Can't we all just get along ?

Fake news, in its most direct incarnation as made-up drivel on the internet with intent to deceive, is best fought through removal. While this can also be necessary for other forms of behaviour, for some it won't do much good and can even be counter-productive. Removing detailed discussion of a novel outright lie (e.g. that Hillary Clinton is a werewolf) will curtail the spread of that lie. Trying to do the same with endemic attitudes (e.g. racism, sexism etc.*) is only going to alienate people, drive them further away, and feed their own victim narrative. Thus discussion can be necessary even with those who hold abhorrent views, though there are limits to which one should go. Debate online does not imply concession, much less legitimisation - which needs a prominent recognised forum. Nor are discussions and censorship mutually exclusive. There is very little point in debating with the diehards (who are better off censored), except in to present the alternatives to more casual followers : there is, as Doctor Who put it, nothing worse than when ordinary people lose their minds.

*These did not spring forth from Facebook, but social media does allow the bigoted to get organised more easily.

There is no foolproof guide on deciding when to censor, when to debate and when to simply walk away. If a person has been convinced solely through online discussion, then presenting them an alternative in the same venue (especially in sufficient numbers) may succeed. If, however, there is some external cause driving their belief, then the presence of online strangers telling them they're wrong may only backfire. At some time or other we've all wandered in to a debate completely dominated by people with a diametrically opposite position to our own - it almost always ends with neither side giving any ground. Things are far more successful when participants are put together on an equal and fair footing.

All in all, I think the approach used here is a good one : form an organised group to be present en masse (since quality engenders authority), don't argue directly with the ringleaders (but do let and encourage moderator intervention, including blocking users and deleting comments where necessary), seek to change the tone of the debate before changing minds, and provide alternatives that will persuade at least the more casual (but usually more numerous) followers rather than the devotees. The combination is more than the sum of its parts : trying to debate without deletion or delete without debate are both ludicrous approaches, but used in concert they can allow productive debate to flourish.

Nina is part of an international movement working to find and combat hate speech on the platform. She and her fellow #IAmHere members spend their spare time scanning Facebook for conversations happening on big pages, often run by mainstream media organisations, which are overwhelmed with racist, misogynistic or homophobic comments. 

They don't attempt to change the minds of people posting hate or argue directly with extremists. Instead they collectively inject discussions with facts and straightforwardly argued reasonable viewpoints. The idea is to provide balance so that other social media users see that there are alternative perspectives beyond the ones offered up by the trolls. The groups stick to fighting hate speech, which Facebook defines as a "direct attack on people based on protected characteristics - race, ethnicity, national origin, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, caste, sex, gender, gender identity, and serious disease or disability."

Further digging made it clear that many users creating and liking hateful comments were just as organised and targeted as #IAmHere. Researcher Jacob Davey, an expert on the far right at the London-based Institute of Strategic Dialogue (ISD), says: "Troll armies bring themselves together in almost semi-military style hierarchies. You can see these groups coming together and engaging in harassment on Facebook, which appears to be both silencing moderate discussion and dominating certain discussion points."

Starting in 2018, Germany's NetzDG law required social media sites to remove hate speech within a day of it being reported, and analysis shows that explicitly racist posts have decreased on Facebook since then. A study of #IchBinHier activity by researchers at the University of Dusseldorf also found that its commenters are often successful at changing the tone of online debates. On the other hand, research carried out by Kreissel and the ISD found that coordinated right-wing extremist online hate campaigns have increased three-fold since December 2017.

'I spend three hours a day on Facebook fighting hate'

A network of tens of thousands of online volunteers is fighting hate speech on Facebook. They organise under the slogan "#IAmHere". It's 7:30 in Berlin, and Nina's alarm clock is going off. Before getting up and making breakfast for her 13-month-old daughter, who is sleeping in the next room, she reaches for her phone.