How major tech companies are fighting hate groups

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Major tech companies such as Google, Facebook and PayPal are banishing a growing cadre of extremist groups and individuals in the wake of the deadly clash at a white-nationalist rally last weekend in Virginia.

Civil rights advocates welcomed the moves, but say more needs to be done, and more should have been done earlier.

Here is a look at some of the technology services that have banned hate groups or have otherwise come out against white supremacists and their supporters.

Apple

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Apple is donating two million US dollars to two human rights groups as part of CEO Tim Cook’s pledge to help lead the fight against the hate that fueled the violence in Charlottesville.

The tech giant is giving one million US dollars apiece to Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League. The iPhone maker also will match employee donations to those two groups and other human rights organizations on a two-for-one basis.

Airbnb

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Ahead of the rally, the housing booking service barred rentals to people it believed were traveling to participate.

The company said it used its existing background checks and “input from the community” to identify users who didn’t align with its standards.

Social media giants

Facebook removed several groups and individuals from its service and Instagram for what it calls violations of terms banning hate speech, including Vanguard America, Physical Removal and Genuine Donald Trump.

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The company uses a combination of artificial intelligence and human moderators to weed out groups, posts and people that violate its policies.

Spokeswoman Ruchika Budhraja acknowledges this is a difficult task, as determining what is hate speech is more difficult than something like a beheading video or child pornography.

Twitter, meanwhile, appears to have suspended the account for neo-Nazi site Daily Stormer, though the company doesn’t comment on individual accounts.

Service providers

The Daily Stormer’s publisher Andrew Anglin said he has been effectively “banned from the Internet” after mocking the victim of a deadly car attack during the protests in Charlottesville.

Anglin said by email he is “figuring out the next step” after four domain registration companies refused to service his site.

GoDaddy and Google said earlier that the site violated their terms of service. After briefly reappearing under a Russian domain name, the site was again offline Wednesday after the security company Cloudflare Inc. dropped him as a customer, leaving the site vulnerable to hacking attacks.

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Email marketing firm MailChimp said some groups had their accounts terminated after it changed its terms of service on Monday to exclude customers whose primary purpose was “inciting harm” or promoting “discriminatory, hateful, or harassing content.”

Squarespace, a website service company, said it had given certain groups 48 hours to leave “in light of recent events.”

Identity Evropa, a northern California hate group that helped organize participants in Charlottesville, tweeted Monday that it had lost service from MailChimp, Squarespace and PayPal.

Online payments

PayPal has been removing payment accounts linked to known hate groups in the months leading up to Charlottesville, according to the company and a civil rights organization it was working with.

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For example, the account for the Daily Stormer was banned several months ago. In a blog post, the company said it “strives to navigate the balance between freedom of expression and open dialogue — and the limiting and closing of sites that accept payments or raise funds to promote hate, violence and intolerance.”

Online fundraising sites GoFundMe and Patreon also banned people and canceled fundraisers associated with right-wing hate groups.

GoFundMe confirmed that it removed “multiple campaigns” for James Fields Jr., the driver accused of driving his car into protesters and killing a woman.

Spotify

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The music streaming service banned music it said “favors hatred or incites violence against race, religion, sexuality or the like” after it was alerted to white supremacist bands on its service by the music blog Digital Music News .

The blog found bands identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as white power music streaming on Spotify.

Outside the tech world

Discover said Thursday that it is “in the process” of terminating the accounts of hate groups. The racial justice group Color of Change had called on the credit card company, along with American Express, Mastercard and Visa, to stop processing funds for hate groups.

Amex said most of the websites it was alerted to by activists already do not accept its credit cards. The company said it is “currently reviewing the other sites and will take the appropriate actions. We maintain the right to terminate any relationship that is harmful to our brand.”

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Mastercard said in a statement that it reviewed the websites “provided by civic leaders and others” and shut down the use of cards on sites it saw as inciting violence.

At the same time, the company said it generally doesn’t block cards “based on our disagreement with specific views espoused or promoted.”

Visa also issued a similar statement, saying that while it bans illegal transactions, it does not restrict “lawful expression of views, even if we may find the organization or its positions to be offensive.”

Source(s): AP