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To Western audiences, Russias invasion of Ukraine has unfolded as a series of brutal attacks punctuated by strategic blunders. But on Russian television, those same events were spun as positive developments, an interpretation aided by a rapid jumble of opinion and falsehoods.

Much of Russian news media is tightly controlled by the Kremlin, with state-run television working as a mouthpiece for the government. Critical reporting about the war has been criminalized.

Russian televisions convoluted and sometimes contradictory narratives about the war are not solely intended to convince viewers that their version of events is true, disinformation experts say. Just as often, the goal is to confuse viewers and sow distrust so audiences are not sure what to believe.

The New York Times reviewed more than 50 hours of television footage to show how the war was being presented to Russians through the countrys news media.

Russia faced a significant loss when its flagship missile cruiser, the Moskva, sank after being damaged in mid-April. Ukrainian officials said the ship was struck with two Neptune anti-ship missiles. The New York Times reported this week that the United States provided intelligence that helped Ukraine locate and strike the ship. Independent Russian news media based outside the country reported that about 40 men died and an additional 100 were injured.

Moskva, a Russian missile cruiser, moored in a Ukrainian port in the Black Sea in 2013. Reuters

On Russian state-controlled media, though, news programs downplayed Ukraines strategic attack with a narrative that has shifted over time.

At first, Russias Defense Ministry said the ship was damaged after a fire on board had detonated ammunition. The ship was being towed back to shore and the crew was safely evacuated, the report continued.

Russian media later reported that the ship had sunk while being towed during a storm. A segment also showed a lineup of healthy Russian sailors, describing them as the Moskvas crew, alive and well.

Ship described as sinking in a storm.

Russian sailors, reportedly from the Moskva.

For the Kremlin, the loss adds to its growing challenges in conveying a positive impression of the war at home. While Russian news media has repeatedly dismissed or downplayed Ukrainian civilian casualties, Russias own casualties and the grieving families left in their wake are harder for the Kremlin to ignore.

Russia acknowledged the overall death toll for the first time in March, making clear to Russian viewers that the war would involve domestic losses as well. But even those reports underestimated the Russian casualties, according to U.S. experts. Though it is difficult to get exact casualty figures during a war, Western intelligence agencies estimate Russian military losses could be as high as 10,000 killed and 30,000 wounded.

As Russian forces retreated from the region surrounding Kyiv, graphic images circulated showing bodies of dead civilians lying in the streets. In Bucha, a suburb of Kyiv, some civilians were found with their hands bound or with gunshot wounds to the head. The images prompted renewed calls for war crime charges against Russia.

Tatiana Petrovna, 72, mourned in the garden where three civilian bodies lay. Daniel Berehulak for The New York Times

On Russian television, the discovery was cast instead as a hoax, with television presenters analyzing images and video for signs of fakery.

In one clip, Russian journalists noted that clothing on some dead civilians was too clean to have been in the streets for days, implying they could not have been killed during Russias occupation. A statement from the Ministry of Defense, aired on the nightly newscast Vremya, said the bodies lacked signs of decay and that blood in their wounds had not coagulated.

All that is irrefutable evidence that the photos and videos from Bucha are yet another staging by the Kyiv regime for the benefit of Western mass media, the ministrys statement said.

Unblurred photographs run by Western media outlets, however, showed the bodies had clear signs of decay.

Another news report indicated that footage from Bucha showed some of the bodies moving, which was cited as proof the dead bodies were staged. One clip showed a body in a rearview mirror that appeared to move after the car drove by. But several photographs taken on the ground by Western photographers showed bodies in the area had clear signs of decomposition. The impression of movement appeared to be caused by distortion in the mirror, which was also seen affecting the buildings surrounding the body.

A Russian television report claimed the body seen in the rearview mirror on the right-hand side was moving.

The claim that the bodies in the streets were part of a staging collided later with an entirely different narrative pushed on Russian television: that the civilians were indeed killed, but that it was Ukrainian troops who had killed them.

To make that case, the Russian state-run station Channel 1 presented a convoluted alternate timeline, selecting footage to support the claim that no one was killed until days after Russian troops fled the region.

March 30

March 31

April 1

March 31 to April 2

April 2

Disinformation researchers say scattershot narratives like this can overwhelm viewers, sowing doubts even if audiences arent persuaded by any specific claim.

Russia drew international condemnation after a maternity hospital was bombed in the southern port city of Mariupol. Images of injured pregnant women, carried across charred hospital grounds or ushered down battered staircases, made clear to Western audiences the civilian cost of war.

Marianna Vyshemirskaya walked downstairs in a maternity hospital damaged by shelling in Mariupol. Evgeniy Maloletka/AP Photo

In Russia, though, the attack was dismissed as a hoax.

In a flurry of claims over several days, Russian television dissected footage and raised numerous doubts about the Western account, often using the same imagery seen in the West to advance very different accounts of what happened.

Images of two women in particular were widely circulated in Western media. One, an influencer named Marianna Vyshemirskaya, survived the attack and later gave birth to a girl. Another woman, who has not been identified, was photographed on a stretcher and was later reported by The Associated Press to have died. In one segment, Russian journalists claimed the two were the same woman. Ms. Vyshemirskaya later denied being the woman seen on the stretcher.

In another segment aired on Russian television, victims being carried away from the hospital were described as soldiers from Ukraines far-right Azov Battalion, a unit of the Ukrainian National Guard with ties to the countrys neo-Nazi movement. But images captured by Western journalists showed the victims were women, with some wearing khaki-colored clothing that vaguely resembled troop uniforms.

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Ms. Vyshemirskaya later gave an interview to Denis Seleznev, a Ukrainian blogger who backs the separatist movement in Ukraines eastern Donbas region. The portions that aired on Russian television focused not on her injuries but on the Azov Battalion, with claims that the military group occupied the hospital before the strike took place.

There was no evidence reported by Western journalists on the scene that Azov was using the building as a base, and an April report by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe classified the attack on the hospital as a war crime.

In airing Ms. Vyshemirskayas interview, alongside a video she posted to Instagram, Russian news media focused on her description of Azov soldiers, casting them as belligerent occupiers who demanded food.

They said they havent eaten for five days, she said. They took our food away and said, You can cook more.

An interview with Ms. Vyshemirskaya aired on Russian television.

The Kremlin and Russian media have frequently focused on Ukraines neo-Nazi movement as justification for the invasion. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia said that one of his central aims was the denazification of Ukraine.

Though the Azov Battalion was founded in 2014 out of Ukraines ultranationalist and neo-Nazi groups, experts say the group has quelled much of its extremist side under pressure from authorities. The neo-Nazi movement is not a significant force in Ukraine, according to experts who track the far right, who point to Ukraines election of President Volodymyr Zelensky, who is Jewish, as evidence.

Russian forces advanced on Europes largest nuclear power plant in early March. A skirmish with Ukrainian forces ended with a fire on the compound, which Mr. Zelensky warned could result in the end of Europe. The fire was later extinguished, but Ukrainian officials accused Russia of nuclear terrorism.

Surveillance camera footage captured the attack near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. Zaporizhzhya Npp/Zaporizhzhya Npp Via Reuters

But Russian audiences were told another story: that Ukrainian soldiers had attacked the facility, setting fire to the building before fleeing. Russian forces were described as defending the facility from Ukrainian saboteurs, according to a government statement repeated in state media.

A Russian television report says that Russian soldiers were defending the power plant from Ukrainian small arms fire.

In footage released weeks later, the power plant was shown functioning normally, with drone shots showing workers arriving at a spotless facility and passing through security checkpoints in an orderly fashion.

While the special military operation is underway, the nuclear power plant hasnt stopped working for a second, said Aleksey Ivanov, a reporter for Vremya, the Channel 1 evening news broadcast. And now it has even grown in strength.

Mr. Ivanov also said that Russian guards do not interfere with the work of the plant.

A soldier interviewed at the facility said that employees of this plant show a certain amount of respect and that workers maintain order and discipline in their work.

The idea that Ukraine is faring better under Russian control continues to be a frequent claim on state television, bolstering the dubious argument advanced by Mr. Putin that Russian troops were sent in to protect Ukrainian citizens.

A Russian state news report describes the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which was recently captured by Russian soldiers, as functioning normally.

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The War in Ukraine, as Seen on Russian TV - The New York Times

By Patrick KurpSpecial to the Rice News

Daniel Preston, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Rice University, is the latest of eight young researchers in the George R. Brown School of Engineering to receive a National Science Foundation CAREER Award, making 2022 a record-setting year for the honor.

In all, 12 Rice faculty members have won the prestigious award so far this calendar year.

The director of the Preston Innovation Laboratory was awarded a five-year, $600,000 grant for his proposal, Textile-Based Wearable Robots with Integrated Fluidic Logic. Some 85 million adults in the United States who live with physical functional limitations could potentially benefit from the proposed work.

When theyre incorporated into wearable robots, Preston said, soft fluidic actuators provide assistive, rehabilitative and even superhuman capabilities while having advantages over hard exoskeletons. They are lightweight and safe, and they feel comfortable when worn in close contact with the body.

Soft fluidic actuators pose problems of their own. They rely on bulky, hard components, such as valves and electronic control systems that increase weight and decrease comfort when integrated into wearable robots. They sometimes require cumbersome tethers to external devices, making people with mobility limitations less likely to adopt the technologies.

To address these problems, Preston proposes the development of a platform for completely textile-based, non-electronic computation that can be integrated directly into the structure of wearable robots. This would eliminate the need for rigid control systems and enable soft wearables that look and feel like everyday clothing.

Our first objective is to develop a fundamental understanding of this approach, starting from the circuit level, by designing textile-based fluidic analogs to resistors, capacitors and relays, he said.

Second, Preston proposes using these circuit elements as building blocks for fluidic digital logic, engineered for high performance in terms of speed and other computational metrics. Finally, he aims to integrate textile-based fluidic computers, along with textile-based input/output devices and actuators, directly into the structures of wearable robots.

Preston earned his master of science degree and Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2014 and 2017, respectively, followed by two years of postdoctoral research at Harvard University. He joined the Rice faculty in 2019.

Laura Schaefer, the Burton J. and Ann M. McMurtry Chair in Engineering, professor of mechanical engineering and department chair, noted that every junior faculty member in her department has won an NSF CAREER Award. In addition to Preston, the recipients are Matthew Brake, Pedram Hassanzadeh and Geoff Wehmeyer, all assistant professors of mechanical engineering.

Patrick Kurp is a science writer for the George R. Brown School of Engineering.

https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2144809&HistoricalAwards=false

https://news-network.rice.edu/news/files/2022/05/0509_DOE-1-web.jpg

Daniel Preston. (Credit: Jeff Fitlow/Rice University)

Preston Innovation Laboratory: https://pi.rice.edu

Department of Mechanical Engineering: https://mech.rice.edu

George R. Brown School of Engineering: https://engineering.rice.edu

Located on a 300-acre forested campus in Houston, Rice University is consistently ranked among the nations top 20 universities by U.S. News & World Report. Rice has highly respected schools of Architecture, Business, Continuing Studies, Engineering, Humanities, Music, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences and is home to the Baker Institute for Public Policy. With 4,052 undergraduates and 3,484 graduate students, Rices undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is just under 6-to-1. Its residential college system builds close-knit communities and lifelong friendships, just one reason why Rice is ranked No. 1 for lots of race/class interaction and No. 1 for quality of life by the Princeton Review. Rice is also rated as a best value among private universities by Kiplingers Personal Finance.

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Daniel Preston wins NSF CAREER Award | Rice News | News and Media Relations | Rice University - Rice News

From sheep herding to pest control, and even crop spraying, drones could play an increasing role in the future.

Workshops have been held in Pukeawa, South Otago, to show farmers some of the options that could help them on the paddock.

Some drones linked with GPS can map challenging terrains, such as paddocks with rocks or dense bush.

Bill Paterson from Aerial Agri Solutionz has been using the technology for around six months.

"It takes a series of photos, depending on how high you send it will determine how many it takes, then all those photos get stitched together and then we use the spray drone to follow the lines that we make of that picture," says Paterson.

He says drones can also be used for both precision spraying and seeding.

"It's got a variable nozzle on it so it's just dropping the spray straight down onto a spinner, and that spinner we can adjust the RPM (rotations per minute) and it'll give us a really accurate droplet size we can go anywhere from rain to really fine mist that you can hardly see."

This precise control helps prevents spray from drifting into waterways, or unintentionally cross-spraying other crop types.

The drone field days were set up by local water care group South Otago River Care (OSRC) with the help of $1.8m in funding from the Ministry of Primary Industries (MPI) over three years as part of its Sustainable Food and Fibre Futures Fund.

OSRC's Rebecca Begg is a big driver of the project.

'We went to out catchment groups and were asking them what innovation would they like to see, and drones kept coming up," says Begg.

She believes it's a vital opportunity for workers to ask questions, get advice, and talk through innovative ideas with others in the sector.

"Farmers love talking to other farmers and that's where they get their good ideas from," she says.

"They love looking to see what's happening over the fence.

"So if we can get the drone technology to be something that's a bit more normal, and a little bit more visible, then I think there'll be a lot more trust in it as an innovation that you can use."

But the technology isn't just for farmers.

The demonstration days saw interested attendees from police search and rescue, regional councils, forestry groups and the Department of Conservation.

Department of Conservation (DOC) threats adviser Keith Briden says drones could be incredibly useful for pest control.

"We're doing quite a bit more work with [wallabies] now, they've been spreading and we want to... make New Zealand wallaby free in the future and we're going to need tools like drones," he says.

"Wallabies are a nocturnal animal, they're very hard to see during the day, they hide in the scrub and pine tussocks."

A solution, he says, is to fit a drone with a thermal camera.

"At night time you can fly it fairly high and spot the wallabies."

He says DOC is even looking at developing drones that can detect wilding pines using artificial intelligence, developing techniques that would be safer and more efficient than traditional practices.

"Some contractors can use a drone to fly an area before they go in and start their work and they can see what the hazards might be."

Organisers hope more regions around the country will hold similar demonstration days, providing more businesses with the opportunities offered by the technology.

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From farming to pest control - drones could change the way we work - 1News

In July 2020, the government announced it would monitor Indias performance of 29 select global indices. A meeting with 47 Central ministries and departments was held to work out how to improve the ranking. Let us see what has happened since.

On the United Nations Human Development Index, we have fallen by one place. This is because of a decline in average income and disinvestment in girls education and health. The United Nations World Happiness Report does not measure happiness. It measures GDP per capita, life expectancy, freedom and perceptions of corruption. India has fallen 19 places here.

On the Global Hunger Index, which measures hunger, stunting in children and undernourishment, India has fallen 46 places and is today behind Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh.

Conservative (meaning right-wing) bodies in the United States have long been monitoring the world from their point of view on freedom. On the Cato Human Freedom Index, India has fallen 44 places because of a decline in rule of law, religious freedom and freedom to trade.

The World Economic Forum (popularly known as Davos) issues the Global Gender Gap Index which monitors progress on gender parity. India has fallen 26 places. The World Bank through its Women, Business and the Law Index monitors womens economic opportunities. India has fallen 13 places.

On the Smart Cities Index which looks at health, safety, mobility, activities and opportunities for citizens, Delhi has fallen 18 places, Bengaluru has fallen 16 places, Hyderabad 18 places and Mumbai 15 places. The Access Now Tracker looks at internet shutdowns around the world. India is by far the global leader here. India had six shutdowns in 2014, 14 in 2015, 31 in 2016, 79 in 2017, 134 in 2018, 121 in 2019 and 109 in 2020.

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A downwardly mobile India on global indices & govts media blitzkrieg - National Herald

In a slightly creaky, book-filled office at Cardiff University, Matthew Williams pulls up a blood-red graph on his computer. At first glance you might think it referred to stock market fortunes, but when I peer closely, the sad truth behind its jagged peaks becomes clear: it traces the amount of anti-Black hate speech recorded on Twitter in the aftermath of last Julys Euro 2020 final, when England lost to Italy in a nail-biting penalty shootout.

After missed penalties from three Black England players, Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka, racist abuse went through the roof, says Williams. Within the hour there was an almost 700% increase in hate directed against those players. Half of the 20,000 toxic tweets came from within the UK; the police made 11 arrests for hate crimes, four of which have resulted in prosecutions.

In some ways this is a textbook example of a hate-filled outburst. There was a trigger event and, for many offenders, lots of alcohol and drugs involved. That the abuse trickled off over the following two days is also typical. But the content of the hate directed against the players was new. Alongside familiar racists slurs there was a deluge of primate emojis. Williams calls this a key shift. Weve never seen emojis used as features of hate speech in that way and volume before.

Williams would know: he is a professor of criminology specialising in hate crimes and, along with computer scientist Pete Burnap, is the co-founder of the HateLab, a platform that monitors hate across social media in real time. They are on the frontline of internet hate, observing shifts in behaviour and figuring out who is stirring the fury. They pass their insights on to civil rights organisations, governments and big tech firms who use it to inform counter-hate-speech campaigns, ban users and pursue prosecutions.

An all-seeing eye for the racist, misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic venom that humans spit at one another from behind keyboards, Williams has advised everyone from Twitter, Meta (formerly Facebook), Google and TikTok to the Professional Footballers Association, the UK Home Office and the US Department of Justice.

The 45-year-old has also just published a book that investigates the biological and sociological reasons why people commit hate crimes. The Science of Hate asks big, urgent questions: is everyone capable of hate? Is this the most hateful the world has ever been? And, perhaps most importantly, how can we combat it?

In recent years, hate has felt omnipresent. It is no coincidence that soaring hate-crime figures are found in countries where the extreme right is rising, writes Williams, adding that divisive messages from public figures are directly linked to tipping some people into violence on the streets. The 2016 election of Donald Trump coincided with the biggest rise in hate crimes in the US since 9/11. And the HateLab found there were 1,100 racist attacks committed in the UK as a direct result of the 2016 Brexit referendum result.

In nations with reasonable hate-crime recording standards, such as the UK, US and much of Europe, the data points to an upward trend, says Williams. The internet has amplified the rage by giving people a 24/7 hotline to spurt poisonous views and egg one another on. A 2021 survey found that half of all 12- to 15-year-olds in the UK had encountered hateful content online. Left unchallenged, he writes, the expression of hate has the potential to become more widespread than at any other point in history.

Yet Williams is no doomster. With neatly combed hair, a gently lilting Welsh accent and an easy laugh, he is a surprisingly cheery character given his line of work. He does, however, want to awaken us to the fact that everyone has prejudices You can say you dont but youre lying and, under the right mix of circumstances, has the potential to slide towards hateful behaviour.

Its a sobering thought in a woke era in which were loath to admit any prejudices. But its intended as a rallying cry. Being mindful of our own prejudices helps us keep them in check and understanding how biases work better equips us to de-fang those who peddle hate, especially online.

To keep my faith in humanity I have to constantly remind myself that the majority are not hateful, says Williams. What I hope for is for more of these good citizens to stand up to hatred when they see it, instead of scrolling or walking on.

Williams, who is gay, knows full well how damaging a hate crime can be. In 1998, when he was 20, he was beaten up by three men after leaving a gay bar in London. Their punches were punctuated by snickering and homophobic slurs. The attack shook him. I couldnt get it out of my head: it filled my thoughts until there was no room for anything else, he says. Even today, he wont hold his husbands hand in public for fear of being targeted. Its stayed with me for a long, long time.

It also shaped his career, prompting the then-aspiring journalist to switch to criminology. A key thrust behind the book was to find out what made his attackers do what they did that day. Theres this notion that all hate crime offenders are monsters beyond understanding and that if you dare to try to understand them, you humanise them or in some way provide an excuse for their behaviour, he says. I wanted to find something that really separated me from my attackers, something that was unique about them and different from me.

Instead, his findings showed that he and his attackers were, in all likelihood, remarkably similar in our biology and psychology. The common core? An innate human desire to be part of a group and to favour people we perceive to be like us. Such groupishness is an evolutionary trait: huddling with others increases our chance of survival. And it means that, from a young age, we instinctively view the world through the lens of our group and other folks: us and them.

Our behaviour towards others occupies a spectrum, with unconscious bias at one end, prejudice in the middle and hate at the other extreme. Whereas prejudiced behaviour means avoiding others, hateful acts seek them out in order to hurt them. Theres often a twisted moral element to hate, too, with offenders claiming that the victims group are an affront to their way of life.

Neuroscientific studies suggest bias is mapped on to our brains: the amygdala, a fast but dumb threat detector in our temporal lobe, as Williams puts it, often sounds an alarm when it registers someone who is not like us. The smarter prefrontal cortex then overrules it when it realises there is nothing to worry about (most studies on this relate to race). But research suggests certain individuals can develop an oversized amygdala and a weak executive control centre, meaning they instinctively overreact to threats and then have no reasoning function to calm things down. Statistically, hate offenders are most likely to be young men (and in western countries, white). Williams imagines them to be fearful, angry and powerless.

Traumatic childhoods often set them apart. Many grew up with abusive or absent parents and experienced personal losses, homelessness, drug addictions or other traumas that left them emotionally unstable. Childhood scars can thwart psychological development to a point where normal coping mechanisms are either malfunctioning or absent, he writes.

Williams cites a study from the University of Manchester involving in-depth interviews with 15 young white British men convicted of racial violence. When stressed or triggered, they took out their frustrations on ethnic minorities who they saw as having less power than them, he writes. Race hate provided a convenient home for their unresolved frustrations from past trauma. The racial other was an easy target: hate almost always involves punching down. (For the most extreme type of hate criminal, a mission offender, eliminating other groups is seen as serving a higher purpose. Examples include suicide bombers; the 1999 London nailbomber who targeted gay, black and Bengali communities; and Joseph Paul Franklin, a KKK member who, during the 1970s and 80s, killed more than 20 black people.)

While its human nature to classify us and them, how those lines are drawn is at least theoretically not fixed. Evolution tells us that were not inherently racist or biased against a religion or a sexual orientation, says Williams. That certain groups are consistently targeted for hate is a product of social forces: it is shaped by what we see in the media, what our parents tell us and who we interact with growing up (children who attend mixed-race schools before the age of 12 are less likely to possess race-related bias). And new battle lines are constantly being drawn. Covid has pitted vaxxers and anti-vaxxers against one another, seen a spike in anti-Asian hate crimes and resulted in experts and even the NHS becoming targets of derision.

The unique dynamics of social media can spur people into hateful outbursts. Filter bubbles and algorithms reinforce and deepen prejudices, while anonymous accounts reduce accountability. When sparked by an event whether political vote, terror attack or football game some users temporarily lose their ability to suppress their ingrained biases and take to their keyboards as the mask of civility slips. In whats known as a cascade effect, theyre encouraged by the rush of others doing the same, and the perception that such actions have little or no consequence, says Williams, who is currently busy monitoring a prolonged wave of hate speech against Russians in the wake of the Ukraine invasion.

The most common target for online hate? Women. Misogyny is always the most prevalent category on social media: its a huge problem, says Williams. Its rifeness is partly attributable to the fact that women account for half the population (most other hate victims are minorities), so there are lots of targets, and to a culture of misogyny that festers among incels and other all-male communities. Misogyny would probably attract the highest number of hate-crime prosecutions if it were, in fact, a hate crime.

In the UKs hate crime legislation, sex and gender are not recognised as protected characteristics, so a judge is not compelled to consider misogyny as an aggravating factor in sentencing and police are not required to record it as a hate statistic. Just this February, MPs rejected a proposal to add it as a category due to concerns it could complicate domestic violence and rape prosecutions. Because theres no sort of legal framework there, [anti-women online hate] is probably not policed to any great extent not in the same way anti-black or anti- Muslim or anti-gay rhetoric would be, says Williams.

Who should be accountable for stamping out hate is a thorny issue. While governments and police should be responsible for dealing with the most serious offences, in many places including the US but not the UK hate crimes are woefully under-reported. This is a combination, says Williams, of a lack of police resources (investigating hate crimes requires considerable effort) and lack of trust in police by the most vulnerable members of society.

Online, big tech clearly has a role to play in monitoring content on their sites and banning users who go too far. But sifting through the millions of posts requires vast resources and, as Williams puts it, Theres no money in stopping hate. Theres no thriving marketplace for services that track hate speech and coordinate anti-hate campaigns, meaning organisations doing these things are chronically underfunded and rely on support from government and charities to survive (HateLab is mostly funded by the UKs Economic and Social Research Council and the Alfred Landecker Foundation).

By contrast, There seems to be more profit in generating hate and keeping people on social media by engaging with it, says Williams. As is shown by YouTubes famously addictive algorithm, which draws viewers deeper down a rabbit hole by suggesting ever more extreme content, hate is sticky. Its like not being able to avert your eyes from a car crash. Even so, Williams is optimistic that an anti-hate crusade could bear fruit for businesses concerned with bottom lines. Can you imagine if you could say your platform was free of hate speech? he says. How great would that be for the company but also the profits!

Rather than relying on the likes of Mark Zuckerberg, Williams thinks were best placed to take on the responsibility ourselves. First, we need to learn the art of neutralising hate speech. Our instinct, says Williams, is to go in all guns blazing and attack the hate speaker with equally offensive speech sometimes, which surprise, surprise escalates the situation. By contrast, calmly challenging the logic of their claims has proven success.

If they say, All Muslims are terrorists, you say, Hang on a second. Dont you think that if every Muslim was a terrorist, wed have a lot more terror attacks right now? Because theres X many Muslims living in this place.

The quick-witted among us will be pleased to hear that humour and parody can be handy, too. Engaging in a lighthearted way and maybe being a bit sarcastic to highlight the inconsistency of their argument can help the [hate makers] start to interact a bit more, he says. And coordinated efforts whereby a group of users are singing from the same hymn sheet are far more effective than solo missions (a catchy hashtag can help engender a sense of solidarity). Such things need to be taught in schools, he says. We dont have any solid educational guidance on what the best counter speech is.

Combining this knowledge with an eagle eye, we need to start shutting down bile whenever we see it and taking control of our online spaces. Williams has seen examples of this done with success in the past, such as the safety pin campaign in the aftermath of Brexit, whereby every time someone said something racist, a bunch of people would descend on it using the safety-pin hashtag and standing up for migrants.

Williams views Wikipedia as an unlikely North Star. Its a self-regulating system: people pull up information if its false, members of the community flag it and get rid of it. They set their standards of operation. Hes hopeful that we can turn our online spaces into more mature places if counter speakers engage with hate speakers in a sustained, coordinated drive. And en masse. That, I think, will change how these platforms look.

Its not rocket science, but it does require a conscious effort. Start by looking at your own prejudices. Then, armed with a calm mind and perhaps a quip or two, pull up your Twitter, Instagram and TikTok feed. And then, you anti-hate hounds, get sniffing.

The Science of Hate: How Prejudice Becomes Hate and What We Can Do To Stop It by Matthew Williams is published by Faber & Faber at 9.99. Order a copy from the guardianbookshop.com for 9.29

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Meet the man who wont let the haters win - The Guardian