Special Report: New breed of video sites thrives on misinformation and hate

Similarweb

23/08/2022 13:29

(For more Reuters Special Reports, click on  SPECIAL/ )
 (Updates to change headline)
    By Andrew R.C. Marshall and Joseph Tanfani
    Aug 22 (Reuters) - A day after a mass shooting in Buffalo,
New York last May, the video-sharing website BitChute was
amplifying a far-right conspiracy theory that the massacre was a
so-called false flag operation, meant to discredit gun-loving
Americans.
    Three of the top 15 videos on the site that day blamed U.S.
federal agents instead of the true culprit: a white-supremacist
teenager who had vowed to “kill as many blacks as possible”
before shooting 13 people, killing 10. Other popular videos
uploaded by BitChute users falsely claimed COVID-19 vaccines
caused cancers that “literally eat you” and spread the debunked
claim that Microsoft founder Bill Gates caused a global
baby-formula shortage.
    BitChute has boomed as YouTube, Twitter and Facebook tighten
rules to combat misinformation and hate speech. An upstart
BitChute rival, Odysee, has also taken off. Both promote
themselves as free-speech havens, and they’re at the forefront
of a fast-growing alternative media system that delivers
once-fringe ideas to millions of people worldwide.
    Searching the two sites on major news topics plunges viewers
into a labyrinth of outlandish conspiracy theories, racist abuse
and graphic violence. As their viewership has surged since 2019,
they have cultivated a devoted audience of mostly younger men,
according to data from digital intelligence firm Similarweb
 SMWB.N .
    Online misinformation, though usually legal, triggers
real-world harm. U.S. election workers have faced a wave of
death threats https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-election-threats
 and harassment inspired by former President Donald Trump’s
false claims that the 2020 election was rigged, which also
fueled the deadly Jan. 6, 2021 U.S. Capitol riot. Reuters
interviews with a dozen people https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-election-threats
 accused of terrorizing election workers revealed that some had
acted on bogus information they found on BitChute https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-election-threats-vermont
 and almost all had consumed content on sites popular among the
far-right.
    BitChute and Odysee both host hundreds of videos inspired by
the QAnon conspiracy theory, whose supporters have been arrested
for threatening politicians, abducting children and blocking a
bridge near Arizona’s Hoover Dam with an armored truck full of
guns and ammunition.
    “Platforms such as BitChute and Odysee have had a seismic
impact on the disinformation landscape,” said Joe Ondrak of
Logically, a British firm that works with governments and other
organizations to reduce the harm of misinformation. The sites,
he said, had become the “first port of call” for conspiracists
to publish videos.
    BitChute and Odysee say they comply with the law by, for
example, removing terrorism-related material, and that they have
rules banning racist content or incitement of violence. At the
same time, the companies defended the rights of extremists to
express themselves on their sites and downplayed the importance
of their content. 
    “Bitchute’s North Star is free speech, which is the
cornerstone of a free and democratic society,” BitChute said in
a statement to Reuters. Odysee said that right-wing and
conspiracy content didn’t define the platform, which it said is
focusing on generating science- and technology-related videos.
    Despite the platforms’ rules, their users routinely publish
overtly racist videos and post comments that call for violence,
a Reuters review of the sites found. BitChute and Odysee didn’t
respond to questions about content that appeared to violate the
sites’ guidelines.
    All social media platforms publish standards saying they
don’t accept extreme or hateful content, said Callum Hood of the
Center for Countering Digital Hate in London. “The real test is:
Do they live up to those standards? With BitChute and Odysee,
the answer is an emphatic no.”
    Some academics who have researched BitChute and Odysee say
their relaxed content-moderation practices result in sites that
are dominated by incendiary content that most online publishers
routinely reject. Benjamin Horne, a social scientist at the
University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and two colleagues reviewed
more than 440,000 BitChute videos and found that 12% of channels
received more than 85% of the engagement. “Almost all of those
channels contain far-right conspiracies or extreme hate speech,”
their report concluded.
    Reuters searches of the sites show that their most popular
videos are often full of abusive content and misinformation that
grossly distort news events.
    The top BitChute and Odysee videos in searches for “Buffalo
shooting” assert that the massacre never happened. Three of the
top 10 on Odysee claimed that Black survivors and witnesses were
actors. “It’s payday in the ghetto,” said one commentator.
Another video defended the racist theory that motivated the
shooter: that whites are being “replaced” by non-whites through
migration and population growth. The only purely factual video
among BitChute’s top 10 results attracted a slew of racist
comments, with one viewer describing the shooter as a “patriot”
and his victims as “dumb n-----s.”
    Searching for “COVID” on BitChute one recent day produced a
short film called Plandemic as the top result. Plandemic was
banned by YouTube and Facebook for its potentially harmful
misinformation, including the claim that wearing a facemask
“literally activates your own virus” and makes you sick. At
least seven of the top 10 “COVID” search results on Odysee also
contained falsehoods – for example, that vaccines contain
dangerous nanoparticles or have side-effects that are “like a
nuclear bomb.”
    It’s a similar story with a widely reported atrocity of the
Russia-Ukraine war. Nine out of the top 10 search results on
BitChute for “Bucha massacre” theorized that the killing by
Russian soldiers of Ukrainian citizens was a hoax intended to
escalate U.S. involvement in the war, or that it was the work of
Ukrainian soldiers, British agents or “Nazis.”
    Identical YouTube searches on these topics produced almost
all factual reports from established news organizations. This is
consistent with YouTube’s policy of prioritizing information
from what it calls “authoritative sources” on sensitive topics
or events.
    BitChute and Odysee are hardly the only sites spreading
misinformation. Social media giants such as Facebook and YouTube
have also struggled to contain such content, but they have
responded with more aggressive moderation policies and
practices.
    A more direct competitor to BitChute and Odysee is Rumble, a
larger video-sharing site that attracts right-wing users. Rumble
also touts itself as a free-speech champion and attracts
thousands of videos promoting conspiracy theories. But Rumble
has mainstream ambitions and better financial backing, and the
company moderates its content enough to make it palatable to app
stores run by Apple  AAPL.O  and Google  GOOGL.O  – a key growth
driver for any digital business.
    Founded in 2013 by Chris Pavlovski, a Canadian entrepreneur,
Rumble started as a clearing house for viral videos about
children and animals. By 2020, Pavlovski was capitalizing on
anti-Big Tech sentiment to attract prominent right-wing
commentators, and the following year won financial backing from
billionaire Peter Thiel, a Republican kingmaker. Thiel didn’t
reply to a request for comment.
    Today, Rumble offers a mix of pets and politics, with one
foot in the febrile, pro-Trump world where the 2020 election was
stolen and climate change doesn’t exist. Rumble said in a
statement that the platform offered a “wide variety” of
information, including a channel featuring Reuters content. A
Reuters spokesperson said Rumble is a customer that pays to
publish Reuters content. 
    Rumble said its audience is growing rapidly because it
trusts adults “to make up their own minds after hearing all
sides.” But the platform does limit some extreme speech. Search
for the N-word on Rumble, for instance, and you get a message:
“No videos found.”
    The same search on BitChute and Odysee returns hundreds of
racist videos. BitChute co-founder and Chief Executive Ray Vahey
and Odysee co-founder Jeremy Kauffman are self-styled
libertarians who see their creations as safe zones for free
speech – no matter how false or repellent.
    The onslaught of vile content attracted by that philosophy
caused one of BitChute’s three founders to quit and got the
platform banned from mainstream app stores. Odysee has managed
to stay in the Apple app store, but only by blocking searches
for COVID-19 in its app.
    Apple said in a statement that it only permits COVID-19
information in apps from governments and other “recognized
entities.” The company did not answer questions about whether
the extremists and white supremacists on Odysee are permitted
under Apple guidelines, which ban offensive references to
racial, religious and other groups.
    Both BitChute and Odysee have struggled to find workable
financial models in an increasingly crowded market, even as both
quickly amassed huge audiences, attracting hundreds of millions
of site visits annually.
    Odysee’s story starts with a frisbee-playing American
eccentric who sought to finance the site by inventing a new
cryptocurrency. BitChute has roots in northern Thailand, where a
reclusive British expat decided that something had to be done
about internet censorship.
    
    'KILL 'EM ALL'
    Vahey, 45, is a software designer who lives in the sleepy
suburbs of Chiang Mai. Before starting BitChute, Vahey created
animated nursery rhymes for a YouTube channel called
RockstarLittle. The songs, among them “Incy Wincy Spider” and
“Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,” also appear on BitChute under its
“Education” category, where they’re mixed with videos about
chemtrails – the conspiracy theory that governments are secretly
spraying toxins from aircraft – and security-camera footage of a
hooded man shooting a Brazilian shop assistant in the head.
    Vahey declined to be interviewed for this story but has
detailed his vision in recorded talks with BitChute users posted
to the site. In one recent talk, he recalled a “golden age” when
the internet had fewer restrictions. “It seems like the more
censorship has grown, the more society has been ripped apart,”
he said.
    Bit Chute Ltd was incorporated in Britain in 2017 by Vahey
and two other Brits. Rich Jones, a software developer by
training, is the company’s chief operations officer. He is 53,
lives in England and, on his LinkedIn page, describes Vahey as
“a former classmate and long-time friend.” Jones also declined
to comment.
    Andy Munarriz, a 53-year-old telecoms expert, is BitChute’s
third co-founder. “Around this time YouTube, Facebook and others
were removing contributors, and Ray felt free speech was under
attack,” Munarriz told Reuters. Vahey started BitChute in his
spare time, running it from his Chiang Mai home.
    Vahey was shocked when his platform “took off like a
rocket,” he recalled in an interview published on BitChute in
December. “It was overwhelming. The next day, I had to scale up.
And the next day, I had to scale up again.”
    Horne, the BitChute researcher, said the platform owes its
early success to the prominent U.S. conspiracy theorist Alex
Jones. His Infowars show joined BitChute in late 2017 and gained
popularity as YouTube and other platforms evicted Jones the
following year.
    Among other falsehoods, Jones championed the theory that the
2012 Sandy Hook school massacre was a hoax. Twenty children and
six staff members were fatally shot; Jones claimed their
families were actors and the shooting was a false-flag operation
concocted by a government that wanted to seize citizens’ guns.
Today, videos from a variety of content creators on BitChute and
Odysee make strikingly similar claims about the Buffalo
shooting.
    A Texas jury recently ordered Jones to pay $50 million in
damages to the parents of one child killed in the shooting. A
spokesperson for Infowars and a lawyer for Jones did not respond
to requests for comment.
    Horne’s team collected and analyzed more than three million
videos from 61,000 BitChute channels posted between June 2019
and December 2021, finding that almost all of the platform’s
most popular videos were full of misinformation and hate speech.
Horne said the researchers found a “recruitment video” for
Atomwaffen Division, which the Southern Poverty Law Center
describes as a “terroristic neo-Nazi organization.” Federal and
state authorities have charged Atomwaffen members with crimes
including murder.
    Horne said he reported the video to the Federal Bureau of
Investigation but didn’t hear back. The FBI declined to comment.
The video is no longer available on BitChute, which didn’t
respond to questions about what happened to it.
    Experts say Atomwaffen Division disbanded in 2020. A former
leader of the group, John Denton, pleaded guilty in 2020 for his
part in a racially motivated campaign of harassment and was
sentenced to 41 months in prison. Neither Denton nor his lawyer
responded to requests for comment.
    The comment sections beneath some of the BitChute videos
that Horne’s team reviewed contained “high amounts of hate
speech, most of it anti-Semitic,” Horne said. Reuters also found
dozens of videos featuring white men fighting Black men, with
comments extolling the violence: “N----- stompin fuck yeah.” One
video consisted of graphic footage of a man being burned to
death. “They are the scum of the world,” commented one viewer,
referring to Black people. “Kill ‘em all.”
    In the December interview, Vahey said he often sees opinions
he disagrees with on BitChute, but “that’s part of accepting
what free speech is.” For Munarriz, one of the company’s
co-founders, it was too much. He quit in January 2019, alarmed
at BitChute’s direction.
    “No matter what community guidelines you put in place, or
how hard you police, objectionable content would still make its
way onto the platform under the guise of ‘free speech,’”
Munarriz told Reuters. “Why take on that fight? The intention of
BitChute is not to be a destination for objectionable content,
but in the real world that’s what happens.”
    In theory, BitChute users can filter the content they see by
choosing one of three “sensitivity” settings: “Normal,” “NSFW”
(“not safe for work”) and “NSFL” (“not safe for life”). In
practice, because BitChute’s uploaders choose these settings,
even “Normal” videos can include disturbing footage of suicides
and killings.
    The Buffalo shooter livestreamed his rampage on Twitch, a
platform owned by Amazon  AMZN.O , which quickly removed it. But
the gruesome footage was reposted on BitChute, where it stayed
for days, before eventually being taken down for depicting what
BitChute called “abhorrent violence” on a page explaining the
removal.
    BitChute didn’t respond to a request for comment on why the
video wasn’t taken down sooner.
    Since 2020, under rules enforced by the British media
regulator Ofcom, BitChute must protect the public from “harmful
content.” This means, primarily, content that would be deemed a
criminal offense under laws relating to terrorism and child
sexual abuse, or content that incites violence or hatred against
particular groups. Ofcom can impose heavy fines or even suspend
a platform.
    Ofcom and BitChute told Reuters they had consulted with each
other on content to ensure compliance – “while maintaining our
free speech guidelines,” added BitChute. But that doesn’t mean
BitChute has removed all potentially harmful content. Ofcom told
Reuters that the regulations don’t require BitChute to
proactively police itself; rather, BitChute only has to remove
content that someone – for example, a user or advocacy group –
has reported as a violation of its terms and conditions.
Moreover, the regulations apply only to BitChute’s videos and
not to its user comments.
    A Reuters review of BitChute’s British site found myriad
examples of content promoting hate and violence, including the
videos of white men beating black men and the racial slurs in
their comment sections.
    Ofcom said it hadn’t launched any investigations or issued
any fines under the 2020 regulations against BitChute or any
other company.
    BitChute issued a public report in June on how it had
moderated tens of thousands of videos. Most were flagged for
copyright issues; others promoted terrorism, violent extremism
or incited hatred. BitChute said that, in most cases, it either
removed the videos or restricted their distribution in certain
countries.
    Reuters found that some videos blocked by BitChute in Europe
remain on BitChute in the United States, where free-speech
protections for social media are especially robust. In addition
to constitutional protections, Section 230 of the 1996
Communications Decency Act stipulates that social media firms
cannot be held legally responsible for the content that users
post on their platforms.
    The BitChute content blocked in Britain, but still freely
available in America, includes swastika-adorned videos that
attacked Jews and Blacks, and adoring montages about Adolf
Hitler with names such as, “We Need You Now – Happy Birthday
Mein Fuhrer.”

    'A LIZARD PERSON'
    BitChute’s online traffic grew 63% in 2021 over the previous
year, to 514 million visits, according to Similarweb, the
digital intelligence firm. For comparison, that’s more than
double the online audience of MSNBC.com, the website of the
cable news channel known for left-leaning opinion hosts.
    But BitChute’s funding model appears fragile. In the
December interview, Vahey said he had turned down investors
because he refused to compromise on free speech. He said he
mostly covered his monthly running costs of $50,000 through
donations and subscriptions. The site also has some advertising.
    BitChute’s closest rival, Odysee, attracted 292 million
visits last year. But it has taken a different path to get
there.
    Odysee grew from a company called LBRY (pronounced
“library”), co-founded in 2015 by Jeremy Kauffman, a U.S. tech
entrepreneur and radical libertarian who financed LBRY by
creating his own cryptocurrency. The company’s other founders
did not respond to requests for comment.
    Kauffman, 37, lives in New Hampshire, where he’s running a
long-shot campaign for the U.S. Senate on the state’s
Libertarian Party ticket in November’s midterm elections. His
hardline version of the Party’s anti-government philosophy
includes abolishing the Federal Reserve, the Internal Revenue
Service and child-labor laws.
    Kauffman promoted his Senate campaign with a bizarre video
posted on Twitter in May. He addresses the camera in an
ill-fitting crocodile costume and speaks as images flash on the
screen of snarling aliens, Godzilla and President Joe Biden with
a forked tongue. “I want to become a lizard person,” Kauffman
says. “I would like to rule you.”
    The act appeared to reference the lizard-people conspiracy
theory, which holds that governing elites are really
blood-sucking alien reptiles in human form.
    Kauffman also posts provocative statements on Twitter.
“Being unvaccinated and being Black are both choices,” he
tweeted in August 2021, with a picture of a light-skinned
Michael Jackson. He told Reuters the tweet was a joke.
    “I think it’s funny,” said Kauffman, the sole occupant of
LBRY’s plainly furnished headquarters in downtown Manchester,
New Hampshire. “If you don’t think it’s funny,” he said, “you
don’t have to look at it.”
    In college at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New
York, Kauffman studied computer science and physics, and played
competitive frisbee. He had little experience in publishing
when, in 2015, he set up LBRY with four others, promising to
bring “freedom back to the web,” according to an early investor
pitch.
    LBRY’s business model relied on sales of its own
cryptocurrency, called LBC. Launched on the cusp of a crypto
boom, the price jumped, pushing the company’s value to $1.2
billion.
    But in March 2021, the Securities and Exchange Commission
sued LBRY, alleging that selling a cryptocurrency to finance its
operations amounted to an unregistered securities offering.
Kauffman attacked the commission in tweets and interviews as
“monsters,” and told Reuters he had spent $2 million on legal
fees on a “Kafka-esque” fight. The Securities and Exchange
Commission declined to comment on the case, which is still
pending.
    Even before the suit, demand for LBC was faltering. After
its 2016 launch, the currency’s value swung up and down,
reaching $1.29 in early 2018 before collapsing, according to
CoinGecko, a website that tracks cryptocurrency values. It now
trades at about two cents.
    The company started a streaming platform in late 2019 called
LBRY.TV. It courted creators who specialized in technology,
cryptocurrencies or science, but also attracted conspiracy
theorists and extremists seeking an alternative to YouTube. Paul
Webb, a web developer who joined LBRY in 2017, said he raised
objections when he found out the site featured videos of a
leader of the Proud Boys, the far-right group whose current
leader and four associates are now charged in connection with
the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
    On a video call with Kauffman, Webb presented research on
the Proud Boys by groups that track extremists. Webb said he
argued that “we have a responsibility not to give people like
that a platform.” Kauffman disagreed and said the controversy
generated publicity for LBRY, according to Webb, who now works
at a digital design agency based in Canada.
    Asked about the exchange, Kauffman said: “Even morally
questionable groups, such as Reuters journalists or the Proud
Boys, should be allowed to speak to others that want to hear
them.”
    LBRY.TV was rebuilt and rebranded as a new website, Odysee,
in late 2020. The following year, the operation was put into a
new subsidiary of LBRY called Odysee Holdings Inc, with a new
chief executive. Kauffman remains the CEO of LBRY, but Odysee is
now run by Julian Chandra, both men said in interviews. Chandra
had worked at the popular Chinese-owned short-video app TikTok
before joining LBRY and taking over Odysee.
    He told Reuters he wants to make Odysee a profitable
platform that serves a bigger, more mainstream audience, moving
beyond Kauffman’s libertarian politics and his original vision
for the video-sharing site. Odysee is seeking to grow revenue
through advertising and premium ad-free subscriptions.
    Odysee’s traffic has grown exponentially. Like BitChute, it
has fed off the turbulence surrounding COVID-19 lockdowns, mass
vaccinations and Trump’s false claims about the U.S. election in
November 2020. That month, Odysee’s visits doubled to about 6
million, according to Similarweb. In January 2021 – the month
Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol – it almost tripled
again, to 17 million. By August, the total almost doubled again,
to 33 million.
    Odysee still bills itself as a bulwark for free speech. When
YouTube last year removed several videos condemning alleged
human rights abuses by China against Uyghur Muslims, Odysee
provided an alternative home https://www.reuters.com/technology/exclusive-youtube-takes-down-xinjiang-videos-forces-rights-group-seek-2021-06-25.
 It did the same for RT and Sputnik after YouTube and Facebook
blocked the Russian propaganda channels in March. In a statement
on Twitter, Odysee said: “We are not banning any news network.
It’s a slippery slope.”
    It remains a sanctuary for controversial figures. Megan
Squire, a professor at Elon University in North Carolina who
researches online extremism, has identified more than 100
channels on Odysee from right-wing extremists and conspiracy
theorists.
    Chandra acknowledged that such content existed on Odysee but
said it didn’t define the platform. He said the company removes
content that promotes terrorism, hatred or violence towards
other groups.
    Yet Odysee remains a home to neo-Nazis. Joseph Jordan, who
produces videos under the pseudonym of “Eric Striker,”
co-founded the white supremacist National Justice Party. In his
videos on Odysee, he praises Hitler, denies the Holocaust
happened and argues for policies protecting whites against
Blacks. Jordan did not respond to a request for comment.
    “You want me to delete this person because of what exactly?
He hasn’t broken any laws,” Chandra said. “You don’t like a
channel, don’t watch the channel. It’s very simple.”  

    <^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Campaign of Fear: Trump world's assault on U.S. election workers
   https://www.reuters.com/investigates/section/campaign-of-fear/
SPECIAL REPORT-How a former leftie fell into the pro-Trump
conspiracy rabbit hole    https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-election-threats-vermont/
SPECIAL REPORT-Reuters unmasks Trump supporters who terrorized
U.S. election officials    https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-election-threats/
    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^>
 (Reporting by Andrew R.C. Marshall and Joseph Tanfani;
additional reporting by Helen Coster; Editing by Jason Szep and
Brian Thevenot)
 ((andrew.marshall@thomsonreuters.com;
joseph.tanfani@thomsonreuters.com))