This is how hate on the internet is organized I Documentary about haters and trolls.
How does organized hate work on the internet? Why do some topics receive more aggressive comments than others? Why is it a small, but conspicuously frequent minority that makes so much noise online, as if it were a large part of the population? Rayk Anders and Patrick Stegemann offer answers to these and other questions in their documentary. They describe the documentary on YouTube:
The documentary follows a team that went undercover as trolls and haters online and reports on controlled shitstorms, bullying attacks and election manipulation. In the documentary they talk to trolls, Nazis and haters and are undercover in troll networks. For the documentary “Delete yourself: This is how hate is organized on the internet,” a team led by YouTuber Rayk Anders and journalist Patrick Stegemann spent a year immersed in the world of haters, trolls and Nazis. They want to find out whether the waves of hate comments are coordinated and organized. In doing so, they find themselves in the middle of the meme war, as right-wing trolls often call their fight for attention.
The approximately 40-minute documentary shows the group of journalists, programmers and internet activists, reports on their research successes and defeats and shows their offline encounters with haters. For the Lösch-Dich documentary they meet, among others, the trolls “Dorian the Übermensch” and “imp the Übermensch”, but also political agitators such as Martin Sellner from the right-wing extremist Identitarian Movement. With fake accounts they are part of right-wing troll groups like “Reconquista Germanica”. They listen when the hate posters organize themselves, have participated in discussions as supposed comrades-in-arms and have been present at planned hatestorms.
Their intensive research shows: Hate on the Internet is organized. It is used by political groups, mostly right-wing ones, but is also simply part of a counterculture on the Internet. Haters are often not lone perpetrators. They organize themselves into groups and hunt, hound, bully and, after prior agreement, have certain sides and people. In secret forums with names like “Reconquista Germanica,” they organize themselves almost militarily, give themselves titles like “General,” and use terms like “Special Operations Command.”
They see themselves as “info warriors in the info war” for sovereignty of opinion on the Internet. They manipulate the mood online, hijack online discussions with hate speech and fake accounts. They create masses of memes with, among other things, racist images, share them thousands of times and like to claim the success of the AfD for themselves.
Criticism of the documentary (update)
At the same time, however, the documentary also raised critical voices. The Facebook page “Hooligans Against Sentence Structure” published critical feedback on the documentary in the form of a status report. The special thing about this status report: the author of the documentary (Patrick Stegemann) comments on the criticism and a factual exchange takes place ( see here ). The status message as a whole:
About “Delete Yourself!” This is how hate on the internet is organized,” the documentary by Rayk Anders commissioned by funk, which feels like half the German internet is currently speaking.
We also think it is important to highlight systems that manage to turn large groups of people against each other.
What we don't think is important, not right and, above all, not good is that the documentary is largely dedicated to the right-wing spam network "Reconquista Germanica", but then to two "trolls" like # Dorian and # Imp [, who somehow represent something like the prototype of the hedonistic digital anarcho-punk], as central figures, namesake of the documentary and thus in what we believe to be an inappropriate connection [with dangerous, political ideologues like Martin Sellner and the IB (see the documentary cover photo alone)] to set. [You can criticize everything, but it's two different things!]
If you read the full interview with the two of them - or watch the video - you will notice that something is being mixed together in a brown pot that simply doesn't belong together.
[Perhaps the time for the documentary was too short, perhaps they wanted to concoct as much as possible in as little time as possible, perhaps personal sensitivities play a role. We do not know it.]
Apart from the fact that we think commitment against organized hatred and the uncovering of secret Discord servers (Great Job “Hans”) and corresponding counter-actions are really good and worth supporting (thanks Jan Böhmermann and team – well done). But mixing the whole thing with funk criticism, creating a very simplified (enemy) image, and thereby more or less subtly placing the whole thing in the right-wing corner, leaves a really bland and even disgusting aftertaste[, because funk is in Overall certainly worthy of discussion and criticism!]
General information:
More background information on the Lösch Dich! channel:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list…
For information on the topic, take a look here: Who or what helps against hate on the internet?
https://www.amadeu-antonio-stiftung.de/
https://no-hate-speech.de/de/
Further information: On the role of trolls in the US election campaign
http://www.politico.com/magazine/stor…
German trolls – also in the federal election campaign
https://faktenfinder.tagesschau.de/in…
Further sources: Berlin Constitutional Protection Report:
https://www.berlin.de/sen/inneres/ver...
Psychological studies on trolls:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science…
http://www.cs.cornell.edu/~cristian/A…
To measure hate speech
https://arxiv.org/abs/1701.08118
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Notes:
1) This content reflects the current state of affairs at the time of publication. The reproduction of individual images, screenshots, embeds or video sequences serves to discuss the topic. 2) Individual contributions were created through the use of machine assistance and were carefully checked by the Mimikama editorial team before publication. ( Reason )

