The Role of Internet Intermediaries in Tackling Online Hate

1. The Role of Internet Intermediaries in Tackling Online Hate Raphael Cohen-Almagor

2. Introduction • The Internet is a macro system of interconnected private and public spheres: household, literary, military, academic, business and government networks. • The mix of open standards, diverse networks, and the growing ubiquity of digital devices makes the Internet a revolutionary force that undermines traditional media and challenges existing regulatory institutions based on national boundaries.

3. The Internet • The Internet contains the best products of humanity

5. Ufff…

7. Worse of Humanity Unfortunately, the Internet also contains the worse products of humanity: • Child Pornography, Pedophilia • Terror • Racism, Hate speech and Holocaust denial • Crime-facilitating speech

8. Argument • Socially responsible people should not stand idly by while others are abusing freedom of expression to discriminate and victimized their targets for hate. • Striking a balance between freedom of expression and social responsibility

9. Definition • Hate speech is defined as a bias-motivated, hostile, malicious speech aimed at a person or a group of people because of some of their actual or perceived innate characteristics. • It expresses discriminatory, intimidating, disapproving, antagonistic and/or prejudicial attitudes toward those characteristics which include sex, race, religion, ethnicity, colour, national origin, disability, or sexual orientation.

10. Aim of Hate Speech • Hate speech is aimed to injure, dehumanize, harass, intimidate, debase, degrade, and victimize the targeted groups, and to foment insensitivity and brutality against them.

11. Line Drawing • The line-drawing of what constitutes hate is not always simple. • Statements that assert “Jews are money hungry,” “gays are immoral,” “abortionists are murderers,” “Israel is an apartheid state,” “n----s return to Africa,” and calls to boycott Israel are all unpleasant yet legitimate speech. • On the other hand, calls that incite violence against target groups fall under the definition of incitement.

12. Responsibility of ISPs and Web Hosting Services ICT Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR); Responsibility of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and Web Hosting Services (WHS); ISPs and Web-hosting Rules and Regulations;

13. Legal, Moral and Social Responsibility • Legal responsibility refers to addressing the issue by agencies of state power. • In moral responsibility, the personal responsibility of the agent to conscience is at issue, with appeals to moral consideration. • Social responsibility relates to the societal implications of a given conduct.

14. Online/Offline • The Internet has a dis-inhibition effect. • The freedom allows language one would dread to use in real life, words one need not abide by, imagination that trumps conventional norms and standards.

15. Power of Words • Words can wound. Words can hurt. Words can move people to action. The anonymity of the Internet is most convenient for spreading unfounded allegations, for backstabbing, for malicious rumours, for pushing people to conduct harmful actions to others as well as to themselves.

16. Targets • The Afro-Americans are depicted as the enemy. • They are brutal, primitive, biologically inferior whose presence represents a corrosive element for the whole American society. • In Africa, they were eating one another. • They bring their jungle culture to America. • They are referred to as n---s, “mud people,” source of social pollution and cultural decadence which clashes with the ethnic, civil and economic superiority of the whites.

17. Targets • Some of the anti-Black sites are also anti-immigration (especially Latino), and anti-Muslim. • Minorities endanger the position of whites in the United States. • They increase their numbers by tempting white women. • Interracial marriage is one of the ideas, arguably the idea that most upsets racists on the Internet and is likely to drive them too advocate anti-Black hate crime.

18. Targets • A second hated group on the Net is the homosexual community. • They are portrayed as seeking to sexually trap young white males. • Gay behaviour is as contradictory to nature, perverted, sinful, morally abominable, threatens to undermine the religious values of the white community. • Homosexuals do not reproduce and thus threaten the survival of their own race. • They spread contagious and deadly diseases and are no less than angles of death. • They should be hunted down in the same way witches were once hunted in Europe.

19. Targets • The third most hated group is the conspirators, i.e. the Jews. • The Jews are situated in power positions in society. • The Jews are united by a secret pact to set in motion a global conspiracy to rule the world. • The Jews lie in order to achieve this aim and are successful in brainwashing the minds of Christian-Americans. They control the academia, the media, the banks, MTV, the feminists. • There are sites to educate you how Jews look like, their power, how they control America and the world (ZOG=Zionist Occupied Government.

20. Targets • The fourth most hated group are Muslims. • In the US in 2014, anti-Muslim hate crimes represented 16.3% of 1,092 reported offenses motivated by religious bias. • Anti-Semitism still led the way as a motive for these crimes, at 58.2 percent. • Before the 2015 Paris attacks, 60% of Americans took a positive view of the Syrian refugees, asking how they could “help,” “volunteer” or “aid.” • The other 40% were negative, mostly expressed skepticism about security. • After Paris, share of people opposed to refugees rose to 80%.

21. From Speech to Action • Aryan supremacists like Benjamin Smith, Richard Baumhammers, James W. von Brunn and Brenton Tarrantwho respectively went on racially motivated shooting sprees in 1999, 2000, 2009 and 2019 after being exposed (von Brunn and Brenton Tarrant also contributed) to Internet racial propaganda. • Smith regularly visited the World Church of the Creator website, a notorious racist and hateful organization. • He said: "It wasn't really 'til I got on the Internet, read some literature of these groups that… it really all came together.“

22. From Speech to Action • Other hate crimes that involved shooting and killing of innocent people in the USA concern Buford Furrow who killed one person and injured five others in 1999; • The same year, 1999, Matthew and Tyler Williams who murdered a gay couple and set fire to three Sacramento-area synagogues; • In 2009, Keith Luke murdered two black people, and raped and nearly killed a third. • All were active on hate sites.

23. Hate crimes • In 2011, Anders Behring Breivik’s murderous journey in which he detonated a truck bomb in front of a government building in Oslo, killing eight, and then went on a shooting spree in Utoya Island, murdering 69 others. • In May 2012, Jason Todd Ready killed four people before killing himself. • That same month, Eric Clinton Kirk Newman, also known as Luca Rocco Magnotta, was accused of torturing and dismembering a Chinese immigrant;

24. Hate crimes • Three months later, Wade Michael Page shot and killed six people at a Sikh temple before killing himself during a shootout with police. • In London, David Copeland planted nail bombs in black and Bangladeshi neighbourhoods and in a gay pub. He killed three and injured more than one hundred people.

25. ISPs and web-hosting rules and regulations • ISPs and web-hosting companies have the right and the duty to report potentially criminal activities to the appropriate law enforcement agency. • ISPs may prohibit posting legally seditious or offensive content. • What a legitimate realm includes may vary from one ISP to another.

26. Should ISPs and host companies be proactive? • They are obviously reluctant for very practical reason – the costs involved in employing professional staff who will scrutinize the information.

27. Relevant Factors • History • Culture • Morality • Law

28. Responsibility of ISPs and Web Hosting Services: Applications From Hate speech to hate crimes – Bonnie Jouhari

29. Jouhari • Next to Jouhari’s picture, the ALPHA HQ website stated, "Traitors like this should beware, for in our day, they will hung from the neck from the nearest tree or lamp post.“ • The website referred to Jouhari's daughter as "mongrel," listed various types of guns, information where to obtain various weapons, and provided a bomb recipe under the picture of Jouhari's office.

30. Jouhari • Wilson was charged by the Pennsylvania Commonwealth's Attorney General with threats, harassment, and ethnic intimidation. • The site was removed from the Internet, and the court issued an injunction against the defendant and his organization barring them from displaying certain messages on the Internet.

31. Machado Date: Fri, 20 Sep 1996 10:58:55 -0700 From: "Mother Fucker (Hates Asians)" <mfucker@uci.edu> To: {recipient list omitted to protect privacy of individuals} Subject: FUck You Asian Shit Hey stupid fuckerAs you can see in the name, I hate Asians, including you. If it weren’t for asias [sic] at UCI, it would be a much more popular campus. You are responsible for ALL the crimes that occur on campus. YOU are responsible for the campus being all dirt. YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE. That’s why I want you and your stupid ass comrades to get the fuck out of UCI. IF you don’t I will hunt all of you down and Kill your stupid asses. Do you hear me? I personally will make it my life carreer [sic] to find and kill everyone one [sic] of you personally. OK?????? That’s how determined I am. Get the fuck out. Mother Fucker (Asian Hater)

32. State Responsibility Hate and Racism; Hate Commercialization: The Yahoo! Saga;

33. Winds of Change • In the last few years, we witnessed atrocious hate crimes that resulted in dozens of casualties: • racist attack on a black church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015; • car attack on protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017; • mass shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 2018; • terror attack on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019; • Attack on a synagogue in San Diego in 2019;

34. Winds of Change • All attacks had Internet component. • Facebook is now reconsidering its free speech position, realising that white nationalism could not be "meaningfully separated" from white supremacy and organised hate groups.

35. Winds of Change • April 2019: • Home Secretary, SajidJavid, said that despite repeated calls to action, harmful and illegal content is still too readily available online. • Therefore, the British government has decided to force Internet intermediaries to clean up their act once and for all.

36. Remedies • Speech v. Speech • Education (like the Partners Against Hate program), http://partnersagainsthate.org/ • Promotion of tolerance • Exposing of hatred that might lead to terror • Hate watch • Citizens’ initiatives to combat hate – “Coloradans United Against Hatred” (CUAH) • Net users’ initiatives against hate (FacebookUnited Against Hate)

37. Remedies • We need to better understand the Internet’s social networking. • Facebook, Yahoo! Groups. Geocities. Twitter. • What are the implications of these tools on hate? • People tend to say on the Internet things they do not usually say or write via other communication means in public.

38. Remedies • Denying Legitimacy: • sensitive media coverage; • banning racist parties; • protecting vulnerable people • Culture of tolerance

39. Remedies – The Internet • ISPs Liability • Provide a uniform channel for user complaints • Omit or at least label hate websites from search engines • Labelling, naming and shaming • Legal means: Prosecutions

40. Hate • Anti-Defamation league (ADL). • The YouTube Abuse & Safety Center.

41. Remedies – The Internet • Parental Supervision • Filters • Install computer blocking programs at work and school • Publishing overviews and reports on a regular basis • Business Ban

42. Remedies – The Internet • International cooperation between governments as well as between governments and Internet Service Providers: Working Group on Internet Governance; Jugendschutz.net in Germany; Stichting Magenta in the Netherlands; International Network Against Cyber Hate

43. Remedies– The Internet • Law and adherence to international conventions: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights(1948); The 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; The U.N. International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination (1969); The European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (1950); The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948); The Council of Europe’s Convention on Cybercrime(2003)

44. Confronting the Internet's Dark Side • CleaNet • Deliberative democracy

45. CleaNet • Select Committee • Netcitizens Committee • Complaints Committee • Hotline • International Steering Committee

46. New raison d'être • Introducing a different rationale: • Instead of free highway, social responsibility

47. Global problem requires global solution Who’s Responsible? Social responsibility Individual/ISPs State I Filters Proactive NGOs ISPs Role of the State The Challenge Global solution for global problem Business ban Filters

48. Conclusion • The Internet does not have any borders but it does have limits. • Aristotle’s Rule of the Golden Mean. • ISPs should scrutinize their servers. • Readers should use tip lines and alert the authorities upon encountering dangerous, anti-social content. • Global cooperation.

50. Thank you Blog: http://almagor.blogspot.com Subscribe by sending me an email: R.Cohen-Almagor@hull.ac.uk Twitter: @almagor35