Violent and hateful rhetoric on the anonymous online message board 4chan rose dramatically following Hamas’s attacks on Israel last weekend, and again during Israel’s counteroffensive in the Gaza Strip, research shows.
The Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) found that within 48 hours of the initial attacks, the use of slurs and violent speech against Jewish and Muslim communities on 4chan grew by more than 500% and remained at high levels.
GPAHE saw 2,626 examples of such speech on October 8 compared to 511 examples on October 6—a 579% increase. These levels were sustained through the following two days, the research shows. And the numbers are likely conservative, the researchers say, acknowledging that their search couldn’t capture every instance of hate speech on 4chan.
Hatred toward Muslims on 4chan grew fastest after the Hamas attacks, but hatred against Jews remained far higher in raw number. Anti-Semitic slurs and calls for violence grew from 484 instances on October 6 to 2,626 on October 8, a nearly 5-fold increase. Anti-Muslim slurs and calls for violence grew from 27 instances to 333 in the same time frame, increasing 12-fold, the researchers found. The GPAHE researchers say the difference in these numbers may stem from the considerable number of neo-Nazis found on 4chan. Still, 4chan members demonstrate strong hatred for both groups, GPAHE says, with many describing the current conflict as a “win-win for whites.”
“[E]xtremists and hate-mongers have taken to online spaces to target Jews and Muslims alike,” GPAHE says in a statement. “Both of these communities are frequent targets for acts of violence and hate propaganda globally . . . but the scale of growth over the last week is alarming.”
4chan is a well-known platform for hate speech, including explicit anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim slurs and even calls to kill members of both groups. In a recent example, a man who killed 10 people in a hate-fueled attack on a Buffalo supermarket in 2022 posted his manifesto on 4chan, in which he described how he’d been influenced by the site and inspired to act by watching a video of the 2019 mass shootings at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. The moderation of 4chan is guided by free-speech absolutism; that is, moderation is very light or nonexistent, guided mainly by a rule stating that users will not post content that’s illegal where they live.
“We concentrate a lot of our research on unregulated platforms because it’s these places where you find these extreme voices,” GPAHE cofounder Heidi Beirich tells Fast Company. “We’re concerned about posts that might contain direct threats or things like manifestos that can produce direct actions.”
“We are observing a sudden and significant rise in anti-Muslim hate speech and racist anti-Palestinian speech on social media, including violent rhetoric calling for the extermination or expulsion of Palestinians and Muslims,” says Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) national deputy executive director Edward Ahmed Mitchell in a statement to Fast Company. “Social media platforms, which sometimes have a habit of ignoring violent rhetoric aimed at Muslims while silencing peaceful advocacy for Palestinian human rights, should maintain strong protections for the free speech of all users while also ensuring their platforms do not host any violent or threatening rhetoric.”
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) says its own research has shown that calls for anti-Semitic violence on the instant messaging service Telegram increased 400% in the 18 hours after the Hamas attacks and have not slowed down. “Time and again, we have seen how the hatred and vitriol incubated online animates real world violence,” says Oren Segal, vice president of the ADL’s Center on Extremism.
Indeed, police in Fresno, California, launched a hate-crime investigation Tuesday after windows were broken at a Jewish temple and a bakery, a local TV affiliate reports. And Salt Lake City police say “several” synagogues in Utah were forced to evacuate on Sunday after receiving bomb threats.
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