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A Hidden War on Free Speech: Google’s Jigsaw

A Hidden War on Free Speech: Google’s Jigsaw

How the Control of Information Works (in Modern Times)

  • Certain information is deemed dangerous and must be censored or "shadow banned" (complex censorship)
  • Other information is forced on populations, via the Redirect Method (how far-left resources are placed in user's ad feeds and search results)
  • This control is justified by the existence of extremism, hate crimes, and terrorism, despite all three being insignificant in America

Counter-violent extremists (CVEs) develop these software, non-software approaches, as well as the extremism/terrorism/hate reports. Technology companies and government agencies use the CVE products. When those techniques require the redirect method, special left-leaning groups are chosen to be the sources that users are redirected to. The Department of Homeland Security promised $1 billion in 2016 to researchers in this area, effectively creating a market for leftist researchers to mis-characterize the public and for tech platforms to control information online in the state's interest.

Specifically, this article is about a CVE organization called Jigsaw, and how Jigsaw uses unscientific methodology and the appeal to authority to claim that white supremacy is more of a threat than it actually is.


Jigsaw

Tech platforms and their allies are profoundly powerful because information flow has become centralized through them[1], information on individuals is being permanently stored, and artificial intelligence can target individual users online. Google’s unit, Jigsaw is one of the developers of those AIs.

Jigsaw is largely responsible for much of the censorship that occurs online. Jigsaw has even worked with the New York times on such campaigns by claiming to be champions of the downtrodden.

These censorship software techniques are produced by CVEs like Jigsaw and then tailored specifically for various platforms. Other, more manipulative campaigns such as the Redirect Method originated from Moonshot[9][11] and was expanded on by Jigsaw. In the Redirect Method, data history or real-time input from a user is flagged, the user is then profiled and categorized into a specific "cohort", and then has his/her feed manipulated without the user's consent or knowledge. Strangely, the alternative content placed in a user's ads and search results tends to be Leftist propaganda and politicized organizations disguised as "science"; but that is the topic of another article [12].

The google.jigsaw.com site provides a creepy narrative that is riddled with false assumptions, loosely connected citations, and even unscientific references.


"White Supremacy"

Jigsaw serves as the front for Google’s approach to certain issues in open societies. “We combine cutting-edge research with experimental technology to identify emerging issues — from censorship and harassment to disinformation and violent extremism — that threaten open societies.”

A specific project of Jigsaw took place in the US in 2017, where they focused on online “toxicity”. They partnered with the New York Times to use technology for scaling their (NYT) moderation. This warrants an entire investigation on its own, even if I had not shown the bizarre relationship between the New York Times and US national security state officials, 2 where the NYT repeatedly spreads false information in the interest of the security state branches.

Specifically, I am reporting on Jigsaw’s obsession with white supremacy extremists and the vague logic applied to ultimately serve Google’s (and the US security apparatus's) interest in dominating narratives and controlling networks on a global scale. The narrative crumbles immediately with even just a cursory look at 2019 FBI Crime statistics. From the most recent 2019 data collected by the Uniform Crime Reporting Program, 52.5 percent of hate crime offenders were whites[4] despite whites comprising of 62 percent of the population, 5 meaning that other groups are disproportionately attributing to hate crimes. Furthermore, if we consider only crimes against persons, and exclude simple intimidation crimes, that leaves 3200 hate crime offenders in 2019. Compare that with the total number of violent crimes being 1.2 million; 6 even if the hate crime offenders committed 5-10 violent acts each, they are still a fraction of the total violent crimes. For all communities, hate crimes are insignificant. In summary, anyone that chooses to evade real issues (1.2 million violent crimes annually) in order to tackle such an insignificant problem (3200 hate crime offender), is most likely doing so for political or economic agendas.

Jigsaw focuses on “Lone Wolf” extremists, by unravelling a narrative about how "Lone Wolf" extremists are radicalized by extremist groups and that "disinformation" is involved.

According to Jigsaw, it is a myth that the perpetrators act alone. There is an “underlying infrastructure of white supremacist online communities around the world.” In other words, the problem is more than just a few solo actors, and these perpetrators make use of both Google and non-Google networks to spread their violence.

This framework is crucial to Jigsaw's goals. If any of these assumptions are invalid, then Jigsaw's tale of merely 35 bad people is not going to convince Jigsaw's partners that entire populations need to be censored and manipulated, and that Google Search needs to absorb smaller startups to protect the world from this grave threat.

Jigsaw must argue that these people are an affiliated type of extremism, since the methodology of CVEs is built to handle affiliated extremism as opposed to lone wolf extremism.

Jigsaw must convince potential partners that this is a networking issue. Our knight in shining armor, Jigsaw, is protecting us from becoming these bad men.


Analyzing the Narrative

The narrative falls apart if any of the following are incorrect: that the perpetrators are indoctrinated by gamification theory; that they are indoctrinated by disinformation in such a way that researchers have discovered; or that the problem is a global networking issue. Throughout Jigsaw’s page, formers (former white supremacists) are mentioned throughout. In fact, the entire No. 002 Violent White Supremacy page is one long narration from the perspective of formers, of which there were 35, but anecdotal stories focused on just three. All of the theoretical framework that jigsaw introduces is from this meager data set (if it can be called that) along with a number of misused references (see next section on references). Jigsaw uses vague, highly anecdotal arguments tying these 35 formers to what Jigsaw believes is a global network that the world should quiver in fear of. The argument is that white supremacist terrorists incite copycats, a bold statement, since global numbers of these attacks are quite low. 8 Even if I were to take Jigsaw’s bold datasets, the numbers do not exceed 50 per year for large nations, and that is at the peak years. Furthermore, those data take place in countries with populations from 80-350 million. One argument Jigsaw relies on is that these attacks (according to their data) are higher than they are for Muslim extremists in predominantly white nations; hence, a greater number of white extremists versus Islamic extremists. The lack of awareness in their own statements (remember, we are talking about a division of one of the wealthiest firms on the planet) is startling.

Lastly, the major issue I took with the narration was the idea of disinformation, which relied on incorrect or incomplete theories from sociology and criminology. It was never clear how the theories applied to the Jigsaw's formers especially in the context of global networking. It was never clear that disinformation was intrinsic in these individuals becoming extremists, rather than the extremists simply being a small number of extreme outliers. The leaps in logic were left unaccounted for without a clear relationship between these ideas.


Problems with the References

Jigsaw uses Gamification studies to support their theory, yet their 18th and 19th references explicitly state that the theory is in it’s infantile stages. Even if the sources did not directly contradict Jigsaw’s intent, one of the underlying principles of Jigsaw’s theory is that the problem is globally networked, and it has yet to be proven that gamification is a widespread phenomenon.

To support the disinformation narrative, Jigsaw introduced a series of sociology and criminology reports. The issue is that certain disinformation theories and experiments were misunderstood, or were wrong to begin with (see reference 20 and subsequent references that stem from it). For brevity, my detailed criticism will not be included; but I will summarize those criticisms.

The studies either (i) do not have enough data points to conduct a thorough statistical analysis, (ii) had incompatible definitions between groups and individuals within analysis, (iii) did not define clearly what their groups were in order for proper data collection to take place, or in some cases where the methods agreed with my rigor, (iv) required follow up analysis.

The only analysis to be found was qualitative, rather than quantitative, which has become a common theme in the CVE community. The cesspool of “science” that jigsaw is willing to accept to satisfy their ends is disturbing, and trying to follow the CVE's incoherent logic felt like arguing with a disgruntled toddler. I think I grew a couple of grey hairs in the process.


Their Allies

The CVE community works closely with unscientific organizations that are disguised as psychology, criminology, sociology, and mental health [12][13]. When a user follows these pages, left-leaning propaganda and training (such as critical race theory) is introduced. Anyone that doesn't know what science is but claims to love it is a prime victim of these manipulation campaigns since these schemes use the term "science" as a headline. This is why I conducted a comprehensive review of the psychology of trauma and resilience [13], where I reviewed the empirical data and quantitative analysis literature as well as addressing criticisms of the field. This gives me a convenient handle to gauge what psychology and mental health organizations are legitimate, versus those that are propaganda schemes. Any and all psychology, sociology, and mental health groups that are political in nature (that are leftists, since the right-wing does not politicize such industries) tend to push unscientific narratives over trauma.

Now let's return to Jigsaw. Jigsaw overemphasizes a problem so that information can be controlled and so that Google can consolidate more networks and companies. Remember that Jigsaw claims this issue is network-based, which enables them to claim that they need access to all networks and platforms to combat “white supremacists.” Also, recall that Jigsaw emphasizes that disinformation is key to the issue, which enables them to justify manipulating what users see or don’t see.

And it all began with DHS funding...

we must better grasp the social and networked nature of their online lives.

-Jigsaw


[1] Subcommittee of Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law. https://judiciary.house.gov/uploadedfiles/competition_in_digital_markets.pdf#page399

[2] Kelly C. Offield. https://advocate-for-rights-and-knowledge-of-americans-arka.ghost.io/ghost/#/editor/post/609ec65ce78df0003bb04c92

[3] Subcommittee of Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law. https://judiciary.house.gov/uploadedfiles/competition_in_digital_markets.pdf#page399

[4] FBI. https://ucr.fbi.gov/hate-crime/2019/topic-pages/offenders

[5] Statistical Atlas. https://statisticalatlas.com/United-States/Race-and-Ethnicity

[6] FBI. https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/topic-pages/violent-crime

[7] Subcommittee of Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law. https://judiciary.house.gov/uploadedfiles/competition_in_digital_markets.pdf#page399

[8] Statista. https://www.statista.com/statistics/737335/number-of-attacks-and-fatalities-by-white-supremacist-extremists-us/

[9] Moonshot. https://moonshotcve.com/

[10] Kelly C. Offield. "Grand Manipulation: Facebook Edition" The ARKA Journal. (2021) https://advocate-for-rights-and-knowledge-of-americans-arka.ghost.io/grand-manipulation-facebook-edition/

[11] Kelly C. Offield. "Grand Manipulation: Moonshot CVE Edition" The ARKA Journal. (2021) https://advocate-for-rights-and-knowledge-of-americans-arka.ghost.io/grand-manipulation-moonshot-cve-edition/

[12] Kelly C. Offield. "Grand Manipulation: The Agents" The ARKA Journal. (2021) https://advocate-for-rights-and-knowledge-of-americans-arka.ghost.io/grand-manipulation-the-agents/

[13] Kelly C. Offield. "A Tale of Suppressed Science: The Psychology of Trauma and Resilience" The ARKA Journal. (2021) https://advocate-for-rights-and-knowledge-of-americans-arka.ghost.io/the-psychology-of-trauma-and-resilience/