Wednesday, August 1, 2018

TWITTER HIRES "EXPERTS IN ISLAM" & "RIGHT WING POPULISM" TO BANISH "INTOLERANT DISCOURSE"

TWITTER HIRES "EXPERTS IN ISLAM" & 
"RIGHT WING POPULISM" TO BANISH "INTOLERANT DISCOURSE" 
BY ROBERT SPENCER
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research purposes:
This will be more Left-wing bias, and more censorship of views that dissent from the Left’s agenda, since it is certain that the “experts in Islam” that Twitter has hired are apologists who insist it is a religion of peace, not people who actually know and are willing to state what is in the Qur’an and Sunnah.
“Twitter hires experts in Islam and right-wing populism to banish ‘intolerant discourse,’” by Jasper Hamill, Metro, July 30, 2018:
Twitter has launched a new scheme to clamp down on ‘abuse, harassment and other types of behaviours that can detract or distort from the public conversation’.
It has selected two teams of academics to begin a project aimed at silencing the wrong type of speech on the social network.
The researchers have expertise in a wide range of subject areas including Islam, diversity and the spread of right-wing populism.
They will work to measure the effect of echo chambers and hate speech on Twitter, with the data used to guide the tech giant’s future strategy.
‘Earlier this year, as part of our global health initiative, we committed to serving the public conversation and working to increase the collective health, openness, and civility of the dialogue on our service,’ wrote Vijaya Gadde, who works as legal, policy and trust and safety lead at Twitter.
‘We want everyone’s experience on Twitter to be free of abuse, harassment and other types of behaviours that can detract or distort from the public conversation….
Dr. Rebekah Tromble, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Leiden University, is leader of a scheme called ‘examining echo chambers and uncivil discourse’.
She has a PhD in political science with a minor in ‘transnational Islam’ and wrote her dissertation called: ‘Who Framed the Prophet? Media, Stakeholders, and the Debate over the Danish Cartoon Controversy.’
Tromble will work with several scientists including Dr. Michael Meffert, who also works at Leiden University and has written several papers on the right-wing.
‘In the context of growing political polarization, the spread of misinformation, and increases in incivility and intolerance, it is clear that if we are going to effectively evaluate and address some of the most difficult challenges arising on social media, academic researchers and tech companies will need to work together much more closely,’ Tromble said….
It will also attempt to develop algorithms which hunt out ‘intolerant discourse’ and automatically recognise hate speech, racism or xenophobia.