Social networks MySpace and Facebook and video-sharing site YouTube are being used as powerful new tools by extremist groups to spread a message of hate, participants in a conference on Internet hate speech warned on Monday.
"MySpace, Facebook and YouTube are the 'killer apps' of the Internet today, and they're used by millions, but the virus of hate certainly has infected those technologies," Christopher Wolf, chair of the International Network Against CyberHate (INACH), told the Global Summit on Internet Hate Speech.
"The Internet continues to be exploited by people who espouse hate in many different ways - anti-Semites, Holocaust deniers, racists, homophobes and terrorists," Wolf said on the opening day of the two-day event hosted by the French embassy.
"The Internet toolbox that is available to hatemongers has had a number of new items added to it over the last several years," Wolf said, citing Web 2.0 features such as blogs, social networks, video sites and instant messaging.
Stefan Glaser, a co-founder of INACH, an umbrella group for non-governmental groups fighting online hate speech, said that with Web 2.0 tools "the effect of hate is getting broadened."
"Neo-Nazis are very well aware of social network platforms for recruiting the next generation, for infiltrating youth groups," said Glaser, who runs Jugendschutz.net, the German bureau which protects minors on the Internet.
Deborah Lauter, national director of civil rights for the Anti-Defamation League, said extremist groups "use these social-networking sites and they create a community, a community of hate and it has very real consequences."
Lauter cited the case of an Oklahoma woman who was shot dead this month, allegedly by a member of the white supremacist Ku Klan Klan, after being recruited through MySpace.
The woman was killed after she apparently changed her mind and tried to flee a Ku Klux Klan initiation rite, according to police in Louisiana.
"In today's Web 2.0 world with user-generated content, social network sites like Facebook and MySpace, mobile computing and always-on connectivity every aspect of the Internet is being used by extremists of every ilk to repackage old hatreds and to recruit new haters," Wolf said.
"The emergence of new Internet technologies and their adoption by online haters is far more pernicious than the static website that most of us have been focusing on over the years," he said.
"While the problem of hate-filled websites certainly exists, much more problematic is the sudden and rapidly increasing deployment of Web 2.0 technologies that spread not only written messages of hate but now audio messages and increasingly video messages," Wolf said.
"On YouTube, for example, there are thousands of hate videos that are uploaded with messages of racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia and intolerance towards minorities," said Wolf, a lawyer and expert in Internet law.
"There are sites on Facebook and MySpace that promote civil rights but there are many, many more that demonize Jews and Muslims and Gays and other minorities," he said.
"All of that is prohibited by the operators of Facebook and MySpace in the terms of service," he said. "If we report these sites to the operators of these services they often are removed.
"But for every site that we can report and get taken down there is at least one other site to replace it and often many others," Wolf added.
Brian Marcus, an analyst for the US Department of Homeland Security focusing on domestic extremism and terrorism, said "extremists and terrorists are just like the other users of electronic media.
"They adapt to the new ways and the new technologies with incredible speed," he said, warning that "these emerging medium give scale, scope and speed and a new dimension to terrorism and extremism unlike anything seen in the past." - Sapa-AFP