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Hate speech crackdown driving far-right activists to fringe sites
Removed: Hate speech crackdown driving far-right activists to fringe sites
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Far right turning to social media platforms that do not censor posts after clampdown by Facebook and Twitter, experts say
Mon 29 Jan 2018 16.48 GMT
Sarah Marsh
Mon 29 Jan 2018 15.04 GMT
Last modified on Mon 29 Jan 2018 16.51 GMT
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Crackdowns on far-right posts on Facebook and Twitter are driving hate groups on to social media sites that do not censor posts, according to experts.
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Rightwing campaigners are moving to fringe sites such as Gab, based in Texas, and VK, Russia’s version of Facebook, as mainstream internet companies try to clamp down on hate speech.
Information
Concerns over far-right activity online have grown in recent months in line with the growing prominence of rightwing radical groups on both sides of the Atlantic.
In August a woman died after a car was rammed into a group of counter-protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, during a white supremacist rally. The man subsequently charged with Heather Heyer’s murder, James Fields, had been photographed taking part in the rally.
In the UK, five serving members of the British army were arrested this month on suspicion of being members of the neo-Nazi group National Action, which has been banned by the Home Office. Last month the Crown Prosecution Service announced that online hate crime would be treated as seriously as offences committed in person.
Prof Matthew Feldman, co-director of the Centre for Fascist, Anti-fascist and Post-fascist Studies at Teesside University, said: “The crackdown is leading groups to look at alternatives ways of communicating. I expect that more UK groups and individuals will use these platforms to post extremist and hateful content.
“Sites like Gab are encrypted. The real danger with this is that if these groups move on to these platforms they will have a space to mobilise that is no longer [visible to investigators] in the UK.”
Feldman estimated there were dozens of far-right groups in Britain. He said it was a time of “unprecedented change” in terms of social media and the far right.
In an indication of the growing prominence and concerns over the sites, Gab tweeted this week that it had been notified its domain would be seized in five days’ time because it was in breach of anti-discrimination laws in Australia, where its host, Asia Registry, is based. The site may have to close unless it finds an alternative host.
The warnings over Gab and VK mirror concerns about online jihadist propaganda in the UK. On Tuesday a thinktank said Islamic State was producing at least 100 new items of content a week and that British users clicked on Islamist extremist material more often than those in any other European country.
The Policy Exchange report said jihadist recruiters were able to reach tens of thousands of people out of public view through Telegram, a private messaging platform. Islamic State is said to have turned to the app after growing frustrated at having its Twitter accounts persistently deleted. It makes use of Telegram’s “channel” feature, which allows users to send messages to large numbers of recipients simultaneously.
While Gab and VK both have content guidelines in place, they are widely seen as taking a more hands-off approach than other social media sites.
Gab is a private social networking site that requires people to sign up to post and access content. Its guidelines say that “the only valid form of censorship is an individual’s own choice to opt-out” and that its mission is to “defend free speech”. Gab’s community guidelines stress that users can filter or remove posts they don’t want to see. It says its policy is to follow all applicable laws in the US.
In August it was removed from Google’s app store because of its content. And amid increasing scrutiny of its moderation policies, on Monday Gab suspended Andrew Auernheimer, a white supremacist troll known as weev, for a comment that it said violated its guidelines in regards to “threats and terrorism”.
Utsav Sanduja, Gab’s chief communications officer, refused to comment but emailed a link to a statement that read: “They [the Guardian] made the decision long ago to mislabel, mischaracterise us as a ‘hate site’. They can go to hell.”
Russia-based VK says its users can openly discuss any issues within the law, but posts containing calls for violence, bullying, extremism or any other content that violates the rules will be blocked.
Experts tracking far-right groups in the UK said it was hard to assess the rise of the movement, but noted that digital methods used for recruitment were becoming more sophisticated.
Typically, activists begin talking to people in comment threads before sending them direct messages to build personal relationships. According to experts, far-right groups also send messages on games such as Call of Duty and dating websites including OKCupid.
The far-right movement in Britain is understood to be relatively fragmented. One of the larger groups is Britain First, with 1,910,713 likes on Facebook.
Vidhya Ramalingam, founder of Moonshot CVE, an organisation using technology to respond to extremism, said: “I don’t want to overstate the threat of the far right in the UK, it’s definitely not the same as it is in Germany and the US, but it’s a worrying moment where we are seeing chatter, planning and movement. This has been happening in the last few years almost as response to Isis and also the rise of anti-immigration politics.
“You see it in comment threads, people shift into direct messaging and build relationships from there. White supremacists also put up YouTube videos that don’t infringe upon the rules but demonstrate personal brotherly bond between those in their organisations. It’s a way of drawing people in.”
Mark Littler, an academic criminologist at the University of Hull who specialises in the study of terrorism and extremism, said: “While British groups are a little bit behind American ones in terms of their use of technology, they are becoming more sophisticated.
“Platforms such as Facebook generally operate as gateways, allowing extremist groups to reach out to those who are susceptible to extremist messages. Once they have their targets ‘hooked’, they can move communications on to other, more private platforms where regulation is more difficult.”
