By Ashleigh Atwell | Blavity
Google needs to do some housekeeping.
As white supremacist groups get thrown off of Facebook and Twitter, it seems they have found a refuge in Google Plus.
According to The Hill, there are “dozens” of Google Plus communities dedicated to promoting white supremacist thought despite Google’s anti-discrimination policies.
Alphabet’s Google Plus policy forbids “content that promotes or condones violence against individuals or groups based on race or ethnic origin, religion, disability, gender, age, nationality, veteran status, or sexual orientation/gender identity, or whose primary purpose is inciting hatred on the basis of these core characteristics.”
The rules acknowledge that deciding what content violates the policy “can be a delicate balancing act, but if the primary purpose is to attack a protected group, the content crosses the line.”
A quick search of the platform shows numerous pages that contradict this policy.
The article states some of the Google Plus groups are active, while others appear abandoned. Those no longer being updated still contain links to extremist websites and forums. When we searched using the terms “white supremacy” and “white nationalism,” groups advocating “white power” and those with KKK affiliations popped up.
We also saw memes that encouraged white people to inflict violence on black people. One meme shows a picture of a protester holding a sign reading “they can’t kill us all” juxtaposed with a picture of a KKK member holding a shotgun with the word “challenge accepted” printed on it.
The Hill found a picture of a white man with a gun drawn on a black toddler.