United Nations Radio

Tens of thousands of internet sites spread intolerance and misinformation across the World Wide Web. UN Radio's Lindsay Lazarski reports on cyber hate and ways to contain its spread.

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LAZARSKI: In October of 2003, after months of online taunting from peers at school, a 13-year-old, Vermont native, took his own life.

In Hong Kong after a 31-year old woman jumped 24 stories to her death in December of 2007, a mob of bloggers, called the "human flesh search engine," accused her husband, of being responsible for her death. Internet users used his admitted affair as bait to saturate him with harassing messages and death threats.

And just this month, an 88-year-old white supremacist opened fire at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC killing a security guard.

The connection between these tragedies: each was either a victim or a perpetrator of cyber hate.

Mark Weitzman, an expert in cyber hate from the Simon Wiesenthal Center, said the internet has become a convenient tool for spreading propaganda and recruitment of extremists.

WEITZMAN: "James von Brunn was someone who was known to those of us who were monitoring extremism. He had been active for 20 years, first publishing and then posting material. But he was someone who did not have a group behind him, so it did not seem that he was an immediate threat. Clearly we were all wrong on that regard and what we are seeing now is that people with a history of violent writings and violent postings online now have to be taken seriously even more so than before. If we made a mistake in dismissing Von Brunn we have to be careful that that doesn't happen again."

LAZARSKI: Although cyber hate can be freely monitored, actually stopping online harassment or intolerance proves to be more difficult.

Social network groups like MySpace and Facebook have privacy features that allow members to block unwanted users and report abusers.

But Steven Sheinberg from the Anti Defamation League says network providers need to take the next steps for a hate free environment. Starting with being able to verify the true identity of users.

"We ask that companies don't allow true anonymous use of the web. So even if you are allowed to use handles of pseudonyms at least the company is able to trace back that information if you engage in harmful or unlawful activity."

LAZARSKI: Sheinberg compares anonymous cyber hate activity on the web to the clandestine activities of the Ku Klux Klan in the United States during the 1930's and 40's.

"So when the clan would intimidate and harass people behind the white hoods, they felt empowered to do it, emboldened to do it. Once you remove those hoods it was very difficult to get members because that hood hid their identities and gave them the confidence to go forward. Most similarly here on the web we urge companies to unmask those who would hide behind an electronic hood of anonymity."

LAZARSKI: News Corporation and MySpace, Chief Security Officer, Hemanshu Nigum, says online safety is a shared responsibility between companies, parents, kids, and educators.

"We often talk about the virtual world as different and apart from the physical world. Our teens though, when they spend online; time, it has become a difference without distinction. So rather than treat these two worlds differently, online and offline, our goal has been and will continue to be to, make our virtual neighborhood, as safe as our real one."

For UN Radio this is Lindsay Lazarski

(duration: 3'49")