What if our neighbours are not the enemy – what if instead our enemy is the system? What if we stopped talking about free speech and started talking about supply chains – would that actually help to protect democracy?
These were some of the questions posed at a special NYC impact screening of Tribeca-winning HACKING HATE, a powerful and timely new documentary from director Simon Klose about online radicalisation and its real-world consequences.
HACKING HATE shadows Swedish journalist and true-life ‘girl with a dragon tattoo’ My Vingren as she goes undercover to track an elusive far right digital influencer and unpack how social media platforms amplify and profit from extreme, polarising and hateful content. Opening the screening event, which took place at Scandinavia House NYC in the margins of the UN Summit of the Future and ahead of the UN General Assembly, Deputy Ambassador of Canada to the UN Michael Gort remarked that HACKING HATE offers crucial insights into how extreme and hateful content, misinformation and disinformation online are attacking democracy. He said the film shows again the urgent need for companies and political institutions together to take measures to stop such content from continuing to proliferate.
Deputy Ambassador Gort noted that online hate speech normalises abuse, undermines freedom of expression, and stifles healthy public debate. He reiterated that radical individuals and groups online can rapidly become real-life threats – both as individual actors and through authoritarian regimes, which are known increasingly to be leveraging online hate as a weapon to destabilise democratic systems. And he spoke to the leading work that Canada is engaging on around these topics, in particular co-launching with the Netherlands in 2023 the Global Declaration on Information Integrity Online, which he described as a key step in the right direction towards promoting responsible digital governance.
While hate speech is intrinsically a problem that needs to be cut off at source, Deputy Ambassador Gort also recognised that an effective response cannot simply end at blocking and removing. He reflected that HACKING HATE’s layered narrative informs us about and inspires us to rethink the deeper power dynamics that shape our online experiences. Dissecting further these film messages after the screening, an expert panel, moderated adeptly by Mozilla Festival Head of Curation Zeina Abi Assy, similarly commended HACKING HATE for framing the problem of hate online in such a way that as audiences we’re able to consider what the solutions could and should be.
Imran Ahmed, Founder and CEO at the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), emphasised that we must urgently see and treat hate online as part of a wider fundamental threat to democracy and the foundations of society: this isn’t about one iceberg melting, it is about climate change in our information ecosystem. He described how a handful of individuals at the top of the chain are driving a deliberate system of information chaos; bombarding us, saturating us, and making us unable to separate truth from lies, all in order to bring us all to a point of apathy, where we accept that we have no control. This tyrannical subjugation, Imran pressed, is what we must truly counter.
But, Imran added, simply telling a company not to do something that’s incredibly profitable is not going to be successful.
Claire Atkin, co-founder and CEO of ad transparency organisation CheckMyAds, picked up this thought. She agreed that we need to get past our fixation on the facade of user-generated hate and start looking much more closely at the true business of the internet – advertising. Because then, Claire argued, we actually *can* start telling companies what to do in a way that will make a real difference.
Behind the scenes of the internet, Claire explained, is a chaotic business, where faceless chains of ad tech middlemen operate a murky lawless shadowland between brand and consumer, where everyone is taking a cut and no-one is accountable. Around 20% of the ad tech market – representing potentially thousands of companies – is completely invisible – no-one knows who owns it or even from where in the world it is operating.
In Claire’s view, this is where the major online hate solution opportunity lies: power needs to be placed back in the hands of brands – whose dollars are primarily the ones propping up the online world – so they can decide where their ads are going. Ad tech business regulation, Claire argues, is essential, easy to implement, and the only way to really start fixing the internet – and, by extension, society.
Companies only operate within environments enabled by governments, and using existing laws and frameworks doesn’t require much invention. Similar to the EU’s novel uses of competition law to rein in platform company wrongdoing, we agree that governments need to start exploring how existing supply chain regulatory frameworks – such as the EU CSDDD passed only just this year – can be leveraged and interpreted to apply to the digital ecosystem. This creative regulatory approach also offers a valuable way into tackling wider, interrelated issues; such as surveillance advertising, which uses personal and sensitive data to target people and maximise their time on platforms – increasing their exposure to hateful content published there; and bots, which are dangerously wielded by individuals and regimes for fake clicks and mass amplification of democracy-attacking content.
Sean Cruse, Senior Advisor on Research and Data with the United Nations Global Compact (which is in essence a call on companies to make commitments based on human rights) further acknowledged negative uses of AI within the panel, but also spoke to the potential to positively leverage AI for solutions. He gave an example of how AI is already being used to streamline accountability and reporting frameworks, giving companies across multiple industries a better handle on their supply chains. So there are blueprints for how AI could be deployed for ad tech supply chain transparency also.
Director Simon Klose added a further piece to the solution puzzle – in an age where truth is being kept from us, people like My Vingren, and Anika Collier Navaroli, also in the film, are the heroes. We must listen to journalists, listen to whistle-blowers, protect researchers, and fund them.
The future of the internet is in many ways the future of democracy. At present, businesses that purchase platform ads currently have little to no transparency on where these are being placed, and run the risk of being associated with extremist, anti-democratic organisations and individuals, to the detriment of their own values, reputation and profit. Large platforms dependent on advertising for revenue prioritise and promote extreme and polarising content as a means to keep users engaged as long as possible, perpetuating an environment of hate. Far-right and other dangerous extremist influencers online use the monetization structures that mainstream social media platforms provide to grow their following – then funnel message recruits to smaller, lower-moderation, fundraising sites and encrypted messaging groups, where offline expressions to undermine democracy, including the use of violence, can be secretly coordinated.
Follow the money to find both the problem and the solution: we need to disrupt the revenue streams fuelling far-right and other dangerously extreme influencers, empower responsible businesses to sever the link between advertising and hate online, and uplift citizens by advancing an online environment grounded in fundamental human rights and democratic values.
Money is not, however, the end of the tale. HACKING HATE unravels the stories of people behind the hate. Storytelling and film are incredibly important to inform, inspire, and bring hope. As My Vingren herself shares, in a vastly automated, digital age, perhaps hope is the greatest weapon to hold onto. With hope, we can fight back together against the system and rebuild a better society. Closing the panel, Imran also reiterated this: people are primarily tolerant, he encouraged, so simply be human. Meet people with humility, be kind, and be open to learning about and respecting their differences. All else will follow from that.
HACKING HATE releases first in Sweden, with plans for a future international theatrical and streaming release.
