On Saturday, a car drove into anti-fascism protesters in Charlottesville. Heather Heyer, a 32-year-old legal assistant, was killed and more than 30 people were left injured following the incident. During the weekend's protests, white supremacists walked through the city's streets, proudly performing Nazi salutes and shouting "Hail Trump".
Following Heyer's death, propaganda started to spread about her online. Neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer published a defamatory article calling her a "fat, childless... slut". The story was shared 65,000 times on Facebook, before the social network decided to delete any shares that didn't include a comment.
In response, GoDaddy stopped hosting the website for violating its terms of service. When The Stormer's creators tried host their site with Google, the Silicon Valley firm also blocked it. Google also removed its YouTube channel, while service provider Zoho blocked the website for violating its terms and conditions.
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Technology firms are increasingly being faced with a blindingly obvious reality: they are ultimately responsible for the content posted on their websites. "It's one thing to shut down a website, but it's wholly another to try and persuade Facebook and Twitter to take down content that is in more of a closed setting – a closed group for example," says Josh Cowls, a researcher focussing on the political impact of ethics. Cowls argues it's easier for GoDaddy or a service provider to remove entire websites on the grounds of objectional content than it is for social media websites to take down individual posts.
GoDaddy says it removed the The Stormer as it was inciting "violence against people". A spokesperson for the firm told the Washington Post that in most cases it attempts to protect free speech, but that the site had “crossed the line and encouraged and promoted violence”. The spokesperson continued: "We generally do not take action on complaints that would constitute censorship of content."
For Silicon Valley, the alarming rise of white supremacist voices in the US poses a major challenge. Donald Trump's rise to power hasn't just fuelled a raft of alt-right memes, it's also given birth to conspiracy theories such as Pizzagate. But Trump's presidency hasn't just stoked the flames of fascism, its also (almost) united technology CEOs against him, especially when it comes to issues such as the From the travel ban. Following his non-statement on Charlottesville, a number of technology leaders resigned from his advisory councils.
For many in Silicon Valley, the rise of the alt-right has caused an unusually direct response. Airbnb's CEO Brian Chesky has said his firm will ban anyone it suspects of using the platform to organise extremist events. Airbnb will also use background checks to find "antithetical" behaviour and ban people from renting rooms.
It's not the first time the Valley has been forced to respond to society's problems – but its recent response to the alt-right represents a step-change. Before white extremists, the likes of Facebook, Google and Twitter have been faced with the spread of Isis propaganda, live-streaming of crimes, racism and the publication of child sexual abuse. In response, companies have developed internal policies and standards that users have to uphold. These often fall in line with local laws – for instance, in 2012 a student who posted racist material on Twitter was jailed by UK judges. In June, Germany became the first European country to introduce laws that will punish technology firms if they fail to remove hate speech within 24-hours of it being reported.
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Facebook, Google and Twitter have developed the technological tools to handle extremist content, which aren't dependent on the type of extremism they're focusing on. Take Facebook: the social network has developed machine learning algorithms to identify problematic accounts, Google's Jigsaw nudges people to alternative viewpoints and YouTube's bots are becoming more effective at spotting extremism. (The video sharing website faced a backlash from advertisers when it was found their sponsorship was making money for, and appearing next to, extreme views).
Just as Silicon Valley firms have attempted to clamp down on the alt-right, they've also fundamentally failed to tackle other extremists using their networks. But it's a fine line to tread. Niri Shan a media lawyer at Taylor Wessing told the BBC that technology firms find themselves in a precarious position. "You've got politicians saying they'll intervene and legislate if they don't take more actions on the content on their sites, so I think this is part of a bigger picture," he said.
Cowls argues Trump's presidency has brought online extremism into sharp relief for many Silicon Valley leaders. "These are questions these companies haven't had to necessarily face in the past. Technology companies are really having to wake up and think about how these issues play out – the Trump presidency has caused a lot of rethinking in the tech space."
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
