Talk:Online hate speech

Section currently reads (as of 5th July 2022)

In the aftermath of 2014's dramatic incidents, calls for more restrictive or intrusive measures to contain the Internet's potential to spread hate and violence are common, as if the links between online and offline violence were well known. On the contrary, as the following example indicates, appearances may often be deceiving. Stormfront is considered the first "hate website." Launched in March 1995 by a former Ku Klux Klan leader, it quickly became a popular space for discussing ideas related to Neo-Nazism, White nationalism and White separatism, first in the United States of America and then globally. The forum hosts calls for a racial holy war and incitement to use violence to resist immigration. and is considered a space for recruiting activists and possibly coordinating violent acts. The few studies that have explored the identities of Stormfront actually depict a more complex picture. Rather than seeing it as a space for coordinating actions. Well-known extreme right activists have accused the forum to be just a gathering for "keyboard warriors." One of them for example, as reported by De Koster and Houtman, stated, "I have read quite a few pieces around the forum, and it strikes me that a great fuss is made, whereas little happens. The section activism/politics itself is plainly ridiculous. [...] Not to mention the assemblies where just four people turn up." Even more revealing are some of the responses to these accusations provided by regular members of the website. As one of them argued, "Surely, I am entitled to have an opinion without actively carrying it out. [...] I do not attend demonstrations and I neither join a political party. If this makes me a keyboard warrior, that is all right. I feel good this way. [...] I am not ashamed of it." De Koster and Houtman surveyed only one national chapter of Stormfront and a non-representative sample of users, but answers like those above should at least invite to caution towards hypotheses connecting expressions and actions, even in spaces whose main function is to host extremist views. The Southern Poverty Law Center published a study in 2014 that found users of the site "were allegedly responsible for the murders of nearly 100 people in the preceding five years."

There are many problems with this paragraph.

• the first two wikilinks redirect to ISIL and Islamic terrorism respectively. That seems to be evidence of anti-Islamic bias on the original writer's part, as I am unsure to which "dramatic incidents" they are referring. Nonetheless, Islamist terrorism has nothing to do with the section here.
• The argument of this paragraph seems to be that the Stormfront website is not worthy of being considered a threat to anybody offline, and thus in general that the link between online hate speech and violence in real life should be questioned. However, as the last sentence shows, Stormfront was directly linked in the deaths of nearly 100 people.
• What is the "Stormfront precedent"? Nowhere else online does anybody refer to this phrase, apart from wiki clones.
• This paragraph thus reads like white nationalist apologism, or at the very least Stormfront apologism.

I would suggest moving the bulk of this paragraph to the Case Studies section, with significant revision. Due to the genuine and documented real world effects of Stormfront, as mentioned at the bottom of the paragraph, and further at https://www.thedrum.com/news/2017/08/28/stormfront-one-internets-oldest-white-supremacist-sites-knocked-offline, Stormfront was taken offline briefly in 2017, and this article should include the nuance that some neo-nazis view the site as being a gathering for less extreme individuals to vent and is not a impetus for action, but conclude that on balance there is in this case a genuine link between online and offline violence.

A draft re-write of my own is as follows:

Stormfront is considered the first "hate website." Launched in March 1995 by a former Ku Klux Klan leader, it quickly became a popular space for discussing ideas related to Neo-Nazism, White nationalism and White separatism, first in the United States of America and then globally. The forum hosts calls for a racial holy war and incitement to use violence to resist immigration,[original citation] and is considered a space for recruiting white nationalists and possibly coordinating violent acts. Within the white nationalist activism sphere, though, some accuse the forum as being merely a space for "keyboard warriors". As reported by De Koster and Houtman,[original citation] one white nationalist stated, "I have read quite a few pieces around the forum, and it strikes me that a great fuss is made, whereas little happens. The section activism/politics itself is plainly ridiculous. [...] Not to mention the assemblies where just four people turn up." Some regular members of the forum argue that this is a positive attribute: "Surely, I am entitled to have an opinion without actively carrying it out. [...] I do not attend demonstrations and I neither join a political party. If this makes me a keyboard warrior, that is all right. I feel good this way. [...] I am not ashamed of it." However, both opinions do not seem to align with the facts. In 2014, the Southern Poverty Law Center published a study that found users of the site "were allegedly responsible for the murders of nearly 100 people in the preceding five years."[original citation]. Stormfront.org was taken offline by its domain registrar in 2017 due to pressure from a campaign by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, following the takedown of far-right news website the Daily Stormer under similar circumstances. These takedowns followed the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in which a white supremacist killed a peaceful counterprotestor, and the general public saw the extent of the rising neo-Nazi and white supremacist movement in the United States, who primarily organised through online forums like Stormfront.[citation=https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/aug/29/stormfront-neo-nazi-hate-site-murder-internet-pulled-offline-web-com-civil-rights-action]. The takedown lasted only a few months, though, and as of July 2022, the site remains active. In this case, the argument for freedom of speech and expression has won out over the argument for protecting the safety of minorities against hate movements. Zed.eds (talk) 21:46, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

No hate speech! 2600:6C5A:557F:E0DD:8C86:E9BC:F83F:881F (talk) 20:52, 19 July 2023 (UTC)