White supremacists are using online platforms for hate. It's time to
change the terms.
adopt the terms
As internet platforms provide more opportunities for people around the world to connect, they have also provided a forum for certain groups to spread hate, fear, and abusive behavior.
The deadly neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville, Virginia, was organized with the use of Facebook, PayPal, and Discord.
The violent Proud Boys group vets new applicants through Facebook, and have seen an uptick in applications since summer 2018.
Some technology companies have made steps in the right direction to reduce hateful activities online, but more work needs to be done.
Over the past year, the Change the Terms coalition has met with experts on terrorism, human rights, and technology around the world to gather insights on how hate operates online and how it can be stopped.
The result of those conversations was the creation of recommended corporate policies and terms of service to ensure that social media platforms, payment service providers, and other internet-based services are not places where hateful activities and extremism can grow.
Hateful activities are those that incite or engage in violence, intimidation, harassment, threats, or defamation targeting an individual or group based on their actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity, immigration status, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, or disability.
Read the FAQsJust as the internet has created immense positive value by connecting people and creating new communities, it has also given new tools to those who want to threaten, harass, intimidate, defame, or even violently attack people different from themselves.
Change the Terms has developed model corporate policies to help internet companies stop hate and extremism online and ensure that they do more to protect people of color, women, LGBTQIA people, religious minorities and other marginalized communities. We are made up of civil-rights, anti-hate and open-internet organizations.
About the coalition
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Our condolences and love go out to members of the Christchurch mosques and the people of New Zealand. Hate has once again brought violence to Muslims in their places of worship.
We're reminded of the murderous attacks on Jews in Pittsburgh at Tree of Life Synagogue and of African American Christians at Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. In those cases, and in so many more, the murderers’ hatred found a home online. These shooters were incited by online hate and conspiracy theories that demonize and dehumanize people because of their religions, races, genders and sexual identities.
The Change the Terms coalition has called on tech companies like Facebook, Google and Twitter to take the steps necessary to curb the use of social media, payment processors, event-scheduling pages, chat rooms and other applications for hateful activities. Many companies have recently taken important steps forward. This must continue with concrete efforts to build out a culture that prioritizes curbing hateful activities, with a focus on enforcement, transparency, staff training, governance and appeal rights.
Videos of the murders in Christchurch and a purported manifesto have circulated online. We urge all tech companies to use all existing capacities to immediately remove these from their services. We call on internet users everywhere to flag this content to these companies for removal.
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