the sharing of other news sources.

Here, we studied whether, once an event happens on one Internet platform (say, a hyperlink to a piece of news), the same event happens on another platform. It will be the exact same news link being posted on /pol/ that then makes its way to Twitter, let�s say. We use a mathematical technique called 'Hawkes-process modelling', in which we can say with reasonable confidence that a particular event actually is related to the previous one that happened.

So we did this study, the first of its kind in tracing links between services. The idea here is that there has been quite some work on studying fake and alternative news. People look at how alternative news spreads on Twitter, for example; how people reshare it. But these services do not live in a vacuum � they�re part of the greater web. These places where alternative news stories are posted and they talk about them and they make up these crazy conspiracies and all of that: we wanted to understand whether this actually has an impact on the wider web.

What we found is that Twitter influences the other services a lot, which makes sense. Users of /pol/ and reddit will see news on Twitter, and then they will post those stories on their own boards and talk about them. But we also found that the opposite happens. To give you an example, we found that about 12% of the alternative news on worldnews � one of the main news boards on reddit � is coming from 4chan. And over 16% of the alternative news on the same board is coming from The_Donald [a specific part of Reddit used by supporters of the US president].

Was it unpleasant reading all these posts?

It�s definitely a hateful place and quite unpleasant. It�s not nice looking at it. My colleagues and I have some best practices: we advise whoever is working with us not to spend too much time continuously on the website, and to take breaks. We have this inside joke to every once in a while go and look at cat pictures.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Nature doi:10.1038/nature.2017.22128

Link to the actual paper is here: https://aaai.org/ocs/index.php/ICWSM/ICWSM17/paper/view/15670/14790

# ? Jun 12, 2017 21:36

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# ? May 23, 2024 21:09

Brother Tadger: Feb 15, 2012; I'm accidentally a suicide bomber!

Definitely not reading all of that poo poo.

How does that make you feel, OP?

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

# ? Jun 12, 2017 21:46

FisheyStix: Jul 2, 2008; This avatar was paid for by the Silent Majority.

Author sounds like kind of a pussy OP

# ? Jun 12, 2017 21:49

Helical Nightmares: Apr 30, 2009

From Kek, Cucks, and God Emperor Trump.

https://aaai.org/ocs/index.php/ICWSM/ICWSM17/paper/view/15670/14790

quote:

Text Analysis

Hate speech. /pol/ is generally considered a �hateful� ecosystem, however, quantifying hate is a non-trivial task. One possible approach is to perform sentiment analysis (Pang and Lee 2008) over the posts in order to identify positive vs. negative attitude, but this is difficult since the majority of /pol/ posts (about 84%) are either neutral or negative.

As a consequence, to identify hateful posts we use the hatebase dictionary, a crowdsourced list of more than 1,000 terms from around the world that indicate hate when referring to a third person.5 We also use the NLTK framework6 to identify these words in various forms (e.g., �retard� vs �retarded�).

Our dictionary-based approach identifies posts that contain hateful terms, but there might be cases where the context might not exactly be �hateful� (e.g., ironic usage). Moreover, hatebase is a crowdsourced database, and is not perfect. To this end, we manually examine the list and remove a few of the words that are clearly ambiguous or extremely contextsensitive (e.g., �india� is a variant of �indio,� used in Mexico to refer to someone of Afro-Mexican origin, but is likely to be a false positive confused with the country India in our dataset). Nevertheless, given the nature of /pol/, the vast majority of posts likely use these terms in a hateful manner.

Despite these caveats, we can use this approach to provide an idea of how prevalent hate speech is on /pol/. We find that 12% of /pol/ posts contain hateful terms, which is substantially higher than in /sp/ (6.3%) and /int/ (7.3%). In comparison, analyzing our sample of tweets reveals just how substantially different /pol/ is from other social media: only 2.2% contained a hate word.

In Figure 10, we also report the percentage of /pol/ posts in which the top 15 most �popular� hate words from the hatebase dictionary appear. �friend of the family� is the most popular hate word, used in more than 2% of posts, while �human being� and �retard� appear in over 1% of posts. To get an idea of the magnitude of hate, consider that �friend of the family� appears in 265K posts, i.e., about 120 posts an hour.

After the top 3 hate words, there is a sharp drop in usage, although we see a variety of slurs. These include �goy,� which is a derogatory word used by Jewish people to refer to non-Jewish people. In our experience, however, we note that �goy� is used in an inverted fashion on /pol/, i.e., posters call other posters �goys� to imply that they are submitting to Jewish �manipulation� and �trickery.�

Formatting mine for clarity. Still no way to measure ironic usage of a term it appears.

Helical Nightmares fucked around with this message at 21:54 on Jun 12, 2017

# ? Jun 12, 2017 21:50

Emmideer: Oct 20, 2011; Lovely night, no?; Grimey Drawer

Helical Nightmares posted:

From Kek, Cucks, and God Emperor Trump.

https://aaai.org/ocs/index.php/ICWSM/ICWSM17/paper/view/15670/14790

Formatting mine for clarity. Still no way to measure ironic usage of a term it appears.

ironic hate speech is still hate speech

# ? Jun 12, 2017 21:51

Helical Nightmares: Apr 30, 2009

jon joe posted:

ironic hate speech is still hate speech

Which you cannot prove.

# ? Jun 12, 2017 21:52

Who Is Paul Blart: Oct 22, 2010

jon joe posted:

ironic hate speech is still hate speech

Which is good because I am literally filled to the brim with hate.

# ? Jun 12, 2017 21:53

Emmideer: Oct 20, 2011; Lovely night, no?; Grimey Drawer

Helical Nightmares posted:

Which you cannot prove.

hate speech isn't according to the intentions of the speaker

# ? Jun 12, 2017 21:57

Waffle House: Oct 27, 2004; You follow the path
fitting into an infinite pattern.

Yours to manipulate, to destroy and rebuild.

Now, in the quantum moment
before the closure
when all become one.

One moment left.
One point of space and time.

I know who you are.

You are Destiny.

I'm somehow not surprised to see that /pol/ as a phenomenon is being studied in a clinical sense, and am pleased to see it being dissected by entities that are not the news-media.

Part of the issue/brilliance with the anonymity aspect of the 4chonz is that anyone can post without verification, so they themselves are extremely subject to things like astroturfing and infiltration, and it doesn't seem like that has occurred to many of them. Hell, from the looks of it, a lot of them probably upend the kool-aid and guzzle it freely as soon as it's put on the table for them.

# ? Jun 12, 2017 21:58

Sweaty IT Nerd: Jul 13, 2007

jon joe posted:

hate speech isn't according to the intentions of the speaker

Isn't it time someone gave the bigots the benefit of the doubt?

# ? Jun 12, 2017 21:59

Helical Nightmares: Apr 30, 2009

Waffle House posted:

I'm somehow not surprised to see that /pol/ as a phenomenon is being studied in a clinical sense, and am pleased to see it being dissected by entities that are not the news-media.

Part of the issue/brilliance with the anonymity aspect of the 4chonz is that anyone can post without verification, so they themselves are extremely subject to things like astroturfing and infiltration, and it doesn't seem like that has occurred to many of them. Hell, from the looks of it, a lot of them probably upend the kool-aid and guzzle it freely as soon as it's put on the table for them.

What's more startling is the methodology they are using to quantitative the effect of raids on other platforms. Check it out.

It suggests youtube could use an algorithm to identify current raids and shut off comments to a particular raided video for the duration of the raid.

# ? Jun 12, 2017 22:01

Enfield: May 30, 2011; by Nyc_Tattoo

imagine being the op and going to a bar and starting a conversation about trump cucks because hes a loving retard that finds it interesting for some reason

# ? Jun 12, 2017 22:04

satanic splash-back: Jan 28, 2009

Enfield posted:

imagine being the op and going to a bar and starting a conversation about trump cucks because hes a loving retard that finds it interesting for some reason

I would rather drown myself in gasoline than imagine living a life like that.

# ? Jun 12, 2017 22:06

Waffle House: Oct 27, 2004; You follow the path
fitting into an infinite pattern.

Yours to manipulate, to destroy and rebuild.

Now, in the quantum moment
before the closure
when all become one.

One moment left.
One point of space and time.

I know who you are.

You are Destiny.

Helical Nightmares posted:

What's more startling is the methodology they are using to quantitative the effect of raids on other platforms. Check it out.

It suggests youtube could use an algorithm to identify current raids and shut off comments to a particular raided video for the duration of the raid.

That'd be neat. It's a little late to the party, but I'm pleased those kinds of software controls might be put in place, rather than legislative controls, which I think (legislative) is something that the recent /pol/ motions were gunning to force a hand on so as to better cram their AntiCurrentGovernment narrative.

I'm not really a big fan of 4chan. I "get" the humor, I mean it's hilarious and spicy a lot of the time, and even derive my own works from it, but I just as a matter of personal taste don't post there, there's too much illegal and illicit stuff. I'll just wait the 30 seconds for it to filter out onto Facebook or twitter via their many, many sock puppets, alts, and bots.

Once they decided they'd occupy the side of their horseshoe ( :v:

) that's closest to Al-Qaeda, just with White Nationalism� instead, they completely lost sight of the force for comedy and trolling that they used to be, and instead IMO DEscended to the ranks of petty "terrorists", if we're going on the book definition of "Terrorism."

I'm afraid they're not even really funny anymore. They're burning so hard that now all their humor is in the hands of "normies", and is evolving squarely in those hands without them. Rather than realizing their legacy all along was humor, which is the best kind of memetic to be remembered by, they decided that they needed to scorch the earth around them with anger. Such is fine, but all it does is show them as really salty people with nothing better to do.

Waffle House fucked around with this message at 22:18 on Jun 12, 2017

# ? Jun 12, 2017 22:13

Strategic Tea: Sep 1, 2012

Helical Nightmares posted:

What's more startling is the methodology they are using to quantitative the effect of raids on other platforms. Check it out.

It suggests youtube could use an algorithm to identify current raids and shut off comments to a particular raided video for the duration of the raid.

The methodology is neat and multipurpose.

*adds additional words to the hate speech filter*

"union" "strike" "solidarity"

# ? Jun 12, 2017 22:17

VikingSkull: Jan 23, 2017; Look Viking you're a trash Trump supporter what the fuck makes you think you can have an avatar that isn't what I decide? Shut your fucking trap and go away. Your trolling is tiresome and just shits up the forum.

hell maybe they could extend the algorithm to the videos themselves and have an auto delete feature so that we can kill the controversies entirely as they pop up

# ? Jun 12, 2017 22:27

ScRoTo TuRbOtUrD: Jan 21, 2007

1redflag posted:

Definitely not reading ~~all~~ any of that poo poo.

How does that make you feel, OP?

# ? Jun 12, 2017 22:31

Who What Now: Sep 10, 2006; by Azathoth

...and the pitch! posted:

Isn't it time someone gave the bigots the benefit of the doubt?

I'm willing to give them the benefit of a quick death.

# ? Jun 12, 2017 22:32

galumphing lummox: Aug 30, 2006

...and the pitch! posted:

Isn't it time someone gave the bigots the benefit of the doubt?

Heh, so much for the tolerant left. :smuggo:

# ? Jun 12, 2017 22:40

Dean of Swing: Feb 22, 2012

I didn't read that but what the hell do frog memes have to do with biology?

# ? Jun 12, 2017 22:47

Carwash Cunt: Aug 21, 2007

My culture war timeline is not ready to publish, but the flow of battle basically goes:

Bioware Drama --> GamerGate --> Trump.

I'm still working out the details. Did MineCraft train a generation to be obsessive shut ins who now blame Obama for their problems? Not sure yet.

# ? Jun 12, 2017 22:53

Junior Jr.: Oct 4, 2014; by sebmojo; Buglord

I'd be very concerned if those students legit got diplomas for this crap. Memes should not be considered academic material.

# ? Jun 12, 2017 22:56

Carwash Cunt: Aug 21, 2007

Junior Jr. posted:

I'd be very concerned if those students legit got diplomas for this crap. Memes should not be considered academic material.

Sounds like something a meme spreading Russian spy would say.

# ? Jun 12, 2017 22:58

bird with big dick: Oct 21, 2015

Helical Nightmares posted:

From Kek, Cucks, and God Emperor Trump.

https://aaai.org/ocs/index.php/ICWSM/ICWSM17/paper/view/15670/14790

Formatting mine for clarity. Still no way to measure ironic usage of a term it appears.

Use of the N word on 4chan hasn't been ironic since 2008.

# ? Jun 12, 2017 23:14

Monos Bullet: Dec 6, 2016; Yea, and I say unto you, bringeth me a machiatto of caramel, with crickets on top.

Finally, the thread that'll nab me a Silent Majority av!

# ? Jun 12, 2017 23:16

The Insect Court: Nov 22, 2012; by FactsAreUseless

scrubs season six posted:

Use of the N word on 4chan hasn't been ironic since 2008.

Ironically all the ironic Nazis were just Nazis.

Also who the gently caress would ever want to read any Youtube comment anywhere for any reason whatsoever?

# ? Jun 13, 2017 00:23

flubber nuts: Oct 5, 2005

gently caress u op i was having a good day too. ban thread gas op. no mods no masters.

# ? Jun 13, 2017 00:24

Noblesse Obliged: Apr 7, 2012

ya someone wrote some poo poo woopteedoo i write some poo poo too

I PISSS SITTTTING DWON TO KEEP MY Y ELLOW MELLLOW

# ? Jun 13, 2017 00:28

Helpimscared: Jun 16, 2014

This is the kind of stuff our tuition money goes to?

# ? Jun 13, 2017 00:39

Helical Nightmares: Apr 30, 2009

Strategic Tea posted:

The methodology is neat and multipurpose.

*adds additional words to the hate speech filter*

"union" "strike" "solidarity"

Absolutely could be done.

# ? Jun 13, 2017 00:41

kickascii: Mar 30, 2010

I've browsed /pol a bit on and off. It feels to be like a playground for social psychologists, social engineers, niche narrative pushers, trolls, and anarchists. The signal to noise ratio is completely unbearable to me. I've become an extreme pessimist about online discussions of all forms, theyre completely ruined by dialog that is not genuine.

Except you guys. You guys seem cool.

I say that unironically as I hope that because SA is smaller and more niche it has less shills than other places on the net.

Whoever would write a sociology paper on 4chan discussion is extemely naive, imo. Youre essentially watching siri, alexa, Shareblue and Stormfront spew memes and calling it a study of human behavior.

# ? Jun 13, 2017 00:44

Who What Now: Sep 10, 2006; by Azathoth

kickascii posted:

I've browsed /pol a bit on and off. It feels to be like a playground for social psychologists, social engineers, niche narrative pushers, trolls, and anarchists. The signal to noise ratio is completely unbearable to me. I've become an extreme pessimist about online discussions of all forms, theyre completely ruined by dialog that is not genuine.

Except you guys. You guys seem cool.

I say that unironically as I hope that because SA is smaller and more niche it has less shills than other places on the net.

Whoever would write a sociology paper on 4chan discussion is extemely naive, imo. Youre essentially watching siri, alexa, Shareblue and Stormfront spew memes and calling it a study of human behavior.

You write like what a retard thinks a smart person sounds like. Have you tried not writing like that?

# ? Jun 13, 2017 00:46

Hardawn: Mar 15, 2004; Don't look at the sun, but rather what it illuminates; College Slice

kickascii posted:

I've browsed /pol a bit on and off. It feels to be like a playground for social psychologists, social engineers, niche narrative pushers, trolls, and anarchists. The signal to noise ratio is completely unbearable to me. I've become an extreme pessimist about online discussions of all forms, theyre completely ruined by dialog that is not genuine.

Except you guys. You guys seem cool.

I say that unironically as I hope that because SA is smaller and more niche it has less shills than other places on the net.

Whoever would write a sociology paper on 4chan discussion is extemely naive, imo. Youre essentially watching siri, alexa, Shareblue and Stormfront spew memes and calling it a study of human behavior.

im gay

# ? Jun 13, 2017 00:49

Luxury Communism: Aug 22, 2015; by Lowtax

My favorite /pol/ posters the the Israelis who want a traditionalist Jewish ethnic state in the middle east and think that the white nationalists just need to realize they are really cool guys irl.

# ? Jun 13, 2017 00:58

afeelgoodpoop: Oct 14, 2014; by FactsAreUseless

Helpimscared posted:

This is the kind of stuff our tuition money goes to?

obama put like a hundred billion into this bullshit with his stimulus bill. a republican would probably do a similar amount, not trying to be political here.

# ? Jun 13, 2017 01:03

Mordor She Wrote: Nov 17, 2014

We already have a bunch of /pol/ enclaves here

# ? Jun 13, 2017 01:08

Blurry Gray Thing: Jun 3, 2009

I've heard the words "R-The Donald" spoken out loud in real life by a person I always thought was normal and well-adjusted and other things that made her very different from me before this election broke her brain.

Then she brought up Pizzagate and said "Well, it's very suspicious, don't you think?"

I believe this paper and support any and all efforts to burn down the internet that it leads to.

# ? Jun 13, 2017 01:10

DoctorStrangelove: Jun 7, 2012; IT WOULD NOT BE DIFFICULT MEIN FUHRER!

Pizzagate is the funniest thing since it was /pol/ accidentally trolling their own people.

# ? Jun 13, 2017 01:12

Putty: Mar 21, 2013; HOOKED ON THE BROTHERS

the Kek thing is stupid but its funny to see the media lose it's mind over the cartoon frog

# ? Jun 13, 2017 01:13

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# ? May 23, 2024 21:09

Luxury Communism: Aug 22, 2015; by Lowtax

DoctorStrangelove posted:

Pizzagate is the funniest thing since it was /pol/ accidentally trolling their own people.

I knew Pizzagate was going to go off the rails when I saw my own posts attempting to speculate and hypothesize being screencapped and taken as authoritative fact.

# ? Jun 13, 2017 01:20

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