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Facebook bans white nationalism and separatism accounts in Canada
Last week, Facebook announced it would ban white nationalism and separatism content, in addition to the white supremacy content it already prohibits. Today, we're getting a sense of which accounts that might include. According to BuzzFeed News, Facebook will ban groups, Pages and Instagram accounts associated with Faith Goldy, the Canadian Nationalist Front, Soldiers of Odin, Wolves of Odin, Kevin Goudreau and the Aryan Strikeforce.
Gab browser extension puts a far-right comments section on every site
Gab, the "free speech" social network that's become a haven for the far-right, has launched a browser extension that creates an alternative comments section for any website. The "Dissenter" plug-in -- which appears as a sidebar once enabled -- allows Gab users to discuss everything from tweets to Wikipedia pages in real-time without the fear of said comment being removed by a site's moderators.
The US government comes for Google, Facebook, and Twitter
Facebook, Twitter, and Google were threatened by lawmakers from three distinct quarters on Wednesday. A leaked email from the largest US telecom lobbying group tells us where this is headed. One threat came during testimony from Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg and Twitter's Jack Dorsey to Congress when Senator Mark Warner told the pair of executives that "Congress is going to have to take action here. The era of the Wild West in social media is coming to an end."
Twitter bans far-right group Proud Boys ahead of Washington rally
Just because Twitter is reluctant to take action against some of its more malicious users doesn't mean it isn't cracking down against others. Twitter has confirmed to BuzzFeed News that it banned the accounts of the far-right group Proud Boys for reportedly breaking its rules prohibiting "violent extremist groups." The social network shut down the group's main account, its satellite accounts and that of its founder Gavin McInnes. While the company didn't specify what prompted the move, it came just after a violent August 4th protest in Portland, Oregon, and just ahead of the extreme right-wing Washington, DC rally on August 12th.
Mark Zuckerberg: CEO, billionaire, troll
We imagine the scene at Facebook right now is like Kim Jong-il's funeral. Employees weeping in hallways, dripping anguished snot onto keyboards, beating their chests with unsold Facebook phones in an orgy of anguish at the injustice of media coverage regarding Mark Zuckerberg's unprompted defense this week of giving Holocaust deniers a voice on the platform. But I think we've finally figured out what's going on at Facebook after all.
Pepe the Frog creator gets neo-Nazi site to pull copyrighted cartoons
Pepe the Frog creator Matt Furie is enjoying more success in his copyright-based campaign to stop the "alt-right" from dragging his cartoon character's name through the dirt. Motherboard has learned that Furie's attorneys (Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr) used a Digital Millennium Copyright Act notice to force neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer to remove most instances of Pepe from its pages. The challenge wasn't so much getting the site to comply as having a stable target, according to the lawyers.
Twitter bans Congressional candidate after racist image
Twitter is continuing to act on its promise to fight hate speech, however imperfectly. The site has banned Wisconsin Congressional candidate Paul Nehlen after he posted a racist image that placed the face of Cheddar Man (a dark-skinned British ancestor) over actress and soon-to-be-royal Meghan Markle, who's mixed race. The company said it didn't normally comment on individual accounts, but said the permanent suspension was due to "repeated violations" of its terms of service.
Twitter starts enforcing tougher anti-hate rules
Twitter is about to crack down on hate speech in a big way... probably. As it marked on its safety calendar, the social network is now enforcing its recently updated polices on abuse and hate. From today on, Twitter says it will take action against people that use hateful imagery and language in their profiles, condone (or glorify) violence or participate in groups that promote violence against civilians -- including through their actions outside of Twitter. The site may only ask users to delete individual tweets if they run afoul of the rules, but repeated offensive tweets, a hateful profile or affiliation with a violent group will lead to a permanent ban.
Pepe the Frog creator battles the 'alt-right' through copyright law
Pepe the Frog creator Matt Furie has long been unhappy with how the "alt-right" hijacked his friendly amphibian for hateful memes, going so far as to declare their uses "illegal" and to kill off the character in a symbolic gesture. And now, he's fulfilling that promise to fight back. Furie has sent cease-and-desist notices to multiple "alt-right" personalities (including racist Richard Spencer, conspiracy theorist Mike Cernovich and Reddit's r/the_Donald community), and he's issuing Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown requests to pull infringing content from sites like Amazon, Google, Reddit and Twitter.
Discord chats may be crucial to lawsuits over neo-Nazi violence
Discord was quick to shut down neo-Nazi servers and accounts in the wake of racist violence in Charlottesville, but that doesn't mean those conversations are gone forever. In fact, they may be instrumental to making criminal cases and lawsuits stick. The media collective Unicorn Riot has obtained leaked Discord chat screenshots (about 1,000 of them) and audio suggesting that many of the white supremacists were gearing up for a fight even as their organizers were supposedly calling for non-violence. In the days after the Charlottesville march, they also made light of the car attack that murdered Heather Heyer and injured many others.
Options for neo-Nazis on the internet are starting to shrink
If you're an American who's ever wondered what it would be like to have had the internet and today's technology during the time of Nazi ascension in Germany, take a look around. You're soaking in it. While a whole lot of us have been aware of this since at least last year's election, it's only now starting to sink in for companies who control the internet. Bitterly, only after the literal killing of people in the streets by white supremacists. Who, until this week, enjoyed using online services for their organizing, sharing, harassing, business needs and getting hateful shit done.
Gaming chat app Discord starts shutting down racist accounts
Google and GoDaddy aren't the only internet companies dumping racists in light of the violence in Charlottesville. The team behind the gaming chat app Discord has shut down both accounts "associated with the events in Charlottesville" and the altright.com chat server. As the company explains, it plans to take action against "all forms of hate," and that its mission is "positivity and inclusivity" -- it doesn't believe gamers will feel welcome if racists have a home in the app.
Recommended Reading: Apple's original television aspirations
Apple Is a Step Closer to Making Its Own TV Shows David Sims, The Atlantic While the company's television aspirations remain largely a mystery, Apple hired two big names this week to help build its slate of original shows. Jamie Erlicht and Zack Van Amburg, presidents of Sony Pictures Television, will make the move to Cupertino this summer with experience making hits like Damages, Breaking Bad, Justified and other series. The Atlantic offers a look at what this means for Apple and what we can expect from Eddy Cue & Co. in the months to come.
Apple deems Pepe 'objectionable' and bans the frog from its App Store
Pepe the Frog is an amphibia non grata at the Apple App Store, according to a rejection letter sent to a developer. The letter, which the developer posted to r/The_Donald subreddit (because of course he did), argues that Pepe is "considered objectionable content" and is therefore banned from appearing in any app in the Apple ecosystem.
Pepe the Frog is dead, but that won't stop 4chan
You have to sympathize with Matt Furie. The Boy's Club artist created Pepe the Frog as a positive, mellow character, but the amphibian got hijacked by the "alt-right" and became virtually synonymous with bigotry despite attempts to save him. So now, Furie is taking the next logical step: he's declaring Pepe dead. If you picked up Fantagraphics' Free Comic Book Day offering on May 6th, you saw a strip where Boy's Club characters mourned Pepe as he rested in an open casket. It's no doubt a hard decision for Furie (would you want to kill one of your cherished characters?), but arguably an important one -- he's effectively acknowledging that the internet has taken control of his creation.
Internet troll's book deal is rescinded
Just a couple of months after announcing a book deal for Milo Yiannopolous -- an internet figure most well-known for being banned from Twitter due to harassment focused on actress Leslie Jones -- Simon & Shuster has apparently had second thoughts. In a statement, the publisher said that "After careful consideration @simonschuster and its @threshold_books have canceled publication of Dangerous by Milo Yiannopoulos."
Reddit bans 'alt-right' community over harassment
Reddit isn't done cracking down on harmful communities. The social site has banned its r/altright subreddit for violating policies against "the proliferation of personal and confidential information." Members were doxxing people to harass or threaten them, in other words. Reddit didn't tell us exactly what prompted the move, but it clarifies that there were "repeated violations" of its doxxing policy. Moderators either couldn't or wouldn't police users' behavior, then. You can read the full statement below.
The year's biggest loser was the American public
Even if we judge 2016 purely on the musical legends it stole from us, it would be an awful one. The truth is, this year has been rough by any standard. Our social networks, ostensibly designed to connect us, led us to turn on one another. Incidents of harassment and abuse came to define Twitter. Our already bitter and destructive discourse dissolved even further in the midst of a divisive election season. Meanwhile Facebook was flooded with an alarming number of fake news stories. And if that wasn't enough, we were constantly reminded that none of us are safe from the seemingly endless barrage of hackers. Yep, this year the American public lost, big league.
Twitter reinstates racist leader's account
Twitter was supposed to have cracked down on "alt-right" racism back in mid-November, but it appears to be having second thoughts. The social network has reinstated the account of Richard B. Spencer, the white nationalist leader whose groups were an important part of the crackdown. He'd originally been banned based on Twitter rules barring "violent threats, harassment, hateful conduct and multiple account abuse," although there weren't clear examples of violations at the time.
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."
