Photo credit: Drew Hays via Unsplash.

Oxford University mathematician John Lennox stars in the one-night-only filmAgainst the Tide: Finding God in an Age of Science, in theaters across the country on November 19.Get your tickets here, and dont forget to bring family and friends!Looking forward to the release, Professor Lennox took time to answer some questions fromEvolution News.

The film includes a fascinating section where it covers how you were invited to lecture at universities in Communist countries. Communist intellectuals were known for explicitly embracing materialist explanations for the origin and development of life and being intolerant of anything that went beyond materialism. Are you worried that universities in the UK and America are embracing the same sort of intolerance you saw in Communist countries?

Well, of course. Although, I wouldnt call myself an expert on exactly whats going on. But culturally, one can see it. I experienced it in the former Soviet Union all over the place, where their commitment to materialism had actually in my view left them intellectually weak. It was very dogmatic.

It was associated with an attitude to education that was learning by rote. You learned what the professor said, and you reproduced that. There was no learning how to think. Universities are supposed to be places where people are taught to think. The difficulty today is that there are certain cultural movements, some of them coming from Marxism, some of them coming from elsewhere, that are reversing the idea of a university. They are forbidding free speech and de-platforming people and saying that the students mustnt be exposed to this idea or that idea. That contradicts the very definition of a university.

The idea of tolerance has changed its meaning in a tragic and very dangerous way. The Latin verb tolerre means, If I tolerate you, I disagree with you but I will defend your right publicly to say what you believe. We need to get back to that but were losing it. This is a complex story, and Im not an expert on culture, but at least from what I observe there is a huge danger today in putting on colored glasses that see everything in terms of power, oppression, and oppressors. Theres an element of whats often called critical theory, pejoratively called cultural Marxism, that is sweeping around on the left side of political academic thinking. Its been very influential in the university world. And to my mind, anything that stops freedom of speech is the exact opposite of a university.

One of the things that I never tire of saying is: Look to the origin of the great universities. They were mostly founded on Christian thinking. That is extremely important. Now what weve got is the dominance of naturalism, with universities going against their very foundation.

In the really ancient world, the Christians fought the pagans. They got involved in the debate, but now were afraid to debate in case we upset somebody. It is very important because it is damaging. This looking at things in terms of oppressor-oppressed, the victim culture, is blinding people to real issues. The trouble is once you lose the kind of stabilizing influence of rational thought and respect, then you can end up with violence, as we have seen.

No stranger to public argument, Professor Lennox has debated famed atheists including Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. See the event with the late Mr. Hitchens Is God Great? here:

For some related reflections on stultifying materialism, see also, Inside the Evolution Silo Darwinism as a Cult.

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Against the Tide: The Darkening Intellectual Scene - Discovery Institute

Utah is one of the strongholds of a growing anti-federal government movement. Thats one of the many findings of Ammons Army, a report released earlier this month by the Montana Human Rights Network and the Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights, or IREHR.

The 13-chapter report details the inner workings of Peoples Rights, an organization that anti-federal government activist Ammon Bundy publicly launched in April, when coronavirus restrictions began going into effect across the country.

As of Sep. 1, the group had registered more than 20,000 members nationwide 1,517 of whom reside in Utah. That statistic renders the Beehive State one of the groups strongholds, alongside Washington, Oregon and Idaho. While militia movements have gained widespread public attention in the run-up to the 2020 election, there are several factors that make Peoples Rights stand out. Those include its level of interstate organization and its movement towards de-platforming from major social networks, though it has used Facebook groups to gather supporters and spread its message, said IREHR Research Director Chuck Tanner, who helped author the report.

Tanner added the studys authors gained access to the groups internal records to calculate membership totals. The move also allowed the researchers to map out the networks leadership structure, ranging from Bundy himself down to state and local organizers. Its a level of organization that seems a little more sophisticated and far-reaching than some of the other militia groups, Tanner said, warning the level of coordination is especially dangerous for a group like Bundys. It doesnt take massive numbers to cause the kind of conflict that the Bundy familys been involved in historically.

The Nevada rancher burst onto the national stage in 2016, when he and his far-right supporters engaged in a 41-day standoff with the federal government at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in eastern Oregon. That action resulted in charges against many of its participants and the death of the occupations spokesperson, Robert LaVoy Finicum, a Kanab-born rancher who was shot by law enforcement officials after fleeing a traffic stop and allegedly reaching for his weapon.

The pandemic has allowed Bundys message, which originated with a protest against federal control of public lands, to expand rapidly to a broader audience. The organizations embrace of bigoted ideas and vehement anti-government positions pose a threat to social norms and democratic institutions, Tanner said.

With Bundys track record, theres always a possibility of these organizations resorting to armed conflict or displays of arms and weapons as a means of advancing their cause, he said.

In Utah, law enforcement has special task forces dedicated to monitoring groups like Peoples Rights and other militias, said Lt. Nick Street, a spokesperson for the Utah Department of Public Safety.

Militia members are within their constitutional rights to speak out, bear arms and assemble. But they will be investigated and charged if they commit criminal acts, Street said, adding that the groups are not sanctioned by law enforcement, he added.

We arent asking for their help. We arent asking them to take up arms, Street said. In fact, quite the contrary: we would prefer that they allow the system of government thats in place to handle that.

The Department of Public Safety conducts background checks to ensure that its personnel do not belong to groups with anti-democratic aims, Street said. However, he noted he has seen instances in which local law enforcement agencies in Utah have not conducted additional background checks after hiring personnel.

Read more from the original source:

More Than 1500 Utahns Have Joined Ammon Bundy's Anti-Federal Government Movement, New Report Finds - KUER 90.1

House Party. // Courtesy Eek! Games

Today, weve got an opinion piece on the complications of tackling adult themes in video games. Why? Because were fascinated by what it takes to push the art of games forward. We dont want to shy away from the complicated perspectives around art, whether it go high-brow or low-brow. And todays author who is a creator attempting to measure his own work (and its mainstream criticism) to find a newfound perspective. The game in question is called House Party. And its creator is named Bobby Ricci.

The game and its creator have drawn widespread criticism, but there are valid points of discussion that arise from examining the source of these complaints. Within the grand history of games, how does one explore sexuality without alienating an audience? Ricci has some opinions on what his project did right, and where he might do better next time. And that mixed reception seems appropriate for a game hailed as the worst game of 2017 (via Rock Paper Shotgun) yet receiving best of awards elsewhere, and selling exceptionally well for a small indie title.

Is a dating sim game that sets out to be comedic/satirical inherently free of the criticisms that would normally befall an adventure with sexist elements? Is the divide between audience and critic too vast, or is all of this just different shades of grey? Is it stupid that violence has been embraced by games for decades, while anything dipping its toe into sexuality is in danger of being lambasted?

Perhaps most importantly, this is a chance to examine the journey of the gamenot just its development and constant change, but the battles it encountered along the way in terms of access. Even if you were to find the titles content to be not your cup of tea, the struggles of genre creators everywhere can be found echoed inHouse Partys navigation of the inconsistent minefield that is content curation. Who makes these judgments and why are they always in flux? Should all art be accessible to those who are interested, or do some titles simply have no place in our culture? Can adults treat other adults as adults?

Here are some observations on the development, reception, release, and continuing evolution of one of gamings most interesting lightning rodsas written by the man who keeps pushing for it.

The world can be a weird place.

The video game world can be even weirder.

For an indie game developer just trying to make his mark, that world can be brutal, especially if your game happens to contain murder, violence, torture, decapitation, dismemberment, war, or genocide.

Just kidding! All of those things are perfectly fine and encouraged video game content inclusion, unlike the focus of this piece; nudity and sex.

Immediately, that probably made some of you reading this uncomfortable. In fact, you would probably feel more comfortable if I said I was here to talk about violence and murder. Im here to ask why that is. Im not being disingenuous when I say I really dont get it.

My name is Bobby Ricci. I am the owner and founder of Eek! Games, and I conceptualized and wrote the game House Party, which has gone on to sell over 700,000 copies and has positive review scores among players. [As of publication, it has an average score of 9/10 stars and just under 7,000 votes.]

House Party is a point-and-click adventure game where your choices shape the party around you in real-time. The player can play the game as a sandbox. They can run around and do whatever they want. They can dive into the individual party guests stories and get deeply involved in them. The point of the game is to uncover the lunacy, zany stories, and opportunities waiting to present themselves based on the players choices and watch the madness unfold with each choice.

When I wrote House Party, I didnt even think it would be that big of a deal. I didnt expect it to get the attention it did, at least not with the sexual content held up to a magnifying glass. In fact, I should make it clear that House Party was not intended to be a pornographic game. I was generously awarded that label by people who I think felt uncomfortable with the topics the game contained.

Somebody expecting pornography would be grossly disappointed by this animated adventure; in my opinion. You know how they say youll recognize poronography when you see it? I do not think anyone could see it here. Thats because House Party isnt a sex simulator. Sexual scenes account for less than 5% of the games content. Sex is a mechanic in House Party, much like driving a car or shooting a gun is a mechanic in Grand Theft Auto. Its just something that the player can do, but the reward is the comedy that ensues on the players path.

When it came time to implement the sex scenes, the thought did cross my mind to censor it, but then I thought, Why? It was 2015 when I began work on this title, and the most popular television show Game of Thrones had regular male and female full-frontal nudity alongside a plethora of other modern cultural taboos. Peoples perceptions of nudity and sex in media have changed. Theyre no longer acting like children when they come across it. Naked bodies grinding against each other (which is about all the House Party sex scenes animatedly show) seem to be normal in mainstream entertainment. So why self-censor? Wouldnt people be, you know, into this?

If I had instead made killing everybody at the party in weird and gruesome ways the core mechanic of House Party, I doubt it would have even raised a single eyebrow. It wouldnt even come close to measuring up to the violence and gore in games like Friday the 13th, Doom, or Mortal Kombat. Video games are fiction and are intended to be fantasy. They are not meant to be taken in the context of reality. Are people able to disconnect reality from violent entertainment? I would think that weve all agreed on that by this point. Unless you personally feel like youre incapable of doing so. In which case perhaps you should stop? I dont personally know any adults that believe theyre incapable of separating the two.

Why cant people disconnect in the same way when they approach a game about sex? And why arent more developers writing games about sex? Part of the reason I chose to make House Party was because sex and physical relationships are such a staple of film and television, but grossly underrepresented in video games.

It wouldnt be so prevalent in other media if there wasnt a demand for it. Why would we, as an industry, pretend that there isnt?

When House Party first released to Early Access, a journalist reviewed the game on Rock Paper Shotgun. One of his criticisms included that the game might be misogynistic. I found that reductive since the game is choice-based. You can make crappy choices in House Party, which result (for the most part) in crappy outcomes, but you can also make better choices that can provide rewards. You cant make a meaningful choice-based game without putting in reactions and outcomes to bad choices. In effect, I suppose Im saying that the game is only misogynistic when youre playing as a misogynist. Does it give you the option to do so? Yes.

One thing the reviewer got right was that it was a bad game when he reviewed it. There is no denying that.

I was a solo developer moonlighting on the game for two years at that point. There was only so much I could do in that short amount of time, but it was a fun and quirky idea that I did hope would at least emotionally resonate with people. Now I have a team of eight and work with several other companies and contractors on further development. The game is looking, playing, and generally feeling much better. Its a pleasant evolution to watch.

Could you read elements of misogyny in some of House Partys content? I think insofar as much as you can read toxic behavior in a lot of mainstream stories about dating. It would be unreasonable to pretend that we live in a world where that doesnt exist. In Grand Theft Auto, the player can choose to go on a murderous rampage because they feel like it, but thats accepted in terms of giving a player choice. However, allowing the player to take his pants off would be a bridge too far. The NPCs in House Party dont respond well to these types of actions in the game, obviously. It is again an attempt at crafting honest reactions to a series of choices. Yes, if you drop your pants out of nowhere, people are going to hate it. The option to make that choice is not inherently good or bad, but you absolutely understand how the cause and effect will play out.

During the development of the game we tried not to reward bad or misogynistic behavior and we only portray consensual acts of sex in the game. We also presented LGBTQ+ options in the game. And that was simply the baseline from where we launched. Our next phase of evolution in the game is finally realizing a female main character play-through, which has been one of our goals since the initial pitch. Again, one of those things we wanted to explore but that a lone programmer couldnt knock out while attempting to make this simply functional.

I cannot say Ive been completely unassailable for the choices that Ive made in the development of House Party. As the game evolved, as well as my understanding and awareness of consent culture, it was clear that I needed to make sweeping changes to the narrative. Not that any of this was ever born from a place of ill-intent, or even dubious grey areas, but rather I came to understand that players were left in positions where they might take the wrong message away from a situation. Reworking the interactions and the story to clarify and improvethats been the thrust. I also began striking elements that I realized could make people feel uncomfortable in a way that undercut the intended levity of the game. Trying to do comedy is hard, and trying to do comedy around such complicated subjects as sex and datingfor a wide and diverse audiencefeels impossible to get right. But were still trying.

This was a great lesson for me as a developer of adult games. The rules for this genre arent written in stone and it was through taking missteps that I could grow and my game could evolve. That evolution still hasnt reached its final stage. More than anything, Im thankful for the opportunity given which allowed us to find and develop our path.

Shortly after its initial release, the game was actually removed from the game store Steam. I got an email saying that there had been complaints and my game was awarded the honor of being considered pornographic. Through trial and error, we re-released a ridiculously over-censored version, that at least allowed the game to continue to be sold. Working alongside the community and taking the more constructive criticisms to heart, we got the chance to keep developing this into something that seems to have engaged more people and at least satiated some of the critics who thought it went too far.

The censoring of our game actually lead to Steam setting a new policy which allow games with sexual content and nudity to be sold, so long as they are age gated. Thats perfect. Thats all I could want here. House Party is intended for mature audiences, and I dont mind the disclaimer. All I wanted was to be treated fairly and similarly to other games. And this feels like an important step forward for the entire genre/medium.

Why does our game and team have to fight this uphill battle? I think it comes from a place where any and all sexual content can wind-up being a Pandoras box. I am sympathetic to anyone who finds such art handled poorly or even offensively because of course that should happen. Just as the characters in game have their own sets of choices, so do those who engage with our content. But at the end of the day, the ability for anyone tochoose to interact with our content should be allowed. There are, as aforementioned, plenty of violent games that I may choose to playor have no interest in whatsoever. Some of what they do might offend me, and then I know it isnt for me. But we do our entire industry a disservice when the access to those titles is opened almost everywhere, but banning and deplatforming coming faster and easier towards creators that want to explore human intimacy. Certainly, sex and dating is a more universal experience than, say, firing a rocket launcher? Why hide from the complications of, you know, reality and society?

While I cant offer any solid conclusions as to why sex is still considered forbidden territory in video games, or where it will go in the years to come, I do hope that House Partys success can speak for itself. The audience and interest are there. Maybe we should try to treat each other more like adults while working in this adult space.

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Why are sex and nudity a bridge too far in video games? Observations on the reception and evolution of House Party - Kansas City Pitch

A project launched by Australian programmer Mark Ledwich, meant to shed light on politics on YouTube by classifying and labeling channels, has been criticized by those fearing that its shortcomings might ultimately turn Transparency Tube into yet another tool for censorship on Googles video giant.

Internet users who have been observing and trying to understand the use and possible consequences, and who are convinced those can be negative, have described Transparency Tube as anything from hitlist to automated libel.

The idea behind the project, as announced by Ledwich on Twitter, is to track and analyze over 8,000 YouTube channels on a daily basis and provide a visual representation of this, as a way to reveal political and cultural views behind these channels.

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Although YouTube itself would be best equipped to produce such analysis, given its gargantuan machine learning apparatus, it has little incentive to do that since the results might invite more criticism of bias in the recommendation system.

Its not hard to see why this would be an interesting time to launch such a tool, just ahead of the US presidential election, and amid calls for YouTube to step up restrictions on the type of content allowed on its platform mostly around political, cultural, and pandemic topics.

Ledwich, for example, noted that data collected and analyzed as part of Transparency Tube showed YouTubes effort to censor what he called conspiracy content has not been entirely successful. And that is, it would appear, one of the labels Transparency Tube puts on channels it identifies as such. It is also offering this data to researchers, and invites journalists to work with the project in order to raise the quality of content on YouTube, which Ledwich thinks is currently poor.

From his tweets and from the projects page, it appears that the process of categorizing, indexing, and analyzing thousands of English language YouTube channels is done using an algorithm, or as Ledwich puts it, a clever model developed to discover and classify channels, and this automation has enabled Transparency Tube to go from 800, that were covered manually, to over 8,000.

But not everyone would agree the model is as clever as its authors would hope, as YouTubers keep reporting to Ledwich that their channel had been falsely classified as something it is not, usually things that can get them ostracized and deplatformed and according to online discussions about the platform, those very policies happen to be something Ledwich opposed in the past.

The way he is responding to many of these complaints has been to remove the labels and promise to update the data, but for some users, that is not enough. In one instance, a history channel was erroneously labeled as white identitarian while in another, a Twitter user was inexplicably classified as right wing and anti-SJW.

Ledwich doesnt appear to have a history of pushing censorship causes (as he previously criticized deplatforming) and his intention here was not have been to provide a hitlist for political censors but the project he launched can be turned into just that.

Some have suggested that YouTubers need a way to opt out of their channels being publicly named and shamed in this way.

However, others think that there may be intent to allow showdowns with political opponents. This scathingly critical comment accuses Ledwich of creating a tool tantamount to automated libel and urges him to abandon the project in order to avoid damaging channels and people behind them by applying false labels.

Another point this Twitter user makes is that Transparency Tube is (or could help) those looking to further silence and censor political opponents on a platform like YouTube, thats described as already partisan.

In announcing the project, Ledwich rightly pointed out that YouTube has tremendous reach and influence in the US these days, where 71 percent of people use it, while 26 percent treat it as their news source. All the more reason, then, to be extra careful when providing a tool that could be used to wrongly classify channels, depriving their owners of their livelihoods, and help ramp up censorship on the platform.

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Transparency.tube categorizes YouTubers, brands them with political labels, and could be used as hitlist - Reclaim The Net

Using conspiracy theories that include child sex traffickers and restaurants serving human flesh, QAnon has unleashed a modern-day moral panic.

It is now more than 30 years since sociologists proposed moral panic as a way to understand the incitement of fear around a perceived enemy. In the opening paragraph of his canonical study of popular media from 1972, Folk Devils and Moral Panics, sociologist Stanley Cohen outlined his basic thesis:

Societies appear to be subject, every now and then, to periods of moral panic. A condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests.

In President Donald Trumps America, those people are queers, racial minorities and Jews.

At the time Cohen was writing, his focus was on popular media and the manipulation of mods and rockers as moral degenerates. He argued that those in positions of authority used sensationalized headlines to enforce what they saw as threats to social order.

We find ourselves in a similar place today. The media in question is social, but the targets are as old as journalism itself.

When Trump refused to call out QAnon in his Oct. 15 town hall, preferring to show sympathy for its purported fight against pedophilia, he tapped into a moral panic with deep historical roots. The danger that QAnon poses is not that its endorsed by the president. Its the way it speaks to long-festering hatreds that transcend political affiliation.

QAnon was born digital in the age of platformed antagonism, where social media breathes new life into racist stereotypes. But its appeal owes to a longer history of animosity towards sexual and racial minorities at critical points in their quest for rights and recognition. It does this through the use of the modern-day blood libel accusation.

Charges of ritual murder were frequently waged against Europes Jewish populations as an effort to reinforce the exclusionary logic of ethnic nationalism. Jews were accused of kidnapping and murdering gentile children so as to use their blood and make matzo. Ritual murder accusations could result in mob violence, as it was in 1900 in the case of a local Jewish butcher in the West Prussian town of Konitz.

Jews were also slandered for their role in the so-called white slave trade, the luring of young white women into prostitution. This mix of sexual excess and ritualistic fervour went hand-in-hand with Jewish emancipation, visibility and new-found claims to equal citizenship.

Both the Pizzagate and Cannibal Club conspiracies in QAnon share roots with the blood libel accusation.

Suggestions that Hillary Clinton and financier George Soros were part of a global sex ring have long permeated social media networks. In 2018, these claims morphed in a new direction: children were not just being lured into a sexual underground, they were considered sources of adrenochrome, a chemical with hallucinogenic qualities harvested for satanic rituals. A cabal of elites didnt just harvest childrens blood, they consumed the flesh itself: as proof, conspiracy theorists pointed to a website that falsely claimed that Raven Chan Mark Zuckerbergs sister-in-law was involved with a fake restaurant called the Cannibal Club.

Although the story has since been debunked, its alive and well on social media, surfacing most recently in the hashtags used by Twitterers in the wake of the Trump town hall, linking Hollywood to human sacrifice, secret societies and pedophilia.

Similar moral panics accompanied the pursuit of equality by gays and lesbians, with fears around the seduction of minors frequently used as an argument against criminal justice reform. The new-found visibility of the Gay Liberation Front and lesbian, feminist and Black power movements unleashed a preoccupation with adolescence, childhood sexuality and age of consent.

While the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders used to define and classify mental disorders removed homosexuality from its list of paraphilias in 1973, conservatives lamented the legalization of same-sex sexuality for what they saw as a sea change in societal values. Anti-gay rights activist Anita Bryants Protect Americas Children campaign gave this moral panic a celebrity face.

The AIDS epidemic, scandals within the Catholic Church, trans rights and, most recently, the Jeffrey Epstein assaults have all cast renewed attention on the history of changing social and sexual mores brought about by the sexual revolution.

At its core, the preoccupation with pedophilia and childhood sexuality is an attempt to protect the heterosexual family as the bedrock of society, a salve against degeneration and excess. There are too many examples to list, from Pope Benedict blaming homosexual cliques for the general collapse of morality in the late 20th century to opponents of the 2015 Obergefell decision legalizing gay marriage, a cause clbre in the conservative media linking gay, lesbian, and trans rights with pedophilia as a leftist plot against the family.

Even Dr. Anthony Fauci a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force was not immune from conspiracy theorists who falsely linked his wife to Epstein handler Ghislaine Maxwell.

The QAnon conspiracy theory draws together anti-Semitism, sexual excess, homophobia and race-baiting in a modern-day moral panic. They resonate because they have a place in the contemporary zeitgeist as products of long-standing animosity against change.

De-platforming QAnon is not enough. For while Trump is proving himself to be conspiracist-in-chief, the culture of folk devils and fear is of our own making.

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Folk devils and fear: QAnon feeds into a culture of moral panic - The Conversation CA

Farhad Manjoo| The New York Times

Lately, I have been putting an embarrassing amount of thought into notions like jinxes and knocking on wood. The polls for Joe Biden look good, but in 2020, any hint of optimism feels dangerously nave, and my brain has been working overtime in search of potential doom.

I have become consumed with an alarming possibility: that neither the polls nor the actual outcome of the election really matter, because to a great many Americans, digital communication has already rendered empirical, observable reality beside the point.

If I sound jumpy, its because I spent a couple of hours recently chatting with Joan Donovan, the research director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvards Kennedy School. Donovan is a pioneering scholar of misinformation and media manipulation the way that activists, extremists and propagandists surf currents in our fragmented, poorly moderated media ecosystem to gain attention and influence society.

Donovans research team studies online lies the way crash-scene investigators study aviation disasters. They meticulously take apart specific hoaxes, conspiracy theories, viral political memes, harassment campaigns and other toxic online campaigns in search of the tactics that made each one explode into the public conversation.

This week, Donovans team published The Media Manipulation Casebook, a searchable online database of their research. It makes for grim reading an accounting of the many failures of journalists, media companies, tech companies, policymakers, law enforcement officials and the national security establishment to anticipate and counteract the liars who seek to dupe us. Armed with these investigations, Donovan hopes we can all do better.

I hope shes right. But studying her work also got me wondering whether were too late. Many Americans have become so deeply distrustful of one another that whatever happens on Nov. 3, they may refuse to accept the outcome. Every day I grow more fearful that the number of those Americans will be large enough to imperil our nations capacity to function as a cohesive society.

Im worried about political violence, Donovan told me. America is heavily armed, and from Portland to Kenosha to the Michigan governors mansion, we have seen young men radicalized and organized online beginning to take the law into their own hands. Donovan told me she fears that people who are armed are going to become dangerous, because they see no other way out.

Media manipulation is a fairly novel area of research. It was only when Donald Trump won the White House by hitting it big with right-wing online subcultures and after internet-mobilized authoritarians around the world pulled similar tricks that serious scholars began to take notice.

The research has made a difference. In the 2016 election, tech companies and the mainstream media were often blind to the ways that right-wing groups, including white supremacists, were using bots, memes and other tricks of social media to hack the publics attention, as the researchers Alice Marwick and Rebecca Lewis documented in 2017.

But the war since has been one of attrition. Propagandists keep discovering new ways to spread misinformation; researchers like Donovan and her colleagues keep sussing them out, and, usually quite late, media and tech companies move to fix the flaws by which time the bad guys have moved on to some other way of spreading untruths.

While the media ecosystem has wised up in some ways: Note how the story supposedly revealing the contents of Hunter Bidens laptop landed with a splat last week, quite different from the breathlessly irresponsible reporting on the Democrats hacked emails in 2016. But our society remains profoundly susceptible to mendacity.

Donovan worries about two factors in particular. One is the social isolation caused by the pandemic. Lots of Americans are stuck at home, many economically bereft and cut off from friends and relatives who might temper their passions a perfect audience for peddlers of conspiracy theories.

Her other major worry is the conspiracy lollapalooza known as QAnon. Its often short-handed the way Savannah Guthrie did at her town hall takedown of Donald Trump last week as a nutty conspiracy theory in which a heroic Trump is prosecuting a secret war against a satanic pedophile ring of lefty elites.

But that undersells QAnons danger. To people who have been Q-pilled, QAnon plays a much deeper role in their lives; it has elements of a support group, a political party, a lifestyle brand, a collective delusion, a religion, a cult, a huge multiplayer game and an extremist network.

Donovan thinks of QAnon represents a new, flexible infrastructure for conspiracy. QAnon has origins in a tinfoil-hat story about a D.C.-area pizza shop, but over the years it has adapted to include theories about the deep state and the Mueller probe, Jeffrey Epstein, and a wild variety of misinformation about face masks, miracle cures, and other hoaxes regarding the coronavirus. QAnon has been linked to many instances of violence, and law enforcement and terrorism researchers discuss it as a growing security threat.

We now have a densely networked conspiracy theory that is extendible, adaptable, flexible and resilient to take down, Donovan said of QAnon. Its a very internet story, analogous to the way Amazon expanded from an online bookstore into a general-purpose system for selling anything to anyone.

Facebook and YouTube this month launched new efforts to take down QAnon content, but Q adherents have often managed to evade deplatforming by softening and readjusting their messages. Recently, for instance, QAnon has adopted slogans like Save the Children and Child Lives Matter, and it seems to be appealing to anti-vaxxers and wellness moms.

QAnon is also participatory, and, in an uncertain time, it may seem like a salvation.

People are seeking answers and theyre finding a very receptive community in QAnon, Donovan said.

This is a common theme in disinformation research: What makes digital lies so difficult to combat is not just the technology used to spread them, but also the nature of the societies theyre targeting, including their political cultures. Donovan compares QAnon to the Rev. Charles Coughlin, the priest whose radio show spread anti-Semitism in the Depression-era United States. Stopping Coughlins hate took a concerted effort, involving new regulations for radio broadcasters and condemnation of Coughlin by the Catholic Church.

Stopping QAnon will be harder; Coughlin was one hatemonger with a big microphone, while QAnon is a complex, decentralized, deceptive network of hate. But the principle remains: Combating the deception that has overrun public discourse should be a primary goal of our society. Otherwise, America ends in lies.

Farhad Manjoo writes for The New York Times.

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Manjoo: How to break the hold of conspiracy theories - The Register-Guard

Dr. Stella Immanuel speaking from a lectern. (YOUTUBE)

A controversial doctor, pastor and conspiracy theorist who President Trump has touted for her false claims about the coronavirus is speaking at a Trump campaign event in Texas on Wednesday night.

Dr. Stella Immanuel is one of three headliners for a Trump Victory phone bank in Houston.

The event was promoted on the Republican National Committees Trump Victory website, and Immanuel tweeted to promote the event on Tuesday evening.

Her claim to fame came when Trump retweeted a late July video that featured her falsely saying that the drug hydroxychloroquine was a cure for COVID-19, and that face masks did not help stop the spread of the disease.

This virus has a cure. It is called hydroxychloroquine, zinc, and Zithromax. I know you people want to talk about a mask. Hello? You dont need [a] mask. There is a cure, she declared in the video, wearing a white lab coat and standing alongside other doctors.

But while Trump may have backed off a bit on touting hydroxychloroquinehe didnt take it himself when he got COVID-19Immanuel is still a big proponent.

Hydroxychloroquine works and I believe everyone in America should go on prevention [treatment], she told VICE News Wednesday evening, shortly before heading to the Trump event. We take prophylaxis. Me, my staff, and everybody.

In early July, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had already revoked its emergency use authorization for hydroxychloroquine because of adverse health risks including heart arrhythmia.

Multiple studies have showed the drug doesnt help with COVID, but Immanuel dismissed them as being funded by Bill Gates, who she called crazy and a college dropout. Gates is a common character in conspiracy theories.

Trumps retweet may have made Immanuel famous, but her other sermons are what made her notorious.

The Daily Beast unearthed reams of truly bonkers comments from Immanuel, including claims that a variety of health issues were caused by dream sex with spirit husbands and spirit wives. The story caused the term demon sperm to trend on Twitter, a moniker the Beast later adopted in a headline and CNN used on air.

They turn into a woman and then they sleep with the man and collect his sperm, she said. Then they turn into the man and they sleep with a man and deposit the sperm and reproduce more of themselves.

Immanuel also warned that demonic spirits that she called nephilims, incubus and succubus caused health issues.

They are responsible for serious gynecological problems, Immanuel said in a 2013 sermon. We call them all kinds of namesendometriosis, we call them molar pregnancies, we call them fibroids, we call them cysts, but most of them are evil deposits from the spirit husband.

When asked about those sermons, Immanuel told VICE News the term demon sperm was made up to make her look stupidbut defended her comments.

They pulled up my sermon that I did on people that are having attacks from sexual perverted spirits, she said. I was talking about demonic spirits that sleep with women at nightThey just used demon sperm to discredit me.

She added that demonic spirits cause health problems, period, arguing that doctors havent been able to figure out what causes medical conditions like endometriosis and ovarian cysts but that Christian teachings do.

Sex with demons is a very biblical concept. It was in the book of Genesis. Its in the book of Jude, she said.

The video of Immanuel that Trump retweeted was taken at a late July event held by Americas Frontline Doctors, a GOP front group, and promoted on the right-wing Breitbart News. It went viral, garnering tens of millions of views before it was removed from Facebook, Twitter and YouTube for spreading false information. Immanuel responded to the deplatforming by promising that Jesus Christ would crash Facebooks servers if her video wasnt restored.

Trump later said that he didnt know anything about Immanuel, but called her very impressive and said he didnt know why the video was taken down because theyre very respected doctors.

In other speeches, she has warned that doctors created a microchip vaccine to keep people from being religious, senior government officials inthe Obama administration werent human but had a reptilian spirit, and that doctors were using alien DNA.

Additional public talks include sermons against the gay agenda, secular humanism, Illuminati and the demonic new world order.

In early October, Immanuel blasted Trumps personal doctors for not putting him on hydroxychloroquine as a treatment while he was fighting COVID-19, saying whoever told him not to take the drug should be punched in the face.

She was invited to speak at the Wednesday Trump event by another controversial hydroxychloroquine proponent, Dr. Robin Armstrong, a physician and former Texas Republican Party vice chairman.

Shes a friend of mine so I asked her to come, Armstrong told VICE News on Wednesday. Shes not coming in as an official surrogate. Shes not. I asked her to come because people are interested in her.

Armstrong, who drew criticism for putting his patients on hydroxychloroquine early in the pandemic (including some nursing home patients whose family members with power of attorney werent informed), still insisted to VICE News that the drug was safe and effective for some patients battling COVID-19.

Hydroxychloroquine has never harmed anyone, I do know that. Its actually helped a lot of people in this pandemic, he said.

The Trump campaign and Republican National Committee did not respond to VICE News requests for comment.

Go here to see the original:

Doctor Who Warned of Demon Sex and Touts COVID Conspiracies Speaking at Trump Event - VICE

Twitter on Monday announced that itwill start placing messaging at the top of users feeds that aims to preemptively counter any false tweets about voting and the election.

The unprecedented messaging format, dubbed apre-bunk, will appear at the top of all U.S. users news feeds.

Were introducing pre-bunks for some of the most common misleading claims about#Election2020, tweeted Twitters Head of Site Integrity, Yoel Roth (above). Research shows that getting ahead of misinformation is a powerful way to build resilience. Excited tosee this application of inoculation theory in practice.

One message reads: Election experts confirm that voting by mail is safe and secure, even with an increase in mail-inballots. Even so, you might encounter unconfirmed claims that voting by mail leads to election fraud ahead of the 2020 US elections. The message is accompanied by a link to additional votinginformation.

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Another points out that full election results may be delayed for legitimate reasons.

The move is the most recent in a flurryof actions taken in recent weeks by Twitter and Facebook in efforts to address the flood of falsehoods about voting, including President Trumps claims that mail-in voting is rife withfraud.

Twitter which stopped taking political ads as of late last year has previously said that candidates cannot claim election wins on its platformprior to authoritative calls (from election officials or two national news outlets), and that it will put warning labels on any premature results calls, with a link to its election page.

Inaddition, Twitter says it is preventing users from liking misleading posts by politicians, and only allowing retweets of those posts if users add their own commentary; flaggingmisleading posts by politicians by requiring users to tap through a warning label before reading them; and preventing its algorithms from recommending those posts.

Originally posted here:

Twitter Adds 'Pre-Bunk' Alerts To Preempt False Voting, Election Information 10/27/2020 - MediaPost Communications

Fifteen conservative YouTubers (or as some have termed them, (QAnon influencers)sued YouTube and Google in California federal court on Tuesday, seeking an emergency injunction that would allow them to get back onto their accounts.

The users channels were deleted after YouTube announced on October 15 that it would thereafter prohibit content that threatens or harasses someone by suggesting they are complicit in one of these harmful conspiracies, such as QAnon or Pizzagate. The group of plaintiffs claimed that they have suffered a violation of their First Amendment rights to broadcast political speech on matters of public interest, as well as a breach of contract.

The complaint alleged that YouTubes massive de-platforming harmed both conservative content creators and American voters. Further, YouTube took this draconian action so swiftly that plaintiffs werent even able to download their own content, they said.

Why did YouTube dothis? the complaint asked and then answered.To frustratethe contracts and tomollify itspartner, Congress, which just days before had passed H.R. 1154, a resolution condemning the existence of conservative contentwhich it characterized as conspiracy theorieson the Internet.

For some background, the resolution to which the Complaint refers was introduced by Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-N.J.) in September. It stated that the House of Representatives condemns QAnon and rejects the conspiracy theories it promotes. The resolution also encourage[d] the FBI and as well as all Federal law enforcement and homeland security agencies to strengthen their focus on preventing violence, threats, harassment, and other criminal activity by extremists motivated by fringe political conspiracy theories.

The plaintiffs also claimed that YouTube is more important than television, that YouTube hasnt done enough to combat cyberbullying, and that YouTubes removal of their content was entirely motivated by its decision to capitulate to bullying by Congress.

Recently, the complaint alleged, politicians from all areas of government have demanded that Big Tech,particularly Google and YouTube, take down content with which they disagreei.e., content that they consider harmful, offensive, conspiracy theories andthe like.Since these demandsbegan, YouTube creators and partners have been excised from the platform, most suddenly on or around October 15.

While conspiracy theories abound, particularly on todays fast-moving information superhighway, lamented the plaintiffs, never since McCarthyism have the government and its actors moved so quickly to condemn and excise them from public debate.

The filing went on to detail several conspiracy theories that turned out to be true, including that the Department of Treasury having killed people with poisoned alcohol during Prohibition, the federal government having lied about treating Black men with syphilis for 40 years, 100 million Americans having been exposed to a carcinogen through the Polio vaccine, the Gulf of Tonkin Incident never having happened, the government having tested LSD on citizens, and others.

YouTubes decision to drop their channels from its platform so soon after Congress introduced H.R. 1154, argued Plaintiffs, is proof that YouTube acted at the direct behest of and encouragement of the United States House of Representatives. Therefore, the argument went, YouTube should be held to the standard of a government actor for purposes of the First Amendment.

Part of the ousted plaintiffs argument is that YouTubes decision to throw them off its platform rests on legal drama over Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. That act, you may remember, is one for which President Donald Trump has been instigating a repeal. According to the plaintiffs, YouTubes haste to purge the disfavored conservative voices is simply an attempt to stay on the governments good side. With Section 230 on the books as is, YouTube, as merely a platform, is shielded from liability based on the postings of its users. Without it, though, YouTube might be liable as a publisher.

The plaintiffs in the litigation against YouTube include Jeff Pedersen, known online as InTheMatrixxx; Jordan Sather of the channel Destroying the Illusion; and Polly St. George, known as Amazing Polly. St. George is believed to be the origin of the debunked Wayfair conspiracy theory. Another plaintiff, who is listed anonymously, runs the SGT Reportwhich has been said to be responsible for spreading the baseless and false Frazzledrip conspiracy theory that Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin sexually abused a child and drank her blood.

[Image via Caitlin OHara/Getty Images]

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Link:

QAnon Influencers Sue YouTube for Deleting Their Channels, Claim Big Techs Acquiescence to Congress Is Worse Than McCarthyism - Law & Crime

While swimming off the coast of Lady Elliot Island in Queensland, Australia, photographer Mark Fitzpatrick encountered a sea turtle coming towards him.

At just the right moment, he snapped a photo of the turtle's flipper pulling back into what appeared to be a middle finger. Coupled with the turtle's grumpy expression, it made for a hilarious shot.

As the winner of the 2020 contest, Fitzpatrick won a safari in Masai Mara, Kenya, a Think Tank photography bag, and a Nikon camera.

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He continued, "I hope Terry the Turtle can encourage more people to take a moment and think about how much our incredible wildlife depend on us and what we can do to help them. Flippers crossed that this award puts Terry in a better mood next time I see him at Lady Elliot Island!"

Read more from the original source:

A photo of a grumpy sea turtle apparently giving the finger won the top prize at this year's Comedy Wildlife P - Business Insider India