Good report, anon. Fair-minded. In a way, it's better for these guys not to mention 8chan. Low-profile, we get the news out anyways. Smaller target, mebbe.
Nice summary. Sundae is making me hungry.
Hard to know what JA actually did vs what was done in his name. At least, in the last few years.
Network Contagion Research Institute
fancy name, fake research
WAPO used em in Dec along with 4 other fake research groups for big article (see below)
Did a lot of digging on this, sauce below (from QResear.ch):
Network Contagion RESEARCH INSTITUTE
#4319183 at 2018-12-15 09:10:28 (UTC+1)
Q Research General #5504: God Bless The United States Of America Edition
ongoing digg into new attacks on chans for hate speech
Fake research groups justify new MSM attacks on "conspiracy theorists" – Gp 2: network contagion Research Institute
WaPo article "Hateful Conspiracies Thrive on YouTube despite pledge to clean up problematic videos" cited the following groups and individuals as "researchers":
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Data & Society (Joan Donovan)
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network contagion Research Institute <<< SEE BELOW
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AlgoTransparency (Guillaume Chaslot)
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Columbia University Tow Center for Digital Journalism (Jonathan Albright)
network contagion RESEARCH INSTITUTE:
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Two primary guys: Joel Finkelstein (political guy) & Jeremy Blackburn (tech guy). Both are high-IQ autist types.
Joel Finkelstein: PhD, Stanford in "psychology & the neural underpinnings of compassion"; used to work at GOOGLE! Research sounds innocuous & fake but could be aimed at predicting anti-social behavior by neural mapping. And in science it's one short step from "prediction" to "control." And you know patriots will be defined as anti-social, right?
Jeremy Blackburn: Degree?? Doesn't say. Asst Prof, computer science at UAB (Univ Alabama at Birmingham). So low-status position; might want a lot of freedom. Studies the World Wide Web. Worked at Telefonica Research in Barcelona. Studies low level cryptography in video games, lots of other network stuff like cyber security.
* New organization: all articles are dated 2018; FB/Twitter has very little content, lots of repeat stuff. Like a "gay fake" org. Oldest blog post is date 9-6-18.
* Focus is mapping hate speech memes using some kind of cluster analysis to depict how objectionable memes are interrelated and spread
* No funding info; shoe-string op (unless they have hidden funding). Still cited by WaPo as tho they're some kind of major league research prganization; bogus image.
* Use AI to study "billions of posts from fringe and mainstream websites…to better understand and hopefully treat the ominous infection of hate in modern political life.
Sauce:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/hateful-conspiracies-thrive-on-youtube-despite-pledge-to-clean-up-problematic-videos/2018/12/10/625730a8-f3f8-11e8-9240-e8028a62c722_story.html?