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{{COI|date=July 2021}}
{{COI|date=July 2021}}
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{{Infobox organization
{{Infobox company
| name = Center for Countering Digital Hate
| name = Center for Countering Digital Hate
| former name =
| former name =
| logo = Center for Countering Digital Hate - Monochrome on Transparent.png
| logo = Center for Countering Digital Hate - Monochrome on Transparent.png
| image_border =
| image_border =
| size = <!-- default 200px -->
| size = <!-- default 200px -->
| alt = <!-- alt text; see [[WP:ALT]] -->
| alt = <!-- alt text; see [[WP:ALT]] -->
| caption =
| caption =
| abbreviation = CCDH
| motto =
| motto =
| predecessor =
| predecessor =
| successor =
| successor =
| formation = 2017-2018<ref name="Our People"/><ref name="companies"/>
| founded = 2018<ref name="companies"/>
| founder = Imran Ahmed<ref name="Our People">{{cite web |url=https://www.counterhate.co.uk/our-people|work=Center for Countering Digital Hate|date=26 May 2020|title=Our People}}</ref>
| founder = Imran Ahmed<ref name="Our People">{{cite web |url=https://www.counterhate.co.uk/our-people|work=Center for Countering Digital Hate|date=26 May 2020|title=Our People}}</ref>
| extinction = <!-- {{End date and age|YYYY|MM|DD}} -->
| extinction = <!-- {{End date and age|YYYY|MM|DD}} -->
| merger =
| merger =
| merged =
| merged =
| type = [[Limited company]]
| type = <!-- [[Governmental organization|GO]], [[Non-governmental organization|NGO]], [[Intergovernmental organization|IGO]], [[International nongovernmental organization|INGO]], etc -->
| purpose = "To disrupt the architecture of online hate and misinformation"<ref name="About Us">{{cite web |url=https://www.counterhate.co.uk/about-us|title=About Us|work=The Center for Countering Digital Hate|accessdate=17 June 2020}}</ref>
| location =
| location =
| language =
| language =
| general =
| general =
⚫
| key_people = Imran Ahmed (CEO)<br>Tom Brookes<br>Simon Clark (Chair)<br>[[Damian Collins]] MP<br>Kirsty McNeill<br>Siobhan McAndrew<br>Lord [[Jonathan Oates]]<br>Ayesha Saran<ref>{{cite web | title=CENTER FOR COUNTERING DIGITAL HATE LTD | website=Officers (free information from Companies House) | date=2020-10-09 | url=https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/11633127/officers | access-date=2020-12-07}}</ref>
| leader_title = Directors
⚫
| leader_name = [[Tom Brookes]]<br>Simon Clark (Chair)<br>[[Damian Collins]] MP<br>[[Kirsty McNeill]]<br>[[Siobhan McAndrew]]<br>Lord [[Jonathan Oates]]<br>Ayesha Saran<ref>{{cite web | title=CENTER FOR COUNTERING DIGITAL HATE LTD | website=Officers (free information from Companies House) | date=2020-10-09 | url=https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/11633127/officers | access-date=2020-12-07}}</ref>
| key_people =
| main_organ = <!-- gral. assembly, board of directors, etc -->
| num_staff =
| num_staff =
| num_volunteers =
| num_volunteers =
| website = [https://www.counterhate.co.uk/ www.counterhate.co.uk]
| website = {{url|https://www.counterhate.co.uk}}
| remarks =
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}}
}}

Revision as of 21:32, 15 September 2021

"CCDH" redirects here. For the Moroccan human rights organization, see National Human Rights Council (Morocco).
Center for Countering Digital Hate
Company typeLimited company
Founded2018[1]
FounderImran Ahmed[2]
Headquarters
London Edit this on Wikidata
Key people
Imran Ahmed (CEO)
Tom Brookes
Simon Clark (Chair)
Damian Collins MP
Kirsty McNeill
Siobhan McAndrew
Lord Jonathan Oates
Ayesha Saran[3]
Revenue400,000 Euro (2020) Edit this on Wikidata
Websitewww.counterhate.co.uk

The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) is a UK limited company[1] presenting itself as an "international NGO " with offices in London and Washington, DC"[4]. It says that that "big tech" firms such as YouTube, Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, Instagram, and Apple should stop providing services to individuals who they say promote hate and misinformation, including neo-Nazis and anti-vaccine advocates. It has been running the Stop Funding Fake News campaign since May 2020.[5]

The company is a member of the Stop Hate For Profit coalition.[6]

History and structure

According to the official records, the company was registered in 2018 as Brixton Endeavours Limited and its first director was Morgan James McSweeney.[1] The company changed its name to Center for Countering Digital Hate in August 2019.[1] Contrary to this, the company's website claims that it was founded in December 2017[7] by its current CEO, Imran Ahmed.[2]

Board of Directors

Morgan James McSweeney, currently chief of staff to the Leader of the Labour Party, Keir Starmer,[8][better source needed] was the first Director of the CCDH.[9] He was joined in September 2019, upon the launch of the center, by three other directors: David Craig Roberts, Siobhan Marie McAndrew,[9] a sociology lecturer at the University of Bristol[10] and Kirsty Jean McNeill,[9] an Executive Director at Save the Children and Board member of the Holocaust Educational Trust and the Coalition for Global Prosperity.[11] McSweeney resigned in April 2020.

More recent directors include Simon Clark (Chair), Tom Brookes, Executive Director, Strategic Communications at the European Climate Foundation,[12] Damian Collins MP, a Conservative Member of Parliament and former Chair of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, Lord Jonathan Oates, a Liberal Democrat Member of the House of Lords and former chief of staff to Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, and Ayesha Saran.[9]

CEO

CCDH's current CEO, Imran Ahmed, was raised in Manchester, England and holds an MA in Social and Political Sciences from the University of Cambridge.[13] He is a trustee of Victim Support[14] and sits on the steering committee for the Commission for Countering Extremism's Pilot Task Force.[15] Before founding the CCDH in 2018, he served as a Political Advisor to Shadow Foreign Secretary, Hilary Benn MP in the UK Parliament and as Political Advisor to Alan Johnson MP, leader of the Labour Remain campaign, in the 2016 Brexit referendum.[16][17]

Ahmed previously co-authored the book The New Serfdom: The Triumph of Conservative Ideas and How to Defeat Them with Labour MP Angela Eagle.[18]

Activities

The CCDH has targeted social media platforms for what it claims are insufficient efforts to fight neo-Nazis[19] and anti-vaccine advocates.[20]

Campaigns

Campaign against Galloway and Hopkins

Further information: Twitter suspensions
photograph
Rachel Riley and the CCDH lobbied "big tech" companies to deplatform George Galloway and Katie Hopkins.

In January 2020, the CCDH campaigned against Katie Hopkins, a far-right political commentator, and George Galloway, a veteran left-wing politician and broadcaster who was sacked from his job at Talkradio for posting an allegedly antisemitic tweet.[21] TV presenter Rachel Riley and the CCDH directly lobbyied "big tech" companies to have these individuals removed from major social media platforms. According to media reports Riley and CCDH CEO Imran Ahmed had a "secret meeting" with Twitter's Soho, London based office, demanding the removal of Hopkins and Galloway from their platform.[22]

At the meeting with Twitter representatives on 29 January 2020, Ahmed and Riley stated that their demand was to exclude "hate actors from public discourse". They presented a number of posts by Hopkins and Galloway which they claimed were in breach of Twitter's community guidelines, demanding that they stop their "ability to use the platform to spread hate".[23][24][25] Ultimately, the CCDH's attempt to remove Galloway from Twitter failed, but Hopkins had her account suspended for a week in February 2020,[26] and removed permanently in July 2020.[27]

Campaign against David Icke

photograph
The British conspiracy theorist David Icke, who the CCDH sought to deplatform in 2020

In April 2020 the CCDH launched a campaign against the British conspiracy theorist David Icke, who gained increased media attention during the COVID-19-associated lockdown in the United Kingdom.[28] The CCDH released a 25-page pamphlet attacking Icke entitled #DeplatformIcke[29] and campaigned to persuade social media platforms to remove his accounts, using the hashtag #DeplatformIcke. The CCDH demanded the total removal of Icke's online presence from YouTube, Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, Instagram, and Apple, portraying him as a "hate actor" on their website.

In November 2020, Twitter removed Icke's account for violating the site's rules against spreading misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic.[30]

Publications

  • Don't Feed the Trolls: How to Deal with Hate on Social Media (2019) – a 12-page pamphlet on how internet trolls operate
  • The Anti-Vaxx Industry (2020) – criticises social media platforms for the growth of anti-vaccination ('anti-vaxx') activists
  • Will to Act (2020) – argues that the largest social media companies fail to enforce their own rules preventing anti-vaccine and COVID-19 conspiracy theory content
  • #No2Misinfo (2020) – a report on the use of Google Ads to monetise websites intended to spread misinformation about the 2020 US Presidential Election
  • Failure to Act (2021) – tracks action taken by social media companies in response to anti-vaccine content
  • Hatebook (2020) – a report co-authored by the Coalition for a Safer Web that accuses Facebook and Instagram of hosting accounts that were selling neo-Nazi merchandise to fund far-right extremism
  • The Anti-Vaxx Playbook (2020) – claims to provide insight into anti-vaxx tactics, messages, and the use of social media
  • Malgorithm (2021) – a critical analysis of Instagram and Facebook’s user engagement and content recommendation algorithm.
  • The Disinformation Dozen (2021) – identifies the top 12 spreaders of anti-vaccine disinformation on social media platforms
  • Disinformation Dozen: the Sequel (2021) – reports on the failures of social media giants to remove anti-vaccine content

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d "Center For Countering Digital Hate Ltd". Companies House. 10 May 2020. Archived from the original on 10 April 2020.
  2. ^ a b "Our People". Center for Countering Digital Hate. 26 May 2020.
  3. ^ "CENTER FOR COUNTERING DIGITAL HATE LTD". Officers (free information from Companies House). 2020-10-09. Retrieved 2020-12-07.
  4. ^ Cite error: The named reference About Us was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  5. ^ "Stop Funding Fake News". Stop Funding Fake News. Retrieved 24 August 2020.
  6. ^ Frazer, Jenni. "'The reason social media companies tolerate hate? Profit'". jewishnews.timesofisrael.com. Retrieved 2020-12-10.
  7. ^ "CCDH: Center for Countering Digital Hate | Policy Commons". policycommons.net. Retrieved 2021-06-09.
  8. ^ "Morgan McSweeney". Keir Starmer MP. 9 Dec 2020.
  9. ^ a b c d {{cite web |url=https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/11633127/officers%7Ctitle=Center For Countering Digital Hate Ltd|work=Companies House|date=10 May 2020
  10. ^ "Dr Siobhan McAndrew". University of Bristol. 10 May 2020.
  11. ^ "Kirsty McNeill". Save the Children. 9 Dec 2020.
  12. ^ "Tom Brookes". European Climate Foundation. 9 Dec 2020.
  13. ^ "Our People | Center for Countering Digital Hate". CCDH. Retrieved 2021-05-18.
  14. ^ "Board of Trustees". Victim Support.
  15. ^ "Pilot Task Force Steering Committee". Commission for Countering Extremism. 26 May 2020.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  16. ^ "In the thick of it". www.parliament.uk. Retrieved 2021-05-13.
  17. ^ Frazer, Jenni. "'The reason social media companies tolerate hate? Profit'". jewishnews.timesofisrael.com. Retrieved 2021-05-13.
  18. ^ "Imran Ahmed". Bite Back Publishing. 10 May 2020.
  19. ^ "Facebook Still Ignoring Warnings of Neo-Nazi Fundraising Network on Its Platforms, New Report Claims". Algemeiner.com. 2020-11-23. Retrieved 2021-01-05.
  20. ^ Burki, Talha (2020-10-01). "The online anti-vaccine movement in the age of COVID-19". The Lancet Digital Health. 2 (10): e504–e505. doi:10.1016/S2589-7500(20)30227-2. ISSN 2589-7500. PMC 7508526. PMID 32984795.
  21. ^ "George Galloway sacked by talkRADIO over allegedly anti-Semitic tweet". BBC. Retrieved 21 May 2020.
  22. ^ "Countdown's Rachel Riley in secret talks over Katie Hopkins' Twitter suspension". Metro. 30 January 2020. Retrieved 10 May 2020.
  23. ^ "Katie Hopkins' account locked after an anti-hate group met with Twitter". iNews. Retrieved 10 May 2020.
  24. ^ "Katie Hopkins locked out of Twitter after Rachel Riley intervention". Retrieved 10 May 2020.
  25. ^ "Katie Hopkins suspended from Twitter for violating social network's anti-hate policy". Yahoo! News. Retrieved 10 May 2020.
  26. ^ "Katie Hopkins' Twitter Reinstated Following Week-Long Absence". Huffington Post. Retrieved 10 May 2020.
  27. ^ Slawson, Nicola; Waterson, Jim (19 June 2020). "Katie Hopkins permanently removed from Twitter". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 19 June 2020.
  28. ^ "Icke antisemitic conspiracies viewed over 30 million times, new research shows". The Jewish Chronicle. 10 May 2020.
  29. ^ "#DeplatformIcke: How Big Tech powers and profits from David Icke's lies and hate, and why it must stop" (PDF). Center for Countering Digital Hate. 10 May 2020.
  30. ^ "Twitter bans David Icke over Covid misinformation". BBC News. 2020-11-04. Retrieved 2020-11-04.

Further reading

External links

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Center_for_Countering_Digital_Hate&oldid=1044556846"