Episode 30: #WeCounterHate - Creating an Innovative Digital Response to Racism on Twitter

On today’s episode of Speak Out With Tim Wise, Tim speaks with the folks behind the We Counter Hate project: an ingenious and creative new effort to counter hate speech on Twitter. As you’ll hear on the program, the project involves the use of computer technology to identify hate speech, alert those who spread it that it has been deemed hate speech, and then let them know that for every re-tweet of the material, a donation will be made to an organization fighting the very hatred they seek to spread. Ultimately the goal is to get “hatefluencers”to think twice before retweeting bigoted content, by raising the cost of their free speech. Neither censorship nor shaming of racists will suffice to shut them down, but this creative approach is making a difference. Tweets marked by the We Counter Hate system get retweeted up to 70 percent less often than tweets sent out by the same Twitter accounts, but which were not marked. Also on the program is Sammy Rangel, the Executive Director of Life After Hate — which works to help people leave the white supremacist movement and inoculate others to their poison — and which has worked with the folks at We Counter Hate to develop the model and the approach used in this effort.