Online Library

In the course of the last years, the European Union (EU) institutions, and the Commission (EC) in particular, have shown a growing concern regarding the use of online intermediary platforms for the dissemination of illegal content, particularly content of terrorist nature. Despite lack of complete certainty and differences between member States about what terrorist content the law prohibits, or even can prohibit consistent with fundamental rights to free expression, the truth is that there is a broad consensus among the national authorities that legislative and regulatory measures should be enacted both at the European and national levels in order to guarantee the swift and almost automatic detection and removal of content related to the commission of acts of terrorism. The political positions and non-binding documents produced so far have progressively incorporated the notion of “responsibility” for intermediaries, although this could not necessarily be equated to a straightforward intention to impose conventional legal liability obligations on such actors. In particular, the initiatives undertaken so far by the EU institutions basically aimed at promoting platforms’ voluntary cooperation with public authorities to detect and remove online illegal content (including terrorist content). Such initiatives include the Code of Conduct on Countering Illegal Hate Speech Online, the Recommendation on measures to effectively tackle illegal speech online, the Guidelines on Freedom of Expression Online and Offline, and the EU Internet Forum. Above all these recommendations, agreements and soft-law standards, the general legally applicable regime has remained so far intact since its approval in 2000:Directive 2000/31/EC, known as the e-commerce Directive, establishes liability exemptions for intermediaries under certain conditions of lack of knowledge of illegal activity or information and expeditious removal and disabling upon knowledge (article 14). The Directive also includes an important provision regarding the absence of any legal obligation for providers to monitor content (article 15).The new proposed Regulation on preventing the dissemination of terrorist content online, which was the object of a first discussion on September 19-20 during the meeting of EU leaders in Salzburg under the Austrian Presidency, may represent a change in the above mentioned approach.

Academics are increasingly expected to use social media to disseminate their work and knowledge to public audiences. Although this has various advantages, particularly for alternative forms of dissemination, the web can also be an unsafe space for typically oppressed or subordinated groups. This article presents two auto-ethnographic accounts of the abuse and hate academics researching oppressed groups, namely, women and people of Muslim faith, experienced online. In doing so, this article falls into four parts. The first section provides an overview of existing literature, particularly focusing on work which explores the violence and abuse of women and people of Muslim faith online. The second section considers the auto-ethnographic methodological approach adopted in this article. The third section provides the auto-ethnographic accounts of the author’s experiences of hate and abuse online. The final section locates these experiences within broader theoretical concepts, such as silencing, and considers possible implications of such online hate in both an academic context and beyond.

This article offers a bottom-up understanding of the media strategy employed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) as it relates to the production and dissemination of its hostage execution videos. Through an empirical analysis of sixty-two videos of executions produced by ISIL in the year following its establishment as the “Islamic State” in 2014, this study examines the videos as a major component of ISIL’s media strategy. Through these media products, ISIL seeks to spread a political message aimed at both local and global, ingroup and outgroup consumption through audience segmentation, while striving to influence both local and global audiences through the use and production of graphic violence. This article also discusses the strategy governing the production and release of ISIL’s execution videos; how it relies on the global media to transmit its intertwined political and religious agenda in the digital media age.

There are increasing calls to curtail or revoke Section 230, a 1996 law that protects internet companies from most lawsuits related to user-generated content. Critics of Section 230 say it discourages vigilant self-regulation. Proponents counter that the law has fostered free expression and innovation. Our report concludes that Section 230 ought to be preserved but significantly amended.

Beyond the familiar online world that most of us inhabit lies a vast network of sites, communities and cultures where freedom is pushed to its limits. A world that is as creative and complex as it is dangerous and disturbing. A world that is much closer than you think. The Dark Net is a revelatory examination of the internet today, and of its most innovative and dangerous.

Facebook serves more than 1.5 billion people globally. Although the majority of people use the site for positive purposes, there are some who use the platform in negative ways. With that in mind, Facebook has created a set of policies – its Community Standards – detailing what type of content people can and cannot post. For instance, Facebook prohibits and removes hate speech and does not allow dangerous organisations (defined as groups that engage in terrorist or organised criminal activity) to have a presence on Facebook. Content that supports or promotes those groups is removed. However, sometimes people post content which other users may consider hateful or extreme, but which does not violate Facebook’s policies.

To counter this type of disagreeable or extremist content, Facebook has publicly stated that it believes counter-speech is not only potentially more effective, but also more likely to succeed in the long run. Counter-speech is a common, crowd-sourced response to extremist or hateful content. Extreme posts are often met with disagreement, derision and countercampaigns.

Combating extremism in this way has some advantages: it is faster, more flexible and responsive, and capable of dealing with extremism from anywhere and in any language; and it retains the principle of free and open public spaces for debate. However, the forms counter-speech takes are as varied as the extremism it argues against. It is also likely that it is not always as effective as it could be; and some types of counter-speech could potentially even be counter-productive. In the light of its belief in the power of counter-speech and the growing interest in a more rigorous and evidence-led approach to understanding it better, Facebook commissioned Demos to undertake this research report, examining the extent to which different types of counter-speech are produced and shared on Facebook.