Countering online hate speech with methods that promote tolerance

The internet can seem like a place polluted by hatred, where one is vulnerable to sudden harassment or attack, and where other people are exposed to content that can inspire them to hate or kill, or simply teach them how to kill more efficiently. Online hateful and harmful messages are indeed so widespread that the problem cannot be laid at the feet of any particular culture or country, nor can such content be easily classified with terms like ‘hate speech’ or ‘extremism’ – it is too varied. Similarly, the people who produce harmful content (and their motivations) are too diverse to fit a stereotype.
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Daunting though this problem is, there are opportunities to diminish it and to build norms of tolerance that have been largely overlooked so far. This paper thus offers a set of specific and contrarian ideas for better understanding hate speech and other harmful speech that proliferates online, and for reducing the damage such content causes, while limiting the risk of other harms.