According to the Jeruselum Post, a new study out of Israel finds that extremists are using a new coded language on social media to avoid detection from algorithms.
Authored by Dr. Gabriel Weimann, a professor of communication at the University of Haifa, and web intelligence analyst Ari Ben-Am uncovered the new codes used by extremist organizations to both communicate with one another and recruit members.
The hidden language could be used to incite violent acts such as the shooting at Christchurch in New Zealand or the January insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. The study is primarily focused on images and messages disseminated on Facebook.
Much of the coded language in the study found was shown to rely on the use of “dog-whistles,” a coded message communicated through words or phrases commonly understood by a particular group of people, but not by others.
The method could be as simple as swapping one word for another such as far-right users calling Jews “Skypes,” African-Americans as “Googles” and Latinos as “Yahoos.” Yet, some tactics are more intricate and dabble in numerology where numbers stand for people or concepts. The number 88, for example, stands for “Heil Hitler,” since H is the eighth letter in the alphabet. Finally, the language also employed visual cues often by manipulating already popular memes found in pop culture. This method is by far the most sophisticated one as an algorithm’s ability to detect hate speech within an image is still limited.
In 2020, Weimann wrote a study on the far Right's presence on the popular social media platform TikTok, and noted the widespread use of such coded symbols and messages to evade the algorithm and censorship.
“It's clear that security, counter-terrorism and government agencies, as well as social media platforms are doing much to crack down on abuse,” Weimann said. “But we need to educate the operators of these companies that run social media platforms to report these violations and also teach their users how to spot them. A human eye is still much more savvy than a computer-generated algorithm.”
The study’s authors claim that the new codes have driven the formation of alternative social media sites such as Gab, Bitchute and imageboards such as 4Chan, 8Chan and Neinchan.
“While this is purely an academic study, it has real-world implications,” Weimann added. “Being Internet savvy and understanding what you're seeing online is important. We need to learn what they do, slow them down and reduce their activity and efficiency. Words kill even if in a new language.”