A recent Wall Street Journal Article discusses how Facebook has added a new tool, counter speech, in the fight against terror. These speakers are meant to contradict extremist views and posts with nice comments directly on those extremist posts or in direct messages. A 2014 effort in Germany was cited which organized 100,000 people to infiltrate neo-Nazi Facebook pages in the same manner.
Facebook is willing to provide ad credits up to $1,000 for those that are willing to counter speak. They have also teamed with the State Department and Edventure Partners to entice college students all over the globe to participate in competitions for counter-speech. They were given $2,000 budgets and $200 in ad credits.
Counter speech needs help and money to help spread the proverbial word. The extremists have done an excellent job of putting money behind their hateful propaganda. Now it's time to try an alternate approach.
While counter speech is largely unproven at this point, perhaps this is a step in the right direction by thinking about solving the problem in a contrarian way...with social media! Clearly the status quo of never ending war is not solving anything and may even be inciting more extreme terrorism. In order for anyone to listen, words of peace, tolerance, and understanding need to be spread by people like you and me; the common people. We have all had enough of the hot air from our governmental leaders.
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