March 19, 2021 By David Andrew Weinberg
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is the Supreme Leader of Iran and an active presence on various social media platforms in multiple languages. And although he uses these accounts to spread hatred, violence, and dangerous disinformation – let alone his calls to destroy the State of Israel – these platforms allow him to keep doing so in seeming violation of their own policies.
This is in purported deference to his status as a political…
280 Results
Back
February 22, 2021 Social media platforms have received the lion’s share of attention for enabling users to spread hate and disinformation and plan and incite violence and terrorist acts. Flying under the radar are infrastructure providers like Epik, a domain registrar and web hosting company that works with nearly 750,000 websites and is ranked among the 50 largest web hosts. A domain is the address of a website you type into the URL bar of an internet browser. Domain registrars are…
February 12, 2021 THE WEEK’S BIG 3
Google's YouTube is still recommending extremist and white supremacist videos to viewers already susceptible to racial hatred, a new report from ADL found. Iranian schools are teaching antisemitism, hatred and conspiratorial material in their textbooks, according to a comprehensive analysis by ADL. Police in Spokane, WA are looking for the person who painted swastikas on the Temple Beth Shalom building and a Holocaust memorial.
Read on for more…
January 15, 2021 We live more and more in digital spaces, so we have to work harder to distinguish protected online speech from unprotected online conduct. In the wake of the attack at the U.S. Capitol on January 6—an attack that was planned, mobilized and livestreamed online—this work has gained an even greater sense of urgency, especially when it comes to doxing.
Many people define doxing as posting someone’s personal information online. But doxing as a blanket…
January 15, 2021 A livestream video shot by a newly-elected West Virginia lawmaker shows a disturbing gap between what a mob of Trump supporters who attacked the Capitol thought about the events of January 6 and what the rest of the world actually saw.
Derrick Evans, a freshman member of the West Virginia House of Delegates, viewed fellow rioters swarming around him and forcing entry into the Capitol as a celebration. He was visibly giddy. But for horror-struck viewers, it was a violent…
January 13, 2021 The January 6 attack at our nation’s Capitol was deliberate and coordinated. Individuals who broke the law must be held accountable, but we cannot ignore that social media platforms, like Gab, may well bear a measure of criminal responsibility for the attack as well. To the extent Gab intentionally served as a forum for people to plan, coordinate, engage in or otherwise facilitate the criminal activity that took place on January 6, a Department of Justice investigation…
December 11, 2020 THE WEEK’S BIG 3
The only Anne Frank memorial in the United States was vandalized Tuesday, a distressing display of hate that has prompted a police investigation. A report into last year's Christchurch mosque attack found that New Zealand security agencies were "almost exclusively" focused on the threat from Islamist terrorism, and police failed to enforce proper checks on firearm licenses. Facebook is embarking on a major overhaul of its algorithms that detect hate…
November 24, 2020 UPDATE:
In July 2021, during a investigative radio show and podcast, Alex Mann, an Australian journalist for ABC’s Background Briefing, identified CatboyKami (aka Philip Hedley) as Tor Gustafsson Brookes.
Extremists are constantly adapting and finding ways to reach new audiences, spread and spew their hate and create online content. Their latest tactic involves the use of Omegle, a free online chat service that randomly pairs anonymous users for…
November 20, 2020 The latest Facebook Transparency Report, which covers July 2020 to September 2020 (Q3 2020), raises some alarming concerns around the prevalence of hate speech on the platform, leaving ADL with several questions that demand clear answers. ADL published a blog post about the opaque nature of Facebook’s transparency reports in January 2019. Many of the same problems that existed in the 2019 reports continue in Facebook’s most recent transparency efforts.
…
November 17, 2020 Facebook has been vocal about its recent efforts to suspend and ban hateful, conspiratorial and violent content from its platform. And yet a great deal of extremist content remains.
As of November 16, 2020, even a cursory search of Facebook brings up white supremacist, racist and antisemitic pages. The following is a sampling of extremist groups and individuals currently active on Facebook.
Antisemites and Holocaust Deniers:
TruNews is a fundamentalist…
1-11 is a numeric symbol used by the Aryan Knights, an Idaho-based prison gang, to identify themselves. Substituting letters for numbers, 1 and 11 mean A and K, i.e., Aryan Knights.
The number 12 is a numeric symbol for Aryan Brotherhood groups (as are the numbers 1 and 2 separately), especially the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas. Substituting letters for numbers, 12 equals AB, i.e., Aryan Brotherhood.
The number 13 is a numeric symbol for the Aryan Circle, the large Texas-based racist prison gang. Substituting letters for numbers, 1 and 3 equals A and C, i.e., AC or Aryan Circle.
The number combination 14/23 is a numeric symbol associated with the Southern Brotherhood, the largest white supremacist prison gang in Alabama. The 14 is a reference to the white supremacist "14 Words" slogan ("We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children"), while the 23 refers to the "23 precepts," a list of rules that Southern Brotherhood members must follow, such as "do not make a debt you cannot pay" and "no huffing lacquer." Additional Images:
Members of the Unforgiven, a Florida-based racist prison gang, use the numeric symbol 21-2-12 as a sort of slogan. Substituting letters for numbers, 21 stands for U ("Unity"), 2 stands for B ("Brotherhood") and 12 stands for L ("Loyalty"). Additional Images:
ALTERNATE NAMES: Aryan Alliance, Brotherhood of Aryan AllianceGroup Status: Active
The 211 Crew is a large racist prison gang based in Colorado. Its main tattoo (or "shield" or "patch") is a complex triangular symbol made out of interlocking arms, with hands grasping lightning bolts and the number 211 in the center. According to law enforcement, the name of the gang originated from the California penal code for robbery. However, members claim that 211 is a numeric code for BAA,…
ALTERNATE NAMES: Aryan Alliance, Brotherhood of Aryan Alliance
Read more about 211 Crew
The number 511 is a numeric symbol for the Oregon-based racist prison gang European Kindred. Substituting letters for numbers, the 5 and 11 equate to E and K, i.e., European Kindred. Additional Images:
The number 737 is a numeric symbol used by Public Enemy Number 1 (PENI), a California-based white supremacist gang present on California's streets and in its prisons. Unlike most white supremacist numeric symbols, 737 is not an example of number-letter substitution. Instead, the numbers 737 correspond to the letters P, D, and S on a telephone keypad. The initials PDS stand for Peni Death Squad, another name for the group. Additional Images:
Group Status: Active
The Alabama Aryan Brotherhood is one of many racist prison gangs that have adopted the Aryan Brotherhood name. It is an independent gang and has no connection to the "original" Aryan Brotherhood present in the California and federal prison systems. The primary Alabama Aryan Brotherhood tattoo or "patch" is in the popular "shield" format and consists of a shield-like emblem sporting four images, which could include the initials AB, SS lightning bolts, a swastika, an…
Remarks by Jonathan A. Greenblatt, ADL CEO November 09, 2020 Thank you all for tuning in today for the 5th annual Never is Now conference. There is so much to discuss, but before we get started, I want to pause and remember Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks who left us too soon this weekend. He was an extraordinary leader, a remarkable rabbi, a gifted scholar and a beautiful man. He will be missed. May his memory always be for a blessing. We gather today -- virtually -- at what feels like the start…