Neo-Nazi
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Twitter apologizes for error that allowed advertisers to target neo-Nazis
Twitter has apologized after the BBC found that the company's ad platform could be gamed to target neo-Nazis, Islamophobes and other hate groups. In a report published on Thursday, the BBC says it was able to use Twitter's advertising tools to broadly identify groups of people who may have been interested in topics like white supremacism and then pay to advertise to them.
Cloudflare cuts off extremist site 8chan after multiple shootings
Cloudflare has announced that it will no longer provide security services to the far-right site 8chan following the deadly, mass shooting by a white nationalist in El Paso, Texas. That will open 8chan up to distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, starting at midnight PDT, that could permanently disable the site unless it's able to find another security service.
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.
Subpoenaing Discord may reveal identities of Charlottesville neo-Nazis
The white supremacist Charlottesville marchers who used Discord to prepare for violence might not remain anonymous for much longer. A chief magistrate judge has shot down an attempt by one of the neo-Nazis to dismiss a subpoena for Discord that would identify her and roughly 30 other users who reportedly relied on the chat app ahead of the event last year. She maintained that exposing her identity would violate her First Amendment rights to "anonymous speech" and put her in danger, but the judge disagreed. The plaintiffs' interest in identifying her as a possible perpetrator or witness outweighed her anonymity, according to the magistrate.
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 '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.
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.
Reddit's stricter stance on violence bans more racist communities
Reddit has previously had success cleaning up its act by banning hate communities, and now it's expanding those crackdowns. The social site has widened its policies on violent content to forbid material that "encourages, glorifies, incites or calls for violence," and has used that to ban numerous subreddits that have celebrated racist violence. Some of them were very small, but others had as many as 7,000 subscribers or weren't exactly hiding their violent ideology, including /pol (an offshoot of 4chan's notorious board), /Nazi and /far_right.
Internal Twitter email explains its new plans to fight abuse
Twitter promised stricter rules for abuse and hate in the wake of a boycott, but what will those rules entail, exactly? It's a bit clearer after today. Wired has obtained email providing early details on new policies, and they're mostly good news -- although they probably won't satisfy some people. Most notably, it's planning to crack down against all groups that "have historically used violence as a means to advance their cause" rather than focusing primarily on terrorism. It'll also take action against tweets that glorify violence, not just direct threats. There's no guarantee that this will lead to bans and suspensions against hate groups (Twitter is still hashing out the details), but that's what the early language implies.
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.
EFF warns blocking neo-Nazi sites may threaten free speech
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has criticized internet providers for blocking the neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer, saying it violates the principals of free speech and could backfire. "We strongly believe that what GoDaddy, Google and Cloudflare did here was dangerous," it said in a blog post. "We would be making a mistake if we assumed that these sorts of censorship decisions would never turn against causes we love."
Squarespace pulls hate sites from its web hosting service
The post-Charlottesville crackdown on internet hate speech is expanding at a very rapid pace. Squarespace, the web design and hosting service, has revealed to The Verge that it's removing a "group of sites" for violating its policy banning advocacy of bigotry and hate. The company isn't saying which sites are getting the axe, but it's giving the affected producers 48 hours' notice before their pages vanish.
Twitter suspends account used for 'Daily Stormer' updates
The white supremacist website Daily Stormer keeps popping up, and like a bad game of whack-a-mole, the internet keeps trying to rid itself of the stain. Web hosting company GoDaddy dumped the domain itself, and even though the neo-nazi site briefly resurfaced as a Russian .ru domain, it is no longer available on the regular web. Now, Twitter has suspended an account, @rudhum, that provided Daily Stormer updates.
Facebook and Reddit ban hate groups in wake of Charlottesville
It's not just domain registrars and game chat services that are cracking down on neo-Nazis in the wake of the racism-fuelled violence in Charlottesville. Facebook and Reddit have both confirmed that they've shut down numerous hate groups in the wake of the attacks. Reddit tells CNET that it shut down the /r/Physical_Removal subreddit for content that "incites violence" and thus violates its content policy. Users in the group hoped that people in anti-hate subreddits and at CNN would be killed, supported concentration camps and even wrote poems about killing.
Google cancels neo-Nazi site's registration in a matter of hours
If the white supremacists at Daily Stormer thought they were going to get a warm reception from other web service providers after GoDaddy gave them the boot, they were clearly mistaken. Google says it's cancelling the neo-Nazi website's domain registration a mere 3 hours after it signed up. A Google spokesperson tells us that DS was "violating our terms of service." The domain is still listed as registered with Google as of this writing, but it's likely going to take some time before the change is reflected in public databases.
GoDaddy dumps white supremacist site 'Daily Stormer' (updated)
White supremacist website Daily Stormer just lost its web domain. In a tweet, GoDaddy claims it's giving the site "24 hours" to move to another domain provider, having found it to be in violation of its terms and services. The announcement came in response to a Twitter appeal from The New Agenda co-founder Amy Siskind, who pointed out an article by the neo-Nazi publication. In the piece, Daily Stormer used obscene language in regards to Heather Heyer -- the woman who was killed in Charlottesville on Saturday after a man rammed his car into a crowd of people. Heyer was among those protesting against the Unite the Right white supremacist rallies over the weekend.
German police may use a song recognition app to fight neo-Nazi music
Song recognition apps like Shazam primarily exist to name catchy tunes on the radio, but Germany could soon use one to fight crime. Police in the state of Saxony have developed a smartphone app that identifies neo-Nazi music playing at social events or through internet radio stations. The software would help officials bust those violating national laws that limit access to far-right music. It's not certain that you'll see German cops bringing out their smartphones at extremist rallies, however. The country's interior ministers are discussing the app's viability this week, but Germany's existing laws on acoustic surveillance could heavily restrict its use. [Image credit: AP Photo/Markus Schreiber]
