What is BitChute? Characterizing the “Free Speech” Alternative to YouTube Milo Trujillo∗ Cody Buntain Benjamin D. Horne Maurício Gruppi∗ [email protected] [email protected] (trujim,gouvem)@rpi.edu New Jersey Institute of Technology Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Newark, New Jersey Troy, New York Troy, New York ABSTRACT Warning: This paper contains disturbing and offensive language. While In this paper, we characterize the content and discourse on BitChute, we try to discuss some of the more disturbing material at a high level, we a social video-hosting platform. Launched in 2017 as an alternative do not censor language exposed in analysis. to YouTube, BitChute joins an ecosystem of alternative, low con- tent moderation platforms, including Gab, Voat, Minds, and 4chan. 1 INTRODUCTION Uniquely, BitChute is the first of these alternative platforms tofo- In recent years, the online media ecosystem has gained significant cus on video content and is growing in popularity. Our analysis attention due to its role in false information spread, radicalizing reveals several key characteristics of the platform. We find that ideological extremists, and perpetuating malicious hate speech. Due only a handful of channels receive any engagement, and almost all to these rising concerns, several social media platforms, including of those channels contain conspiracies or hate speech. This high Twitter, YouTube, and Reddit, have begun efforts to mitigate both rate of hate speech on the platform as a whole, much of which is false information and hate speech through a variety of methods, anti-Semitic, is particularly concerning. Our results suggest that including banning users, quarantining communities, and demone- BitChute has a higher rate of hate speech than Gab but less than tizing content creators. This new approach on platforms that were 4chan. Lastly, we find that while some BitChute content producers once more lax in content moderation has led to the proliferation have been banned from other platforms, many maintain profiles on of many alternative social platforms, which harbor banned and mainstream social media platforms, particularly YouTube. This pa- demonetized content creators in the name of free speech. per contributes a first look at the content and discourse on BitChute While moving extremists off of large mainstream platforms and provides a building block for future research on low content seems to be a pro-social solution, as it potentially limits exposure moderation platforms. to anti-social content, the online cultures created and propagated by fringe platforms can have real-world impacts. For example, in CCS CONCEPTS October 2018, a Gab user carried out a mass shooting at a Pitts- • Social and professional topics ! Cultural characteristics; • burgh synagogue after previously announcing the shooting on Gab, Information systems ! Social networks. where he also participated in anti-Semitic discourse [16]. Similarly, in August 2019, a mass shooting occurred in El Paso, Texas, where KEYWORDS police believe the gunman had previously posted a white national- social media, social networks, hate speech, online communities ist themed manifesto on 8chan [1]. Unfortunately, these examples only cover a small fraction of recent events in which online hate ACM Reference Format: speech has motivated, incited, or has been connected to offline Milo Trujillo, Maurício Gruppi, Cody Buntain, and Benjamin D. Horne. violence [11]. While it is unclear how causal the role of fringe 2020. What is BitChute? Characterizing the “Free Speech” Alternative to YouTube. In HT ’20: 31st ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media, platforms are in these events, clear connections exist between the July 13–15, 2020, Orlando, FL. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 11 pages. https: online discourse and the stated motivations of these events. //doi.org/10.1145/nnnnnnn.nnnnnnn These violent events and questions of broader online radical- arXiv:2004.01984v3 [cs.CY] 29 May 2020 ization have shifted the focus of researchers and media towards This paper is supplemental to a short version of the paper published these alternative platforms. A selection of this research shows high in ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media levels of hate speech and broader impact on the online ecosystem. Specifically, research on Gab has shown that the platform has high ∗Both authors contributed equally to this research. levels of hate speech and evidence of alt-right recruiting efforts [29], communities within 4chan, Reddit, and Gab have been shown to Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed spread hateful and racist memes across the web [30], and research for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on 4chan’s “Politically Incorrect” board /pol/ has shown evidence on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM of impact on mainstream platforms, including “raids” of YouTube must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a comment sections [8, 14]. fee. Request permissions from [email protected]. Despite this growing attention, one alternative platform, HT ’20, July 13–15, 2020, Orlando, FL BitChute, has, for the most part, operated under-the-radar, receiv- © 2020 Association for Computing Machinery. ACM ISBN 978-1-4503-XXXX-X/18/06...$15.00 ing little attention from media or researchers. BitChute is a re- https://doi.org/10.1145/nnnnnnn.nnnnnnn cently launched video-hosting platform that seeks to provide a HT ’20, July 13–15, 2020, Orlando, FL Milo Trujillo, Maurício Gruppi, Cody Buntain, and Benjamin D. Horne “censorship-free” alternative to YouTube. BitChute’s 2017 launch R3. Both the videos and comments on BitChute contain high comes in a wave of other alternative social platform launches: amounts of hate speech, mostly anti-Semitic. Evidence shows BitChute is an alternative to YouTube, as Gab is an alternative the rate of hate speech on BitChute is higher than on Gab, to Twitter, and Voat is an alternative to Reddit. Just as other fringe but less than 4chan’s “politically incorrect” board /pol/. platforms, BitChute has been said to provide sanctuary for conspir- R4. While some BitChute content producers have been banned acy theorists, disinformation producers, and hate speech. Specifi- from other platforms, many maintain profiles on mainstream cally, the Southern Poverty Law Center has described BitChute as a social media, particularly YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook. “low-rent YouTube clone that carries an array of hate-fueled mate- rial” [7]. While BitChute is currently smaller than communities like 4chan and Gab, recent analysis of Google Trends data suggests the 2 RELATED WORK platform is growing in popularity and doing so faster than other A large body of work exists on alternative or fringe online social alternative platforms (see Figure 2). Furthermore, the immense pop- platforms and communities. The earliest and largest set of work ularity of social video content points to the impending success of has focused on the 4chan platform, launched in late 2003. 4chan BitChute. According to a 2019 survey, YouTube was used by 73% of is an anonymous, ephemeral imageboard platform, known for its U.S. adults, making it the most widely used social media platform “politically incorrect” board /pol/ and the various internet memes in the United States. In comparison, only 22% of U.S. adults said created on the platform. Work on 4chan has primarily focused on they used Twitter, and 11% of U.S. adults said they used Reddit [19]. the behavior of /pol/, including studies of hate speech [8], specific This contrast demonstrates the pervasive popularity of social video racist discourse [17], and measurements of its impact outside of content, a role which BitChute seeks to fill. As the alternative news 4chan [8, 30, 31]. Similarly, researchers have studied fringe Red- ecosystem continues to diverge from mainstream sources [26] and dit communities, particularly their connections to 4chan. These YouTube commits more to moderation efforts27 [ , 28], an alterna- studies include exploring news shared across Reddit, 4chan, and tive space to YouTube will likely be a key platform in this space. Twitter [31], discourse on Reddit and 4chan during the Boston If we want to address this increasing polarization in the media Marathon Bombings [20], and detecting potential ideological radi- environment, an understanding of BitChute’s discourse, types of calization on the Alt-right Reddit community [5]. content, and connections with the larger ecosystem are critical to More recent work has focused on characterizing the Gab plat- developing such interventions. form, a low-moderation alternative to Twitter. In 2018, two papers To address this knowledge gap and better understand the po- characterizing the platform were published [12, 29]. They both tential dangers of BitChute, we perform an exploratory, mixed- found similar conclusions. Namely, Gab is predominately used for methods analysis of the video-hosting platform. Our goal with this political discourse and the users of Gab are strongly conservative work is to provide a broad characterization of the platform for leaning. It was also shown that the rate of hate speech on Gab is future research to build from. To the best of our knowledge, this more than Twitter, but less than 4chan. work is the first characterization of BitChute and its place in the Also related is work on YouTube and its potential radicalization alternative social media ecosystem. Specifically, we address four pathways. Specifically, Ribeiro et al. provide the first quantitative primary questions: analysis of user radicalization on YouTube [21]. Using a dataset that is focused on the Alt-right radicalization pathway, the authors show Q1. How active are users on the platform and is interest in the that users consistently move from milder to more extreme content.