Open Archive of Hate: Terrorism and Violent Extremism on Internet Archive

Abstract

Gabriel Weimann

The recognized correlation between the growing spread of violent extremist and terrorist content on the Internet and online platforms and the significant increase of attacks inspired by these postings caused governments and security agencies to launch various countermeasures. These measures included removal of terrorist and violent extremist online content (or “deplatforming”), suspension of their social media accounts, hacking websites and pressuring social media companies to remove terrorist propaganda. Struggling to adjust to these countermeasures and sustain their online pres- ence, terrorist and violent extremists moved from mainstream online platforms to alternative online channels including anonymous sharing portals and cloud services. The most popular archiving service used by various extremist and terrorist group is the Internet Archive. While the few studies on hate speech and violent contents on Internet Archive focused only on a certain type of content or a specific group, this study attempts to reveal a wider range of contents, groups and organizations who use this archive for sharing and promoting such contents. To examine the use of Internet Archive by various groups and organizations involved in violence, terrorism, hate speech, racism and neo-Nazism we applied several stages of data collection and analysis. The findings highlight an alarming volume of terrorist, extremist, and racist material on the Internet Archive. These findings are discussed in terms of ethical and practical implications.

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