White Supremacy Thriving Online, Despite Prevention Efforts
By Extremism Watch Desk
October 30, 2019 10:54 PM
WASHINGTON - As major tech companies step up efforts to curb extremist content on their platforms, far-right white extremists continue to find ways to spread violent messages and attract sympathizers on the internet.
Experts warn that far-right extremists in the West are turning to fringe sites such as Gab, BitChute, 4chan, 8chan and others to propagate their conspiracies.
While significant progress has been made to remove extremist content on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, a large chunk of white extremist content on fringe platforms could go unnoticed.
8chan logo, anonymous online forum, graphic element on black
The 8chan logo from an anonymous online forum.
“White supremacists are typically early adopters of technology. They go and hang out in places where there aren’t strong rules — places they’re more likely to get a foothold,” Keegan Hankes, interim research director at the Southern Poverty Law Center, told VOA.
In September, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security released its framework for countering terrorism and targeted violence, which states that online space appears essential to the recent growth of white supremacists, in particular.
“Celebration of violence and conspiracy theories about the ‘ethnic replacement’ of whites as the majority ethnicity in various Western countries are prominent in their online circles,” the department said.
As companies adopt stricter regulations and extremists are banned, “we see a lot of these individuals moving towards smaller, more secretive, and harder-to-detect platforms,” Hankes told VOA. “Those places tend to be more extreme.”
The far-right, anti-Islamic British group Britain First was banned from Facebook in March 2018, but it migrated its videos to BitChute, a less-regulated, YouTube-like platform.
The group also moved its social media presence to Gab and Telegram, as other white extremist organizations have done.
People mourn outside the synagogue in Halle, Germany, a day after two people were killed in a shooting.
FILE - People mourn outside the synagogue in Halle, Germany, a day after two people were killed in a shooting.
Shortly after a gunman opened fire on a synagogue in the German city of Halle in October, a video of the shooting circulated among nearly 10 white supremacist Telegram channels to tens of thousands of users, many of whom hailed the shooter as a “hero” and a “saint,” according to NBC News.
The suspect reportedly livestreamed the assault on the gaming platform Twitch before the site removed it.
Global network
Some observers charge that by posting videos of mass shootings online and glorifying perpetrators, extremist groups hope to drag more vulnerable people into their ranks.
“We are witnessing the internationalization of the white supremacist movement,” the Anti-Defamation League found in a recent report. “European and American adherents are learning from each other, supporting each other and reaching new audiences. They feel empowered and emboldened because they perceive that they are influencing the political climate and reaching disaffected whites.”.....
https://www.voanews.com/extremism-watch/white-supremacy-thriving-online-despite-prevention-efforts
all you anons looking for something to dig on
dig on this:
there are studies that show that white supremism is WAY DOWN. If you can find them, i will assemble a paper based on them. Got IRL now, anybody interested??