Hatebase
The Platform
Hatebase is a service built to help organizations and online communities detect, monitor and analyze hate speech. Our algorithms analyze public conversations using a broad vocabulary based on nationality, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, disability and class, with data across 95+ languages and 175+ countries.
Our work has been profiled in Wired, Maclean's, Ars Technica, Foreign Policy and New Scientist, among others. We're proud to say our data is supporting research at several leading universities, including Harvard, Stanford, Princeton and Cornell.
Hate Speech vs. Free Speech
Our efforts to reduce hate speech are the product of a decade's worth of humanitarian work, and are founded on the belief that discrimination degrades public conversation, silences diverse and under-represented viewpoints, and can be an early indicator of violence.
We do not promote censorship or any sort of Orwellian Newspeak, and are passionate in our defense of free speech. We believe that the right to hold and express opinions, no matter how disagreeable, is one of the distinguishing characteristics of a free and open society.
To that end, we encourage counter-messaging as a better solution to hate speech than censorship. Sunlight is, after all, the best disinfectant, whereas driving hate speech underground simply removes the speech while leaving the hate intact. That said, we recognize that governments have a right and a responsibility to prevent violence when causality is reasonably clear, and we also recognize that private companies have a right to police their ecosystems as they see fit.
Find out more about how we classify hate speech in our FAQs.
The Company
Hatebase is a Toronto-based company. Our mission is to:
- reduce incidents of hate speech by monitoring the use and dissemination of discriminatory language against targeted groups;
- lessen the acceptability of hate speech; and
- prevent violence which is predicated by hate speech.
