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w JULY 2021 Courage Against Hate w Introduction The Courage Against Hate initiative has Hate and extremism have no place on Facebook and we have been brought together by Facebook for been making major investments over a number of years to improve detection of this content on our platforms, so we the purpose of sparking cross-sector, can remove it quicker - ideally before people see it and pan-European dialogue and action to report it to us. We’ve tripled - to more than 35,000 - the combat hate speech and extremism. people working on safety and security at Facebook, and This collection of articles unites European grown the dedicated team we have leading our efforts against terrorism and extremism to over 350 people. academic analysis with practitioners who This group includes former academics who are experts on are actively working on countering counterterrorism, former prosecutors and law enforcement extremism within civil society. agents, investigators and analysts, and engineers. We’ve also developed and iterated various technologies to make us faster and better at identifying this type of material automatically. This includes photo and video matching tools and text-based machine-learning classifiers. Last year, as a result of these investments, we removed more than 19 million pieces of content related to hate organisations last year, over 97% of which we proactively identified and removed before anyone reported it to us. While we are making good progress, we know that working to keep hateful and extremist content off Facebook is not enough, because this content proliferates across the web and wider society, often in different ways. That is why we also need partnerships to do this work well. In order to be truly effective in stopping the spread of terrorist and extremist content across the internet, we need to join forces with others. Four years ago, we started meeting with other technology companies to discuss the best ways to counter terrorists’ attempts to use our services through the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT). We’ve subsequently also partnered with experts in government, civil society and academia to discuss and study the latest trends in terrorist and violent extremist activity online. Partnerships like this allow technology companies 2 | COURAGE AGAINST HATE w like us to see beyond trends on our own platform, and the Swedish Defence Research Agency further assesses better understand the interplay between online and the challenges and opportunities of automatic hate speech offline. They also help us build programs with credible civil detection including domain transferability, reliability, society organizations to support counter-speech at scale, languages and expressions, and how to avoid detection. and how best to deploy multi-sector efforts to challenge These expert briefings highlight once again that threats hate speech and extremism while respecting fundamental from the far-right need to be constantly monitored in principles of human rights. order to learn from emerging trends and develop nuanced Courage Against Hate is a strategic policy initiative successful countermeasures, in what is a fundamentally brought together with this goal in mind. We hope it will adversarial field. help us collectively develop a more holistic understanding about the diverse and evolving nature of the problem and prompt a multi-disciplinary conversation around what PRACTITIONER CASE STUDIES policies, further analysis and programs are needed for In order to showcase exemplary programmatic solutions and the fight against hate, extremism and terrorism to be best practices in counterspeech, we further commissioned truly effective. This publication highlights that we are by six case studies. The aim of these case studies was to map no means starting from zero. Substantial work has been how a selection of European practitioners are putting forth done in the last five plus years. New methodologies have efforts to strategically combat hate speech and extremism, been developed, tools have been tested, programs have as well as how tactics for preventing and countering violent launched innovative approaches to reaching at-risk and extremism, such as counterspeech/counter-narratives, are vulnerable audiences. We hope that this publication best deployed, and help a broader audience understand the shows how much technology companies, governments, interplay between online and offline interactions in this field. researchers and civil society all have very important roles to play, and how much partnerships are needed to tackle The resulting case studies presented in this report are the societal issue that hate speech represents. diverse and cover a range of focus areas and programmatic approaches. Sweden-based #iamhere speaks to their approach to counterspeech, specifically their method to RESEARCH BRIEFINGS reduce hate speech and misinformation online. Galop in the UK focuses on their approach to combating hate speech Right-wing extremism is constantly changing and adapting and extremism based on mutual support and cooperation. to global developments. Hope not Hate’s Joe Mulhall and Meanwhile, Moonshot, presents their work on the Redirect Safya Khan-Ruf text examine the trajectory of the rhetoric, Method, using targeted advertising to connect people tactics and direction of European far-right in the midst of searching the internet for violent extremist content with a global pandemic in 2020 and the rise of the International safer alternatives. The Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) Black Lives Matter movement. But right-wing extremism sheds light on the Online Civil Courage Initiative (OCCI) is not only reacting to such developments: Matthias Quent, aimed at uniting a diverse set of actors, providing them Christoph Richter and Axel Salheiser from the Jena Institute with the latest research into hate and extremism online for Democracy and Civil Society showcase in their text and fostering a collaborative environment via conferences how the far-right is also adapting to subcultures and has and hackathons. Austria-based Zivilcourage und Anti modernized itself to fully embrace the digital space. Rassismus-Arbeit (ZARA) puts forward their practices Bethan Johnson (Centre for the Analysis of the Radical aimed at combating racism and online hatred and to Right) similarly explores the increasing trends of white promote, strengthen, and increase the value of civil courage supremacy across Europe and North America in her analysis within the Austrian society. Finally, Textgain and Media piece on Siege Culture - one of this subcultures’ original Diversity Institute look at how their respective projects publications which makes up the backbone of the modern Detect Then Act and Get The Trolls Out use AI and manual movement. She explores the increasing trends of white media monitoring to mitigate discrimination and intolerance. supremacy across Europe and North America, pointing to one of these subcultures’ original publications and texts that make up the backbone of the modern movement. Rearchers from Uppsala Univeristy and 3 | COURAGE AGAINST HATE w EXISTING GUIDELINES AND RESOURCES We understand that we are starting from a point where much has already been done in the last few years to fight against hate speech in all its forms and to ensure that multi-sector approaches evolve to effectively tackle adversarial shifts as they happen. For that reason, we want to highlight some of the existing toolkits and resources created to provide guidance, support and best practices for developing, launching, measuring and evaluating work that challenges hate speech and extremism online and offline. • Facebook’s Counterspeech Hub exists to support voices • ISD Global has developed a number of training that are engaged in counterspeech efforts. The site programmes and toolkits to help practitioners and provides overviews of a variety of counterspeech activists develop, launch and measure counterspeech. programmatic efforts that Facebook supports around These include the NGOs Counter Narratives Monitoring the world and links to open-access resources and analysis and Evaluation Handbook, their report about assessing to help guide practitioners. The hub helps promote the Impact of Counter Narratives and the Counter accessibility to Counterspeech tools, resources, and Narrative Handbook. guidance. Above all, it is there to elevate the dialogue • The Online Civil Courage Initiative Help Desk works with beyond the reach of fear, hate, and violence. civil society organisations to provide tailored support and • The Campaign Toolkit is a new and dynamic digital guidance on developing, managing and measuring online resource for educating, enabling, and empowering the counter-speech. Funded by Facebook and run by ISD next generation of activists and community organizations Global, the help desk can help civil society groups design as they mobilize to outcompete hate and to promote a campaign that meets specific needs and objectives, and community cohesion, inclusion and tolerance. Funded connects them with organisations who can fill any skills by the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism and gaps that might be apparent. You can access this resource managed by ISD Global, the toolkit immerses you in the in English, French or German. journey of planning, producing and promoting campaigns for global audiences. It provides a step-by-step guide as well as resources from leading technology companies and civil society. Available in English, French, German