Racism
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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.
Dell founder offers low-key response to Charlottesville violence
Tech giants like Apple and Intel have vocally opposed both the racist violence in Charlottesville and President Trump's equivocating response to it, but former manufacturing council member Dell has remained silent. Where's its statement? Well, company founder Michael Dell has finally spoken. The CEO has sent a brief email to employees condemning both the Charlottesville violence and the terrorist attack in Barcelona, but in generic terms. His message declares that "hate is evil" and stresses that Dell is a company where "everyone is welcome," pointing to the company's culture code. And... that's it.
OkCupid just banned a white supremacist for life
OkCupid is the latest company to kick white supremacists off of its platform. In a tweet today, the dating service said that it found out Chris Cantwell -- the fascist featured in Vice News' Charlottesville documentary who cried in a video when he thought a warrant was issued for his arrest -- was on its site and subsequently banned him for life. It also said, "There is no room for hate in a place where you're looking for love," and told members to report people they come across who are involved in hate groups.
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.
Spotify removes ‘hate bands’ from its streaming library
You can add Spotify to the growing list of companies taking a stand against hateful, racist content. In the last few days we've seen Google and GoDaddy cancel a white supremacist website domain, Facebook and Reddit ban hate groups, Discord shut down racist accounts and GoFundMe remove a campaign in support of the man accused of driving a car into protesters this weekend in Charlottesville. Now Billboard reports that Spotify is removing "hate bands" from its streaming service.
Neo-nazi website Daily Stormer briefly resurfaces with Russian domain (updated)
After being rejected by both GoDaddy and Google, neo-Nazi publication The Daily Stormer resurfaced today with a Russian domain extension. As Vox reports, Stormer's efforts to secure a Chinese hosting service (DailyStormer.wang) were cut short, so it turned to the Dark Web and then the mainstream internet. A Whois report states that the hosting company is CloudFlare and the IP location is in Arizona. But, the site isn't online as of publication time.
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.
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.
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.
Google employee's anti-diversity screed enrages coworkers (updated)
For all the talk of improving diversity in technology companies and getting employees to treat each other with respect, it's clear that there's still a long way to go. Motherboard has learned that a Google staffer infuriated many of his coworkers after publishing a viral document attacking the company's purported "ideological echo chamber." He contended that women had low representation in software engineering due to biological differences (because they prefer people more than things, he claims), and said that the company should drop attempts to include different cultures and genders to instead focus on accommodating conservative social views.
Facebook is still terrible at managing hate speech
Facebook has failed yet again at managing and removing hate speech. Ijeoma Oluo, a black activist and writer, was on a road trip with her children recently when she decided to make a meal stop at a Cracker Barrel. While at the restaurant, which has been sued numerous times for racially discriminatory practices and has paid millions of dollars to settle such cases, Oluo jokingly tweeted, "At Cracker Barrel 4 the 1st time. Looking at the sea of white folk in cowboy hats & wondering 'will they let my black ass walk out of here?'"
Facebook is slowly becoming less white and less male
Facebook's latest diversity stats are in, and it seems that while the process is glacially-slow, the company is becoming less white and less male. In the last year, the number of women in tech has risen from 17% to 19%, with women accounting for 27% of all new graduate hires in engineering and 21% of all new technical hires. The number of Hispanics at the company has increased from 4% to 5%, while the number of black people has risen from 2% to 3%. These figures don't represent a particularly impressive move forward from last year, but they are in many cases much better than they were in 2014. According to a blog post by the company, much of this "success" can be attributed to a range of diversity-focused programs, designed to eradicate the White Boys' Club mentality that has long-plagued Facebook's boardrooms.
Airbnb and NAACP partner to boost minority-hosted rentals
Airbnb is doing everything it can to repair its image after a racist host cancelled a reservation earlier this month. The next step of that is to help people of color rent out their homes or spare rooms. "Under the new partnership, Airbnb and the NAACP will conduct targeted outreach to communities of color to help more people use their homes to earn extra income," the NAACP writes.
Racist Airbnb host ordered to take Asian American studies class
An Airbnb host who cancelled a reservation based on a guest's race has been ordered to pay $5,000 and take a college-level course in Asian American studies. Earlier this year, Dyne Suh booked a cabin in Big Bear, California and as she and three others were on their way to it, the host cancelled the booking. In a text, Tami Barker, the host, said, "I wouldn't rent it to u if u were the last person on earth. One word says it all. Asian." After Suh said she was going to notify Airbnb of Barker's actions, Barker said, "It's why we have Trump," and, "I will not allow this country to be told what to do by foreigners."
The Facebook president and Zuck's racist rulebook
If a political campaign is an engine then propaganda is its oil, and its gas is the medium of communication with voters. The hacking of the DNC and tonnes of raw crude in propaganda mined out through WikiLeaks, Breitbart and Daily Stormer was black gold for the Trump campaign.
Magic Leap settles sex discrimination lawsuit with former employee
Magic Leap created some serious buzz back in 2014 when Google, Qualcomm and other tech giants lined up to heavily invest in its mysterious mixed reality headset. Unfortunately, the tech may not live up to its own hype. Making things even worse, the company was sued for sex discrimination this past February by former employee Tannen Campbell, who, ironically, was hired to help create a more female-friendly product. While no specific terms have been revealed, the company filed a notice of settlement May 8th; the suit should be officially dismissed by June 2nd.
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.
Google is donating $11.5 million to racial justice causes
Google will invest $11.5 million to support racial justice, the company announced in a blog post today. The funds are split between 10 different causes, with $5 million going to the Center for Policing Equality. "CPE's National Justice Database is the first in the nation to track national statistics on police behavior, including stops and use of force, and standardizes data collection across many of the country's police departments," Justin Steele, a Google.org principal, writes on The Keyword blog.
Airbnb's rehabilitation tour doesn't end with a Super Bowl ad
Airbnb's rehabilitation tour came to a dramatic climax on the evening of Feb. 5th, 2017. In between downs of the 51st Super Bowl, as dozens of beefy men slammed their bodies together to the cheers of millions, Airbnb aired an advertisement presenting itself as a compassionate, socially conscious company. "#WeAccept," Airbnb declared over a slideshow of stoic faces, most of them people of color. Light piano music accompanied the white text, which read, "We believe no matter who you are, where you're from, who you love or who you worship, we all belong. The world is more beautiful the more you accept."
Facebook says it can't police all posts for racism
Facebook has a lot of control over what you see in your social feed, but it can't control everything... at least, according to its lawyer. While defending against a German lawsuit over misuse of photos in fake news, the company's attorney said it wasn't possible for Facebook to watch for racist language in every post. There are "billions" of posts every day, Facebook claims, and it would require a "wonder machine" to catch every possible instance of abuse.
