Center for Countering Digital Hate

CCDH
Founder	•  Imran Ahmed •  Morgan McSweeney
Member of	Climate Action Against Disinformation

The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) is a nonprofit limited company based in London. CCDH dates its foundation to December 2017, although the current limited company was not incorporated until October 2018. Co-founder and CEO is Imran Ahmed.

CCDH lobbies American "big tech" firms such as YouTube, Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, Instagram and Apple to "deplatform" individuals so that they cannot present their views to the general public. CCDH's most high-profile campaign so far has been against the British conspiracy theorist David Icke. Other CCDH campaigns have included the left-wing politician and broadcaster George Galloway and the right-wing media personality Katie Hopkins.

From 4 May 2020, the Stop Funding Fake News campaign became a project of the CCDH.

Deplatforming campaigns

Campaign against Galloway and Hopkins

The CCDH's first significant campaign began in January 2020; the targets for this campaign were [Katie Hopkins, a right-wing commentator, and George Galloway, a veteran left-wing politician and broadcaster. The most prominent figure at the forefront of this was Rachel Riley, who directly lobbied "big tech" companies, along with the CCDH, to have these individuals removed from major social media platforms. Similar methods had already taken place in regards to American figures, such as conspiracy theorist Alex Jones in 2018, who was completely removed from all "big tech" platforms. According to media reports Rachel Riley and CCDH CEO Imran Ahmed had a "secret meeting" with Twitter's Soho, London-based office, demanding the removal of Hopkins and Galloway from their platform. Riley, best known for co-hosting the game show Countdown, has an active Twitter account, coming to political prominence along with other UK-based celebrities such as David Baddiel, for advocacy in the debate over antisemitism in the UK Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn and claims to have been the victim of online trolling by pro-Palestinian left-wing Labour activists. Riley has herself courted controversy and accusations of online trolling by pro-Corbyn activists for content she has posted on Twitter.

At the meeting with Twitter representatives on 29 January 2020, Ahmed and Riley stated that their demand was to exclude "hate actors from public discourse". Hopkins, who first came to public prominence in the United Kingdom as a contestant on The Apprentice and had gone on to have a career as a controversial media commentator, supports right-wing populism in general, including advocacy on her Twitter account for Brexit and American president Donald Trump. George Galloway, a veteran left-wing activist, broadcaster and former Labour MP, was sacked from his job at Talkradio for posting an allegedly antisemitic tweet. Ahmed and Riley presented to Twitter a number of posts by Hopkins and Galloway which they claimed were in breach of Twitter's community guidelines, demanding that they stop their "ability to use the platform to spread hate" and deplatform them from Twitter to eliminate "hate actors from public discourse". Ultimately, the CCHD's attempt to remove Galloway from Twitter failed, but Hopkins had her account suspended for a week in February 2020, and eventually removed permanently in July 2020.

Campaign against David Icke

In April 2020, CCDH started to campaign against the British conspiracy theorist David Icke, who gained media attention during the COVID-19-associated COVID-19/Pandemic in the United Kingdom. Icke posted a number of controversial videos to his YouTube account, which included an interview with Brian Rose of London Real where Icke posited a conspiracy theory which attempted to link the erection of 5G masts to the COVID-19 pandemic. During the British lockdown, the CCDH began to present itself as "countering COVID-19 misinformation" and promoted various posts on its website and social media to this end attempting to direct public opinion on the subject. The CCDH released a 25-page pamphlet attacking Icke entitled "#DeplatformIcke" and began a campaign to enact social media deplatforming of him, using the hashtag "#DeplatformIcke". The CCDH demanded the total removal of Icke's online presence from "big tech" platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, Instagram and Apple, portraying him as a "hate actor" on their website.

The #DeplatformIcke pamphlet sent out by CCDH to "big tech" giants was signed by 800 individuals, according to the CCDH, and groups. in particular the All-Party Parliamentary Group against Antisemitism (Andrew Percy and Catherine McKinnell both signed), as did Damian Collins, Conservative MP who was the former chair of the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee. Antisemitism monitoring organisation, the Community Security Trust (CST), also supported the letter, with CST's Dave Rich calling for Icke's "hateful and dangerous conspiracy theories to be removed from mainstream social media platforms."

Icke, a prolific content creator, had a public audience of more than 1 million followers on YouTube, as well as on Facebook and Twitter. Two of the websites, YouTube and Facebook, deleted his accounts from their website: Facebook deleted his account on 1 May 2020, stating as the reason "health misinformation that could cause physical harm", YouTube followed on 2 May 2020 stating: "YouTube has clear policies prohibiting any content that disputes the existence and transmission of Covid-19 as described by the WHO and the NHS." While both of Icke's personal accounts were deleted from the two websites, both allowed other uploaders to host Icke-related content unrelated to COVID-19. Ahmed and the CCDH praised the response to their call, but continued to demand that complete internet-wide deplatforming be enacted against Icke and a shadow ban of all his content be enforced.

In November of 2020, Twitter removed David Icke's account for violating the site's rules against spreading misinformation about the COVID-19/Pandemic. This was welcomed by the CCDH.

Campaign against The Gateway Pundit

The CCDH has repeatedly accused The Gateway Pundit of spreading dangerous conspiracy theories and misinformation; particularly in reference to the fairness of the US/2020 Presidential election.

Directors and associates

The organisation was founded by its current CEO, Imran Ahmed, who is also a trustee of Victim Support and sits on the steering committee for the Commission for Countering Extremism's Pilot Task Force. Ahmed previously co-authored the book "The New Serfdom: The Triumph of Conservative Ideas and How to Defeat Them" with Labour MP Angela Eagle and worked as a political advisor to Labour MP Hilary Benn.

The CCDH has attracted a number of high-profile supporters such as Sadiq Khan (the Mayor of London), Rachel Riley, Gary Lineker and Eddie Izzard.

Morgan McSweeney (born April 1977) was the first Director of the group, originally known as Brixton Endeavours Ltd. Since 2017, he had become the Managing Director of Labour Together and was later the campaign manager for Keir Starmer's ultimately successful bid to become the new leader of the Labour Party.

Aside from McSweeney, the organisation was joined by three other Co-Directors in September 2019. In addition to this are the currently sitting Co-Directors; Dr Siobhan Marie McAndrew (born March 1978), a sociology lecturer for the School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies at the University of Bristol and Kirsty Jean McNeill (born February 1980), a Labour Party political activist and former speech writer for Gordon Brown who sits on the boards of the Labour Women's Network, the Holocaust Educational Trust and the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust.

Publications

"Don't Feed the Trolls"

The CCDH first garnered media attention by publishing a 12-page pamphlet Don't Feed the Trolls: How to Deal with Hate on Social Media in 2019, signed by the CCDH's CEO Imran Ahmed and the Canadian psychologist Linda Papadopoulos. The authors, Ahmed and Papadopoulos, acknowledged the assistance of the following individuals as having "provided valuable insight or feedback in the writing of this report"; Morgan McSweeney, Siobhan McAndrew, Rachel Riley, Dave Rich (of the Community Security Trust), Dr Daniel Allington (of King's College London, Simon Clark (of the Center for American Progress), Euan Neill (of the Commission for Countering Extremism), Randeep Ramesh (of The Guardian), Hannah O'Rourke (of Labour Together), Will Somerville (of Unbound Philanthropy), Dr Kate Ferguson (of Protection Approaches, an NGO which focuses on "identity-based violence and mass atrocity crimes"), Dr Robert Ford (of the University of Manchester) and Jonathan Sebire (of Signify).

The central thesis of the Don't Feed the Trolls pamphlet is that what the CCDH describes as internet trolls operate through manipulating social media algorithms and if a tweet or Facebook post receives engagement (whether positive or negative) then it is seen by a wider audience, particularly if the feedback is from a high-profile account. The pamphlet advises those who are on the receiving end of the messages not to respond, block the user, do not highlight being targeted and take time off social media. The pamphlet cited as ideological inspiration the works of several American-based sociologists, psychologists and political thinkers, including Cass Sunstein's "Going to Extremes: How Like Minds Unite and Divide" (2009) and "On Rumors: How Falsehoods Spread, Why We Believe Them, What Can Be Done" (2011), Jonathan Haidt's "The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion" (2012), George Lakoff's "Don't Think of an Elephant! Know Your Values and Frame the Debate: The Essential Guide for Progressives" (2004) and Nancy L. Rosenblum's "A Lot of People Are Saying: The New Conspiricism and the Assault on Democracy" (2019).

"The Anti-Vaxx Playbook"

In late 2020, the CCDH published a report entitled The Anti-Vaxx Playbook targeting criticism of the lockdown policies and pharmaceutical interventions pertaining to the covid event. The core message of the report is to support active big tech censorship of politically sensitive communications with the purpose of protecting the legitimacy of core institutions.

 

Employee on Wikispooks

Employee	Job	Appointed	End
Morgan McSweeney	Director	19 October 2018	6 April 2020

 

Known members

6 of the 16 of the members already have pages here:

Member	Description
Imran Ahmed	Spooky activist "Buffalo might never have happened if online hate had been tackled after Christchurch"
Damian Collins	Integrity Initiative connected UK politician cum propagandist member of the Center for Countering Digital Hate
Kirsty McNeill	Suspected UKDSO, trusted aide of of British PM Gordon Brown, Center for Countering Digital Hate, future Labour MP?
Morgan McSweeney
Lindsay Moran	Spooky journalist promoting internet censorship.
Jonny Oates	Center for Countering Digital Hate UK politician

 

Related Document

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
Document:I get abuse and threats online - why can't it be stopped?	Article	18 October 2021	Marianna Spring	The Disinformation Specialist at the BBC gets criticism online for her "fact checking". Internet censorship is the answer.

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References

This page imported content from Wikipedia on 16 November 2020.
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