"Newsreaders still feel it is worth a special and rather worrying mention if, for instance, a crime was planned by people ‘over the Internet.’ They don’t bother to mention when criminals use the telephone or the M4, or discuss their dastardly plans ‘over a cup of tea,’ though each of these was new and controversial in their day."
Probably because the decentralization, reach, and scale make it materially different where the potential harms can be so much greater. That IS was able to recruit and inspire people across the world through their distribution of propaganda is a prime example of this.
Arguably, but I think you need more than that to make the argument.
Al Qaeda, the parent organization achieved something similar in the 80s. The spanish civil war in the 20s attracted international communists and anarchists (including George Orwell) to fight for their cause. Fascism spread across Europe very quickly.
The radical liberalism of the French and American revolution is an earlier example. These ideas spread pretty fast. In all these cases (including ISIS) war was a major catalyst. In all cases propaganda played a major role and it was disseminated by whatever media was politically relevant at the time.
Anticommunist revolutions of 1989 spread despite some pretty extreme centralization, censorship and control of media. Word gets around.
You can also find many pre-modern and arguably ancient examples.
FWIW, I believe a lot of ISIS propaganda was spread by cassette tape. For Al Qaeda, I believe this was the primary medium. In both cases, I seriously doubt that propaganda alone would have inspired and recruited so many. It was military success. ISIS recruits started arriving when they won Mosul. Once they crossed into Syria and established bonafide territorial control, the faucets were turned on.
For one thing, the IRA used the M1. The M4 runs east-west. (joke). More to the point, revolutionary republicanism and the IRA existed for a pretty long time. A lot of those who joined the (P)IRA in the 70s were grandchildren of "old IRA" members. True also for many of the international (mostly US) supporters. They communicated in person.
And notice how regional that is, stemming from a history/land divisions that again were regional. Imagine if people were bombing for the IRA world-wide... that is materially different.
Ironically the weapons and funding for the IRA came from international sources, much like how ISIS obtains funding and fighters from international sources. And the IRA did this without the use of the internet in 1970. Two principle sources were the USA and Basque country. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provisional_Irish_Republican....
The IRA didn't target global targets, it's true. The IRA didn't blow up mosques in Syria. But the reason for this is that terrorists attack those who are in power, and the large majority of that flows back to Western Europe and USA. There are no muslim terrorists trying to get popular from murdering school children in Belarus, for example.
History is full of explosive growth in religious movements, cults and sects, many very short lived and some long. The ones that lasted are the ones we still have. It sometimes happened through conquest, and often in non military ways.
Also political movements. The French and American revolution didn't have much of a preamble.
The French Revolution is a very good example for the importance of delays in communication in terms of world history, though.
The Haitian revolution might have played out very differently had it not taken months for developments in Paris to make their way over to the colony. By the time certain decrees were put into effect, sometimes they had already been overturned back home.
Similar things happened with the wars of Spanish American Independence. When the French occupied Spain and the country fell into a power struggle, there was no clear signal from the mother country to the colonies as to what they should do. The result was factional struggles in Latin America which also bolstered the independence movements.
(Also, I take issue with the statement of the French and American revolutions not having a preamble. I think quite the opposite is true.)
True, but I don't know how to relate this to "terrorists using telegram." I mean, communication is fast these days. It's not like we can prevent a militant in Syria from hearing news from Europe for months.
re preamble: Of course, everything has stuff that happen before it. But, it's not like there were decades of "something major is cooking here" before the revolutions. No one really expected them. Voltaire, Rousseau and others associated with the revolutions had just recently published. Even they were cagey about being labeled "liberals." The idea of absolute sovereignty of "the third estate" was considered out there until the revolution was already happening. AKAIK, the term "democracy" went from meaning "naive anarchist ideas" to an actual system of government within 3-4 years.
Monarchism went from being the only realistic option to outdated and doomed very fast, viral and global 250 years ago.
This is original comment: "You can't create a world movement if all your means of communication are non viral."
This is original contra-argument: "there were no religions before the internet" followed by example of "French revolution" and various "religious movements, cults and sects, many very short lived and some long".
It is not fallacy to point out that none of these things was the kind of "viral world movement" original comment was clearly talking about. For that, non viral communications are not enough.
By the standard you set, nothing is a "viral world movement."
Any example you give (including ISIS, which is the context) can be dismissed as not global enough to be a "viral world movement" or too factitious to be considered a movement at all, like the French revolution.
That's what the "no true scotsman" rhetorical fallacy is. Since "viral world movement" is somewhat broad and imprecisely defined, you can always say that any example is not a true scotsman no matter how scottish she is.
The idea that French republicanism (or republicanism generally) was not political movement silly.
The history is simply not full of "viral world movements" and my argument is that internet is necessary if that is your goal. When world viral ends up being local local cult that grows slowly locally and at some point reaches strength locally just to die quickly, then it is neither viral nor global.
> Any example you give (including ISIS, which is the context) can be dismissed as not global enough to be a "viral world movement" or too factitious to be considered a movement at all, like the French revolution.
But French revolution was significantly more factitious then pretty much anything else. It was absurdly complicated set of widely different groups fighting for very much different goals. Literally ranging from right to radical left, from those for monarchy through those for democracy through whatever dictatorship. It was not one movement at all, it is more of what happens when state fails and everyone rushes for a gun.
ISIS is one movement, its fractions are centered around common ideology with smaller differences. ISIS is not leading war against other branch with different name that is still ISIS. And while ISIS is not super global, it did managed to recruit from western countries. ISIS would not been as successful without internet and used internet extensively.
my argument is that internet is necessary if that is your goal
Only 60% or so of the world's population have access to the Internet.[1] And that's using a definition of "Internet user" as "used the Internet in the past 3 months" which isnt really conducive to a global viral movement.
Rather than a data closet in Luxembourg, Isis uses a piece of software called Nextcloud. Developed by a German company and with its roots firmly in the open-source movement, Nextcloud is freely available for anyone to download and use, allowing its users to synchronise files across a group in a way that avoids any centralised hosting or control.
Nextcloud is awesome and indeed in use by quite a few companies in Germany at least.
ISIS uses it because it is safer. Wouldn't necessarily use that example as an argument though.
Some people also used OneDrive since many already had Office licenses, but it is just hilariously slow and your data would be a lot less safe from access.
Obviously, HN is a pretty friendly place for decentralized software. But as advocates, how do you defend it to people who don’t understand the benefits?
If I’m pitching Matrix as an alternative to Slack, and someone brings up the fact that ISIS used one of them... what’s the response? Decentralized software is scary to someone fearful of shadowy groups. How do you successfully advocate for software that can be used by anyone, even the worst people out there?
> and someone brings up the fact that ISIS used one of them...
They used Facebook, Twitter and YT for propaganda and Gmail for coordination (that thing about saving a mail draft on gmail instead of sending it), it's obvious the other side isn't using logic to make the argument (but beliefs, feelings or simply pushing an agenda) so using logic to argue back is pointless.
Those people are a lost cause. Its the same as how do you refute a saying "there's nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide". You can tell your facts and statistics, but at the end of the day it means nothing as their understanding is based on beliefs and ideals.
I don't think that's a very fair argument. It makes sense to weigh up the legitimate uses of a technology vs. the illegitimate uses and see if the cost is worth the benefit, and if you are unfamiliar with a certain technology then it might not be obvious what the legitimate use cases are. To me it makes sense to take the time and explain the good things you can do with it and why that's worth a few people being able to abuse the technology.
The problem you face is that decentralization per se brings very little benefit to the table and a lot of baggage that you need to evaluate honestly. If this pitch was to an existing organization like an enterprise the simplest question you are going to face and the hardest one for you to answer is simply "why should be take a risk on a (relatively) unknown and (certainly) more complicated solution when Slack gets the job done?" Unfortunately, I do not think there is a good answer to this question.
I really do not think that anyone is going to reject Matrix as a solution because ISIS used them, they will have a whole host of other perfectly legitimate reasons to reject Matrix. It only makes sense to take on the additional cost burdens of a decentralized solution if your organizational needs require it, otherwise it is a waste of time and you run the risk that your effort becomes one of those shitshow horror stories that turns into someone else's reason not to use a decentralized solution.
I mean, I don't think I'm entirely ignorant of the benefits of tech shibboleths like anonymity or decentralization, but, as the internet has matured, I have become more aware of, and concerned about, the drawbacks.
So I would start by making a mental inventory of valid concerns, first. Then, in discussion, you can contrast the pros and cons, rather than evangelize only. That approach is generally the most persuasive.
Having a persona attached to your online activity is a recent phenomena and has the same disadvantages that people in the public sphere need to endure. People seem to suffer a lot more from this, anonymity provides detachment.
You don't talk to the press without PR support. You are not honest in public to limit the angle of attack on your person... there are numerous things that will cause problems other. Ask a celebrity. A non anonymous social network tends to create 2 minute celebrities that can be quite the huge mental load.
This problem is magnitudes more applicable than some terrorist propaganda. I am a net power user, mostly anonymous in decentralized networks. I have never seen ISIS propaganda, child pornography or drug trades. Most people are probably groomed outside of the net.
In an ideal world, I would try to seriously consider and validate what I can about the other person's pov. If I "steel man" their concerns, and still disagree, hopefully I would work through why in a cooperative way with the other person, and the conclusion would feel mutual, as though it were inevitable.
Not that I'm noble enough to actually manage that, in real life. It's just, what I would do, if I had sufficient self-discipline.
(Invented though likely stats): 90% of terrorists smoke cigarettes. 98% of terrorists have drank a sugared drink. 99% of terrorists have eaten meat. All of these are avoidable.
My point thing is, even dumb people think in much more nuanced terms, so this kind of reductive fake-logic argument does not work. Using it just makes you look like someone who is not able to think about real world.
You may seeming win debate, because people stop to engage. But, you wont convince neither on rational nor on emotional level, because that argument is weak.
I generally don’t try and engage in such conversations. In the case of matrix, terrorism existed long before its existence and other encrypted services were available. Unless you block them all, terrorists will just follow the path of least resistance.
I'm not sure if it would be a logical fallacy, but you could bring up a list of other things that can (and are) be abused for nefarious purposes - cash money, ziplock bags, letters, phones, grannies, etc.
I mean ISIS uses the public internet and Facebook as well and neither of those are getting the same stigma for people being disparaging about Matrix or TOR or whatnot.
I haven't heard that argument since I was a teenager, would any serious adult today use the argument that we shouldn't use tool X because other people, including people we don't like use them?
The arguments for gun control are very similar - in addition to “people we don’t like” it also includes “people we do like but don’t handle them safely enough”.
Also, that’s big media’s claim against torrents. And the war on drugs started by Harry Anslinger was basically started along those lines.
It seems “percentage of use by people we don’t like / for purposes we don’t like” plays a big part.
>"The attraction for jihadists of these platforms is that the developers of these decentralised platforms have no way of acting against content that is stored on user-operated servers or content that's shared across a dispersed network of users, " BBC Monitoring senior jihadi specialist Mina Al-Lami said.
Sounds like the people producing and distributing this media are using self hosted and decentralised social network platforms. The people making these platforms release them for free for anyone to use as the like, so they can't stop jihadists. It doesn't say what they're using, but I doubt it is federated with any non-extremist networks.
It's basically an article confused by the fact that most people have been hypnotized into forgetting that anyone can run any software they like on a computer and network it to another computer, without some platform having control over what they do.
Fear mongering over the fact that anyone with a desktop can still run a server on the internet. Law enforcement / the establishment would much prefer for centralized, US based cloud services (re: AWS) to be the only way to host something online, as companies can be deputized at any time via court order. The ideal scenario (from their point of view) is something like in China where every website has to have an internet license from the government and a public official has an office on the inside of every major company. When China does it we decry tencent as an arm of the CCP. When America does it we look the other way because no one wants to be seen defending "terrorism". Never mind that the "terrorism" in this case is a separatist group that hasn't been relevant since last year.
(The indirect approach taken in the latter article agrees with Linebarger[3] on counterpropaganda:
> "Enemy propaganda should, in well conducted operations, be taken into account only when it becomes an asset. That is, the enemy need only be heeded when he tells a whopping lie, or comes forth with a piece of hyprocrisy so offensive to his own people that it needs little improvement to be adapted for counterpropaganda. Most enemy themes are beyond reach, especially those of inter-ideological warfare. The Nazis and Russians made the best propaganda against each other when they got down to the basic necessities of life, not when they were trying to weave finespun theories about each other's way of thinking or of life. Refutation is a joy; it is delightful to talk back. But the best propaganda is only incidentally counterpropaganda.")
[1] it is my hope that after US D's and R's learn to converse with each other, they will apply the same techniques to converse with, say, french interlocutors, or even optimistically, other others.
[2] "Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the over-compensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn't nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand."
You can still read Dabiq.[1] That was ISIL's magazine, in English. It's worth reading, but not taking too seriously.
Kids in school should be exposed to extremist propaganda from all sides. Start with the extremist propaganda of another era, say the 1920s - the Industrial Workers of the World, the German-American Bund, the Communist Party of the USA, Technocracy, America First (the Lindburgh version, not the Trump version), etc.
This is a survival skill today.
It's a shame really. Reminds me of how whenever there is a right-wing terrorist attack/mass murder everyone, including tech companies, try to hide manifestos and other media as much as possible.
"Newsreaders still feel it is worth a special and rather worrying mention if, for instance, a crime was planned by people ‘over the Internet.’ They don’t bother to mention when criminals use the telephone or the M4, or discuss their dastardly plans ‘over a cup of tea,’ though each of these was new and controversial in their day."