Feds Creating Database to TrackThe federal government is spending nearly $1 million to create an online database that will track “misinformation” and hate speech on Twitter.
The National Science Foundation is financing the creation of a web service that will monitor “suspicious memes” and what it considers “false and misleading ideas,” with a major focus on political activity online.
The “Truthy” database, created by researchers at Indiana University, is designed to “detect political smears, astroturfing, misinformation, and other social pollution.”
The university has received $919,917 so far for the project.
My question would be:
Who decides whether the communication is "hateful" or "misinformation"?
My question would be:
Who decides whether the communication is "hateful" or "misinformation"?
My question would be:
Who decides whether the communication is "hateful" or "misinformation"?
The links provided in the article cited in the OP do not support some of the claims of the article. This is a a link to a FAQ for the project Truthy There is no mention of hate speech at all. It is not a government project, it is an Indiana University project that received some government funding. One of the most significant aspects is that helps readers identify disguised mass postings.
Government, political groups and businesses are getting into advanced techniques for spreading information and disinformation. Don't believe anything unless you know something about the source of a claim.
"Truthy is a research project that helps you understand how memes spread online. We collect tweets from Twitter and analyze them. With our statistics, images, movies, and interactive data, you can explore these dynamic communication networks.
What is a meme?
A meme is an idea, value or pattern of behavior that is passed from one person to another by imitation. In the Truthy system, a meme can be a #hashtag, @mention/reply, URL, or phrase....
....How do you pick the memes for the Election Coverage tool?
Memes are picked based upon their relevance and popularity (determined by tweet volume).
For the 'Candidates' election coverage selection, we have chosen the top four memes (by tweet volume) that contain "obama" or "biden" to signify the left, and those that contain "romney" or "ryan" for the right.
For the 'Politics' selection, we determined the memes based upon the following criteria:
#p2: Most popular left-leaning meme
#ows: Most popular co-occurring left-leaning meme
#topprog: Second most popular co-occurring left-leaning meme
#dems: Official hashtag for democrats
#tcot: Most popular right-leaning meme
#teaparty: Most popular co-occurring right-leaning meme
#tlot: Second most popular co-occurring right-leaning meme
#gop: Official hashtag for gop..."
This article seems accurate and unbiased: Truthy.indiana.edu to search, identify smear tactics, Twitter-bombs through election runup
This one mentions other projects that deserve more concern than this particular one: US military studied how to influence Twitter users in Darpa-funded research | World news | theguardian.com
Interesting study, our tax money at work, or is it more? Would private funding make me, or perhaps you, less suspicious?
Feds Creating Database to Track
First, it is FUNDED by the feds. It's not a research project BY the fed. govt. There's a difference. Universities apply to the fed each year for funding for a lot of research projects. Some are granted, some are denied.
They should also restrict violent movies -- they probably contribute to the 12,000 murders per year committed in USA.
Murder rate in USA is declining but still high. It is much higher then in Europe.
Given how popular violent and horror movies are it comes to no surprise.
If the government is aware of something, and they find it useful, they will use it no matter patent applications or anything else. Personally, I worry about any type of gathering system that the government can use to use against the very people they are supposed to be serving.
Sorry but the NSA has pretty much destroyed ANY support that it once had from me and I will not trust them with any type of gathering device/program/ability. Now they're going to have to EARN my trust and the way things currently are....they don't have a chance in hell of it happening.
And for those partisan snipes that are sure to follow due to what I said........:roll: yeah, whatever. :roll:
I guess I'll just repeat what I said....it's NOT the government's research. It's research by the University of Indiana. They, like many other universities, were able to obtain funding for their project. The project will be owned by, analyzed by, and profited by the university, if any of those things apply. The fed govt would have access, too.
Results of research projects are usually published in journals.
This is not a secret gathering mission by the federal government, as you seem to think. Those things don't get advertised in the news, and pay a public university to do it and publish the results!
Google is probably more dangerous in the respect of gathering information on people. Far more dangerous. Their data is not public and is used for purposes only the company knows about.
There's nothing scary about the research program, to me. I don't know why anyone would have a problem with it. It's simply a program to analyze PUBLIC tweets. That's it. YOU could do that yourself, if you created a program to gather the info. In fact, some private companies are probably already doing similar things, for profit/advertising purposes. It's not like the Patriot Act, which IS authority for the federal government, and allows the government to listen in on your private conversations, grab your private e-mails from your devices, get your medical records, and have access to all sorts of private information about you. THAT is a violation of the First Amendment. There is some loosy goosy subpoena requirement, but they only have to worry about that AFTER they commit the violation, and they just get a judge to rubber stamp it.
Were you against the Patriot Act? I was. I actually had nightmares about it. It was so much like Germany pre-WWII that it was scary how easily the public handed over their rights out of fear. So easy. An acquaintance said, "But there's a good reason for it." I responded, "Oh, yes. There is. There is always a good reason to violate our privacy rights. If there weren't, it wouldn't be so easy to scare the people into giving up their rights. But having a so-called good reason is no reason to violate our privacy rights. It's a constitutional right that is not supposed to be taken away."
Definitely a concern. I dislike hate speech as much as the next guy, but come on now, big brother...
What if the next guy is me?
The land of the free is quickly becoming the land of the meek.
Jeez...a few more terrorist attacks on America and the masses will become so scared and spineless that they will have to ask the government when to have a bowel movement.
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