The Fight against Hate Reporting System

Dr Andre Oboler

CEO, Online Hate Prevention Institute

Andre Oboler, 2015

12th biennial Seminar on antisemitism

Lets change our perspective Our work, even in this seminar, has focused on

individuals and specific examples of antisemitic propaganda

This work is critically important, but it is not sufficient. We also need a big picture view.

An invitation to the balcony This presentation contains real and interesting data

about online antisemitism. This data is not the really important thing in this talk.

Step back, and the implications of the tool presented here, from which the data is gathered, will emerge

A revolutionary change to our efforts in combating antisemitism is possible

Join me in looking at the big picture, the possibility of systemic change. Lets talk about it, and see about making it happen.

WHAT WOULD WE CHANGE?

Data & Analysis to plan mitigation & prevention

For off-line incidents, data is available. Based on this important data, action to mitigate and tackle antisemitism can be planned. There is no online equivalent.

Need: Data & Analysis to plan mitigation & prevention

At the Global Forum to Combat Antisemitism we will release a report based on data From our new FightAgainstHate.com reporting tool. Here are some the results:

Need: Data & Analysis to plan mitigation & prevention

23%

41%

36%

Antisemitism by social media platform

Facebook

YouTube

Twitter

5%

12%

49%

34%

Antisemitism by classification sub-types

Promoting violence against Jews

Holocaust denial

Traditional antisemitism (not Israel-related)

New antisemitism (Israel-related)

Note that new antisemitism is significant, but much less than traditional antisemitism

Sample size: 2024 items

Drilling deeper the results are even more startling. We see that different kinds of Antisemitism are more prevalent on different platforms. Prevalence is a combination of what users upload, and what action the platform is taking to remove such content.

Need: Data & Analysis to plan mitigation & prevention

16

27 72

Promoting violence against Jews

Facebook

YouTube

Twitter

42

105

44

Holocaust denial

Facebook

YouTube

Twitter

214

253

120

New antisemitism

Facebook

YouTube

Twitter

137

433

167

Traditional antisemitism

Facebook

YouTube

Twitter

What does this tell us? The view on the dance floor:

We see specific areas such as violence on Twitter, or Holocaust denial on YouTube which need urgent attention.

We see a more even distribution in New Antisemitism, perhaps indicating that all platforms are reluctant to take this for of antisemitism down, and this is the real split of where the antisemites are active.

We can hypothesis that Facebook is doing a better job than YouTube and Twitter at removing hate (except new antisemitism)

What does this tell us? The view from the balcony:

Being able to make such graphs and comparisons is new now we have transparency on social media antisemitism

We have the list of 2024 items that make up the sample Allowing analysis of messages, sources, networks etc

We can monitor if / when they are removed Quality control data on platforms responses

The data comes from public reporting, so we can learn what content is causing the most distress (leading to the most reporting) overall, or by country Content that most urgently needs to be tackled / campaigned on

The data is always live in the system, and we are offering supporting experts such as NGOs, academic researchers, community organisations, government agencies, access to it This can empower many approaches and actions to tackle online

antisemitism

WHAT WOULD WE CHANGE?

Empowerment for Civic Action

Meaningful action by civil soc. & individuals I do believe and I have expressed that in the Parliament,

that Neo Nazis, antisemites, racists and intolerants are using internet and new technologies, in a very effective way, spreading the virus of hate. The issue is how to react and how the civil society or the individuals can make their ideas a reality in order to tackle this issue. We need democratic action especially in terms of social media and internet. - Kostas Triantafyllos, former Member of Hellenic Parliament & rapporteur of the Anti-racist bill of Greece (e-mail, 9/5/2015)

Need: Empowerment for Civic Action

The current situation Users feel ignored and frustrated

1. User report content 2. The report is typically rejected 3. User gets frustrated and doesnt waste their time reporting next time

they see something

Organisations, particularly Jewish ones, want to engage with

tackling online antisemitism, but dont know how.

New grassroots online initiatives exist doing mass reporting. These are isolated from each other and dont feed into our systemic view of the problem.

Grassroots efforts only have success with things the platforms agree should come down. They cant convince the platform to recognise new forms of antisemitism, or that specific old forms are being wrongly rejected.

Need: Empowerment for Civic Action

Empowering Individual and Civil Society Action An alternative place to report,

where items are logged, and a lack of action by the platform will be seen, motivates reporting

Online groups can contribute to a global effort, confident that the hard cases they cant progress will be tackled by others

Communities / civil society organisations can use the tool as a closed community for their members as the technical part of an online campaign

Empowerment for Civic Action

Resource booklet to support campaigns

Empowerment for Civic Action

WHAT WOULD WE CHANGE?

Empowering Government Action

Governments need help

Empowering Government Action

Governments are increasingly demanding more accountability from platform providers for the content spread on their platforms. The argument that it is all the users responsibility is dead

Some governments are introducing systems of fines These however need to be fair. Ideally it should be like pollution,

where the fine is for dropping below a known standard, and the fact this occurred can be empirically demonstrated.

Some courts have imposed penalties when platform providers have not done enough to address problems Courts can help define the standards through case law, but they

need on which it do it e.g. How many cases are taking for than 3 months to resolve?

WHAT WOULD WE CHANGE?

Focus on Hard Cases

The hard case problem Monitoring by experts is not enough. There is too much data

YouTube: 2,056,320 videos are uploaded each day Facebook: 350,000,000 images are uploaded each day

Some cases are obvious The public can identify them and report them Simple training will allow junior staff at social media companies to respond for these items there is no problem, except monitoring the speed of the response

Other cases are less obvious The public may not be able to explain why the content feels antisemitic Platform staff may not have enough expertise and may reject the reports Experts need to know the case exists so they can explain it to the platforms

The challenge is separating easy and hard cases and using limited resources wisely

Focus on Hard Cases

Implication of Hard Cases

Platforms should initially have more time for dealing with hard cases... i.e. new forms of antisemitism, but after it is explained, next time there should be a different expectation on very similar content.

The failure to learn in a systematic way should be penalised.

We need to track what the platforms should have learned at the global level

Focus on Hard Cases

Dealing with the hard case problem One way to filter for the hard cases is to look at the items that

arent coming down, despite many reports by people who in other cases tend to get it right i.e. Their other reports are accepted by the platforms

We need mass participation both for reporting and for reviewing the reports of others (crowd sourcing) for this to work

We need participation in each country (even if the same content is being reported) in order to bring the case into as many jurisdictions as possible, enabling more officials and more experts to tackle it

We need expert to go through the hard cases and within the framework of their existing organisations, tackle some of them

Focus on Hard Cases

A look at FightAgainstHate.com

Overview

A Crowd Sourcing solution Overcomes difficulties around recognition, with enough eye

balls, someone will recognise the problem

Creates problems of bias, ignorance and game playing

An artificial artificial intelligence (AAI) solution Effectively using humans as agents, as we would do with

software agents

We have multiple people assessing content, but maintain a model of trust in those doing the assessing

This provides quality control and prevents game playing

A look at FightAgainstHate.com

How it works Users report the URL of online hate

They classify it

They review items reported by others

In both review and classification they express an opinion over the nature of the content, and their confidence in their opinion

A points system favours strong opinion that are correct, and weaker opinions that are wrong

Points are adjusted on verification of the content by the system (based on the crowds opinion) or by an expert

A look at FightAgainstHate.com

THE EXPERT SYSTEM...

Examples of Statistics Available

Items reported over time

Increase in items by social media platform

Trends over time by hate type

Time taken to remove items

Average time to remove item by platform

Trends in reports by state/country

Responsiveness by platform

We want to work with supporting organisations to see what information would be useful.

5%

12%

49%

34%

Antisemitism by classification sub-types

Promoting violence against Jews

Holocaust denial

Traditional antisemitism (not Israel-related)

New antisemitism (Israel-related)

Imagine graphs like this, by country, generated live

16

27

72

Promoting violence against Jews (breakdown of items by social media platforms)

Facebook

YouTube

Twitter

Or a graph like this to start a conversation with Twitter about needed improvements

10 6

Facebook

pages & groups

users & items

1

26

YouTube

users & channels

videos

19

53

Twitter

users

tweets

An offer... Using the system to run campaigns to collect data, and seeing

the raw data your campaign collects, is free talk to me about running a campaign

We are also looking for supporting organisations, we have 26 in Australia but would like to take that global Supporting organisations will have access to the expert system, and

will provide feedback on it, and a statement of support for fightagainsthate.com

Access to the expert system will be free for supporting organisations until October, from October fees will apply to some expert system features, these will help cover the costs of running & improving the system

We are also looking for donations to improve the expert system; to make the system multi-lingual; and more. Any leads would of course be appreciated.

Thank you.

Questions?

CONTACT DETAILS

Dr Andre Oboler

CEO, Online Hate Prevention Institute

ohpi.org.au & fightagainsthate.com

Twitter: @onlinehate

www.facebook.com/onlinehate