- White supremism, it's like one of the rarest things
in this country.
- [Narrator] It's happened to Alex Jones,
Milo Yiannopoulos, Richard Spencer, the list goes on.
All of these individuals were deplatformed
or kicked off of different web services
after those services deemed comments they made hateful,
a characterization they all deny.
- We are experiencing what we see is a wave
of deplatforming right now.
Oftentimes, when we talk about deplatforming,
we talk about someone losing their account on social media,
but deplatforming can exist in many different ways.
- [Narrator] Deplatforming isn't just limited
to individuals.
The tactic is also being used to silence extremist websites.
Shortly before he allegedly murdered 22 people
at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas,
Patrick Crusius shared his manifesto
to an obscure web forum called 8chan.
- Website 8chan.
That's where the suspected gunman in Saturday's attack--
- [Reporter] Posted a four-page anti-immigrant manifesto.
- [Narrator] This wasn't the first time
that an alleged mass shooter
had posted a manifesto to 8chan.
The individuals who allegedly carried out
the Christchurch Mosque Shootings
and the Poway Synagogue Shooting
also posted their manifestos to 8chan,
but this time, the response to the shooting was different.
Cloudflare, an internet infrastructure company,
decided to deplatform or stop providing its services
to 8chan, effectively shutting down the site,
at least for now.
- There are about one million users of 8chan.
8chan is an empty piece of paper for writing on.
- [Narrator] In response to the takedown,
8chan's owner, Jim Watkins, posted this video to YouTube.
- It is clearly a political move
to remove 8chan from Cloudflare.
It has forced a lot of people to find other places to talk.
(keyboard clacking)
- [Narrator] Today, deplatforming is the most popular tactic
to deal with extremist content online,
but does it actually work?
- It's not necessarily going to create a causal chain
where we get rid of hate online, but what it does do
is it disrupts this community of people
that have been building over the last five years
a culture of harm and harassment and incitement.
- [Narrator] According to Professor Donovan,
deplatforming might slow the growth
and the impact of these websites,
but it can't wipe their ideology away entirely.
The individuals who carry out such attacks
are not the lone wolves
the media often portray them as, Donovan says,
noting that their manifestos suggest they are part
of a growing and global white supremacist movement.
- When we say that they're lone wolves,
what we're pointing to is that these are disaffected people
who live in isolation and are coming out of nowhere
to conduct this violence.
Instead, the research is actually pointing to
that these people are never alone,
that they reach out online, they have a lot of questions.
Mostly they look into white supremacist theories
of how political parties and media are colluding
to keep white people down.
(traffic humming)
- [Narrator] It wasn't that long ago that Scott Ernest
believed in that white nationalist narrative.
- I got involved by accident.
(pensive mallet percussion music)
It was 2004, and I was just searching the internet.
I'm not even sure what I was doing, just surfing,
and I came across a blog.
- [Narrator] Like many young extremists,
Ernest was radicalized online.
- Eventually, it did become a community thing.
You get in there and you meet these people,
and I mean, even if you don't necessarily like all of them,
you know, you start feeling connected to them.
- [Narrator] He eventually became a moderator
on Stormfront, a popular white nationalist website.
- [Scott] It's for all white nationalists,
so you could be a moderate, you could be extreme,
you could be KKK, you could be NSM, national socialist.
- [Narrator] He said he began to distance himself
from the movement as it became more violent.
- You know, a lot of the movement
actually believe in the mass shootings.
- [Narrator] In an email to the Wall Street Journal,
Stormfront's founder, Don Black, said,
"We have always clearly stated that we do not tolerate
"any posts even suggesting illegal violence.
"Any such posts are immediately deleted by moderators
"and the user banned."
- The first time I ever questioned why I was in the movement
was when Anders Breivik shot a bunch of kids in Norway.
That caught my eye because, at some point previous to that,
Anders Breivik had actually been on my Facebook friend list
under the name of Andrew Berwick.
- [Narrator] Breivik, who murdered 77 people in 2011,
has since become an icon of sorts for white nationalists.
On sites like 8chan, users have celebrated
his kill count for years and done so legally.
That's because vile or not, the racist and violent speech
often found on sites like 8chan is protected
under the First Amendment.
- There's much discussion about social media,
its implications, the harms done,
and the question is posed,
what should government do about social media?
- [Narrator] Civil libertarians like John Samples
are skeptical of any government reforms,
arguing that regulation of speech
will backfire and be abused.
- We have very strong protections,
and that's going to mean
that there's not much government can do.
- [Narrator] But that hasn't damped calls for reform.
For her part, Professor Donovan would like to see
legislation regulating the amplification
of hate speech online.
(pensive mallet percussion music)
- Individuals who own websites are allowed
to decide what stays and what goes.
That is non-controversial,
but when we run into the problem of scale,
when that speech scales
so that it is comparable to broadcast,
when you have 50, 60,000 people
that are looking at particular posts or videos online
that contain racist speech, hate speech,
harassment, incitement, then we have to come up
with a schema related to amplification
like we did with broadcast radio,
like we've done with television
that sets a different set of rules.
- [Narrator] For decades now, radio and television stations
have had to follow regulations meant to ensure
they serve the public interest based in part on their reach.
Although the internet is different,
Donovan says it's clear our current laws
have not kept up with our technological advancements
and that perhaps we should consider a new framework.
- You can say that kind of any regulation
around what someone says online is protected,
but I think that that's clearly not right today.
- [Narrator] A third way forward is already in the works.
Zuckerberg announced that Facebook is creating
an independent body that will review controversial content.
- You know, it's not clear to me
that we want a private company to be making
that kind of a fundamental decision about, you know,
what is political speech and how should that be regulated.
- [Narrator] In a blog post addressing
the El Paso shooter's manifesto,
the chief executive of the web services company Cloudflare
wrote that 8chan's lawlessness had contributed
to multiple horrific tragedies, and as a result,
Cloudflare would no longer be supporting the site,
but Cloudflare's post also highlighted
how some web service companies are being thrust relunctantly
into the role of policing speech.
Cloudflare wrote,
"We continue to feel incredibly uncomfortable
"about playing the role of content arbiter
"and we do not plan to exercise it often."
(pensive and dramatic orchestral music)