Thread by @owenblacker

Next at #ORGcon17: @JamieJBartlett taking about online extremism. Far more difficult to censor and control, so govt increasing penalties

This is bad, because we're entering a time of increased radicalism—and we need radicals who bring new ideas to democrats. #ORGcon17

Bartlett recently wrote book "Radicals", for which he went to "Liberland", a libertarian anarchocapitalist state in territory disrupted >

< btwn Serbia and Croatia. Weirdly, neither country wants the territory! On arrival in Croatia, Bartlett was being heavily monitored >

< by Croatian authorities. Suddenly, after talking about extremists' use of crypto & darknet, he gained a new understanding of the need >

< for such technologies. "Even the existence of powerful encryption made me feel I could express myself [more openly]" #ORGcon17

It's a truism that people on the fringes are on the lookout for evading censorship and surveillance. He always found it amusing when ppl >

< didn't understand why Islamic State were so Internet-savvy_they were mainly young man 18–25; they know the Net. One of first BBSes was>

< Stormfront; EDL for a long time was effectively a Facebook group and a few in-person protesters.

Next anecdote: Bartlett taking about >

< Tommy Robinson travelling round Europe trying to set up a new respectable fascism without the drinking and fighting. Every day he gets>

< a stream of news reports of bad things happening. They're not all untrue; the problem is more that they're an unfiltered steam of the bad>

< So they can genuinely perceive that Islam is bad; police tactics mean they genuinely perceive there a conspiracy silencing them #ORGcon17

Censorship backfires against radical groups. That said, in next few years, censorship is going to become more or less impossible to do.

It is more or less impossible to remove illegal material from the darknet — drugs markets, ransomware etc is becoming cheaper there.

So we're running the risk of govts trying to censor more, at a time when it becomes less effective and when it just cements groups positions

Digital literacy is being taught so poorly—mainly in context of counter terrorism, when it's a core skill, for example. We also need to >

< build up our critical faculties, including by exposure to these radical materials.

Q: as individuals become able to achieve more >

< how do we make sure we don't all die?
A: I'm very pessimistic but I fear we're gonna need to give govts more powers & have far more >

< supervision of how those powers are used. #ORGcon17
Q: How do we balance increasing digital literacy with a govt who wants to surveil >

< everything children do online?
A: Good question *shrug* Everything we say about teaching kids to be good ppl, they're still gonna make >

< mistakes, like every other generation before then. We need to make better *people*. Humans have been trying at that forever! #ORGcon17

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