<
https://www.thedailybeast.com/obsessed/hacking-hate-real-life-girl-with-the-dragon-tattoo-battling-nazis>
"The internet is a bottomless pit of intolerance and disinformation, and in
Hacking Hate, Swedish investigative reporter My Vingren dives headfirst into
the ugliness. Known as the “Girl With the Dragon Tattoo of Journalism” for her
coverage of far-right extremism, Vingren is committed to unearthing and
publicizing the myriad ways in which such malice flourishes online, and in
Simon Klose’s documentary—premiering at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival—she
employs her own duplicitous sleuthing methods to immerse herself in a world of
neo-Nazi memes, antisemitic conspiracy theories, and rancid populist politics.
What she finds is a morass of the worst of humanity and, also, a tech industry
that seems perfectly comfortable profiting from it.
It’s not news that Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and their social media ilk are
platforms for noxious bigotry, and yet
Hacking Hate provides a bracing
insider’s look at the grossness that proliferates throughout these venues’
right-wing regions. To access those areas, Vingren has become something of a
master of disguise. Using facial recognition software to alter her visage into
various male and female forms, she creates a fictional virtual family of white
supremacists: father Andreas, mother Johanna, and kids Svea and Ellie. Vingren
concocts entire backstories for her avatars, the better to sell them as real,
and by posting from their accounts with key nationalism-related hashtags, she
swiftly attracts the attention of far-right users.
This process culminates with her first triumph: receiving an invite to join an
exclusive group on Telegram (an instant messaging service) for the Nordic
Federation, an outfit that recruits from Scandinavian countries and advocates
for armed revolt in order to establish a for-whites-only Nazi Nordic region."
Via Frederick Wilson II.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
