#WeCounterHate – Using Reverse Technology to Fight Hate Speech

#WeCounterHate – Using Reverse Technology to Fight Hate Speech

CHONG Hon Paai, Paul

Nowadays, many campaigns, regardless of commercial or non-profit ones, are taking a more technology-driven direction. Advanced technology such as VR (virtual reality) and AI (artificial intelligence) are helping campaigns to spread their messages in a more effective and innovative way.

#WeCounterHate – Campaign Background

#WeCounterHate is a social campaign initiated by Life After Hate, a non-profit organization founded in 2011, with the help of Possible, a global digital marketing agency. Launched in 2018, the campaign saw the growing rate of hate speeches on Twitter (a popular social media), hence it was created with the goal to stop the spread of hate speech and reduce the number of hate tweets on the platform. Most importantly, the campaign aspires to stop the empowerment of hate caused by social media.

#WeCounterHate official website
#WeCounterHate official website

(Source: #WeCounterHate official website)

Executions of Campaign

The campaign created an AI platform with the combination of three technologies, namely Natural Language Processing, Google Jigsaw, and Spredfast. It was designed to classify and rate the toxicity of the tweets and decide if it is certified as a hate tweet. This AI is also trained by several formal hate group representatives, including former white supremacists, to detect hidden forms of hate, such as terms expressed in short-forms or emojis. Once a hate tweet is detected, the AI will generate a reply to flag the tweet as hate speech (known as the Countered Tweet), while urging potential retweeters to either not to retweet, or retweet it with a donation to Life After Hate, a non-profit that fights for inclusion, diversity, and equality.

Shortyawards.com
Shortyawards.com

(Source: Shortyawards.com)

Results of The Campaign

With the continuous training from the collected data, the AI has radically outperformed expectations of identifying hate speeches, with the success rate of 91% relative to a human moderator. The campaign managed to remove up to 11 million impressions of hate tweets, reduced the retweet rate of hate speech by 66%, while more than 18% of the Countered Tweets have been deleted by its users (#WeCounterGood Campaign, 2020).

Integration of AI Technology Into The Campaign

By making good use of AI and its ability to work well with big data analytics The integration of AI technology undoubtedly made the campaign a hugely successful anti-media plan. (Maryville University, 2021). By continuously processing data, the AI platform learns quickly and makes even more accurate recognition. For the campaign, AI helped send the campaign’s messages in a personalized way, while accurately targeting its interested audience (the hate speech tweeters and retweeters). AI successfully improved the efficiency of the campaign by reducing the time to process online data and generate corresponding actions. Furthermore, AI provides real-time feedback for the campaign to make better adjustments in the future (RoboticsBiz Editorial, 2020).

computer-science.enggconferences.com
computer-science.enggconferences.com

(source: computer-science.enggconferences.com)

Human Creativity and Advanced Technology

The campaign is powerful in the sense that, it used technology to fight back the harms that technology has brought to humans. More social campaigns should consider the integration of advanced technology through their campaigns’ executions and spread of messages. With the combination of human creativity with advanced technology, it may surprise the market with unexpected results.

 

Reference:

  1. Editorial, R. (2020, May 12). AI in advertising – benefits and best Ai advertising tools. Retrieved March 22, 2021, from https://www.dealsinsight.com/ai-in-advertising-benefits-and-best-ai-advertising-tools/#:~:text=AI%20advertising%20lowers%20the%20ad,to%20bid%20and%20budget%20allocation
  2. How is big data working with AI. (2021, January 26). Retrieved March 22, 2021, from https://online.maryville.edu/blog/big-data-is-too-big-without-ai/#:~:text=AI’s%20ability%20to%20work%20so,rules%20for%20future%20business%20analytics.&text=%E2%80%9CData%20is%20the%20lifeblood%20of%20AI
  3. WeCounterHate. (n.d.). Retrieved March 22, 2021, from https://showmethe.work/wecounterhate