Online bans fail to silence US extremists drawn to protests

SILVER SPRING, Md. (AP) — After Wisconsin protests over Jacob Blake's shooting by police turned deadly last week, a member of an anti-government extremist group started posting updates from the scene for comrades in an encrypted chat room.

The group member named “Jake” said “two of my guys” rushed in to help after a gunman later identified as 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse shot and killed two people Aug. 25 on a street in Kenosha.

“Jake” was posting on the Keybase messaging platform, where the group migrated after Discord banned it from its instant messaging service in early July.

For months, the nationwide protests against racial injustice and COVID-19 lockdown orders have attracted all manner of extremists using online platforms to plan, coordinate and drum up support for their activities.

Facebook, Discord and other mainstream internet services have banned accounts linked to anti-government extremists, but the recent protests in Kenosha and elsewhere illustrate how easy it can be for them to work around these digital roadblocks.

“The whole landscape is too big and each individual player is very big,” said Elon University Professor Megan Squire, a computer scientist who studies online extremism. “The number of people you would need to truly police this on the platforms is inadequate right now. The resources just aren’t there.”

Squire has been monitoring the messaging site to which “Jake” and hundreds of other users belong, collecting and reviewing their messages.

One of the posts about the Kenosha shooting said one of Jake's “guys” provided unspecified medical care while the other was “escorting the kid to safety," presumably referring to Rittenhouse.

Later, other members of the self-described “private intelligence agency”...