Racism
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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.
Leaked Facebook documents show its shifting hate speech policies
Over the last year or so, Facebook's public statements have reflected the ongoing process of its moderation policies, both when it comes to election fraud and the even pricklier issue of hate speech. Now, beyond its publicly available Community Standards and various apologies, Motherboard has published internal documents showing what it's actually policing, and how that has changed over time.
PS4 exclusive 'Detroit' is a flawed depiction of race in America
Detroit: Become Human begins with a warning: "This is not a story, this is our future." Writer-director David Cage's follow-up to Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls weaves a tale about robots attempting to transcend their programming. But rather being a thoughtful, philosophical examination of consciousness, Detroit, instead, is a tone-deaf look at race.
Facebook will conduct civil rights audit following bias allegations
Facebook has come under fire lately for accusations of racial and political bias, and it's determined to address both of those claims head-on. The social media giant has committed to independent investigations that will scrutinize both its civil rights record and its alleged anti-conservative political bias. Civil liberties leader Laura Murphy will lead a civil rights audit with input from groups like the Leadership Conference. Meanwhile, former Republican Senator Jon Kyl will run a conservative bias advisory partnership that will also see Facebook executives meeting with the right-wing think tank Heritage Foundation.
Facebook removes Pages of two groups run by Richard Spencer
Earlier this week, during his testimony before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Mark Zuckerberg responded to a question from Representative Eliot Engel (D-NY) about hate groups by saying, "We do not allow hate groups on Facebook, overall. So, if there's a group that their primary purpose or a large part of what they do is spreading hate, we will ban them from the platform, overall." But while that may be the policy, it has proven to be a bit difficult to implement. Following that testimony, Vice News found that a number of organizations the Southern Poverty Law Center considers to be hate groups still had Facebook presences, including two linked to white nationalist Richard Spencer. After Vice approached the platform about them, Spencer's Pages were taken down.
Snapchat reinstates Giphy stickers following removal of racist GIFs
Last month, both Snapchat and Instagram pulled Giphy stickers from their apps after users discovered a racist GIF with a slur. At the time, Giphy said that it had removed the GIF in question and fixed the bug that let it through. It also said it would be reviewing all of its GIF stickers manually. Last week, Instagram reinstated Giphy stickers and now, so has Snapchat.
Instagram restores Giphy stickers now that racist GIFs are gone
Instagram and Snapchat completely removed Giphy stickers from their apps after finding racist GIFs, but the feature is now ready to come back... on Instagram, that is. The photo-centric social network has restored stickers after Giphy said it "made specific changes to our [moderation] process" to prevent a repeat incident. Snapchat hadn't made a similar move as of this writing (it reiterated its earlier position in a statement to TechCrunch), but it may be just a matter of time if the company is satisfied with Giphy's response.
Overwatch League team releases player over hateful speech
Overwatch League player Felix "xQc" Lengyel has been suspended twice for using both homophobic and racist slurs, and he's now bowing out entirely. Dallas Fuel and Lengyel have announced that they've "mutually agreed to part ways" in the wake of his conduct. It was in the "best interest" of both sides to release Lengyel before his contract expired, team owner Mike Rufail said. Lengyel's latest suspension won't let him play or practice with any team during Stage 2 of the League's inaugural season, and letting him go now lets the Fuel sign others during the transfer window while giving Lengyel a chance to sign with someone new.
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 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 bans extremist account retweeted by Trump
Twitter's enforcement of its new anti-hate rules is having a very immediate and tangible effect. Daily Dot has noticed that Twitter banned the account of Jayda Fransen, the British extremist whose bogus anti-Muslim videos were retweeted by Donald Trump in November. The social network also banned the account of her right-wing group, Britain First, as well as those of numerous other racist organizations, such as American Renaissance and its editor Jared Taylor.
Tesla hit with another lawsuit claiming a racist work environment (updated)
Tesla is the subject of another lawsuit regarding racism in the workplace, Bloomberg reports. An employee has filed a suit against the company saying that Tesla's production floor is a "hotbed for racist behavior," and that over 100 employees have experienced racial harassment. In the complaint, which was filed today, they said, "Although Tesla stands out as a groundbreaking company at the forefront of the electric car revolution, its standard operating procedure at the Tesla factory is pre-Civil Rights era race discrimination."
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.
Tech giants team with Anti-Defamation League to fight online hate
Internet giants like Facebook and Google have had to step up their fights against hate speech in recent months, but they only occasionally present a united front against bigotry. That might change after today, though. Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Twitter are partnering with the Anti-Defamation League on a Cyberhate Problem-Solving Lab that aims to stem the tide of online hate. The ADL will offer policy considerations and an understanding of how internet hate develops, while the companies will focus on "technical solutions" that keep hateful behavior at bay.
Russia-linked Facebook ads sought to exploit US social divisions
There's been a lot of fuss over a Russian group buying Facebook ads in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, to the point where it's handing the ads to Congress as it investigates the scope of Russia's influence campaign. But what's in those ads, exactly? We might have a better idea. Washington Post sources say that the 3,000 ads headed to Congress were built to exploit American social divisions. Some championed activist groups like Black Lives Matter, while others portrayed them as existential threats. Others aimed to split opinions through hot-button issues like Islam, LGBT rights, gun rights and immigration.
Facebook tightens safeguards against hate-driven targeted ads
Facebook was caught more than a little off-guard when ProPublica discovered ads targeted at racists, and today it's taking steps to prevent those hate-filled ads from showing up again. The social network's Sheryl Sandberg has announced plans to tighten control of ads, including more human involvement. There will now be "more manual review" of ad targeting options to prevent promos based on hateful terms. Also, it's developing a program that will encourage you to report abuses directly -- you might not have to wait for a news story for Facebook to take action.
Twitter also has a problem with ads targeted towards hate speech
ProPublica found that Facebook allows ads to be targeted at users based on antisemitic keywords and BuzzFeed has reported that Google similarly allows ads to be targeted through racist and hateful phrases. So, it probably shouldn't be a surprise at this point that it turns out Twitter is laden with similar issues.
Google has targeted ads based on hate speech, too
Yesterday, ProPublica released a report on its investigation into the sorts of ad categories Facebook makes available to advertisers. It found that the website allowed it to target ads to users based on categories like "Jew hater" and "How to burn jews" among other antisemitic options. Today, BuzzFeed reports that Google has a similar problem.
PewDiePie in trouble once again for racist outburst
Felix "PewDiePie" Kjellberg is back in the headlines for, once again, expressing racist sentiment in one of his YouTube videos. During a stream of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, the world's most popular YouTuber said the n-word during an expletive-filled rant.
Neo-Nazi site Stormfront has been temporarily taken down
The post-Charlottesville removal of neo-Nazi content from various web sources continues to power on as the long-standing website Stormfront has, for now, been taken down. A Whois search shows that Web.com domain provider Network Solutions LLC has put a hold on the website and as the Knoxville News Sentinel reports, the hold prohibits the site from being updated, transferred or deleted. If the domain provider decides to delete Stormfront, any subsequent version hosted elsewhere would have to be recreated from scratch.
