Gadsden GAB Issue 306 a PUBLICATION of BISHOP GADSDEN
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What Is Gab? a Bastion of Free Speech Or an Alt-Right Echo Chamber?
What is Gab? A Bastion of Free Speech or an Alt-Right Echo Chamber? Savvas Zannettou Barry Bradlyn Emiliano De Cristofaro Cyprus University of Technology Princeton Center for Theoretical Science University College London [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Haewoon Kwak Michael Sirivianos Gianluca Stringhini Qatar Computing Research Institute Cyprus University of Technology University College London & Hamad Bin Khalifa University [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Jeremy Blackburn University of Alabama at Birmingham [email protected] ABSTRACT ACM Reference Format: Over the past few years, a number of new “fringe” communities, Savvas Zannettou, Barry Bradlyn, Emiliano De Cristofaro, Haewoon Kwak, like 4chan or certain subreddits, have gained traction on the Web Michael Sirivianos, Gianluca Stringhini, and Jeremy Blackburn. 2018. What is Gab? A Bastion of Free Speech or an Alt-Right Echo Chamber?. In WWW at a rapid pace. However, more often than not, little is known about ’18 Companion: The 2018 Web Conference Companion, April 23–27, 2018, Lyon, how they evolve or what kind of activities they attract, despite France. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 8 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3184558. recent research has shown that they influence how false informa- 3191531 tion reaches mainstream communities. This motivates the need to monitor these communities and analyze their impact on the Web’s information ecosystem. 1 INTRODUCTION In August 2016, a new social network called Gab was created The Web’s information ecosystem is composed of multiple com- as an alternative to Twitter. -
Understanding Web Archiving Services and Their (Mis) Use On
Understanding Web Archiving Services and Their (Mis)Use on Social Media∗ Savvas Zannettou?, Jeremy Blackburnz, Emiliano De Cristofaroy, Michael Sirivianos?, Gianluca Stringhiniy ?Cyprus University of Technology, yUniversity College London, zUniversity of Alabama at Birmingham [email protected], [email protected], fe.decristofaro,[email protected], [email protected] Abstract In this context, an important role is played by services like the Wayback Machine (archive.org), which proactively Web archiving services play an increasingly important role archives large portions of the Web, allowing users to search in today’s information ecosystem, by ensuring the continuing and retrieve the history of more than 300 billion pages. At the availability of information, or by deliberately caching content same time, on-demand archiving services like archive.is have that might get deleted or removed. Among these, the Way- also become popular: users can take a snapshot of a Web page back Machine has been proactively archiving, since 2001, ver- by entering its URL, which the system crawls and archives, re- sions of a large number of Web pages, while newer services turning a permanent short URL serving as a time capsule that like archive.is allow users to create on-demand snapshots of can be shared across the Web. specific Web pages, which serve as time capsules that can be shared across the Web. In this paper, we present a large-scale Archiving services serve a variety of purposes beyond ad- analysis of Web archiving services and their use on social me- dressing link rot. Platforms like archive.is are reportedly used dia, shedding light on the actors involved in this ecosystem, to preserve controversial blogs and tweets that the author may the content that gets archived, and how it is shared. -
To the Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooting: the Evolution of Gab
Proceedings of the Thirteenth International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM 2019) From “Welcome New Gabbers” to the Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooting: The Evolution of Gab Reid McIlroy-Young, Ashton Anderson Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto, Canada [email protected], [email protected] Abstract Finally, we conduct an analysis of the shooter’s pro- file and content. After many mass shootings and terror- Gab, an online social media platform with very little content ist attacks, analysts and commentators have often pointed moderation, has recently come to prominence as an alt-right community and a haven for hate speech. We document the out “warning signs”, and speculate that perhaps the attacks evolution of Gab since its inception until a Gab user car- could have been foreseen. The shooter’s anti-Semitic com- ried out the most deadly attack on the Jewish community in ments and references to the synagogue he later attacked are US history. We investigate Gab language use, study how top- an example of this. We compare the shooters’ Gab presence ics evolved over time, and find that the shooters’ posts were with the rest of the Gab user base, and find that while he was among the most consistently anti-Semitic on Gab, but that among the most consistently anti-Semitic users, there were hundreds of other users were even more extreme. still hundreds of active users who were even more extreme. Introduction Related Work The ecosystem of online social media platforms supports a broad diversity of opinions and forms of communication. In the past few years, this has included a steep rise of alt- Our work draws upon three main lines of research: inves- right rhetoric, incendiary content, and trolling behavior. -
Testimony of Lecia Brooks Chief of Staff, Southern Poverty Law Center
Testimony of Lecia Brooks Chief of Staff, Southern Poverty Law Center before the Subcommittee on National Security, International Development and Monetary Policy Committee on Financial Services United States House of Representatives Dollars against Democracy: Domestic Terrorist Financing in the Aftermath of Insurrection February 25, 2021 My name is Lecia Brooks. I am chief of staff of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). Now in our 50th year, the SPLC is a catalyst for racial justice in the South and beyond, working in partnership with communities to dismantle white supremacy, strengthen intersectional movements, and advance the human rights of all people. SPLC lawyers have worked to shut down some of the nation’s most violent white supremacist groups by winning crushing, multimillion-dollar jury verdicts on behalf of their victims. We have helped dismantle vestiges of Jim Crow, reformed juvenile justice practices, shattered barriers to equality for women, children, the LGBTQ+ community, and the disabled, and worked to protect low-wage immigrant workers from exploitation. The SPLC began tracking white supremacist activity in the 1980s, during a resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan and other organized extremist hate groups. Today, the SPLC is the premier U.S. nonprofit organization monitoring the activities of domestic hate groups and other extremists. In the early 1990s, the SPLC launched its pioneering Teaching Tolerance program to provide educators with free, anti-bias classroom resources, such as classroom documentaries and lesson plans. Now renamed Learning For Justice, our program reaches millions of schoolchildren with award-winning curricula and other materials that promote understanding of our nation’s history and respect for others, helping educators create inclusive, equitable school environments. -
Transnational Neo-Nazism in the Usa, United Kingdom and Australia
TRANSNATIONAL NEO-NAZISM IN THE USA, UNITED KINGDOM AND AUSTRALIA PAUL JACKSON February 2020 JACKSON | PROGRAM ON EXTREMISM About the Program on About the Author Extremism Dr Paul Jackson is a historian of twentieth century and contemporary history, and his main teaching The Program on Extremism at George and research interests focus on understanding the Washington University provides impact of radical and extreme ideologies on wider analysis on issues related to violent and societies. Dr. Jackson’s research currently focuses non-violent extremism. The Program on the dynamics of neo-Nazi, and other, extreme spearheads innovative and thoughtful right ideologies, in Britain and Europe in the post- academic inquiry, producing empirical war period. He is also interested in researching the work that strengthens extremism longer history of radical ideologies and cultures in research as a distinct field of study. The Britain too, especially those linked in some way to Program aims to develop pragmatic the extreme right. policy solutions that resonate with Dr. Jackson’s teaching engages with wider themes policymakers, civic leaders, and the related to the history of fascism, genocide, general public. totalitarian politics and revolutionary ideologies. Dr. Jackson teaches modules on the Holocaust, as well as the history of Communism and fascism. Dr. Jackson regularly writes for the magazine Searchlight on issues related to contemporary extreme right politics. He is a co-editor of the Wiley- Blackwell journal Religion Compass: Modern Ideologies and Faith. Dr. Jackson is also the Editor of the Bloomsbury book series A Modern History of Politics and Violence. The views expressed in this paper are solely those of the author, and not necessarily those of the Program on Extremism or the George Washington University. -
Gab and 8Chan
Gab and 8chan: Home to Terrorist Plots Hiding in Plain Sight The second in a series of reports co-authored by the Network Contagion Research Institute and ADL’s Center on Extremism New analysis of online behavior suggests similar ideological motivations and radicalization methods when comparing the perpetrators of the Pittsburgh and Christchurch massacres. Both killers announced in their preferred internet forums that they were about to commit violence and seemed to identify their fellow forum participants as community members who might share their propensity to commit violence. Both killers were consumed by the conspiracy of a “white genocide.” Both Gab and 8chan – the go-to forums for Robert Bowers and Brenton Tarrant, respectively – are rife with white supremacist, hateful, anti- Semitic bigotry. We present here research conducted by NCRI director and ADL Center on Extremism research fellow, Joel Finkelstein, which provides the first in-depth examination of the genocidal language (e.g. “slaughter”) and conspiracy theories that are pervasive on both platforms. The research explores how each killer identified with his online community, with a degree of adherence reminiscent of what one might see from ISIS followers, and show how that same language is used constantly on both platforms, suggesting the next Bowers or the next Tarrant could emerge at any moment. Background 1 / 14 On October 27, 2018, Robert Bowers perpetrated the deadliestdeadliestdeadliestdeadliest attack attackattackattack against Jews in American history when he stormed a Pittsburgh synagogue armed with an assault rifle and three handguns. Shouting “All Jews must die,” Bowers killed eleven people in their place of worship. -
Alexander B. Stohler Modern American Hategroups: Lndoctrination Through Bigotry, Music, Yiolence & the Internet
Alexander B. Stohler Modern American Hategroups: lndoctrination Through Bigotry, Music, Yiolence & the Internet Alexander B. Stohler FacultyAdviser: Dr, Dennis Klein r'^dw May 13,2020 )ol, Masters of Arts in Holocaust & Genocide Studies Kean University In partialfulfillumt of the rcquirementfar the degee of Moster of A* Abstract: I focused my research on modern, American hate groups. I found some criteria for early- warning signs of antisemitic, bigoted and genocidal activities. I included a summary of neo-Nazi and white supremacy groups in modern American and then moved to a more specific focus on contemporary and prominent groups like Atomwaffen Division, the Proud Boys, the Vinlanders Social Club, the Base, Rise Against Movement, the Hammerskins, and other prominent antisemitic and hate-driven groups. Trends of hate-speech, acts of vandalism and acts of violence within the past fifty years were examined. Also, how law enforcement and the legal system has responded to these activities has been included as well. The different methods these groups use for indoctrination of younger generations has been an important aspect of my research: the consistent use of hate-rock and how hate-groups have co-opted punk and hardcore music to further their ideology. Live-music concerts and festivals surrounding these types of bands and how hate-groups have used music as a means to fund their more violent activities have been crucial components of my research as well. The use of other forms of music and the reactions of non-hate-based artists are also included. The use of the internet, social media and other digital means has also be a primary point of discussion. -
How Indirect Intermediaries Shape Online Speech
Mitchell 1 Anna Mitchell Professor Nate Persily INTLPOL 323 December 16, 2018 Hidden Censors: How Indirect Intermediaries Shape Online Speech 1. Introduction “Literally, I woke up in a bad mood and decided someone shouldn’t be allowed on the internet. No one should have that power.” After a whirlwind five days of social media protests and internal tension, Matthew Prince, the CEO of Cloudflare, an Internet-services company, decided to terminate its contract with The Daily Stormer. The Internet’s most popular neo-Nazi website had vanished from the Web.1 Cloudflare’s content distribution network (CDN), improving the Stormer’s performance and protecting it from distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, had allowed the site to stay afloat for months or years. But that changed in 2017 during a period of tense racial relations in the United States. From August 11 to 12, the Daily Stormer helped organize the white supremacist Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Soon after, it published articles calling murdered protestor Heather Heyer a “sloppy lard ass” and labeling her death an accidental heart attack.2 Reaction was swift. The next day, activist Amy Suskind tagged web hosting service GoDaddy in a Twitter post: “@GoDaddy you host The Daily Stormer - they posted this on their site. Please retweet if you think this hate should be taken down & banned.”3 Within 24 hours, GoDaddy responded by withdrawing hosting services. When the Stormer tried to switch to Google, it soon followed suit.4 Zoho refused to provide email service,5 and Twitter shut down Mitchell 2 associated accounts.6 With multiple major companies withdrawing services, it became increasingly difficult for the Stormer to host and propagate content. -
The Fringe Insurgency Connectivity, Convergence and Mainstreaming of the Extreme Right
The Fringe Insurgency Connectivity, Convergence and Mainstreaming of the Extreme Right Jacob Davey Julia Ebner About this paper About the authors This report maps the ecosystem of the burgeoning Jacob Davey is a Researcher and Project Coordinator at ‘new’ extreme right across Europe and the US, which is the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), overseeing the characterised by its international outlook, technological development and delivery of a range of online counter- sophistication, and overtures to groups outside of the extremism initiatives. His research interests include the traditional recruitment pool for the extreme-right. This role of communications technologies in intercommunal movement is marked by its opportunistic pragmatism, conflict, the use of internet culture in information seeing movements which hold seemingly contradictory operations, and the extreme-right globally. He has ideologies share a bed for the sake of achieving provided commentary on the extreme right in a range common goals. It examines points of connectivity of media sources including The Guardian, The New York and collaboration between disparate groups and Times and the BBC. assesses the interplay between different extreme-right movements, key influencers and subcultures both Julia Ebner is a Research Fellow at the Institute for online and offline. Strategic Dialogue (ISD) and author of The Rage: The Vicious Circle of Islamist and Far-Right Extremism. Her research focuses on extreme right-wing mobilisation strategies, cumulative extremism and European terrorism prevention initiatives. She advises policy makers and tech industry leaders, regularly writes for The Guardian and The Independent and provides commentary on broadcast media, including the BBC and CNN. © ISD, 2017 London Washington DC Beirut Toronto This material is offered free of charge for personal and non-commercial use, provided the source is acknowledged. -
January 11, 2021 NCRI Assessment of the Capitol Riots Violent Actors and Ideologies Behind the Events
NCRI Assessment of the Capitol Riots Violent Actors and Ideologies Behind the Events of January 6, 2021. Former Congressman Denver Riggleman Strategist, The Network Contagion Research Institute Alex Goldenberg Lead Intelligence Analyst, The Network Contagion Research Institute Joel Finkelstein Director, The Network Contagion Research Institute Senior Research Fellow, Miller Center for Community Protection and Resilience, Rutgers University John Farmer Former New Jersey State Attorney General and Senior Counsel, 9/11 Commission Director, Miller Center for Community Protection and Resilience, Rutgers University Brian Harrell Strategic Advisor, The Network Contagion Research Institute Former Assistant Secretary for Infrastructure Protection at DHS Danica Finkelstein Intelligence Analyst, The Network Contagion Research Institute Lea Marchl Intelligence Analyst, The Network Contagion Research Institute The Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) is a neutral and independent third party whose mission it is to track, expose, and combat misinformation, deception, manipulation, and hate across social media channels. On January 6th, President Trump’s “Save America” rally was attended by a majority of peaceful protestors. However, a sizable crowd left the speech delivered by the President and overwhelmed law enforcement officials in order to break into the U.S. Capitol building during the certification of the electoral vote. While a majority of attendees remained peaceful, many participated in the violent storming and looting of the U.S. Capitol building. These events saw law enforcement evacuate lawmakers, Capitol offices burglarized and left 5 dead and many wounded. The cause(s) of these events are several-fold according to NCRI’s analytical assessment: Bottom Line Up Front: ● Virtually all violent vanguard elements appeared to come from predominantly far-right, fringe groups. -
Post-Digital Cultures of the Far Right
Maik Fielitz, Nick Thurston (eds.) Post-Digital Cultures of the Far Right Political Science | Volume 71 Maik Fielitz, Nick Thurston (eds.) Post-Digital Cultures of the Far Right Online Actions and Offline Consequences in Europe and the US With kind support of Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Na- tionalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No- Derivatives 4.0 (BY-NC-ND) which means that the text may be used for non-commer- cial purposes, provided credit is given to the author. For details go to http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ To create an adaptation, translation, or derivative of the original work and for com- mercial use, further permission is required and can be obtained by contacting [email protected] Creative Commons license terms for re-use do not apply to any content (such as graphs, figures, photos, excerpts, etc.) not original to the Open Access publication and further permission may be required from the rights holder. The obligation to research and clear permission lies solely with the party re-using the material. © 2019 transcript Verlag, Bielefeld Cover layout: Kordula Röckenhaus, Bielefeld Typeset by Alexander Masch, Bielefeld Printed by Majuskel Medienproduktion GmbH, Wetzlar Print-ISBN 978-3-8376-4670-2 PDF-ISBN 978-3-8394-4670-6 https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839446706 Contents Introduction | 7 Stephen Albrecht, Maik Fielitz and Nick Thurston ANALYZING Understanding the Alt-Right. -
How White Supremacist Groups Have Embraced Crowdfunding
From Classifieds to Crypto: How White Supremacist Groups Have Embraced Crowdfunding ALEX NEWHOUSE Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism www.middlebury.edu/institute/academics/centers-initiatives/ctec The Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism (CTEC) conducts in-depth research on terrorism and other forms of extremism. Formerly known as the Monterey Terrorism Research and Education Program, CTEC collaborates with world-renowned faculty and their graduate students in the Middlebury Institute’s Nonproliferation and Terrorism Studies degree program. CTEC’s research informs private, government, and multilateral institutional understanding of and responses to terrorism threats. Middlebury Institute for International Studies at Monterey www.miis.edu The Middlebury Institute for International Studies at Monterey provides international professional education in areas of critical importance to a rapidly changing global community, including international policy and management, translation and interpretation, language teaching, sustainable development, and nonproliferation. We prepare students from all over the world to make a meaningful impact in their chosen fields through degree programs characterized by immersive and collaborative learning, and opportunities to acquire and apply practical professional skills. Our students are emerging leaders capable of bridging cultural, organizational, and language divides to produce sustainable, equitable solutions to a variety of global challenges. Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism Middlebury Institute of International Studies 460 Pierce Street Monterey, CA 93940, USA Tel: +1 (831) 647-4634 The views, judgments, and conclusions in this report are the sole representations of the authors and do not necessarily represent either the official position or policy or bear the endorsement of CTEC or the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.