How Facebook Can Fight the Hate

Last summer, Johannes Baldauf, an anti-hate-speech activist from Berlin, got a request for help from an unexpected place: Facebook Inc. When it came to stemming the spread of extremist messaging, Baldauf was accustomed to seeing the giant social network as part of the problem. Now it was asking him and other activists to act as a kinder, gentler, online version of Quentin Tarantino’s Nazi-hunting Inglourious Basterds squad. Their mission was to come up with a social media campaign that might make Germans less susceptible to the wave of fake news and right-wing propaganda scapegoating Europe’s growing population of immigrants and refugees.

Baldauf, 36, and his team at the nonprofit Amadeu Antonio Foundation specialize in an esoteric internet art known as “counternarrative.” The basic idea is to exploit the same online tools extremists use but in a way that undermines their hateful messages. During a daylong brainstorming session, the group came up with a meme that subtly mocks people who blame minorities for the mundane frustrations of daily life, such as packed subway cars.