Unlimited Outrage

The way our networked information system amplifies hate crimes has led to an explosion of hoaxes and there isn't a way to turn it off.

Note: This report sets the stage for the ‘The Battle to Align the Ivy League’ to follow.

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The general perception is that the number of hate crimes in the US has exploded since 2016.

• They haven’t. The perception of a surge is due to:

• Amplification from social networking and mainstream media.

• A large and rapidly growing number of faked incidents.

Let’s dig into some examples to clarify this a bit. Our obsession with hate crimes, from violent attacks to non-violent defacement to abusive language, took off in 2016 due to the following;

• They began to be highlighted by the media to prove that Trump’s non-compliance with media-dictated norms for language and behavior would cause a surge in hate crimes on the right.

• This focus became systematic as the networked swarm opposing Trump took charge. Soon, millions of people were routinely sourcing, framing, and amplifying incidents to inflict political damage on Trump.

• Since the purpose of this focus in both the media and online was to do moral damage to Trump and his supporters, little attention was given to whether these ‘crimes’ were real. As a result, when a reported hate crime was eventually proven false, any mention of the reversal was aggressively deamplified or ignored by the networked swarm.

With the system in a race to amplify news of any suspected hate crime, the number of faked crimes exploded as perpetrators took advantage of the opportunity. Here are some early and recent examples of what fake hate crimes look like;