Yahoo Asked To Shut Down
Alleged Hate Sites
(02/28/00, 11:25 a.m. ET)
By Reuters
SAN FRANCISCO -- A prominent
Jewish group on Friday charged
Yahoo violated its own rules by
hosting alleged racist and anti-Semitic
clubs and asked the popular Internet
portal to shut down the extremists'
sites.
Yahoo clubs include bulletin boards and chat
rooms that allow users to post pictures and
text. But under the Internet portal's service
agreement, members are not allowed to post
content that is hateful, or racially, ethnically,
or otherwise objectionable.
The New York-based Anti-Defamation
League (ADL) has mounted a public campaign
of letter-writing and press releases charging
that contrary to its rules, Yahoo hosted dozens
of online clubs whose members support white
supremacists and racist hate groups, including
the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, the National
Association for the Advancement of White
People, and the World Church of the Creator.
Groups like the ADL, which track extremist
organizations, say they monitor the Internet
because the medium reaches so many people,
making it easier for hate groups to disseminate
information and draw recruits.
"We hope to continue to work with Yahoo
and other Internet service providers to monitor
hate and deny extremists a platform at
websites where user policies strictly forbid
offensive material," said Abraham Foxman,
ADL national director.
One club that was apparently taken down
following ADL complaints was the NS88,
which stands for National Socialism Heil
Hitler, said Jordan Kessler, an ADL
spokesman. But other sites devoted to hate
groups like the Klan remain active on the
Santa Clara, Calif.-based portal.
"We are seeing that many of the sites that we
are concerned about our still up on Yahoo's
server," Kessler said. "We are asking Yahoo
to remove these clubs that violate their terms
of service that hate speech is not allowed on
their servers."
Mark Hull, Yahoo clubs' senior producer, said
his company has investigated the claims and
taken appropriate action, although he declined
to say what that entailed.
Yahoo generally takes a hands-off policy on
its clubs and gives users the power to monitor
themselves, although the company does
investigate every complaint, Hull said.
"We do not police our clubs and we do not
moderate our clubs," he said. "I can say that
sites have been taken down in the past."
The ADL has applied similar pressure to other
Internet companies. In 1997, the organization
sent a letter to America Online asking the
company to shut down a Web page promoting
the Klan, the ADL said. AOL eventually
removed the site and put in place tougher rules
governing hate speech on its service,
according to the ADL.
The issue of policing hate groups on the
Internet also has free speech implications. But
Kessler said his organization is not looking to
deny people this right, even if it is hateful.
Rather, the ADL is targeting those Internet
companies that have elected to put in place
rules banning hateful speech.
"There are many Internet service providers
and other services that do not have rules
against hate speech and they have every right
to not have those rules," he said. "What we've
been concerned about is when servers do have
these rules saying they don't want hate but
hate remains on their servers."
