By Elise Thomas

DLive is a live-streaming platform created in 2017 and acquired by BitTorrent in 2019. From late 2019 onward, the combination of lax content moderation and DLive’s in-built opportunities for monetisation1  using a blockchain-based cryptocurrency reportedly attracted2 significant numbers of extreme right and fringe streamers to the platform. In early 2021, at least nine channels are alleged to have live-streamed the January 6th incursion into the US Capitol on the platform.3 DLive has a policy of tagging channels that contain political or adult content as ‘X tag’ channels. In the wake of the events at the Capitol, DLive took the step of demonetising5  all X tag channels. They also suspended the accounts of users who had streamed the Capitol incursion, announced a content moderation review of all X tag channels with significant viewership, and temporarily suspended all use of their platform for those in the Washington DC area ahead of the Presidential Inauguration.  This briefing details the results of an ethnographic analysis of the role which DLive plays in UK extreme right-wing mobilization online, with specific attention played to the overlap between extremist use of the platform and the targeting of gamers for radicalisation. In total, we watched 13.5 hours of live-streamed content and analyzed the activity of 100 extreme right accounts. The time which ISD analysts spent scoping the platform overlapped with the removal of several high-profile extreme right-wing users of the platform. Importantly this analysis helps document how extremists are using a multi-platform strategy to avoid the negative impacts that content moderation efforts can have on their communications strategies. Key Findings • A relatively wide range of extremist influencers including British white nationalists use DLive as part of a broader strategy to broadcast extreme right ideology to their audiences. The monetization provided by DLive means that as well as providing a means to stream shows to audiences the platform offers the opportunity of netting them funds. • Extremists have an ambivalent relationship with DLive, treating it as part of a multi-platform strategy designed to circumnavigate content moderation. We found that extremists used DLive opportunistically due to the relative freedom it afforded them to broadcast content that would not be allowed on other platforms. However, this was not out of any particular affection for the platform, with extremists often streaming across multiple platforms in a bid to avoid moderation efforts. • Efforts by DLive to implement more robust terms of service appear to be having an impact on extremist activity. Several of the accounts we monitored were removed by DLive over the course of our analysis. Additionally, the users we monitored often discussed using alternative platforms like Trovo and Odysee to broadcast, which they felt provided more permissive environments for extremist activity. • We found limited evidence to suggest that the live streaming of gaming is used as a strategy by extremists to radicalize new users on DLive. Out of the 100 extremist accounts analyzed, only seven used DLive to stream gaming. Of these seven only three appeared to use gaming to advance extreme right ideology and movements. Analysing the gaming content produced by these users it appears that gaming primarily functions as a means for extreme right wing influencers to reach established audiences and strengthen existing extremist communities, rather than to radicalise and recruit new members.  

Beirut; Berlin; London; Paris; Washington DC Institute for Strategic Dialogue, 2021. 11p.

By Pierre Vaux, Aoife Gallagher, Jacob Davey

Steam is a video game supply service, described as the “single largest distribution site for PC games”. At the start of February 2021, the platform set a new record as 26.4 million users signed into the platform simultaneously, breaking its previous record of 25.4 million set only the month before. In addition to its online store and game launcher, the Steam community feature allows users to find friends and join groups and discussion forums, while also offering in-game voice and text chat. These groups serve as a means to enable connectivity around a certain subject or game, forming hubs where users with shared interests can collaborate. Often, Steam groups facilitate interaction between groups of players known as ‘clans’ who play together in one or more multiplayer games. However, several groups have been created to allow networking between people supportive of right-wing extremism. In this chapter, we provide an analysis of 45 interconnected Steam community groups associated with the extreme right. This cohort is a sample of a larger network of potentially extremist groups on the platform, and as such should be seen as a snapshot indicating broader trends on the platform, rather than a comprehensive overview of extreme right activity. Key Findings • The extreme right uses Steam as a hub for individual extremists to connect and socialize. The Steam groups examined by ISD, which often have members in common, span the extreme right ideological spectrum. This network connects supporters of far-right political parties, such as the British National Party (BNP), with groups promoting neo-Nazi organizations, like the Misanthropic Division. • Steam seems to have an entrenched and long-lasting extreme right community. Many of the groups analyzed date back to 2016 or even earlier. Steam’s permissive attitude to this harmful activity means that these communities have a haven to promote and discuss extremist ideology and content. • In addition to connecting individuals who support the extreme right, some groups also provide off-ramps to ideological content and other social media platforms, suggesting that Steam is being used to recruit to specific movements. This includes links to far-right blogs, podcasts and articles, as well as invitations to join Telegram groups and vetted Discord servers. • Some groups provide platforms for groups of individuals to engage in trolling and harassment ‘raids’ against communities deemed to be political enemies. Users were seen naming target sites and asking fellow group members to join them in raiding or spamming them, with the result that these communities are making Steam a more toxic space for other users. • Our analysis suggests that gaming seems to be largely used as a means of community building rather than as a deliberate strategy for radicalization or recruitment. Individuals who are already engaged with the extreme right appear to use Steam as a platform to connect with like-minded individuals over a shared hobby. However, we also found examples of political games, such as ‘Feminazi 3000’ being used as a means of advertising political identity, as well as historical strategy games being used as a means of living out extremist fantasies, such as winning World War II for Germany.  

  Beirut; Berlin; London; Paris; Washington DC Institute for Strategic Dialogue (2021).  14p.

By Aoife Gallagher, Ciarán O’Connor, Pierre Vaux, Elise Thomas, Jacob Davey

Discord is a free service accessible via phones and computers. It allows users to talk to each other in real-time via voice, text or video chat and emerged in 2015 as a platform designed to assist gamers in communicating with each other while playing video games. The popularity of the platform has surged in recent years, and it is currently estimated to have 140 million monthly active users.1 Chatrooms – known as servers - in the platform can be created by anyone, and they are used for a range of purposes that extend far beyond gaming. Such purposes include the discussion of extreme right-wing ideologies and the planning of offline extremist activity. Ahead of the far-right Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017, organizers used Discord to plan and promote events and posted swastikas and praised Hitler in chat rooms with names like “National Socialist Army” and “Führer’s Gas Chamber”.2 In this briefing we provide an analysis of 24 English-language Discord servers associated with extreme right-wing activity. This analysis is intended as a snapshot of current trends on Discord with a specific focus on the role of gaming, rather than a comprehensive overview of extreme right activity on the platform. Key Findings • We found that Discord primarily acts as a hub for extreme right-wing socialising and community building. Our analysis suggests that Discord provides a safe space for users to share ideological material and explore extremist movements. • Of particular concern is the young age of the members of these servers, who on average, when determinable, were 15 years old. This suggests that Discord could act as an entry point for children to come into contact with extremist ideology. • We found limited evidence that gaming played a role in serious strategies to radicalise and recruit new individuals on the platform. Instead gaming was primarily referenced in cultural terms, being used by members of these servers to find common-ground. • Gamified online harassment through ‘raids’ was a popular activity across the channels analysed. This suggests that this semi-organised cyber-bullying could be a vector which brings young people into contact with extremist communities. • We identified discussion in these channels expressing support for the proscribed terrorist organisations Atomwaffen Division and Sonnenkrieg Division. This included the sharing of branded content produced by these organisations, as well as the identification of one user who expressed an interest in joining Atomwaffen.  

Amman | Berlin | London | Paris | Washington DC: ISD Global, 2021. 13p.

By Ciarán O’Connor

This briefing is part of ISD’s Gaming and Extremism Series exploring the role online gaming plays in the strategy of far-right extremists in the UK and globally. This is part of a broader programme on the ‘Future of Extremism’ being delivered by ISD in the second half of 2021, charting the transformational shifts in the extremist threat landscape two decades on from 9/11, and the policy strategies required to counter the next generation of extremist threats. It provides a snapshot overview of the extreme right’s use of Twitch. Twitch launched as a livestreaming service in 2011 focused on gaming and eSports and was acquired by Amazon in August 2014 for $970 million. According to Twitch, the platform has over 30 million average daily visitors and almost half of all Twitch users are between 18 - 34 years old, while 21% are between 13 - 17. In the UK, based on the most recent Ofcom figures from 2019, Twitch accounts were held by 8% of 16-24 year olds, 3% of 25-34 year olds and 2% of 35-44 year olds. Users typically stream themselves playing a game and others can tune in to watch or interact with the gamer through the in-app chat function, whereby a gamer will respond to text questions via their microphone, or to users who send voice comments via a connected chat channel set up by the host gamer on another messaging platform like Discord. There are several ways for Twitch users to monetize their content, most of which are supported and facilitated by the platform. This includes donations sent using the platform’s digital currency, Bits, or via a third-party donations tool like Streamlabs, or via a payment platform like Paypal. Additionally, users earn revenue by running ads on their content or channel, paid subscriptions from other Twitch users (followers), or sponsorships and selling merchandise. Extremist activists have used Twitch in the past to livestream. The platform hosted numerous streams, primarily rebroadcasts or live streams from other platforms, showing events inside the US Capitol in Washington DC on 6 January as protesters stormed the Capitol. In response to extremist threats in the past, Twitch has instituted an in-house moderation team, which suspends or remove channels which breach their rules. Twitch has also been used to promote extremist ideologies and broadcast terrorist attacks. In October 2019, a man killed two people during an attempted attack on a synagogue in Halle. The attack was live streamed for 25 minutes on Twitch. According to the platform, only five viewers watched the video while it was live while a recording of the video generated automatically after the stream ended was viewed by 2,200 people in the 30 minutes it was available before it was flagged and removed. The Twitch account used to broadcast the attack was created about two months prior to the attack and had attempted to stream only once before. In October 2020, Twitch updated its community guidelines to clarify and broaden its ban on terrorist and extremist content. Twitch does not allow content “that depicts, glorifies, encourages, or supports terrorism, or violent extremist actors or acts,” while additionally, users may not display footage of terrorist or extremist violence “even for the purposes of denouncing such content.” In March 2021, Twitch released its first-ever transparency report, detailing its safety initiatives and efforts to protect users on the platform. To better understand the current use of Twitch by the extreme right, and to analyse the overlap with gaming we performed scoping analysis of the platform by searching the platform for keywords associated with extremist activity with the aim of identifying extremist accounts and content. In total we analysed 73 videos and 91 channels on the platform. Key findings • We discovered that content which expresses support for extreme right wing ideologies can be discovered on Twitch with relative ease. These videos are probably better considered as sporadic examples of support for these ideologies on the platform, rather than representative of the systemic use of Twitch by the extreme right for radicalisation and coordination. However, this nevertheless demonstrates that the platform still has a problem with extremist activity. ISD also discovered that there are, and have recently been, prominent extreme right-wing content creators active on the platform, but that these appear to be low in number. • Twitch is one of many live streaming platforms that are favoured by extremists in the practice of “Omegle Redpilling.” This practice involves extremists using the live video chat platform Omegle to troll and spew racism towards others, whilst simultaneously live streaming themselves to their own followers on their profile on another livestream platform. ISD found evidence of at least two such online extremists who have used Twitch for these purposes.Extreme right-wing activists are platform agnostic. Based on findings in this and other reports in this ISD series, there is growing evidence that points to extreme right-activists online adopting a multi-platform approach, where they use as many platforms as possible as part of a strategy to avoid moderation efforts. • A Twitch account belonging to jailed white supremacist Paul Miller is still live. ISD discovered that a Twitch account run by Paul Miller, a white supremacist who used multiple Twitch accounts to simultaneously broadcast hate on multiple video platforms, is still live. Though it features no content, it continues to grow in subscribers and serves as a promotional page for Miller and his hateful ideology. • Streams of gaming did not appear to be used systemically to target, groom or recruit individuals on the platform. ISD did not find evidence that gaming content or communities on Twitch are routinely used or targeted, groomed or recruited by extremists. • We discovered that counter-speech content which pushes back against the extreme right is widely accessible on Twitch. Counter-speech is term for a tactic used by individuals and groups online in countering hate speech, extremism or misinformation by presenting critical responses, debates or alternative narratives in reaction to offensive narratives. ISD discovered there is an active anti-extremist progressive community of counter-speech channels on the platform. • Compared to other online platforms analysed in other reports in this series Twitch does not appear to be a major hub for extreme right-wing communities, content creators or organisations. Notwithstanding some high profile examples of extremist trolling, these appear to be isolated rather than evidence of systemic extremist mobilisation on the platform to reach large audiences, incite violence or recruit others.   

Beirut Berlin London Paris Washington DC Copyright © Institute for Strategic Dialogue, 2021. 13p.