Ironically enough, the project takes its name from a term that was popularized by television personality, Stephen Colbert.
The project will seek to understand how misinformation is spread online, but it will be up to a team of government-funded researchers at Indiana University to decide what type of political speech is true and which is false.
According to the grant for the project, the operation will be open source and the database will be open to the public.
"The project stands to benefit both the research community and the public significantly. Our data will be made available via [application programming interfaces] APIs and include information on meme propagation networks, statistical data, and relevant user and content features. The open-source platform we develop will be made publicly available and will be extensible to ever more research areas as a greater preponderance of human activities are replicated online. Additionally, we will create a web service open to the public for monitoring trends, bursts, and suspicious memes. This service could mitigate the diffusion of false and misleading ideas, detect hate speech and subversive propaganda, and assist in the preservation of open debate," the grant said.
Comment: In other words this service is designed to monitor and assemble a database of whatever the authorities deem to be subversive thoughts. And what, ultimately, will be done with these thought criminals?
However, the database has yet to actually go online, and they have not followed through with the promise of making their information open source.
The website for the project goes on to explain the importance of memes in their research, and their intentions to find out exactly where certain memes originate.
Comment: Where? Or would it be more precise to ask with whom these memes originate? And again, what will be done with these subversives?
"While the vast majority of memes arise in a perfectly organic manner, driven by the complex mechanisms of life on the Web,some are engineered by the shady machinery of high-profile congressional campaigns," the website stated.
The project focuses on Twitter specifically, but will also be reaching into Facebook, Instagram and other sites in their data mining operations.
This may not be the most money that the government has spent on a frivolous project, but it shows that they really are willing to funnel large sums of money into programs that accomplish nothing. Also, this project exposes the extent of the federal government's paranoia about dissent and alternative political information.
Also Read:
Can I still say I HATE "Hate Speech" Laws? Whatever happened to 'sticks and stones?"
I certainly increase my future risks by simply so typing; and you reading SOTT ain't winning YOU any Brownie Points, either.
Hey! I've got an idea: Maybe if you below - try to* - argue in favor of the legitimacy and rightfulness of hate speech laws, then MAYBE they'll even drag you to the Gulag a week or two later than you'd otherwise had gotten 'picked up' for actually reading this site in the first place.
Trolls MAY be excepted from that, but once the police state's in full swing, all bets are off. Read Gulag Archipelago. SOTT folk know that that circumstance wasn't unique to Russia, nor Nazis unique to Germany - it's that there's about 15-20% affirmatively good people, and about 6 to 12% psychopaths/who are mostly authoritarian followers. The rest just follow the herd. {Whoever invented the word 'sheeple' should get a Nobel Prize.).
What happens is that the psychopaths make a lot more noise, and use cheap shot tactics to shut down fair and free speech with things like "hate speech laws," which (by the way) are almost never used to defend "Honkies," the evidence be damned. (Thank God I ain't one? Nevermind.)
I wonder how this will be translated into New Speak (which P.C. is just the start of). Here's a guess that predated Orwell's 1984:
From Mark Twain's "The Mysterious Stranger." If you've never read it, you should. It's free online. E.g., [Link]
(The End of Chapter Nine.)
"Monarchies, aristocracies, and religions are all based upon that large defect in your race—the individual's distrust of his neighbor, and his desire, for safety's or comfort's sake, to stand well in his neighbor's eye. These institutions will always remain, and always flourish, and always oppress you, affront you, and degrade you, because you will always be and remain slaves of minorities. There was never a country where the majority of the people were in their secret hearts loyal to any of these institutions."
I did not like to hear our race called sheep, and said I did not think they were.
"Still, it is true, lamb," said Satan. "Look at you in war—what mutton you are, and how ridiculous!"
"In war? How?"
"There has never been a just one, never an honorable one—on the part of the instigator of the war. I can see a million years ahead, and this rule will never change in so many as half a dozen instances. The loud little handful—as usual—will shout for the war. The pulpit will—warily and cautiously—object—at first; the great, big, dull bulk of the nation will rub its sleepy eyes and try to make out why there should be a war, and will say, earnestly and indignantly, "It is unjust and dishonorable, and there is no necessity for it." Then the handful will shout louder. A few fair men on the other side will argue and reason against the war with speech and pen, and at first will have a hearing and be applauded; but it will not last long; those others will outshout them, and presently the anti-war audiences will thin out and lose popularity. Before long you will see this curious thing: the speakers stoned from the platform, and free speech strangled by hordes of furious men who in their secret hearts are still at one with those stoned speakers—as earlier—but do not dare to say so. And now the whole nation—pulpit and all—will take up the war-cry, and shout itself hoarse, and mob any honest man who ventures to open his mouth; and presently such mouths will cease to open. Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception."
Wow! Mark Twain was the real deal, eh? (I bet many don't know he fought in the civil war - although far, far more SOTT folks will know than is typical.
Why are so few aware? Because he fought for the South. Read his "Private History of a Campaign That Failed."
R.C.
* It's frankly impossible.
RC