16
Opinions
March 2O22
DOWN THE RABBIT Article by Jack Ververis Graphics by Sarah Lin
In many ways, political servers on group messaging platform Discord are just like any other group chat. On one server, 4,000 active users share memes, play games and join voice calls together. It is a standard friend group. That is, until someone brings up politics. As teenagers increasingly rely on online spaces for community and connection, extremist groups are sensing an opportunity. During the pandemic, these spaces boomed; according to the New York Times, Discord increased its active user base to 140 million active users, the primary base of which are ages 12-23. On its 6.7 million “servers,” or largescale group chats, these teens organize around interests ranging from mainstream music to the most obscure topics. The most popular interest by far though is video games. And while gaming platforms have taken some steps in recent months to curb hate speech in the medium, it’s still widespread. In a 2021 survey by the Anti-Defamation League, 10% of gamers aged 13 to 17 had interacted with white supremacist ideology, with 60% experiencing harrassment. Tech magazine Wired found that the large, organized groups are overwhelmingly alt-right, and have been allowed to grow with little oversight on popular platforms like Steam and Discord.
As explained by activist group Tech Against in extreme right-wing Discord communities Terrorism, members typically introduce them- was 15. selves through a slightly edgy joke or off-col“More than a server about politics, it’s a or comment. This can be especially prevalent server where you can make friends,” the modon popular sites like Roblox, of whose 43.2 erator told me. million active users, 54% are under the age But past the server’s welcoming stateof nine. Most of the time, this goes nowhere. ment, threads titled “conspiracies” and “deHowever, if a player is interested, they are in- bates-and-politics” contain a strange mix of vited to join up on private servers and chats. Christian theology, bad Donald Trump pho“In students’ minds, there really was never a YOU’VE BEEN INVITED TO JOIN A SERVER time before the internet,” Director of Network and Join Support Services Chad Griffith said. “Just like with any tool that can be used for good, it can also be used for bad. And I think that when teens are young, they’re impressionable, toshops and virulent antisemitism. It’s often they have a strong desire to fit in, to belong, hard to tell what’s serious and what’s a joke. to be a part of something. And if those needs Next to a meme from Shrek might be a dearen’t met, there’s ways on the internet to find bunked study on African American skulls, and those avenues.” calls for violence against trans people could be One non Trinity affiliated Discord mod- done by a user with a Sonic avatar. Many userator, who asked that their username not be ers feel disillusioned with mainstream politics, published, spends six to eight hours a day run- and often hold contradictory views. ning a political Discord server of about 2,000 “Am I actually a national socialist? No,” one people, most of whom age 13-24. This match- user told me. “Am I whatever the hell normies es with the Institute for Strategic Dialogue’s think is a Nazi? Maybe.” study, which found that the average user age The connecting theme was anger. Despite Discord recently taking meaningful efforts to contain hate speech on its platform, users have still figured out ways to bypass the Terms of Service (one user advised me that, as long as I didn’t type phrases like ‘The Jewish Question’ outright, I wouldn’t be banned). Oftentimes, this hate speech can spread through “raids,” where users coordinate on flooding another server with hateful images and links in order to get new followers or shut the server down. “It’s very tough sometimes,” the moderator said. “We have raids on a daily basis, sometimes a single raid, sometimes up to 6 in a day. We have had raids of any kind, from single raiders, to hundreds of bots, to spam links and invites to the users.”
