Tech firms on offensive against hate groups

Right-wing groups counter by building parallel services

SILICON Valley significantly escalated its war on white supremacy this week, choking off the ability of hate groups to raise money online, removing them from internet search engines and preventing some sites from registering.

Tech companies such as Google, GoDaddy and PayPal are reversing their hands-off approach about content supported by their services and making it difficult for “altright” organisations to reach mass audiences.

But the actions are heightening concerns over tech firms becoming the arbiters of free speech. And rightwingers are building parallel services that cater to their movement.

Gab.ai, a social network for promoting free speech, was founded in August last year by Silicon Valley engineers alienated by the region’s liberalism. Other conservatives have founded Infogalactic, a Wikipedia for the alt-right, as well as crowdfunding tools Hatreon and WeSearchr.

“If there needs to be two versions of the Internet, so be it,” Gab.ai tweeted on Wednesday. “There will another type of Internet who is run by people politically incorrect, populist and conservative.”

Some adherents to the altright – a fractious coalition of neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and those opposed to feminism – said they would press for the US government to regulate Facebook and Google.

Richard Spencer, an influential white nationalist, said: “YouTube and Twitter and Facebook have more power than the government. If you can’t host a website or tweet, then you effectively don’t have a right to free speech.”

He said “social networks need to be regulated in the way the broadcast networks are”.

Silicon Valley firms have limited experience handling these issues. These platforms are also so massive – Facebook counts a third of the world’s population in its monthly user base; GoDaddy hosts and registers 71 million websites – it might be impossible for them to enforce their policies.

Still, tech companies are forging ahead. On Wednesday, Facebook said it cancelled the page of white nationalist Christopher Cantwell, who was connected to the Charlottesville rally. It has shut down eight other pages, citing violation of hate speech policies. Twitter has suspended several extremist accounts, including @Millennial_Matt, a Nazi-obsessed social media personality.

GoDaddy delisted the Daily Stormer, a prominent neo-Nazi site, after its founder celebrated the death of a woman in Charlottesville, Virginia. The Daily Stormer then transferred its registration to Google, which also cut it off. It has since retreated to the “dark web”, making it inaccessible to most internet users.

PayPal said it would bar nearly three dozen users from accepting donations on its platform. It singled out the Ku Klux Klan, white supremacist groups and Nazi groups.

Apple has also dropped payment processing for hate groups. GoFundMe, one of the largest crowdfunding sites, shut down campaigns to raise money for the Nazi sympathiser who crashed his car into a crowd of activists protesting the hate rally, killing a woman and injuring dozens.

Lee Rowland, senior attorney with the American Civil Liberty Union, cautioned against condemning companies that host even the “most vile white supremacist speech”.

“We rely on the internet to hear each other. We should all be very thoughtful before we demand that platforms for hateful speech disappear because it does impoverish our conversation and harm our ability to point to evidence for white supremacy and to counter it,” he said. – The Washington Post

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Tech companies such as PayPal are reversing their hands-off approach about content supported by their services and making it much more difficult for ‘alt-right’ groups to reach mass audiences.