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Over the past few years, hate crimes have steadily increased across the country. Despite being notoriously underreported — or simply not taken seriously when brought to authorities — the FBI still found that between 2016 and 2017, hate crimes rose 17 percent. It’s no stretch to correlate the rise of hate crimes with the United States’ political climate, including the election of President Donald Trump and the subsequent rhetoric that his administration ushered in. With the political climate continuing to worsen, it’s important to be aware of how hate operates online too. According to a survey from the Anti-Defamation League , 2018 turned out to be a record year for online hate speech. Social media platforms ranked especially high, with over half of all respondents (56 percent) saying they experienced hate on Facebook; meanwhile, Twitter and YouTube clocked in at 19 percent and 17 percent, respectively. Often, people separate what happens online from “real life,” as if the digital...
Last month, the House Judiciary Committee questioned Facebook and Google on hate crimes and the rise of white nationalism online. Now, it seems German WhatsApp may be becoming a cesspool for Nazi propaganda and antisemitic groups, according to reporting from BuzzFeed. On the app, nine groups — with names like “The German Storm” and “Ku Klux Klan International” — have shared message glorifying the Third Reich and Adolf Hitler, BuzzFeed reported. Some have also attempted to incite violence through the app. WhatsApp — who is owned by Facebook — has Community Guidelines prohibiting harassment. But even when combined with Germany’s own laws against Nazi imagery, the groups haven’t been taken down. Hate speech on social media platforms has been a growing problem for years. WhatsApp was listed as the sixth most common location for online hate speech in 2018, according to the Anti-Defamation League. Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube were the platforms who secured the top three spots. Although...
Last month, the Christchurch shooting — and its subsequent viral status — revealed just how common white nationalism is online. Many people already knew that platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube harbored hateful rhetoric, but poor responses to the shooting put them in the government’s sights. Yesterday, the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing questioning both Google and Facebook on the rise of white nationalism online. During YouTube’s livestream of the hearing, things got so ugly that YouTube eventually disabled the comments. Screenshots from Buzzfeed News reporter Ryan Broderick on Twitter show comments such as “White haters!” and “Jews make their own problems”. Not that the comments on the official House Judiciary Committee Hearings channel are any better… pic.twitter.com/7GjpTZFu1Z — Ryan Broderick (@broderick) April 9, 2019 YouTube comments filling up with racist and hateful remarks during a Congressional hearing on white nationalism isn’t actually surprising,...
Twitter has been a hub for spam accounts and bots since the platform’s early years. The problem has plagued the company for a long time and today they’ve introduced another idea that may help stop it. Twitter announced that it is changing its rule on the number of accounts a person can follow per day. The platform tweeted that the limit is moving from 1,000 accounts to 400 in order to stop spammers. Follow, unfollow, follow, unfollow. Who does that? Spammers. So we’re changing the number of accounts you can follow each day from 1,000 to 400. Don’t worry, you’ll be just fine. — Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) April 8, 2019 Twitter is working to impede “churning” accounts and lessen the number of block and spam reports caused by them. Churning accounts are profiles that repeatedly follow and unfollow to increase their follower metrics. Some users questioned the 400 account limit, but Yoel Roth, Twitter’s Head of Integrity, offered some insight in his own string of tweets . “You can’t...
This week Slack announced that it has removed more than two dozen accounts linked to known hate groups from its platform. “The use of Slack by hate groups runs counter to everything we believe in at Slack and is not welcome on our platform,” Slack said on its website. Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms have increasingly been used to spread bigoted ideologies and highlight violence that Slack wants no part of. A survey from the Anti-Defamation League showed that 2018 was a record year for online hate and harassment. It seems that 2019 will not be reversing the course despite platform’s removal of such groups. The survey did not name Slack as an online location where users experienced hate speech — this could be because the platform is mostly used in professional environments where the behaviors would be punished externally. Facebook has done mass removals of groups, ads, and pages associated with hate groups over the past few months. Following its policy updates...