Taking on hate

Any effort to reduce our children’s exposure to online hate is good, and this week’s conference on the subject in Paris was remarkable just in its level of participation. “Officials from more than 60 countries were attending the two-day conference aimed at finding ways to keep racist information off the Web without compromising free speech and freedom of expression,” USAToday reports. European governments see hate Web sites as a factor in the growing number of hate crimes. Certainly, the number of hate sites is on the rise. In the SafeKids/NetFamilyNewsletter last month, I mentioned new figures from the UK showing that the number of hate and violence sites had increased 25% since this past January and 300% since 2000. UK Net filtering company SurfControl monitors nearly 3,000 sites that “promote hatred against Americans, Muslims, Jews, homosexuals and people of non-European ancestry, as well as graphic violence.”