Most social platforms have taken aggressive action to tackle another extremist group in recent years: ISIS. But their response to white supremacists has been slower.
Experts say that’s because far-right extremism online isn’t as easy to detect, citing the movement’s innate political nature and culture of ambiguous in-jokes. The messages spread online by white supremacists are commonly compared by researchers and counterterrorism experts to those propagated by the Islamic extremist terror group, for their shared tactic of online radicalization.
“I don’t think (social media companies) have the capabilities, even at a basic level, when white supremacist content is flagged to act on it,” Joshua Fisher-Birch, a content review specialist at the Counter Extremism Project, a US-based nonprofit, told CNN, adding that he doubted those companies were taking white supremacist content seriously enough.
Fisher-Birch, who monitors the proliferation of extremist content online, said that while social platforms and video streaming services have been vigilant in suspending accounts that share ISIS content, white supremacist messaging has gone unfettered.
Source: Why ISIS is easier for big tech to fight than white supremacy
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