QAnon believes at a rally in Florida
Credit: Paul Hennessy
The fragmentation of social media triggered by the ban of President Donald Trump on Facebook and Twitter risks exacerbating online extremism in some of the darkest corners of the internet, experts have warned.
In the aftermath of last week’s riot in Washington D.C., the US President was turned into a digital exile as social media sites Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitch banned him from using their services.
Speaking at the start of a trip to Texas, Trump said the companies had made a "terrible mistake".
He said: "I think that Big Tech is doing a horrible thing for our country and to our country, and I believe it’s going to be a catastrophic mistake for them. They’re dividing and divisive."
Trump’s supporters have also fervently rallied against Big Tech, threatening a mass exodus to fringe social media sites that boast of less stringent checks on content.
Conservative-friendly social media site Gab said it had seen one million sign ups in the last 48 hours. According to company data, Parler had 10 million total users, helping the app become the most popular in Apple’s app store before it was cut off by Amazon Web Services.
Meanwhile, the app for live streaming site D-Live has been downloaded 3.6 million times since 2014. In comparison, Twitter downloads for the first 10 days in January were down 66pc.
‘Awash with extremism’
But experts warn the decision to "deplatform" the US President could backfire by hastening the growth of a plethora of increasingly extreme social media sites which act as echo chambers for his most ardent fans.
"As the public hears more and more about these less mainstream sites, more people are going to be drawn to them to check them out and that means you’re going to have a higher risk of radicalisation," says Jessica Reaves, of the US based Anti-Defamation League (ADL).
Joe Mulhall, senior researcher at Hope not Hate, a British organisation that researches online extremism, describes the smaller platforms which are set to benefit from this online exodus as "awash with the most extreme and often illegal content".
"They’re extremely dangerous," he adds. "Any uptick in their numbers is really worrying — it’s more people engaging with this content, it’s more people coming across this content. How many people will reject it and how many people will go further down the rabbit hole towards more extreme content is difficult to say."
This type of politically-motivated online migration has happened before. Researchers say the trend started in earnest when Facebook cracked down on extremist groups in the aftermath of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in 2017.
"As we’ve seen the mainstream platforms attempt to — very slowly I would add — deal with the issue of radicalisation on their platforms and extreme content, we’ve seen this kind of explosion of alternative platforms," says Mulhall.
A demonstrator holds a sign outside of the Twitter headquarters in San Francisco, California, U.S., on Monday, Jan. 11
Credit: Nina Riggio/Bloomberg
Hope not Hate singles out two groups of fringe social media sites: platforms like Telegram which have been used by extremist groups, such as teenage terrorist organisation British Hand, but not created with them in mind and "bespoke sites" that have been created by and for groups that are no longer permitted on Facebook or Twitter, such as Gab and Parler.
Telegram said the app "forbids public calls to violence" and Parler did not respond to a request to comment.
By email, Gab’s founder Andrew Torba said the site was "NOT an echo chamber while Facebook and Twitter are", pointing to a 2020 paper by academics in Italy which reached the same conclusion. He added the platform has a "great relationship with law enforcement" and does not tolerate threats of violence.
However, researchers in the US and the UK have warned that people who are banned from mainstream social media will be at risk of radicalisation on smaller sites, where more extreme views may prevail.
Jakob Guhl, Senior Fellow at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, says these new sites reach far less people than Facebook or Twitter and interest in them often peters out after the initial hype.
"These platforms are often a bit clunky," he says. "They’re not as user friendly and there’s not as many political opponents you could engage in fights and they’re a little bit boring."
Fringe platforms and real-life violence
While 8chan or Gab might struggle to reach the same user numbers, they can still drag a minority down a rabbit hole of hate speech and conspiracy theories.
"These censorship events [carried out by mainstream platforms] are hotboxing people, bad ideas and antisocial behaviour in close proximity to each other," says Joel Finkelstein, Director and Co-Founder of The Network Contagion Research Institute and fellow at Rutgers University’s Miller Institute for Secure Communities
Those conspiracies, Finkelstein adds, can often end up back on mainstream platforms. He mentions the QAnon conspiracy which started on fringe website 8chan before leaking onto Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.
Many of the protesters who stormed The US Capitol last week also wore surrealist symbols that directly referenced the pro-Trump online movement.
But QAnon is not the only way the content on these websites leaks into real life. In March, the United Nations warned in a report that extreme right-wing groups were exploiting the use of platforms such as Gab and Voat13 "for in-group communication and radicalisation."
Shooters involved in terrorist attacks in El Paso, Texas, Poway, San Diego and Christchurch, New Zealand have also been found to have spent time on 8chan, now known as 8kun.
The terrorist behind the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue shooting was a fervent user of Gab.
A piece of graffiti art depicting the Washington Capitol riots appears on a wall in Kent on January 11
Credit: Karwai Tang/WireImage
Even in the UK, the platforms are becoming more and more relevant. "We’ve had a record number of arrests linked to far-right terrorism in the UK in the last two years and part of that is because we have these unmoderated spaces on the internet which are awash with pro terrorism content," says Mulhall.
Researchers agree that Facebook and Twitter bans do limit the reach of extremists.
But for a niche minority, they create a new problem. "Unfortunately we know that it’s enough for one person to be radicalised for that person to launch some kind of attack," says Jonathan Bright, senior research fellow at Oxford University’s internet institute.
That trend could be turbocharged if one of these platforms receives validation from out-going President Donald Trump.
With more evidence emerging that fringe, unmoderated social media sites put a minority on a fast-track to extremism, it only shows that the challenge of moderating the internet is one that society is far from solving.
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