Briefings
OHPI briefings provide quick responses to breaking issues, or short but detailed explanations on focused topics. Our briefings are original OHPI content originally published on this site.
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The Merchant – an Antisemitic Facebook Page
Update 1 February 2014: “The Merchant” page is currently “unpublished”, this means it is not visible on Facebook and you can no longer report it. It has, however, not been permanently removed. This means the administrtaor can make it come back at any time. If the unpublishing was done by Facebook as a warning (with…
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Briefing: Aboriginal Memes 2014
The “Aboriginal Memes 2014″ Facebook page was created on January 9th 2014 and was unpublished by Facebook on January 27th. Facebook had initially been rejecting reports users made about the page, but reversed their position after a journalist from News Corp contacted the company for an explanation. This incident against highlights that Facebook’s internal mechanisms…
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Facebook apologises over homophobia
At the start of 2014 Facebook issued an apology for wrongly removing (repeatedly) an image of two men kissing. The removal came with a statement saying the image breached the platform’s community standards. Those who had posted the image claim over 100 accounts were suspended for posting the image. The reversal came after media reporting…
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Hate page administrator close accounts after threats of violence
This briefing relates to a recent incident on an anti-Muslim hate page. The administrator(s) of the page took a stand to differentiate opposition to Islam from the spread of violence and hate against Muslims. This is an important distinction between attacks on ideas, which are protected under the principles of freedom of expression, and attacks…
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Using Facebook to Fight Hate
The Online Hate Prevention Institute was alerted last week to sanctions imposed by Facebook against “They Can’t”, an anti-hate Facebook page. We believe “They Can’t” fulfills a valuable public service when it posts links to antisemitic YouTube videos so that fans of the page can flag those videos and bring them to YouTube’s attention. OHPI…
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Centrelink Memes and Anti-Aboriginal Racism
BACKGROUND: “Aboriginal Memes”, that is racist captioned images attacking Indigenous Australians, first gained media attention around October 2012. OHPI produced the first major report on the topic, “Aboriginal Memes and OnlineHate“, which is available as a free download. Aboriginal Memes are less widespread these days but the do keep reappearing. The latest collection we have…
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Digital Self Harm
Digital self harm has been in the media for the last few months following the death of Hannah Smith in the UK. Originally thought to be cyberbullying, it turned out the attacks on Hannah Smith on the ask.fm website were posted from Hannah’s own computer. Despite the recent surge in attention, Digital Self Harm is not…
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The problem of cyberbullying trolls
We recently received a question asking for OHPI’s comment on the prevalence of bullying, hate, abuse and other conduct which seems to be given a pass online but which would meet strong condemnation in any off line context. Our first comment is to note that there is less acceptance of this online conduct now than…
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Video Briefing: Misogyny – Hate Against Women
This is the second part of a series of briefings related to OHPI’s campaign video “Stop Racism and Online Hate with OHPI”. This briefing focuses on the three images in the video which relate to women. The full video can be seen below, and the images have each been recaptured from the video to show…
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Video Briefing: Antisemitism and Holocaust Denial
This is the first part of a series of briefings related to OHPI’s campaign video “Stop Racism and Online Hate with OHPI”. This briefing focuses on the six images in the video which related to antisemitism or the Holocaust. The images have each been recaptured from the video to show when they appear. The video…