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Amazon, Google and Wish pull racist products after investigation
Amazon, Google and Wish have pulled racist products from their stores after an investigation found numerous examples.
Netflix tweaks 'Devil Next Door' documentary after Polish PM complains
Netflix distributes content in nearly every country around the world now, which has meant making edits to content in some places based on local laws. In the case of a Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj episode that was critical of Saudi Arabia's government, the streamer pulled it entirely in the country, while continuing to maintain that it believed in "artistic freedom." This week, just after CEO Reed Hastings commented on the Saudi Arabia incident by saying "we are not in the truth to power business, we're in the entertainment business," it faced a different complaint from Poland's government. A documentary series added this month called The Devil Next Door is about an John Demjanjuk, who was living in Cleveland until Holocaust survivors identified him in the as a notorious Nazi death camp guard and he was later extradited to stand trial. He was eventually convicted, and died while the case was being appealed in 2012.
Hitting the Books: 'Dirty bomb' fears spawned America's nuclear spy force
Welcome to Hitting the Books. With less than one in five Americans reading just for fun these days, we've done the hard work for you by scouring the internet for the most interesting, thought provoking books on science and technology we can find and delivering an easily digestible nugget of their stories.
YouTube will remove some hate speech and conspiracy videos
YouTube has updated its hate speech policy to ban more types of videos from its platform. They explicitly include those promoting or glorifying Nazi ideology or deny that certain events including the Holocaust or the Sandy Hook shooting took place. As a result, YouTube will remove thousands of channels and videos under the refreshed rules.
After Christchurch, we need more than digital-security theater
Just after the Christchurch shooting I came across an article explaining how to make your Twitter, Facebook and YouTube accounts block violent videos. How-tos like this are depressingly necessary, because while Facebook removes an illustrated nipple for "community safety" at lightning speed with real consequences, the company isn't equally interested in policing content that's indisputably harmful. After the Christchurch attack, Facebook said it took down 1.5 million postings of the terrorist's mass-murder livestream within 24 hours, but only 1.2 million of those videos were blocked at upload.
Facebook allowed advertisers to target users interested in Nazism
Facebook still has some work to do if it wants to eliminate racist criteria from its ad targeting. The company has pulled numerous audience groupings from its ad plaform after the LA Times discovered that advertisers could target ads for people interested in racist leaders and groups, including Nazi leader slike Joseph Goebbels and a neo-Nazi punk band. These potentially reached hundreds of thousands of users. Company spokesman Joe Osborne said these ad categories were rarely used and typically focused on historical material, but he also acknowledged that the company should have spotted them sooner and could do better.
Dear tech: Stop doing business with Nazis
Kicking Nazis off tech companies' services is so easy, and such a simple thing to do. It is such a basic act of human decency, a trivial task that would stop PayPal, Stripe, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, GoDaddy and many more from being unquestionably complicit in the deadly rise of American Naziism. Stakes climb as we approach next week's elections. And yet.
Prison survival game 'Scum' no longer includes neo-Nazi tattoos
Days after prisoner survival game Scum came out in Steam Early Access, players discovered their criminal characters could be given Nazi-related tattoos. Today, its publisher Devolver Digital scrubbed the customization options from the title and apologized.
Germany removes blanket ban on Nazi imagery in games
Before video games with swastikas and other Nazi symbols can be released in Germany, they have to go through some major edits to censor those images. Every Nazi eagle and swastika -- and even Adolf Hitler's moustache -- in the Wolfenstein series had to be scrubbed, for instance, even though Nazis are the villains in the game. That will no longer be the case going forward, now that German authorities have lifted the blanket ban on Nazi imagery in video games. Each title will now be assessed on a case-by-case basis by the country's Entertainment Software Self-Regulation Body (USK) and will be judged similarly to books and films.
Amazon removes Nazi and white supremacist listings
Amazon's policy prohibits the sale of racist and 'hatred-glorifying' goods, but a couple of watchdog groups recently found Nazi and white supremacist products sold on the platform. Those products include jewelry adorned with Nazi swastikas and even a children's book normalizing racist beliefs written by George Lincoln Rockwell, founder of the American Nazi Party. Now the company has told Minnesota Representative Keith Ellison in a letter that it has already reviewed and removed those listings. Amazon said that it has also permanently blocked the sellers who violated its policies and has put a restriction on the goods the watchdogs found to prevent them from being sold again.
Google search showed ‘Nazism’ as a California Republican Party ideology
As California gears up for its primary, many of the state's Republicans are fuming over how Google described their party in its search results. Those searching for "California Republicans" or "California Republican Party" would have found a result that listed "Nazism" as one of the party's ideologies along with "Conservatism," "Market liberalism," "Fiscal conservatism" and "Green conservatism." Vice News spotted the listing and Google removed the label following a query from the publication.
Twitter bans 'Impostor Buster' bot that ID'd Nazi trolls
It's been a rocky road to Twitter's newfound pledge to kick members of hate groups off its platform. For those on the end of racist abuse, reporting trolls to Twitter has been a frustrating process. But, earlier this year, one journalist decided to take matters into his own hands. After suffering a record amount of harassment, reporter Yair Rozenberg teamed up with dev Neal Chandra to build a bot that unmasked impersonator accounts manned by bigots. It got off to a great start, explains Rozenberg in a New York Times op-ed, before Twitter shut it down at the behest of Nazis.
The real villain in ‘Wolfenstein II’ is a complicit America
Wolfenstein: The New Colossus improves on everything you liked in the franchise's soft reboot, 2014's Wolfenstein: The New Order. The action, set pieces, characters and writing are all sharper this time around. So is the thoughtful terror in the alternate universe's setting. After striking a blow in Europe against the global Nazi regime in the first game, The New Colossus brings protagonist BJ Blazkowicz and his anti-Nazi crew back to the US — where they find many Americans have gleefully accepted Nazi rule.
Investigators are using AI to find who betrayed Anne Frank
In August of 1944, Anne Frank and her family were captured by the Gestapo after spending a gruelling two years hidden in a secret annex within their apartment. The prolific diarist's work would posthumously bring her fame and recognition the world over. But, to this day, no one has been able to identify who was behind the betrayal that led to her death in a concentration camp. Fast forward 73 years, and a former FBI agent is betting artificial intelligence can help crack the mystery. Retired sleuth Vincent Pankoke, and his team of investigators (comprised of forensic scientists and members of the Dutch police force), are partnering with Amsterdam-based data company Xomnia on the ultimate cold case.
'Wolfenstein II' starts with a wheelchair, Nazis and a machine gun
A little over four months away from launch, Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus already feels finished. The game takes place almost immediately after the events of 2014's Wolfenstein: The New Order, with protagonist B.J. Blazkowicz waking up from a coma aboard a German U-boat, confined to a wheelchair, his legs lame. The Nazis have long since won the war, and in 1961 they're taking their goal of world domination even further. They're afraid of the game's one-man-army hero, too. And really, after 35 years of Wolfenstein, shouldn't they be?
Twitter suspends Tila Tequila following pro-Nazi posts
Twitter's quest to clamp down on hatemongers, trolls and similar provocateurs isn't slowing down any time soon. The social network has suspended Tila Tequila's account after the reality show star (shown at left) posted a string of pro-Nazi tweets, including one showing her giving a Nazi salute at a white nationalist conference in Washington. While she has previously sworn that she isn't racist (she's of Vietnamese heritage), she hasn't exactly hidden her shift toward the extreme right. She once posted a photo of herself wearing a Nazi armband in front of Auschwitz, and in her Twitter bio described herself as an "alt-reich queen" and "literally Hitler."
Twitter shuts down ISIS accounts but lets white nationalists stay
Twitter's previous laissez-faire policy of letting free speech reign on the social network earned ire for their failure to curb hate speech and harassment. But letting terrorist groups freely use it to gather followers and spread their messages was too much. After vowing to ban accounts linked to extremism in mid-2015, they proceeded to shut down over 360,000 of them. But according to a report, Twitter is focusing on countering ISIS-promoting tweets while letting white nationalists run rampant on the service. Which is worrying, since Americans have committed 80 percent of terrorist attacks in the US since September 11th, 2001.
Nazi tracker app coming soon to a German iPhone near you
At a time when ultra-nationalist rallies are becoming a weekly occurrence in the German capital of Berlin, activists are turning to apps to help track the extremist movement and ensure it doesn't evolve into something more dangerous, RT reports. The app, which is named "Berlin Gegen Nazis" (Berlin Against Nazis), shares the same name as the anti-Nazi movement itself and is expected to be released on the iPhone in the immediate future. Using the app, citizens and law enforcement can map extremist activity and organize rallies in opposition to Nazi activity. Brown lines represent gatherings identified as Nazi-centric, while orange lines show oppositional rallies, creating a sort of chess match between the two factions. The group, and by extension, the app, have the support of the Berlin city government as well as other democratic groups.
Luftrausers dev responds to criticisms over Nazi-esque imagery
Luftrausers from Vlambeer is full of fiction. Its name is a made up word, and the game takes place in an alternate history, set some 10 to 15 years after World War II. The game's imagery, however, from its maniacal scientists and sharp-dressed military officers to its skull-emblazoned logo, are evocative of the very real Nazi party of the mid 1940s. This has made some players uncomfortable, which Vlambeer co-founder Rami Ismail addressed on the company's site earlier today. Ismail noted that, while he believes that no interpretation of a game is "wrong," he and his fellow developers did not intentionally place players into the role of a Nazi pilot. Instead, Ismail said the game was inspired by the period between 1900 and 1980 where opposing governments were "capable of determining whether an opposing military force was working on secret weapons, but not quite what those weapons were." The goal of Luftrausers, according to Ismail, was to have players take control of such a weapon. The only way for this to make narrative sense was to have players play the bad guys - someone we were spying on. "The player is part of an undefined enemy force that was not on 'our' side during the six or seven decades in which military intelligence was effectively telling us to prepare for a laser-equipped hoverboat assault," Ismail wrote. Ismail made it clear he was explaining the game's aesthetics, but not excusing them. Ismail and studio partner Jan Willem Nijman are natives to the Netherlands, which was invaded by the Nazis in 1940. "We are extremely aware of the awful things that happened," Ismail wrote, "and we want to apologise to anybody who, through our game, is reminded of the cruelties that occurred during the war." [Image: Vlambeer]
South Park delayed in Germany, Austria over use of swastikas
South Park: The Stick of Truth was supposed to launch in Germany and Austria this week, but it's been delayed because it contains an "unconstitutional symbol." Two guesses what that symbol might be. Hint: It's a swastika. The swastika is widely known as a Nazi emblem (regardless of its origin), and is delineated in German law as the symbol of an unconstitutional organization. Public use of a swastika carries a penalty of up to three years in prison plus a fine. Ubisoft created censored versions of The Stick of Truth for the EMEA regions and Australia, and it was working on a special version for German markets. Something must have gone wrong, as The Stick of Truth's German Steam page today carries the following message: "We're sorry to inform you that we are unable to deliver your pre-ordered version of South Park: The Stick of Truth on March 6th as initially planned. The German and Austrian version of South Park: The Stick of Truth contains an unconstitutional symbol which means that we are unfortunately not able to release the game on the German and Austrian market at this time. This concerns all versions / platforms of the game. There is no need to amend or cancel your pre-order. A new release date of South Park: The Stick of Truth for the German and Austrian market will be announced shortly, and we will ensure that your order is delivered to coincide with this new date." There's only one rule, and it looks like Ubisoft broke it: Don't mention the war. [Image: Ubisoft]
