Center for Countering Digital Hate

"CCDH" redirects here. For the Moroccan human rights organization, see National Human Rights Council (Morocco).

Center for Countering Digital Hate

Abbreviation	CCDH
Formation	2017-2018
Founder	Imran Ahmed
Purpose	Left-wing political activism and social control, Cultural Marxism, New World Order, "To disrupt the architecture of online hate and misinformation"
Directors	Tom Brookes Simon Clark (Chair) Damian Collins MP Kirsty McNeill Siobhan McAndrew Lord Jonathan Oates Ayesha Saran
Website	www.counterhate.co.uk

The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) is a globalist political organization with offices in London and Washington DC. It was founded in December 2017 by its CEO, Imran Ahmed, although the company was not incorporated until October 2018.

Major tools of the CCDH are deplatforming, cancel culture, non-governmental censorship, and moving the Overton Window further left through media control. The organisation says that Big Tech firms such as YouTube, Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, Instagram, and Apple should stop providing services to individuals who they say promote hate and misinformation, including white nationalists and vaccine skeptics. Its opponents outside the mainstream media have gone so far as to describe the CCDH as a tool of an alleged Deep State or Shadow Party.

The organisation is a member of the Stop Hate For Profit coalition, a campaign led by the Anti-Defamation League. From 4 May 2020, the Stop Funding Fake News campaign became a project of the CCDH.

Campaigns

The CCDH has targeted Holocaust revisionists, and vaccine skeptics. Both movements have greatly increased in popularity as a reactionary backlash against the dominant establishment culture that has otherwise been described by its critics as a secular religion.

Campaign against Galloway and Hopkins

Further information: Twitter suspensions

Rachel Riley and the CCDH lobbied "big tech" companies to deplatform George Galloway and Katie Hopkins.

In January 2020, the CCDH campaigned against Katie Hopkins, an alt-right political commentator, and George Galloway, a veteran left-wing politician and broadcaster who was sacked from his job at Talkradio for posting a tweet that was deemed antisemitic. TV presenter Rachel Riley and the CCDH directly lobbyied Big Tech companies to have these individuals removed from major social media platforms. According to media reports Riley and CCDH CEO Imran Ahmed had a "secret meeting" with Twitter's Soho, London based office, demanding the removal of Hopkins and Galloway from their platform.

At the meeting with Twitter representatives on 29 January 2020, Ahmed and Riley stated that their demand was to exclude "hate actors from public discourse". They presented a number of posts by Hopkins and Galloway which they claimed were in breach of Twitter's community guidelines, demanding that they stop their "ability to use the platform to spread hate". Ultimately, the CCDH's attempt to remove Galloway from Twitter failed, but Hopkins had her account suspended for a week in February 2020, and removed permanently in July 2020.

Campaign against David Icke

File:David Icke 2013 (cropped).jpg

David Icke, who the CCDH sought to deplatform in 2020.

In April 2020 the CCDH launched a campaign against David Icke, who gained increased media attention during the COVID-19-associated lockdown in the United Kingdom. Icke posted a number of videos to his YouTube account, which included an interview with Brian Rose of London Real where Icke linked the erection of 5G masts to the COVID-19 pandemic. During the British lockdown, the CCDH worked to censor information that contradicted the politically correct view on COVID-19. The CCDH released a 25-page pamphlet attacking Icke entitled #DeplatformIcke and campaigned to persuade social media platforms to remove his accounts, using the hashtag #DeplatformIcke. The CCDH demanded the total removal of Icke's online presence from YouTube, Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, Instagram, and Apple, portraying him as a "hate actor" on their website.

The #DeplatformIcke pamphlet sent out by the CCDH was signed by 800 individuals, and groups, including the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Antisemitism (Andrew Percy and Catherine McKinnell both signed), and Damian Collins, a left-wing Conservative MP who was the former chair of the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee. Antisemitism monitoring organisation, the Community Security Trust (CST), also supported the letter, with CST's Dave Rich calling for Icke's "hateful and dangerous conspiracy theories to be removed from mainstream social media platforms."

Icke, a prolific content creator, had a public audience of more than 1 million followers on YouTube, as well as on Facebook and Twitter. Facebook deleted his account on 1 May 2020, stating as the reason "health misinformation that could cause physical harm"; YouTube followed on 2 May 2020 stating: "YouTube has clear policies prohibiting any content that disputes the existence and transmission of Covid-19 as described by the WHO and the NHS." While both of Icke's personal accounts were deleted from the two websites, both allowed other users to upload Icke-related content unrelated to COVID-19. Ahmed and the CCDH praised the ban but continued to demand that a complete removal of all of Icke's internet platforms, and a shadow ban of all his content be enforced.

In November 2020, Twitter removed Icke's account for violating the site's rules against spreading information about the COVID-19 pandemic that contradicted the politically correct view.

Hatebook

Hatebook is a CCDH report published in November 2020 and co-authored by the Coalition for a Safer Web. It accuses Facebook and Instagram of hosting 61 accounts that were selling National Socialist merchandise to allegedly fund right-wing extremism, which had a total of 112,181 followers. The CCDH accused Facebook of choosing profits over public safety in allowing what it described as domestic violent far-right extremists to gain 80,000 followers in the US and UK. Facebook promptly removed most of the identified accounts.

#No2Misinfo Campaign

The CCDH’s #No2Misinfo campaign launched in late October 2020 in order to draw attention to electoral networks being funded by the Google Ads service that were condemned by liberal critics as promoting misinformation. The report uncovered that Google Ads were used to monetize websites that contradicted the politically correct view regarding the 2020 US Presidential Election. The Global Disinformation Index identified 145 such sites.

The CCDH examined six of these websites, which received over 40 million visits prior to the election. This traffic generated an estimated $5 million in advertising revenue. The CCDH called on Google to stop placing adverts on electoral "misinformation" websites, releasing an open letter to Google CEO, Sundar Pichai, for supporters to sign.

Other actions

The CCDH notified Google that the Zero Hedge website had published what it called "racist articles" about the revolutionary Black Lives Matter protests and civil disturbance. As a result, in June 2020, Google found that reader comments on Zero Hedge breached its policies and banned Zero Hedge from its advertising platform.

Directors

File:Imran Ahmed Headshot6.jpg

Imran Ahmed, CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate

Imran Ahmed

The organisation was founded by its current CEO, Imran Ahmed, a former Merrill Lynch banker who is also a trustee of Victim Support and sits on the steering committee for the Commission for Countering Extremism's Pilot Task Force. He is critical of social media companies using algorithms to promote what he describes as dangerous extremist content to millions of users. Before founding the CCDH in 2018, Imran served as a Political Advisor to Shadow Foreign Secretary, Hilary Benn MP in the UK Parliament and as Political Advisor to Alan Johnson MP, leader of the Labour Remain campaign, in the 2016 Brexit referendum. Ahmed previously co-authored the book The New Serfdom: The Triumph of Conservative Ideas and How to Defeat Them with Labour MP Angela Eagle. Imran was raised in Manchester, England and holds an MA in Social and Political Sciences from the University of Cambridge.

Board of Directors

Morgan James McSweeney, currently chief of staff to the Leader of the Labour Party, Keir Starmer, was the first Director listed on Companies House, appointed in October 2018. McSweeney resigned in April 2020. McSweeney was joined in September 2019, upon the public launch of the center, by three other directors: David Craig Roberts, Siobhan Marie McAndrew, a sociology lecturer at the University of Bristol and Kirsty Jean McNeill, an Executive Director at Save the Children and Board member of the Holocaust Educational Trust and the Coalition for Global Prosperity. More recent directors include Simon Clark (Chair), Tom Brookes, Executive Director, Strategic Communications at the European Climate Foundation, Damian Collins MP, a Conservative Member of Parliament and former Chair of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, Lord Jonathan Oates, a Liberal Democrat Member of the House of Lords and former chief of staff to Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, and Ayesha Saran.

Publications

Don't Feed the Trolls

The CCDH first garnered media attention by publishing a 12-page pamphlet "Don't Feed the Trolls: How to Deal with Hate on Social Media" in 2019, with an introduction by the CCDH's CEO Imran Ahmed and chair of Advisory Board, Canadian psychologist Linda Papadopoulos.

In Don't Feed the Trolls, the CCDH describes how internet trolls operate by manipulating social media algorithms and engagement (whether positive or negative) with content. It advises those who are on the receiving end of hateful messages not to respond, block the user, do not highlight being targeted and take time off social media.

The "Don't Feed the Trolls" campaign has attracted a number of high-profile progressive supporters such as Sadiq Khan (the Mayor of London), Rachel Riley, Gary Lineker and Eddie Izzard.

The Anti-Vaxx Industry

The Anti-Vaxx Industry, published July 7th 2020, says that Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are responsible for the industrial-level growth of vaccine skepticism, which has amassed an estimated 58 million followers online. It further says that social media platforms chose not to alienate the anti-vaccine user base because it generated an estimated $1 billion in annual advertising revenue. The report concludes that the monetization of online vaccine "misinformation" and its proliferation into the mainstream, poses a significant threat to the claimed effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines.

Will to Act

Will to Act argues that the largest social media companies, more often than not, fail to enforce their own rules preventing vaccine and COVID-19-skeptical content. Volunteers censored posts containing what they described as misinformation that breached social media community standards and claimed that over 9 in 10 of the posts reported had no action taken against them. Imran Ahmed, CEO of the CCDH, said "Social media giants have claimed many times that they are taking Covid-related misinformation seriously, but this new research shows that even when they are handed the posts promoting misinformation, they fail to take action.”

Failure to Act

Failure to Act was released by the CCDH and Restless Development to once again track action taken by social media companies in response to vaccine skeptical content. The report found that platforms did not act on three-quarters of alleged COVID-19 misinformation. Volunteers from Youth Against Misinformation flagged 912 posts on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook and found that 95% of posts containing misinformation were not acted on by social media companies. Removal rates were notably poorer on Instagram than they were on Facebook, despite both companies sharing the same set of community standards and similar policies on Covid misinformation.

The report advocates for greater accountability for tech companies who fail to act on misinformation that violates their own community standards.

"Anti-vaxx Playbook"

In late October 2020 leading vaccine skeptics from across the globe held a private three-day conference to coordinate a strategy to undermine confidence in the Covid-19 vaccine. CCDH agents infiltrated the conference and reported their findings. The Anti-Vaxx Playbook, published on December 22nd, 2020, claims to provide insight into vaccine skeptical tactics, messages, and the use of social media. It also offers suggestions for health experts, the public, tech giants, and legislators on how to censor “anti-vaxxers' deadly plan to disrupt Covid vaccines.”

The report identifies three recurring narratives "anti-vaxxers" use to disrupt efforts to combat the Covid-19 pandemic: covid is not dangerous, vaccines cannot be trusted, and medical experts and global health officials are not to be trusted.

Malgorithm

Malgorithm is a critical analysis of Instagram and Facebook’s user engagement and content recommendation algorithm. The study was launched by the CCDH in collaboration with Restless Development and the Youth Against Misinformation initiative. The report, released in early March 2021, claims that Instagram’s ‘Explore’ and ‘Suggested Posts’ feature, designed to maximise user engagement, is responsible for recommending millions of users dangerous conspiracies and misinformation. The report claimed that users who engage with "anti-vaxx misinformation" on Instagram are routinely suggested racist content and election "conspiracy theories". Similarly, the report found that users who engage with QAnon or claimed "far-right" content are regularly fed Covid-19 and vaccine "misinformation".

The report calls for Instagram to dramatically alter its algorithm to stop promoting allegedly extremist content, Facebook to follow through on a promise to deplatform vaccine skeptics, and antitrust litigators to explore how machine learning algorithms damage consumer interests. On March 25, 2021 US Representative Anna Eshoo questioned Mark Zuckerberg on the findings of Malgorithm before the United States House Committee on Energy and Commerce demanding that Zuckerberg’s platforms stop promoting disinformation.

The Disinformation Dozen

The Disinformation Dozen is a report which was published on March 24th, 2021, by CCDH in coordination with Anti-Vax Watch. It identifies the top 12 spreaders of vaccine skeptical information on social media platforms – which it dubbed the "disinformation dozen" – as Joseph Mercola, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Ty and Charlene Bollinger, Sherri Tenpenny, Rizza Islam, Rashid Buttar, Erin Elizabeth, Sayer Ji, Kelly Brogan, Christiane Northrup, Ben Tapper and Kevin Jenkins. The report cites these individuals as responsible for 65% of all vaccination skeptical content across Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. The report was used by CCDH in order to force social media companies to remove these (what it described as) repeat offenders of community standards from their online platforms.

The report gained significant media attention with public figures such as Chelsea Clinton sharing the research. Along with its launch, twelve state Attorneys General sent a letter to Facebook and Twitter citing the report's findings. The Disinformation Dozen was also cited by US Representatives Mike Doyle, Anna Eshoo, and Jerry McNerney in the March 25, 2021 United States House Committee on Energy and Commerce hearing on online disinformation where they demanded that tech CEO’s act on disinformation on their platforms. United States Senators Amy Klobuchar and Ben Ray Luján also used the CCDH report to call on Twitter and Facebook CEOs to take action to prevent the spread of vaccine disinformation online.

Disinformation Dozen: The Sequel

Disinformation Dozen: the Sequel reports on the failures of social media giants to remove anti-vaccine content a month after pledging to do so before the United States House Committee on Energy and Commerce. 18 of the social media accounts operated by the Disinformation Dozen were removed since the first report. However, the new report claims that false and misleading vaccine content was viewed up to 29 million times in the following month because leading anti-vaccination activists used their remaining accounts to promote vaccine disinformation on social media. CCDH once again called for social media platforms to remove the Disinformation Dozen from their social media platforms.

The report was published on April 28th, 2021 and includes a foreword from Jennifer Nuzzo, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Céline Gounder, Clinical Assistant Professor of Medicine and Infectious Diseases, New York University School of Medicine and Bellevue Hospital, Atul Nakhasi, Primary Care Physician and Co-Founder of #ThisIsOurShot, Sunny Jha, Anesthesiologist, Pain Physician, Patient, and Physician Advocate and Co-Founder of #ThisIsOurShot.

See also

• Anti-Defamation League
• Canadian Anti-Hate Network
• Hope not Hate
• Internet censorship in the United Kingdom
• Southern Poverty Law Center
• Stop Funding Fake News
• World Economic Forum

External links

• Official website

• https://davidicke.com/2022/04/11/transatlantic-professional-censor-imran-ahmed-is-undaunted-in-his-quest-to-silence-your-right-to-free-speech-and-opinion-he-and-his-center-for-countering-digital-hate-are-at-the-heart-some-mista/
• {{cite web |url=https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/11633127/officers%7Ctitle=Center For Countering Digital Hate Ltd|work=Companies House|date=10 May 2020