Showing posts with label cyberbullying. Show all posts

Saturday, 29 March 2025

Techniques for suppressing health experts' social media accounts, part 1 - The Science™ versus key opinion leaders challenging the COVID-19 narrative

Written for researchers and others interested in the many techniques used to suppress COVID-19 dissidents' social media accounts, and digital voices.

There has been extensive censorship of legitimate, expert criticism during the COVID-19 event (Kheriaty, 2022. Shir-Raz et al, 2023. Hughes, 2024). Such scientific suppression makes the narrow frame visible for what the sponsors of global health authoritarianism permit for questioning of The Science™. In contrast to genuine science which innovates through critique, incorporated science does not welcome questioning. Like fascism, corporatist science views critiques of its interventions to be heresy. In the COVID-19 event, key opinion leaders who criticised the lack of scientific rigour behind public health measures (such as genetic vaccine mandates) were treated as heretics by a contemporary version of the Inquisition (Malone et al., 2024). Dissidents were accused of sharing "MDM" (Misinformation, Disinformation and Malinformation) assumed to place the public's lives at risk. Particularly in prestigious medical universities, questioning the dictates of health authorities and their powerful sponsors was viewed as being unacceptable, completely outside an Overton Window that had become far more restrictive due to fear- mongering around a "pandemic" (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. Narrowed Overton Window for COVID-19. Figures copied from (p137-138) in Dr Joseph Fraiman (2023). The dangers of self-censorship during the COVID-19 pandemic. In R. Malone, E. Dowd, & G. Fareed (Eds.), Canary In a Covid World: How Propaganda and Censorship Changed Our (My) World (pp. 132-147). Amazon Digital Services LLC - Kdp.

Higher Education is particularly susceptible to this groupthink, as it lends itself to a purity spiral, which in turn contributes to the growing spiral of silence for "unacceptable views". A purity spiral is a form of groupthink in which it is more beneficial to hold some views than to not hold them. In a process of moral outbidding, individual academics with more extreme views are rewarded. This was evidenced at universities where genetic vaccine proponents loudly supported the mandatory vaccination of students, despite them having minimal, if any, risk. In contrast, scholars expressing moderation, doubt or nuance faced ostracism as "anti-vaxxers". In universities, there are strong social conformity factors within its tight-knit community. Grants, career-support and other forms of institutional support depend on collegiality and alignment with prevailing norms. Being labeled a contrarian for questioning a ‘sacred cow’, such as "safe and effective" genetic vaccines, is likely to jeopardise one’s reputation, and academic future. Academic disciplines coalesce around shared paradigms and axiomatic truths, routinely amplifying groupthink. Challenging reified understandings as shibboleths can lead to exclusion from conferences, journals and cost scholars departmental, faculty, and even university support. Particularly where powerful funders object to such dissent!

Here, administrative orthodoxy can signal an “official” position for the university that chills debate. Dissenters fears of isolation and reprisal (such as poor evaluations and formal complaints for not following the official line) may convince them to self-censor. Particularly where the nonconformist assesses that the strength of opinion against his or her opinion is virulent, alongside high costs to expressing a disagreeable viewpoint- such as negotiating cancelation culture. Individuals who calculate that they have a low chance of success to convince others, and are likely to pay a steep price, self censor and contribute to the growing spiral of silence. The COVID-19 event serves as an excellent example for this growing spiral’s chilling effect versus free speech and independent enquiry.

COVID-19 is highly pertinent for critiquing censorship in the Medical and Health Sciences. Particularly as it featured conflicts of interest that contributed to global health "authorities" policy guidance. Notably, the World Health Organisation promoted poorly substantiated and even unscientific guidelines (Noakes et al., 2021), that merit being considered MDM. In following such dictates from the top policy makers of the Global Public-Private Partnership (GPPP or G3P), most governments' health authorities seemed to ignore key facts. Notably: i. COVID-19 risk was steeply age-stratified (Verity et al, 2019. Ho et al, 2020. Bergman et al, 2021); ii. Prior COVID-19 infection can provide substantial immunity (Nattrass et al., 2021); iii. COVID-19 genetic vaccines did not stop disease transmission (Eyre et al. 2022, Wilder-Smith, 2022); iv. mass-masking was ineffective (Jefferson et al., 2023. Halperin, 2024); v. school closures were unwarranted (Wu et al., 2021); and, vi. there were better alternatives to lengthy, whole-society lockdowns (Coccia, 2021, Gandhi and Venkatesh, 2021. Herby et al., 2024). Both international policy makers' and local health authorities' flawed guidance must be open debate and rigorous critique. If public health interventions had been adapted to such key facts during the COVID-19 event, the resultant revised guidance could well have contributed to better social-, health-, and economic outcomes for billions of people!

This post focuses on six types of suppression techniques that were used against dissenting accounts whose voices are deemed illegitimate "disinformation" spreaders by the Global public-Private Partnerships (G3P)-sponsored industrial censorship complex. This an important concern, since claims that the suppression of free speech's digital reach can "protect public safety" were proved false during COVID-19. A case in point is the censorship of criticism against employee's vaccine mandates. North American employers' mandates are directly linked to excess disabilities and deaths for hundreds and thousands of working-age employees (Dowd, 2024). Deceptive censorship of individuals' reports of vaccine injuries as "malinformation", or automatically-labelling criticism of Operation Warp Speed as "disinformation", would hamper US employee's abilities to make fully-informed decisions on the safety of genetic vaccines. Such deleterious censorship must be critically examined by academics. In contrast, 'Disinformation-for-hire' scholars (Harsin, 2024) will no doubt remain safely ensconced behind their profitable MDM blinkers.

This post is the first in a series that spotlights the myriad of account suppression techniques that exist. For each, examples of censorship against health experts' opinions are provided. Hopefully, readers can then better appreciate the asymmetric struggle that dissidents face when their accounts are targeted by the censorship industrial complex with a myriad of these strategies spanning multiple social media platforms:

Practices for @Account suppression

#1 Deception - users are not alerted to unconstitutional limitations on their free speech

Social media users might assume that their constitutional right to free speech as citizens will be protected within, and across, digital platforms. However, global platforms may not support such rights in practice. No social media company openly discloses the extent to which users' accounts have, and are, being censored for expressing opinions on controversial topics. Nor do these platforms explicitly warn users what they consider to be impermissible opinions. Consequently, their users are not be forewarned regarding what may result in censorship. For example, many COVID19 dissidents were surprised that their legitimate critiques could result in account suspensions and bans (Shir-Raz, 2022). Typically, such censorship was justified by Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Tik Tok, Twitter and YouTube, due to users' violation of "community rules". In most countries, the freedom of speech is a citizen’s constitutional right that should be illegal to over-ride. It should be deeply concerning that such protections were not supported in the Fourth Estate of the digital public square during the COVID-19 event. Instead, the supra-national interests of health authoritarians came to supersede national laws to prevent (unproven) harms. This pattern of censorship is noticeable in many other scientific issue arenas, ranging from criticism against man-made climate change to skeptics challenging transgender medical ideology.

#2 Cyberstalking - facilitating the virtual and physical targeting of dissidents

An individual who exercises his or her voice against official COVID-19 narratives can expect to receive both legitimate, pro-social and unfair, anti-social criticism. While cyberstalking should be illegal, social media platforms readily facilitate the stalking and cyber-harassment of dissidents. An extreme example of this was Dr Christine Cotton's experiences on LinkedIn. Dr Cotton was an early whistleblower (Jan, 2022) against Pfizer's COVID-19 clinical trial's false claims of 95% efficacy for its treatments.

Her report identified the presence of bias and major deviations from good clinical practice. In press interviews, she reported that the trial did ‘not support validity in terms of efficacy, immunogenicity and tolerance of the results provided in the various Pfizer clinical reports that were examined in the emergency by the various health authorities. Christine shared this report with her professional network on LinkedIn, asking for feedback from former contacts in the pharmaceutical industry. The reception was mostly positive, but it and related posts were subject to a rapid content takedown by LinkedIn, ostensibly for not meeting community standards. At the same time, her profile became hypersurveiled. It attracted unexpected visits from 133 lawyers, the Ministry of Defence, employees of the US Department of State, the World Health Organisation, and others (p142). None of these profile viewers contacted her directly.

#3 Othering - enabling public character assassination via cyber smears

Othering is a process whereby individuals or groups are defined, labeled or targeted as not fitting in within the norms of a social group. This influences how people perceive and treat those who are viewed as being part of the in-group, versus those in an out-group. At a small scale, othering can result in a scholar being ostracised from their university department following academic mobbing and online academic bullying (Noakes & Noakes, 2021). At a large scale, othering entails a few dissidents on social media platforms being targeted for hypercriticism by gangstalkers.

Cyber gangstalking is a process of cyber harassment that follows cyberstalking, whereby a group of people target an individual online to harass him or her. Such attacks can involve gossip, teasing and bad-jacketing, repeated intimidation and threats, plus other fear-inducing behaviours. Skeptics' critical contributions can become swamped by pre-bunkers and fellow status-quo defenders. Such pseudo-skeptics may be sponsored to trivialise dissenters' critiques, thereby contributing to a fact choke against unorthodox opinions.

In Dr Christine Cotton's case in March 2022 her name was disclosed in a list as part of a French Senate investigation into adverse vaccine events. A ‘veritable horde of trolls seemingly emerged out of nowhere and started attacking’ her ‘relentlessly’ (p143). These trolls were inter-connected through subscribing to each others’ accounts, which allowed them to synchronise their attacks. They attempted to propagate as much negative information on Dr Cotton as possible in a ‘Twitter harassment scene’. Emboldened by their anonymity, the self-proclaimed “immense scientists” with masters in virology, vaccines, clinical research and biostatistics, launched a character assassination. They attacked her credentials and work history, whilst creating false associations (“Freemasonry” and “Illuminati”).

This suggests how identity politics sensibilities and slurs are readily misused against renegades. In the US, those questioning COVID-19 policies were labelled “far right” or “fascist”, despite promoting a libertarian critique of healthcare authoritarianism! In addition, orchestrators of cybermobbing tagged dissidents accounts to be those of someone who is: 'anti-science', 'an anti-vaxxer', 'biased', 'charlatan', 'celebrity scientist', 'conspiracy theorist', 'controversial', 'COVID-19 denier', 'disgraced scientist', 'formerly-respected', 'fringe expert', 'grifter', 'narcissist with a Galileo complex', 'pseudo-scientist', 'quack', 'salesman', 'sell-out' and 'virus', amongst other perjoratives. Such terms are used as a pre-emptive cognitive vaccine whose hypnotic language patterns ("conspiracy theorist") are intended to thwart audience engagement with critical perspectives. Likewise, these repeatedly used terms help grow a digital pillory that becomes foregrounded in the pattern of automated suggestions in search engine results.

In this Council of the Cancelled, Mike Benz, Prof Jay Bhattacharya, Nicole Shanahan and Dr Eric Weinstein speculate about hidden censorship architectures. One example is Google's automated tagging for "controversial" public figures. These can automatically feature in major mainstream news articles featuring COVID-19 dissidents. This is not merely a visual tag, but a cognitive tag. It marks "controversial" individuals with a contemporary (digital) scarlet letter.

In Dr Cotton's case, some trolls smeared her work in raising awareness of associations for the vaccine injured to be helping “anti-vaccine conspiracy sites”. She shares many cases of these injuries in her book and was amazed at the lack of empathy that Twitter users showed not just her, but also those suffering debilitating injuries. In response she featured screenshots of select insults on her blog at https://christinecotton.com/critics and blocked ‘hundreds of accounts’ online. In checking the Twitter profiles attacking her, she noticed that many with ‘behavioural issues were closeby’. Dr Cotton hired a ‘body and mind’ guard from a security company for 24-hour protection. Her account was reported for “homophobia”, which led to its temporary closing. After enduring several months of cyber-harassment by groups, a behaviour that can be severely be punished by EU law, Dr Cotton decided to file complaints against some of them. Christine crowdfunded filing legal complaints against Twitter harassers from a wide variety of countries. This complaint sought to work around how cyber harassers think anonymity is suitable for avoiding lawsuits for defamation, harassment and public insults.

#4 Not blocking impersonators or preventing brandjacked accounts

Impersonator's accounts claiming to belong to dissidents can quickly pop up on social media platforms. While a few may be genuine parodies, others serve identity jacking purposes. These may serve criminal purposes, in which scammers use fake celebrity endorsements to phish "customers" financial details for fraud. Alternately, intelligence services may use brandjacking for covert character assassination smears against dissidents.

The independent investigative journalist, Whitney Webb, has tweeted about her ongoing YouTube experience of having her channel's content buried under a fact choke of short videos created by other accounts:

Instead of blanket censorship, I am having YouTube bury all my actual interviews/content with videos that use short, out of context clips from interviews to promote things I would never and have never said. Below is what happens when you search my name on YouTube, every single… pic.twitter.com/xNGrfMMq52
— Whitney Webb (@_whitneywebb) August 12, 2024

Whether such activities are from intelligence services or cybercriminals, they are very hard for dissidents and/or their representatives to respond effectively against. Popular social media companies (notably META, X and TikTok) seldom respond quickly to scams, or to the digital "repersoning" discussed in a Corbett Report discussion between James Corbett and Whitney Webb.

In Corbett's case, after his account was scrubbed from YouTube, many accounts featuring his identity started cropping up there. In Webb's case, she does not have a public profile outside of X, but these were created featuring her identity on Facebook and YouTube. "Her" channels clipped old interviews she did and edited them into documentaries on material Whitney has never publicly spoken about, such as Bitcoin and CERN. They also misrepresented her views on the transnational power structure behind the COVID-19 event, suggesting she held just Emmanuel Macron and Klaus Schwab responsible for driving it. They used AI thumbnails of her, and superimposed her own words in the interviews. Such content proved popular and became widely reshared via legitimate accounts, pointing to the difficulty of dissidents countering it. She could not get Facebook to take down the accounts, without supplying a government-issued ID to verify her own identity.

Digital platforms may be disinterested in offering genuine support- they may not take any corrective action when following proxy orders from the US Department of State (aka 'jawboning') or members of the Five Eyes (FVEY) intelligence agency. In stark contrast to marginalised dissenters, VIPS in multinationals enjoy access to online threat protection services (such as ZeroFox) for executives that cover brandjacking and over 100 other cybercriminal use-cases.

#5 Filtering an account's visibility through ghostbanning

As the Google Leaks (2019) and Facebook- (2021) and Twitter Files (2022) revelations have spotlighted, social media platforms have numerous algorithmic censorship options, such as the filtering the visibility of users' accounts. Targeted users may be isolated and throttled for breaking "community standards" or government censorship rules. During the COVID-19 event, dissenters' accounts were placed in silos, de-boosted, and also subject to reply de-boosting. Contrarians' accounts were subject to ghostbanning (AKA shadow-banning)- this practice will reduce an account’s visibility or reach secretly, without explicitly notifying its owner. Ghostbanning limits who can see the posts, comments, or interactions. This includes muting replies and excluding targeted accounts' results under trends, hashtags, searches and in followers’ feeds (except where users seek a filtered account's profile directly). Such suppression effectively silences a user's digital voice, whilst he or she continues to post under the illusion of normal activity. Ghostbanning is thus a "stealth censorship" tactic linked to content moderation agendas.

This term gained prominence with the example of the Great Barrington Declaration's authors, Professors Jay Bhattacharya, Martin Kulldorff, and Sunetra Gupta. Published on October 4, 2020, this public statement and proposal flagged grave concerns about the damaging physical and mental health impacts of the dominant COVID-19 policies. It argued that an approach for focused protection should rather be followed than blanket lockdowns, and that allowing controlled spread among low-risk groups would eventually result in herd immunity. Ten days later, a counter- John Snow Memorandum was published in defence of the official COVID-19 narrative's policies. Mainstream media and health authorities amplified it, as did social media given the memorandum's alignment with prevailing platform policies against "misinformation" circa-2020. In contrast, the Great Barrington Declaration was targeted indirectly through platform actions against its proponents and related content:

Stanford Professor of Medicine, Dr Jay Bhattacharya’s Twitter account was revealed (via the 2022 Twitter Files) to have been blacklisted, reducing its visibility. His tweets questioning lockdown efficacy and vaccine mandates were subject to algorithmic suppression. Algorithms could flag his offending content with terms like “Visibility Filtering” (VF) or “Do Not Amplify”, reducing its visibility. For instance, Bhattacharya reported that his tweets about the Declaration and seroprevalence studies (showing wider COVID-19 spread than official numbers suggested) were throttled. Journalist Matt Taibbi's reporting on the "Twitter Files" leaks confirmed that Twitter had blacklisted Prof Bhattacharya's account, limiting its reach due to his contrarian stance. YouTube also removed videos in which he featured, such as interviews in which he criticised lockdown policies.

The epidemiologist and biostatistician, Prof Kulldorff observed that social media censorship stifled opportunities for scientific debate. He experienced direct censorship on multiple platforms, which included shadowbans. Twitter temporarily suspended his account in 2021 for tweeting that not everyone needed the COVID-19 vaccine ('Those with prior natural infection do not need it. Nor children'). Posts on X and web reports indicate Kulldorff was shadowbanned beyond this month-long suspension. The Twitter Files, released in 2022, revealed he was blacklisted, meaning his tweets’ visibility was algorithmically reduced. Twitter suppressed Kulldorff's accurate genetic vaccine critique, preventing comments and likes. Internal Twitter flags like “Trends Blacklisted” or “Search Blacklisted” (leaked during the 2020 Twitter hack) suggest Kulldorff's account was throttled in searches and trends, a hallmark of shadowbanning where reach is curtailed without notification. Algorithmic deamplification excluded Prof Kulldorff's tweets from being seen under trends, search results, or followers’ feeds- except where users sought his profile directly. This reflects how social media companies may apply visibility filters (such as a Not Safe For Work (NSFW) view). Kulldorff also flagged that LinkedIn’s censorship pushed him to platforms like Gab, implying a chilling effect on his professional network presence.

An Oxford University epidemiologist, Professor Gupta faced less overt account-level censorship, but still had to negotiate content suppression. Her interviews and posts on Twitter advocating for herd immunity via natural infection amongst the young and healthy were often flagged, or down-ranked.

#6 Penalising accounts that share COVID-19 "misinformation"

In addition to ghostbanning, social media platforms could target accounts for sharing content on COVID-19 that contradicted guidance from the Global Private Partnership (GP3)'s macro-level stakeholders, such as the Centre for Disease Control or the World Health Organisation. In Twitter's case, it introduced a specific COVID-19 misinformation policy in March, 2020, which prohibited claims about transmission, treatments, vaccines, or public health measures that the COVID-19 hegemony deemed “false or misleading.” Such content either had warning labels added to it, or was automatically deleted:

Tweets with suspected MDM were tagged with warnings like “This claim about COVID-19 is disputed” or with labels linking to curated "fact-checks" on G3P health authority pages. This was intended to reduce a tweet’s credibility without immediate removal, whilst also diminishing its poster's integrity.

Tweets that broke this policy were deleted outright after flagging by automated systems or human moderators. For instance, Alex Berenson’s tweets questioning lockdown efficacy were removed, contributing to his eventual ban in August 2021. In Dr Christine Cotton's case, Twitter classified her account as “sensitive content”. It gradually lost visibility with the tens of thousands of followers it had attracted. In response, she created a new account to begin ‘from scratch’ in August 2022. The Twitter Files revealed that such censorship was linked to United States government requests (notably from the Joe Biden administration and Federal Bureau of Investigations). For example, 250,000 tweets flagged by Stanford’s Virality Project in 2021 were removed by Twitter.

In March 2020, Meta expanded its misinformation policies to target COVID-19-related MDM. Facebook and Instagram applied content labelling and down-ranking, with posts allegedly featuring MDM being labeled with warnings (such as 'False Information' or 'See why health experts say this is wrong') that linked to official sources. Such posts were also down-ranked in the News Feed to reduce their visibility. Users were notified of violations and warned that continued sharing could further limit reach or lead to harsher action. In late 2021, down-ranking also became applied to “vaccine-skeptical” content not explicitly violating rules but potentially discouraging vaccination. Posts violating policies were removed outright.

With LinkedIn's smaller, professional user base, and the platform's lower emphasis on real-time virality, led it to prefer the outright removal of accounts over throttling via shadow-bans. Accounts identified as posting MDM could face temporary limits, such as restricted posting privileges or inability to share articles for a set period. LinkedIn users received warnings after a violation, often with a chance to delete the offending post themselves to avoid further action. Such notices cited the policy breach, linking to LinkedIn’s stance on official health sources. This approach to COVID-19 MDM followed LinkedIn’s broader moderation tactics for policy violations.

In Dr Cotton's case, she shared her Pfizer COVID-19 clinical trial's critique on LinkedIn to get feedback from her professional network of former contacts in the pharmaceutical industry. This first post was removed within 24 hours (p.142), and her second within an hour. This hampered her ability to have a debate on the methodology of Pfizer's trial with competent people. Prof Kulldorff also had two posts deleted in August 2021: one linking to an interview on vaccine mandate risks and another reposting Icelandic health official comments on herd immunity.

Accounts that posted contents with links to external, alternate, independent media (such as Substack articles or videos on Rumble) also saw such posts down-ranked, hidden or automatically removed.

This is the first post on techniques for suppressing health experts' social media accounts (and the second on COVID-19 censorship in the Fifth Estate). My next in the series will address more extreme measures against COVID-19 dissidents, with salient examples.

Please follow this blog or me on social media to be alerted of the next post. If you'd like to comment, please share your views below, ta.

Saturday, 15 April 2023

Use the Shushmoji app to learn anti chat harassment tactics and end anti-social conversations with WhatsApp chat stickers

Written for people wanting to learn strategies for ending chat harassment in WhatsApp and use chat stickers for this.

Apple users can now feed their trolls with Shushmoji chat stickers in WhatsApp using the free Shushmoji app at https://apps.apple.com/us/app/shushmoji/id1639680705. The app works on Mac, iPhone, iPad and iPods with an M1 chip (or later) and running Mac OS.11 (or later).

The Shushmoji app's sticker packs cover garden-variety trolls, academic bullies, silly asses, pesky sinners and torturous types. Check out two examples of their use below {or there's five here, thirty examples here or via Pinterest !} Download the app to use its free set with 30 stickers; premium sets are available for in-app purchase.

Create With Cape Town's Shushmoji app is also available for Android users at https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.createwith.shushmoji&hl=en&gl=US. It's compatible with Android phones and tablets.

Stop silly troll! chat sticker example	Stop sinner! chat sticker example

The Shushmoji app also offers twenty anti-chat harassment tactics cards. These fall under four strategies for stopping trolls: ignore, report, respond and prevent. Install the app to scroll through all twenty cards on your phone or tablet.

Ignore strategy index card	Ignore tactic card

Why develop a Shushmoji app?

In the first place, there are few end-of-conversation chat sticker designs. Secondly, there also seemed a need for an anti-chat harassment cyber toolkit that targets of cyberbullying could quickly access for tactics. Hopefully knowledge of these can helps expand cyberbullying recipients' understanding of what else is possible than simply being silent and enduring harassment!

Being silent echoes the conventional advice, Do Not Feed the Trolls (DNFTT). It reflects how there are many downsides to communicating with harassers, since they are likely to be mentally unstable (Barnes, 2018). Online trolls score low in the Big Five Personality scores of agreeability and conscientiousness, but score high in Dark Tetrad traits of- narcissism, Machiavellianism, sub-clinical psychopathy and/or everyday sadism. Attempting rational engagement with perpetrators of cyber harassment is likely to provoke retaliatory attacks in excess of the original abuse. This may be further escalated via circling cyber vultures and mobs. Such amplification is common to unmoderated platforms where destructive, hostile and bigoted behaviour is rewarded with likes and re-shares.

While the responsibility for harassment should lie with its perpetrators, society often blames the victims for “putting themselves out there” (Citron, 2014). This reflects a slow-changing social reality in which support for targets of cyber harassment grows at a glacial pace; whether in institutional and organisational culture and policies, or in law and its enforcement. Individuals who fight back against cyber harassment must take a risky gamble in weighing up this battle's pros and cons. For many, the potential benefits of nudging discussion towards norms of respect, whilst repairing any reputational damage, seem unlikely to outweigh the severe downsides of escalating cyber-harassment.

Create With Cape Town's end-of-conversation stickers were designed to support targets' ability to disengage from cyberbullies. Unlike the DNFTT tactic, it does not mute their voice and right-of-reply.
These chat stickers can help end chats-gone-bad, whilst showing trolls and their audiences what one thinks of their behaviour.

Support using the Shushmoji app

Helpful FAQs on using the Shushmoji app are available at https://www.createwith.net/shushmoji-app-faqs/: These cover general users at http://bit.ly/3RfrAIG, Android users at http://bit.ly/3Hlt2VB and Apple users at http://bit.ly/3Y5akZ5.

Shushmoji app credits

Two intern teams from Younglings Africa coded the Shushmoji app in 2020 and 2021: Led by Russel Magaya, 2020’s Android development team comprised Diego Mizero, Shane Abrahams, Ethan Jansen and Johan van der Merwe.

In 2021 the development team focused on Apple and Android versions. It was led by Joshua Schell with Lindani Masinga and consisted of Zaakirah Abrams, Arthur Butler, Rayaan Karlie and Zainab Hartley.

Younglings Developer Solutions' Michael Pretorius completed the Android development in 2022 and the Apple roll-out in early 2023.

Shushmoji feedback

We trust you enjoy using the Shushmoji app. Any comments, concerns or suggestions on the #Shushmoji app, can be shared with me via Create with Cape Town’s email form at https://www.createwith.net/contact/. Do be patient for a reply- it may take one full working week for non-urgent correspondence.

Alternately, hashtag #Shushmoji and #CreateWithCapeTown and give a shout-out to our Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn or Twitter accounts. Cheers!

Friday, 26 August 2022

Want emoji stickers to end #WhatsApp chats with #cyberbullies? The #Shushmoji app on #Android is here!

Written for emoji sticker fans and recipients of harassment via WhatsApp.

The Shushmoji app for WhatsApp on Android is now available via Google Play. This app was developed as an easy method of using Shushmojis as end-of-conversation points versus cyberbullies. As the Shushmoji ® name suggests, the app's emoji stickers are intended to silence irritating noise, just like a 'shush!’ silencing noisy brats.

Check out examples for Shushmoji use in WhatsApp on Pinterest or createwith.net.

The app was initially developed for Create With by interns at Younglings Africa. Michael Pretorius at Younglings Development Studio (YDS) completed the app for the Google Play Store's vetting. An Android version was developed first, since Younglings Africa had experience developing for it. It's also the easiest to develop and secure approval for. {P.S. Mac fans, YDS is working on an Apple iOS version for release in the fourth quarter}.

As this Slideshare presentation explains, my research into online academic bullying and strategies for countering cyber-harassment inspired both the Shushmoji ® concept and its apps. I maintain a Google research spreadsheet (http://bit.ly/2D8qv0k) that shares many strategies against cyber-harassment, plus links to salient online resources. One strategy is for a recipient of cyber-harassment to use emoji stickers for flagging the end-point of a low-value/anti-social conversation. However, high-quality designs that address a wide range of cyber-harassment activities seem to be M.I.A!

The Shushmoji emoji sticker sets were developed in response to this visual aesthetic communication gap. In the app, 30 stickers are available to use for free. Users may purchase sticker sets for the themes they like.

There are currently five sets to buy:

Stop, silly troll! was designed by Janine Venter to poke fun at all-too-common types of cyber-harassment.

Stop, sinner! was also drawn by Janine to flag many naughty (and not nice!) behaviours.

Stop, academic bully! was illustrated by Marlon Albertyn to spotlight the different kinds of academic bullies one can meet in the Ivory Tower.

Stop, silly ass! was drawn by Dominique Whelan, who loves drawing donkeys and worked on the set for "a(ss) laugh". These stickers flag a**holes with silly ass emoji stickers speaking to their asinine behaviours.

Stop, torturer! was illustrated by Studio Dolby and spotlights torturous "conversationalists".

An educational rationale also exists where Shushmojis can illustrate the particular dodgy roles and/or anti-social strategies that cyber harassers follow. For those interested in sampling these stickers, the vector designs for each set are for sale via: Silly Troll, Academic bully, Silly Ass, Sinner and Torturer.

New Shushmoji sets are planned (such as Stop, Dumb Bot!) to close visual gaps for different roles and types of harassment (vs. doxxers and bot farm orchestrators). Hopefully, each set will prove useful for those wanting to express disinterest in continuing chats with cyberbullies. WhatsApp stickers should prove useful to flag this and a perp’s particular style of harassment. Of course, the stickers may also be used to poke fun at tactless friends and colleagues…

Please download the app, use it and let the world know of your good experience via a Google Play Store app review.

N.B. For updates on the Shushmoji ® app versions, you can follow Create With on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter or LinkedIn, ta.

P.S. Several app iterations were trialed by Younglings Africa before the app's approval. Zaakirah Abrams led the most recent testing- her 2022 Shushmoji app report is here.

Saturday, 23 April 2022

Eight conceptual challenges in developing the 'online academic bullying' framework

Written for scholars interested in understanding online harassment from academic cyberbullies, plus the development of the online academic bullying routine activity theory (OABRAT) framework

In developing our 'Distinguishing online academic bullying' article, Prof Tim Noakes and I trimmed the manuscript several times. Reworking some of these cuts in this post may offer value through addressing the methodological challenges we encountered in proposing our article's OABRAT framework. Seven conceptual challenges were overcome its development, while an eighth was encountered post-publication:

1 NEW FORMS OF POWER IMBALANCE

2 BEYOND TROLLS: ACADEMIC CYBERBULLIES AS DECEIVERS, FLAMERS, ETC.

3 CYBER HARASSMENT AS SCIENTIFIC SUPPRESSION VERSUS "HERESY"

4 FOREGROUNDING THE VICTIM’S PERSPECTIVE

5 ACADEMIC CYBERMOBBING, SEPARATE FROM AN ACADEMIC MOB

6 GUARDIANS AGAINST VICTIMS OF ACADEMIC CYBERBULLYING

7 ACADEMIC BULLIES MAY TARGET OUTSIDERS FROM ANYWHERE

8 A COMPLEX FORM FOR AN EXTREME CASE

1 NEW FORMS OF POWER IMBALANCE

Conventional definitions of cyber-bullying suggest a power imbalance in which one aggressor is more powerful than his or her victim (Englander, Donnerstein, Kowalski, Lin, & Parti, 2017). By contrast, an established academic may be easily be targeted by individuals of varied statuses; who can mount frequent attacks as part of cybermobs. OAB differs from the conventional definition of cyberbullying in that there need not be a one-to-one power-imbalance in favour of the bully. It can include varied power relationships between a victim and his or her attackers: a standard power-imbalance may exist in the victim being on a lower rung of an academic cultural hierarchy within a particular field than the bullies (e.g. Cardiology has greater prestige than Sports Medicine in the medical field). However, a senior scholar may still be the subject of collegial mobbing (Davenport, Elliot and Schwartz, 1999). For example, the Emeritus Professor was attacked online by junior academics and non-scholars, from within his field and from other disciplines (see Figure 1 for his university).

Faculties and departments in which employees persistently criticized the Emeritus Professor on social media

Figure 1. Faculties and departments in which employees persistently criticised the Emeritus Professor on social media (Travis Noakes, 2020)

Attacking a scientific dissident as a pre-defined target seemed to provide attackers with an instant form of credibility- they did not have to prove their symbolic credentials to gain visibility. Few of the professor's blogging critics were Health Science scholars. Despite making no scholarly contribution to the debate, some academic cyberbullies seemed to achieve visibility as opinion "leaders" online. This shows how micro-celebrity hijacking can apply for Higher Education (HE) employees. Academic bloggers criticise public intellectuals for "wrongthink" thereby gaining attentional capital- blogged critiques by "independent" critical thinkers can convert into appearances on broadcast media.

Power imbalances may also result from other differences in a victim’s status versus his or her attackers. These can span inequalities in capital (Bourdieu, 1986), notably social and cultural capital- a scholar who defends an unorthodox position is at a disadvantage in terms of her social capital. She will struggle to draw support against unfair criticism by organic groups of academic cyberbullies.

Another dimension of power imbalance may lie in technical cultural capital- an OAB recipient who has less knowledge of the digital platform(s) on which she is being attacked may be at a serious disadvantage. For example, cyberbullies can use advantages in their ‘digital dimensions’ (Paino & Renzulli, 2013) of cultural capital for gaining greater visibility. They can leverage a myriad of online presences for amplifying their attacks, whilst leveraging multiple chains of digital publication that are difficult for a victim to reply to.

This suggests another imbalance whereby OAB recipients will struggle to defend themselves against asymmetrical cyber-critiques. It may be exhausting to respond to frequent criticisms, across a myriad of digital platforms and conflicting timezones.

2 BEYOND TROLLS: ACADEMIC CYBERBULLIES AS DECEIVERS, FLAMERS, ETC.

Definitions of cyberbullying are in themselves broad, since they may also cover electronic bullying and internet harassment (Berne et al., 2013). Likewise, classifications for academic cyberbullies’ roles and behaviours must be wide-ranging to address how bullies can readily draw on many repertoires for anti-social communication. A highly agentive cyberbully could draw on practices that meet several characteristics- the mocking "jokes" of a malevolent troll, the swearing attacks of a 'flamer' and a 'deceiver''s misrepresentations in their self-presentation (e.g. a self-proclaimed "philosophe(r)"/"scholar" without a PhD). We chose not make sharp distinctions between an academic bully’s and other online deviants' roles and behaviours, since this could actually include areas that strongly overlap. At the same time, we were mindful that defining OAB as a particular form of harassment by HE employees was important to ensure OAB does not become a catchall. There is a danger that definitions of harassment that are generalised can be misused in bad faith to apply to mere criticisms or mildly unpleasant language (Jeong, 2018).

A flexible OAB framework for academic cyberbullies also had to be future-proof in accommodating new methods. While there are many characteristic behaviours that mark cyberbullying, the denigration of a scholar’s symbolic capital via scholarly publications that tie-in with weaponised micro-celebrity is another unique layer that other forms of cyberbullying lack. Weaponised micro-celebrity considers how highly prolific micro-celebrities, whose content has the potential to polarise public opinion, are hijacked for attention by traditional media through disproportionate and sensationalist coverage. Their viral persona, fame and content becomes reappropriated as place-holders for various causes by broadcast media (Abidin and Brown, 2018). This resonates with the examples of unscrupulous advertisers who illegally use micro-celebrities' profiles and made-up quotes in fake campaigns that market non-existent products. Such as the Emeritus Professor's image and name being hijacked to market "products" by "Keto Extreme" (2022) and "Ketovatru” (2021) (The Noakes Foundation, 2022).

3 SCIENTIFIC SUPPRESSION VERSUS BIO-MEDICAL HERESY "JUSTIFIES" HARASSMENT

Another conceptual challenge lay in framing how academic cyberbullies' hyper-agentive practices could potentially threaten academic free speech and scientific innovation. Both are threatened where a powerful grouping lays claim to a monopoly on scientific truth. It will follow a win-or-lose competitive approach in defending its belief system as the dominant set of ideas (Martin, 2004). The term ‘heresy’ remains useful for describing ideological challenges that threaten the values of a dominant orthodoxy, such as biomedicine. In the Emeritus Professor's case, the supporters of the dominant “cholesterol” model of chronic disease development (CMCDD) can view a rival scientific model, such as the Insulin Resistance Model of Chronic Ill Health (IRMCIH) paradigm, as a heretical field. The beliefs of health experts who promote IRMCIH are viewed as heretical because they threaten the current health care model for the treatment of many chronic diseases. Dissidents question past research findings and the resulting interventions prescribed for treating most patients with chronic diseases.

When a challenger to orthodoxy begins to attract attention from patients, the general public and the press, then those in power will take active steps to protect the reigning paradigms (Martin, 2004). Adherents to the dominant ideology will view such individuals' questioning of the central values of their CMCDD orthodoxy as performing heresy. Heresy is created by the response of the orthodoxy when its views' delineate attacks as beyond the pale (Wolpe, 1994). Defenders of CMCDD might justify their harassment in believing that only high carbohydrate/low fat diets are “healthy”. Followers of this belief have argued that pursuing any other ideas or approaches constitute a "threat to public health". Following this rationale, such critics may argue for censorship of dissidents' "dangerous" work and to limit digital publics' exposure to state-of-the-art IRMCIH science news.

In highly-polarised debates, HE employees can develop social capital for themselves, and 'negative social capital' for opponents, by using digital platforms to confront heretics, apostates, rebels and dissenters. Negative social capital (Wacquant, 1998) is the engineered dislike and distrust of a person or group by other people and groups. This capital is the antithesis of social capital as it results in its wilful destruction. The examples of cyberbullies creates a chilling effect whereby witnesses of harassment will be reluctant to engage with the proponents of heresy. Their future vocational trajectories may be at risk when grouped with heretical "outsiders".

Defenders of the status-quo enjoy visibility as part of dominant networks and can readily spotlight “heretics” for criticism via formal and informal channels, such as social media. Recipients must negotiate rapidly-spreading disinformation, defamation, misrepresentation-of-argument and even character assassination HE employees involved in such adverse actions typically explain their actions as being justified in maintaining 'academic standards'' (Martin, 2020). However, such actions are detrimental in silencing dissenters' and whistleblowers' free speech, thereby stifling scientific debate and potential innovations.

4 FOREGROUNDING THE VICTIM’S PERSPECTIVE

The perspective of the victim is frequently neglected in research into online hostility (Jane, 2015). Our initial drafts of the manuscript focused on different styles of attack from academic cyberbullies. Subsequent drafts shifted to developing a unique, decade-long, pilot study for a cyberbullying recipient's case. We hoped his experiences of novel forms of OAB harassment might resonate with other recipients. Since we could not find any similar lengthy example of a scholar's online victimisation, we trusted his case would be informative for cyberbullying researchers, plus anti-bullying policy decision makers in HE.

5 ACADEMIC CYBERMOBBING- SEPARATE FROM AN ACADEMIC MOB

The Emeritus Professor's case study was closely linked to a formal mobbing at his former academic institutional employer. In the initial manuscript, we foregrounded this strong overlap: His employer's neglect of rules and policies against harassment by its employees provides a fertile space for harassment (Benatar, 2021). Senior leaders followed a dominating conflict culture (DCC) approach (Desrayaud et al., 2018) in protecting the Faculty of Health Science's (FHS) CMCDD orthodoxy from criticism. Although DCC actively encourages discourse about incompatible goals and ideas, DCC does not acknowledge the validity of opposing views. In a toxic DCC workplace, dissent is ignored and support for dissenters is withheld. Explicit bullying is seen as an acceptable response to intellectual differences and overt mobbing is also condoned. In this respect, attacks on the Emeritus Professor were similar to the bullying of other senior scholars that university leadership clearly tolerated (Benatar, 2017; Coovadia, 2015; Crowe, 2017; Crowe, 2019; McCain, 2020; Plaut, 2020; Soudien, 2015; Steer, 2019; Vernac News, 2019). In 2019, his employer's institution acknowledged that bullying was a major concern amongst staff (Feris, 2019), but has yet to recognise the importance of addressing DCC in its FHS. One positive recent development is that an anti-bullying policy was passed (2021). Albeit, a very late response to its former Ombudsman's recommendation from 2012 (Makamandela-Mguqulwa, 2020).

In university workplaces, bullies can use a justification of “academic freedom” to condone actions that would be unacceptable in other workplaces (Driver, 2018). For example, an academic lecturer (who is neither a scholar nor a scientist) published thirty blog posts that criticised the Emeritus Professor's popularisation of LCHF science. Although by no means an academic peer, this junior lecturer might justify such fervent criticism of a fellow employee at the same university as a necessary part of academic freedom in an institute of higher learning. Nevertheless, such obsessive behaviour from a low-ranking, under-qualified employee seems unlikely to be acceptable at any other place of employment.

In collating the varied forms of harassment from "academic colleagues", it was unsurprising that we initially considered a recipient's OAB as being inseparable from an experience of academic mobbing in the HE context. However, the manuscript's reviewers flagged that it could be separate- especially for targets outside HE. In response, we designed the OABRAT framework to accommodate a separate phenomenon.

Such separation also addressed concerns that the private, departmental ostracisation of ‘academic mobbing’ in HE (Seguin, 2016. Khoo, 2010) is a very different negative phenomenon from the public attacks that academic cyberbullies launch. Unlike the largely concealed backstabbing of an academic mob, academic cyberbullies criticisms are public. OAB recipients can readily spot critics and their networks in digital criticisms, such as group petitions. Like others cybermobbers, public attacks fall within a spectrum that can include: i. drive-by harassment, ii. low-level mobbing, iii. sustained hounding and iv. sustained orchestration (Jeong, 2018). Professor Noakes and I are working on a manuscript that explores this spectrum for defining an ‘academic cybermobbing’'s particular characteristics.

6 GUARDIANS AGAINST VICTIMS OF ACADEMIC BULLYING

In addition to considering academic cyberbullies practices and their recipients experiences, it is also vital to address the role of guardians. RAT supports addressing the activities of both the targets of crime, plus their guardians. In academic cyberbullying, it is important to consider how the online activities of a victim could be placing him or her at added risk. It is also worthwhile considering how the lack of action from guardians of civility, whether they be at the scholar’s academic institution or moderators for social media platforms, has an impact. Prevention would seem better than cure for the negative phenomenon of persistent cyber harassment. In OAB, this emerges when a large quantum of criticism from academic cyberbullies creates an easily searchable footprint.

Policies protecting employees at HE institutes from workplace persecution have largely focused on sexual and racial harassment. The danger exists that other forms of persecution may be neglected as seeming relatively unimportant by comparison (Citron, 2007). For example, aggressive behaviours in the workplace may be considered acceptable by default (Rayner, Hoel, & Cooper, 2002). Informal expectations and norms can increase the sense of a lack of accountability online and boost the likelihood of deviant behaviours. Without deterrents or any consequences for academic cyberbullying, bullies may believe that they will not be held accountable for their actions. Worse, hegemonic leadership may actually reward those whose cyberbullying seems to maintain perceptions of consensus. In HE, such rewards are unethical in undermining academic free speech, scientific innovation and motivating academic cyberbullying.

Dubious research and related fake news may be amplified online with impunity where university employers are unwilling to confront their source(s) and defend their scholarly recipients. Even where HE leaders uncover such falsehoods, they may have little enthusiasm for organising retraction or the censure of those who create and spread them. A HE leadership that models being bystanders in the face of cyber harassment from its own employees, would be hypocritical to expect staff to respond as upstanders against OAB.

7 ACADEMIC BULLIES MAY TARGET OUTSIDERS FROM ANYWHERE

In conceptualising OAB, we came to argue that the victims of academic cyberbullies need not be HE employees. Feedback from IRMCIH proponents in varied health professions, plus LCHF entrepreneurs, confirmed attacks from cyberbullies in HE. While our literature review produced many examples of dissenting scientists and academic whistleblowers being confronted academic mobs, there is a gap concerning cases for bullying victims outside HE. This is another area that The Noakes Foundation's Academic Free Speech and Digital Voices (AFSDV) project can address for the IRMCIH scientific issue arena.

After Professor Noakes and I submitted the article for publication, we identified another concern to explore under the AFSDV theme:

8 A COMPLEX FORM FOR AN EXTREME CASE

Our article shared a reporting instrument for OAB recipients. We hoped that targets of academic cyberbullies could use the Google form at https://bit.ly/3pnyE6w for developing reports on their experiences of cyber harassment. However, based on some OAB recipients' feedback, we must prepare a simplified version of the form. The questionnaire speaks to all aspects of cyber harassment the Emeritus Professor experienced by over a ten year period. So while his outlier experience informed the development of a comprehensive and wide-ranging questionnaire, there is considerable scope to shorten it and simplify its questions via new AFSDV research.

GRAPHIC CREDITS

Stop, academic bully! shushmoji™ graphics courtesy of Create With Cape Town.

Wednesday, 24 November 2021

Shushmoji app briefing presentation to Younglings' interns and mobile dev leadership

Written for interns at Younglings who expressed an interest in working on the Shushmoji app for Android and Apple

I recently presented on the background to Create With's Shushmoji app to Younglings. Its interns will be working to complete an Android version this year and an Apple version for launch in 2022.

Shushmoji app for Younglings developers 2021 from Travis Noakes

The hyperlinks from the presentation are shared below for ease-of-access:

SLIDE 3

Travis Noakes' research at www.travisnoakes.co.za/p/researcher.html
Create With at createwith.net/

SLIDE 4

Anti-trolling graphics to end abusive conversations at samultimodality.wordpress.com/2018/11/26/anti-trolling-graphics-to-end-abusive-conversations-how-to-whack-a-troll/

Online academic bullying project at researchgate.net/project/Online-academic-bullying

SLIDE 5

The Noakes Foundation Lab for Low Carb Nutrition Research at researchgate.net/lab/The-Noakes-Foundation-Lab-for-Low-Carb-Nutrition-Research-Timothy-D-Noakes

SLIDE 6

Younglings’ Social Media and Internet Lab for Research (SMILR)

linkedin.com/posts/younglingsafrica_empowering-software-development-interns-activity-6844615195738816512-Kj_u