Research & Analysis

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317 Results

Anti-Semitic Robocalls Supporting Patrick Little Proliferate in California

Article

Patrick Little: "The Holocaust is a lie."

May 18, 2018 By Oren Segal | Director of the Center on Extremism Supporters of Patrick Little’s campaign for Dianne Feinstein’s U.S. Senate seat have taken up a disturbing new tactic: virulently anti-Semitic robocalls. Little, an unabashed anti-Semite and racist who attended the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, is polling at around 18%, well behind Feinstein in California’s party-blind June 5th…

May 18, 2018

Using Video Games to Fight Hate and Reduce Bias

Article

ADL's Center for Technology and Society's new and innovative work to fight hate and bias in games and emerging media.

May 17, 2018

ADL Statement on Twitter's Report That it Has Curbed Abuse on Platform

Press Release

New York, NY, May 16, 2018 … The Anti-Defamation League released a statement today after Twitter shared the results of a new approach it has taken since March to reduce the amount of abuse on the platform. The following is a statement from Brittan Heller, Director of ADL’s Center for Technology and Society: “Twitter's new approach to disruptive and harassing tweets is a promising and important step in addressing hate online. It is especially so in terms of how it…

May 17, 2018

ADL Statement on Facebook's First Enforcement Data

Press Release

New York, NY, May 15, 2018 … The Anti-Defamation League released a statement today after Facebook for the first time published data detailing its enforcement of the platform’s community standards, including its standards on hate speech. The following is a statement from Brittan Heller, director of ADL’s Center for Technology and Society: We welcome this new level of transparency from Facebook. For us, it underscores the immense challenge we all have in trying to…

May 15, 2018

ADL Statement Praising Spotify's Hateful Content Guidelines

Press Release

New York, NY, May 10, 2018 … The Anti-Defamation League released a statement today welcoming Spotify’s new hateful content guidelines that prohibits any content promoting, advocating or inciting hatred or violence on their platform. “All social platforms should have clear rules on hateful content for users to follow. We are encouraged that Spotify has taken a step to join the many platforms that have been advising their users on hateful content, and we are pleased…

May 10, 2018

Groundbreaking ADL Analysis Estimates 4.2 Million Anti-Semitic Tweets in One-Year Period

Press Release

Washington, D.C., May 7, 2018 … The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) today issued a new report analyzing anti-Semitic speech on Twitter, providing the first-ever snapshot of the trends and themes of anti-Semitism on the social media platform over the course of a one-year period. Using proprietary research strategies to evaluate Twitter for thousands of possible anti-Semitic expressions, including classic stereotypes, code words, symbols and conspiracy theories, and conducting a human…

May 06, 2018

The "Grown Folks" Guide to Popular Apps in Social Media

Tools and Strategies

For Educators | For Parents, Families, and Caregivers Youth and Social Media Technology moves fast and so does social media. Like most tools, technology itself is neutral. All the sites listed can be used for many constructive purposes, linking youth to their friends and interacting in positive ways. Many youth use social media to create vibrant communities and engage in social action and ally behavior. Schools and educators are increasingly using social media to communicate with students…

October 28, 2019

What Mark Zuckerberg Gets Wrong - and Right - About Hate Speech

News

By Brittan Heller | Director for Technology and Society May 02, 2018 WIRED When he testified before Congress last month, FacebookCEO Mark Zuckerberg discussed the problem of using artificial intelligence to identify online hate speech. He said he was optimistic that in five to 10 years, “We will have AI tools that can get into some of the linguistic nuances of different types of content to be more accurate in flagging content for our systems, but today we&rsquo…

May 02, 2018

ADL's Center for Technology and Society Announces First Class of Belfer Fellows Who Will Fight Hate and Bias Through Tech

Press Release

Will innovate in fields such as bot research, video games, virtual reality, and augmented reality to reduce cyberhate and protect civil rights New York, April 26, 2018 … The Anti-Defamation League’s Center for Technology and Society (CTS) has selected an Oxford scholar who works with Google; a leading expert on games and emerging media; and an ordained Episcopal minister working in diverse communities in Chicago as its inaugural class of Belfer Fellows. The Belfer Fellowship…

April 26, 2018

ADL Statement on Brands' Ads on YouTube's Extremist Channels

Press Release

New York, NY, April 20, 2018 ... The following is a statement from Brittan Heller, director of ADL’s Center for Technology and Society, in response to a CNN report that found retail brands’ advertising running on YouTube channels promoting white nationalists, Nazis, pedophiles and other extremist views. It's unfortunate but not surprising to see this type of hateful content appear in this way on YouTube. This is an ongoing problem with the lack of understanding in terms of…

April 20, 2018

ADL Statement on White House Meeting About Video Game Violence

Press Release

New York, NY, March 8, 2018.....The Anti-Defamation League today reacted to the White House meeting with members of Congress, top executives from the gaming industry, and various parent groups to discuss violence in video games. “Based on what we know about the meeting, the conversation failed to include any discussion of how video games and emerging technologies can be used to actively fight bias and hate. The violence we’ve seen across the country comes in part…

March 08, 2018

ADL’s Center for Technology and Society Begins Belfer Fellowship Program To Support Cyberhate, Digital Civil Rights Work

Press Release

Initiative Will Collect Fresh Ideas to Combat Evolving Technology Challenges New York, NY, March 8, 2018 … The Anti-Defamation League (ADL)’s Center for Technology and Society (CTS) is expanding its work with a new fellowship program that will amplify the work of cutting-edge researchers and practitioners at the intersection of tech and civil rights. The new Belfer Fellowship program is the newest initiative from CTS, which ADL opened last year to bring a new focus to ensuring…

March 08, 2018

ADL Asks YouTube to Take Down Neo-Nazi Video Inciting Violence

Press Release

New York, NY, February 27, 2018 … Following is a statement from Anti-Defamation League (ADL) CEO Jonathan Greenblatt in response to news that YouTube would not take down anti-Semitic videos from the neo-Nazi group Atomwaffen Division that call for gassing Jews and a “race war”: Just today we released a report showing a 60% increase in anti-Semitic incidents over the past year, and we know this type of material only contributes to that. These videos are not only…

February 27, 2018

No Longer Just a Prank: "Swatting" Incident Turns Deadly in Kansas

Article

January 10, 2018 By Brittan Heller | Director of the Center for Technology and Society & Aaron Sussman | Associate National Civil Rights Counsel It was a hoax turned deadly. On the evening of December 28, a distressed-sounding man called the police in Wichita, Kansas, and confessed that he had shot his father in the head, was holding his mother and sibling hostage, and had poured gasoline in the house, threatening to set it on fire. He then gave the police his address. …

January 10, 2018

ADL Commends Facebook for Removing Anti-Jewish Conspiracy Page

Press Release

New York, NY, January 4, 2018 ... Facebook has removed a disgusting and highly controversial anti-Semitic page that has been on its platform for at least five years. The page peddled one of the worst anti-Jewish conspiracies from medieval times: Jewish ritual murder of non-Jews. Said Jonathan Greenblatt, Anti-Defamation League CEO and National Director: “We have been calling for the removal of this hateful, anti-Semitic Facebook page since 2014. It’s long overdue that…

January 04, 2018

So-Called "Twitter Purge" Deletes Accounts of Prominent White Supremacists, Hate Groups

Article

December 19, 2017 Following Monday's implementation of new safety rules on Twitter, a number of users associated with white supremacy and other hateful ideologies found themselves no longer allowed on the platform. "ADL commends Twitter for taking these significant steps to tackle hate on their platform. We long urged Twitter to push back against hateful and violent rhetoric, and these latest actions are encouraging," CEO and National Director Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement. …

December 19, 2017

YouTube Takes Step Toward Embracing Human Moderation and Fighting Abuse

Article

December 08, 2017 All online platforms with user-generated content struggle with how best to moderate that content.The stakes are especially high when the platform is exclusively aimed at young children. This is something YouTube, whose parent company Google is part of ADL’s Problem-Solving Lab, learned in a particularly disturbing way, as the young viewers of its popular YouTube Kids app were suddenly exposed to videos of their favorite characters suffering grisly deaths,…

December 08, 2017

Hate Groups Increasingly Raising Money Online

Press Release

New ADL report finds hate groups are still poorly funded, but look to crowdfunding, cryptocurrency, other tools New York, NY, December 5, 2017 … The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) is calling on credit card companies and online crowdfunding sites to more closely monitor white supremacists’ compliance with their terms of services and policies in light of a new report highlighting how racists exploit online platforms to raise money for their racist “cause.” Funding Hate…

December 05, 2017

10 Tips for Journalists Newly Covering Extremists

Article

November 27, 2017 By Mark Pitcavage, Senior Research Fellow for the Center on Extremism Many subjects are difficult to report on, but extremist and fringe movements are particularly difficult landscapes for journalists to navigate, strewn with rough terrain and the occasional landmine. As someone who has monitored right-wing extremism for more than two decades, I’ve had the pleasure of reading many fine works of journalism on extremist-related subjects, but I’ve also seen…

November 27, 2017

ADL Praises Twitter's Move to Remove Verification Badges for Prominent White Supremacists

Press Release

New York, NY, November 16, 2017 … The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) praised Twitter’s decision to remove verification badges for a number of prominent white supremacists and other figures linked to the alt right, calling the move “an important step in the right direction.” Twitter’s new policy reserves the right to remove verification at any time without notice for various reasons, including “promoting hate and/or violence against, or directly attacking…

November 16, 2017