
3 Black Teenage Scientists Had a Breakthrough, Then Came the Trolls - oscarwao
https://www.npr.org/2018/05/05/608558338/3-black-teenage-scientists-had-a-breakthrough-then-came-the-trolls
======
eksemplar
I wonder why we do social media voting at all. Even if it isn’t ruined by
racist trolls it’s still kind of silly isn’t it?

How would a bunch of random strangers know which science project was good? And
more importantly, why do we care what everyman Joe/Jolie has to say about
anything? We’ve always had village idiots or people who stood on cardboard
boxes and yelled about our impending doom, but when did we decide that it was
a good idea to give these people a megaphone?

Personally I think it’s rude as well. If I entered something cool into a
science competition I’d appreachiate it if it was evaluated by people who
actually knew something about science instead of entering some popularity
contest.

~~~
dugditches
Because it brings eyes to a project/company/product/etc.

Why do you think shows like American Idol or weekly music countdowns were so
popular? The feeling of participating and having an impact generates interest.
Similar to the rise in Video Game streaming and Youtube(comments).

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rudedogg
I read about this a couple days ago. Apparently this started the nonsense:
[https://twitter.com/Pash_away/status/988951710524583937](https://twitter.com/Pash_away/status/988951710524583937)

Lots of varying levels of "wrong" to go around IMO.

~~~
verroq
Funny how none of the news mention that pro-black groups started the vote
manipulation, which resulted in trolls escalating the manipulation.

~~~
CM30
Probably because stories that support an outlet's worldview/narrative are
investigated far less than ones that challenge it. You can see the same issue
with the story of that YouTube prankster supposedly 'thrown off a plane for
speaking Arabic'; he wasn't (he was trolling people beforehand), but because
it fit the '2016 election led to increased Islamaphobia/hatred of outsiders'
worldview, it went unchallenged until others stepped forward afterwards.

It's not a pattern exclusive to one political side and their media outlets
either; if a story sounds like it can be used to rally the troops and support
a message, it won't be investigated too thoroughly regardless of whether it
supports the left or right or centre or whoever else.

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RasputinsBro
Slight off-topic. I'm sure this has been said before, but I'm saddened to
catch myself doing it. All my life I've been indifferent to matters of race,
and so if I'd read 10 years ago about 3 black girls doing whatever I wouldn't
have thought twice about it. But after what's been happening in recent years,
I just caught myself thinking: "3 black girls? I wonder if they didn't win as
part of the diversity quota" :-/ I maintain that "affirmative action" does
more bad than good in the vast majority of the cases.

On-topic: In any case, prevalence of occurrences like the reported trolls are
why I no longer give the benefit of the doubt to people who claim "there's no
racism". For a while you had the excuse of not being aware, but now you're
just intentionally adding noise to the conversation.

~~~
IanDrake
I’ve never met anyone who claims racism doesn’t exist. Perhaps I haven’t met
the right troll?

The odd thing about racism is that we typically see it in the US as a
asian/black/white/hispanic issue where historically race was finer grained,
especially when talking about a much more homogeneous population.

Historically Brits would consider the French, Irish, or Italians as a
different race, and, yes, have racist views about those people.

What I learn from that is, even if the US was 100% “white”, racism would still
exist as we would find increasingly small differences to categorize people
into races and then discriminate.

The problem is that discrimination based on categorization is how the human
brain works.

~~~
insickness
> I’ve never met anyone who claims racism doesn’t exist.

The anti-affirmative action argument doesn't say that racism doesn't exist.
The argument against affirmative action is that society should aim for equal
opportunity rather than equal outcome.

~~~
IanDrake
Affirmative action IS institutional racism in that it codifies advantage to
one race over another.

One could argue about the intention of affirmative action, but I don’t think
one could argue that it’s not racist, using the dictionary’s definition of
racism.

~~~
RasputinsBro
> One could argue about the intention of affirmative action, but I don’t think
> one could argue that it’s not racist, using the dictionary’s definition of
> racism.

As is often the case, the dictionary gives multiple definitions.

[http://www.dictionary.com/browse/racism](http://www.dictionary.com/browse/racism)

You're using definition number 2, the person you were responding to was maybe
using definition number 3.

(Although we get it, your point still stands.)

~~~
IanDrake
That’s fair, thanks.

What I was trying to say, without saying it, is that rasism is not what the
cultural Marxist are trying to sell - “power + privilege”.

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sureaboutthis
It always bothers me when there are complaints of treating someone differently
while also describing those persons as "hyphenated Americans". I don't think
those, in this article, described themselves as such but you can't be the same
and different at the same time.

~~~
cimmanom
Then how would you describe the reason that they were targeted?

~~~
sureaboutthis
That has nothing to do with my comment.

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Pica_soO
My solution- depersonalize all work. As in no faces, no interviews, no names-
just a number and the work. Take the old web to reality- kick the whole social
approach out of it. If writing styles or location give the work away, jumble
and anonymize even that.

There will be no way human reeducation will ever work. There will no new -
more human humanity appear by enough reeducation. So just make it one huge
peer reviewed anonymized contest, even distribute some slang into other
papers/ works and lets leave this all behind.

~~~
CM30
Reminds me of a similar idea I've often thought about regarding the court
system; anonymise defendants when possible to remove the biases people have
towards races, genders or human attractiveness.

Yes, it would likely be really difficult to do, and not work too well with
eyewitness evidence or what not, but it may make prison sentences and
punishments consistent between different social groups and demographics again.

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finnthehuman
I know there is a lot of confusion about the internet in the Eternal iPhone
September, but why is NPR feeding the trolls?

The headline is effectively: "[thing happpend], [trolls trolled the thing]."

I don't like trolls either, but as best we can tell, they're an emergent
phenomenon of the system. Either NPR doesn't understand the internet, or is
trying to change the internet.

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chirau
I've always wondered whether 'freedom' encompasses freedom to be racist or
hateful. But then again, the moment you bound the freedom, you have to allow
others to bound other freedoms in their societies as well, which could very
well lead to oppression, or even enslavement. It's a tough call.

~~~
maxerickson
It does in the US.

People seem to get confused though and expect that repugnant speech won't have
any consequences.

~~~
mieseratte
> People seem to get confused though and expect that repugnant speech won't
> have any consequences.

And for folks who scream "Free Speech doesn't mean Free of Consequence" and
engage in harassment campaigns causing targets to lose jobs, homes, and
everything else, I hope you're fine with the same thing happening to you when
someone finds your views repugnant.

We're trying to push the societal ball forward, not revert to a state of
digital Weimar-era street fighters engaging in mob justice.

~~~
moorhosj
What is your proposal for moving the ball forward? How would you deal with
groups of racists trying to influence society?

~~~
finnthehuman
Base society on strong foundational principles like liberty and justice. Give
everyone the tools to properly evaluate ideas. Attempts to extinguish bad
ideas should focus on arguing the point. Gradually the bad ideas will die out.

Every possible alternative relies on whoever is in power exercising
condescending 'parent knows best' authority. And the rest of us just have to
hope the whims of whoever is in power happen to align with ours. That's a bad
way to run anything from the get-go, doubly so when the next generation takes
over and is expected to know what the hell they're doing.

~~~
moorhosj
In the article we have a portion of society acting in their view of "justice".

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blattimwind
> Hundreds of schools across the United States have drinking water that is
> contaminated by lead

How?

~~~
maxerickson
Typically from the building plumbing or the service line from the water main
to the building. Both are customer responsibility to repair and a lot of
school systems have limited funds.

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mieseratte
Meta-Comment: While I really don't doubt a bunch of racist trolls would do
something like this, I've seen /b/ do enough dumb shit over the years, but I
don't see why these papers (NPR, WaPo) don't at least include an example, i.e.
screen-shot, of the calls for vote-rigging. Would make the cynic in me, and
hopefully others, thinking this is a stunt for free press, like with the Clock
Kid, go away.

~~~
threeseed
NASA made the claim about vote rigging. You really think they would lie just
to get some free PR ?

And the "clock kid" incident wasn't a stunt. The child was actually accused of
being a terrorist, handcuffed and detailed by police. And then when the news
spread he was subjected to continued racial and xenophobic taunts.

~~~
mieseratte
> NASA made the claim about vote rigging. You really think they would lie just
> to get some free PR ?

Well, I thought journalists were supposed to do investigative work and not
just publish a PR statement, but so is today's media.

> And the "clock kid" incident wasn't a stunt.

There sure were a lot of folks there saying he was pretending it was, and
jokingly or not that's going to get you a real bad response in this day and
age.

But since it "validates" a lot of folks' views on how the world is, of course
they want to believe and parade it around.

