Thread by @mor10

10 years ago today, a far-right terrorist murdered 77 people in Oslo and on Utøya in Norway. Most of the victims were teenagers at a summer camp. The toxic ideologies and hate speech the terrorist adhered to still flourish online. In fact, they are more prevalent today.

On the 10th anniversary of one of the worst terror attacks in Europe since World War II, international media is largely silent. It's difficult to tell the story of a white christian right-wing terrorist when all people want to hear is that terrorism is something other do to them.

The world did not learn from the Norway attacks. The online echo chambers inside which the terrorist got radicalized are more powerful than ever, and people are being radicalized quicker than ever.

COVID + anti-vaxxer conspiracy theories, the insurrectionists who attacked the Capitol, flat-earth theory, pizzagate, incel culture, right-wing nationalism, the alt-right, all these anti-societal extremist milieus have found fertile ground to prosper in social media echo chambers

The recommendation algorithms of our online platforms have turned into radicalization engines for the extreme right. They weren't intentionally built that way, but fixing them so they don't radicalize people would cost the online media giants too much money, so they don't.

Every day I watch the slow radicalization of people on Twitter, and YouTube, and Facebook and TikTok and Instagram, and even LinkedIn. The slippery slope is difficult to spot at first because it's so gradual. But when you start slipping, it seems as if the slipping is normal.

Some years ago, a man pulled a knife on me at a meetup group for open source software. He was there to tell us "globetards" the "truth" and was ready to "defend himself" from the "thought police" who would "take free speech away" from him.

After convincing him that bringing a knife to a friendly conversation about PHP would not get him the attention he needed, I asked him how he came upon this "truth" and why I didn't know the same truth.

"Once you find it, it's everywhere man!" he said. He went on to explain how he had watched a video about flat earth theory on YouTube, and "suddenly, there was all this content that they had hidden from me. it was everywhere. On YouTube and Google and Facebook!"

His story was one of slow radicalization combined with personal loss. As he fell deeper and deeper into the flat earth echo chamber (what he referred to as "learning the Truth") his family distanced themselves from him, he lost his job, lost his friends, etc.

"Knowing the truth is dangerous" he said. "When you start telling the truth, THEY come after you." Who are "they" I asked? "The people who control everything. The liberals. The feminists. The scientists. The police. The teachers. They are all in it to keep us compliant."

This story is the same story I hear from COVID denialists, anti-vaxxers, 9/11 truthers, religious fundamentalists, far-right nationalists, the list is endless. They fall, often accidentally, into online echo chambers, and their understanding of reality is distorted by them.

Once you're in one of these echo chambers, everything online starts pointing in the same direction; towards content supporting the conspiracy theory of your (accidental) choosing.

All these conspiracies and anti-social ideologies say the same things:
- Everything bad that happened to you was caused by "them"
- You are one of the few people who know the "truth"
- People who don't believe this "truth" are sheep
- People will hate you for knowing the "truth"

This is how people are convinced that a global pandemic is actually part of a liberal ploy to overthrow the US president. Or how a vaccine is actually a disease, or a microchip, or a sterilization effort. It is also how far-right extremists recruit and indoctrinate people.

The Norwegian terrorist murdered 77 people because he believed they were traitors to the nation and therefore should be executed. How were they traitors? They were members of the social democratic Labour party. As in "liberals are traitors". Sound familiar?

The terrorist believed in an anti-semitic right-wing conspiracy theory known as "cultural marxism." This conspiracy theory has still gone relatively mainstream in some political circles in North America.

The terrorist believed in the "islamification" of Europe and that liberals were deliberately trying to "destroy christian values" by "importing" people from other cultures, in particular Muslims. Sound familiar? That's because this dog whistle is nor permanently on.

The terrorist wanted an end to multiculturalism. He wanted to "preserve" Norwegian and western culture over all others, because it is "superior" to all others. Again, these extreme views have since gone mainstream.

The radicalization of the extreme views through social media poses a serious threat to our democracy and to our lives. The radicalization of the extreme right is now seen as one of the most serious threats to world stability by those monitoring and researching the issue.

Social media platforms play a significant role in this. Their recommendation engines and algorithms have been gamed by the far right to radicalize the populace. It has to stop.

10 years ago, a far-right terrorist, a middle-class, blonde, blue eyed, christian man one year younger than myself, murdered 77 people and planned on murdering many more because he hated everyone who didn't look like him or believed in his conspiracy theories.

Since then, countless young men (and to a lesser degree women) have taken up arms and murdered people to promote their own conspiracy theories. The common thread among them is they all found an echo chamber online to cultivate their extreme views.

I can't fix the world, but I can do my part to make it better for the next generation. I want to build educational resources for children and teens to learn how to detect, avoid, and help others out of online radicalization. I invite you to join me. </>