ADL to build Silicon Valley center against cyberhate

NEW YORK – The Anti-Defamation League announced Sunday it will build a state-of-the-art command center in California’s Silicon Valley, to combat the growing threat posed by cyberhate.

The center will employ cutting-edge technology and seasoned experts to monitor, track, analyze and mitigate hate speech and harassment across the Internet, in support of the Jewish community and other minority groups recently affected by such incidents, the ADL said.

The center will pioneer strategies in the fight against online abuse, drawing from the ADL’s three decades of expertise monitoring, tracking and combating hate on the public and private web. It will author reports and data; provide insights to government and policy-makers; and expose and stop specific cases of online harassment and cyberbullying. The seed funding for the project was provided by the philanthropic investment firm Omidyar Network.

ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt unveiled the plan on Sunday at the South by Southwest film festival in Austin, Texas, during a discussion on “The State of Hate.”

“Now more than ever as antisemitism, Islamophobia, racism and other hatreds have exploded online, it’s critical that we are bringing [the] best-in-class technology and resources to this fight,” he said. “That’s why we will build this center in Silicon Valley, and why we are so grateful to Omidyar Network for providing seed funding for this effort.”

The center is “a natural extension of the cyberhate work ADL has been doing for decades,” Greenblatt said.