Respond to racists in ways that do more good than harm

In Charlottesville, Americans watched barriers to Dangerous Speech go down in broad daylight, in the middle of a city, as extremists waved swastikas and chanted hateful slogans. Some people are taking matters into their own hands, reaching out to masses of others to identify and punish marchers in the ‘Unite the Right’ rally, but online shaming often goes too far, reaching into a person’s offline life to inflict punishment

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Civil Society Puts a Hand on the Wheel: Diverse Responses to Harmful Speech

In this essay, Susan Benesch points out that content ‘takedown’ by Internet companies is not the only solution to harmful speech online. She highlights projects organized by civil society – not governments or platforms – to diminish harmful speech and support its targets. It was published by the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society in a collection of essays on harmful speech online.

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Murder of Kenyan election official raises fears of another outbreak of violence

Kenya, which has seen all too much Dangerous Speech before elections, and violence after them, has been relatively free of both in period leading to its next presidential vote on August 8. This has just changed. The tortured corpse of Chris Msando, the Kenyan elections official in charge of electronic voting machines, was found in a forest outside Nairobi on Saturday.

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