* **Summary**: Swarming refers to the coordinated use of accounts to overwhelm the information space with operation content. Unlike information flooding, swarming centres exclusively around a specific event or actor rather than a general narrative. Swarming relies on “horizontal communication” between information assets rather than a top-down, vertical command-and-control approach.
| [I00122 The Extreme Right on Discord](../../generated_pages/incidents/I00122.md) | Discord is an example of a T0151.004: Chat Platform, which allows users to create their own T0151.005: Chat Community Server. The Institute for Strategic Dialog (ISD) conducted an investigation into the extreme right’s usage of Discord servers:<br><br><i>Discord is a free service accessible via phones and computers. It allows users to talk to each other in real time via voice, text or video chat and emerged in 2015 as a platform designed to assist gamers in communicating with each other while playing video games. The popularity of the platform has surged in recent years, and it is currently estimated to have 140 million monthly active users.<br><br>Chatrooms – known as servers - in the platform can be created by anyone, and they are used for a range of purposes that extend far beyond gaming. Such purposes include the discussion of extreme right-wing ideologies and the planning of offline extremist activity. Ahead of the far-right Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017, organisers used Discord to plan and promote events and posted swastikas and praised Hitler in chat rooms with names like “National Socialist Army” and “Führer’s Gas Chamber”.</i><br><br>In this example a Discord server was used to organise the 2017 Charlottesville Unite the Right rally. Chat rooms such in the server were used to discuss different topics related to the rally (T0057: Organise Events, T0126.002: Facilitate Logistics or Support for Attendance, T0151.004: Chat Platform, T0151.005: Chat Community Server, T0151.006: Chat Room).<br><br><i>Another primary activity engaged in the servers analysed are raids against other servers associated with political opponents, and in particular those that appear to be pro-LGBTQ. Raids are a phenomenon in which a small group of users will join a Discord server with the sole purpose of spamming the host with offensive or incendiary messages and content with the aim of upsetting local users or having the host server banned by Discord. On two servers examined here, raiding was their primary function.<br><br>Among servers devoted to this activity, specific channels were often created to host links to servers that users were then encouraged to raid. Users are encouraged to be as offensive as possible with the aim of upsetting or angering users on the raided server, and channels often had content banks of offensive memes and content to be shared on raided servers.<br><br>The use of raids demonstrates the gamified nature of extremist activity on Discord, where use of the platform and harassment of political opponents is itself turned into a type of real-life video game designed to strengthen in-group affiliation. This combined with the broader extremist activity identified in these channels suggests that the combative activity of raiding could provide a pathway for younger people to become more engaged with extremist activity.</i><br><br>Discord servers were used by members of the extreme right to coordinate harassment of targeted communities (T0048: Harass, T0049.005: Conduct Swarming, T0151.004: Chat Platform, T0151.005: Chat Community Server). |
| [I00123 The Extreme Right on Steam](../../generated_pages/incidents/I00123.md) | ISD conducted an investigation into the usage of social groups on Steam. Steam is an online platform used to buy and sell digital games, and includes the Steam community feature, which “allows users to find friends and join groups and discussion forums, while also offering in-game voice and text chat”. Actors have used Steam’s social capabilities to enable online harm campaigns:<br><br><i>One function of these Steam groups is the organisation of ‘raids’– coordinated trolling activity against their political opponents. An example of this can be seen in a white power music group sharing a link to an Israeli Steam group, encouraging other members to “help me raid this juden [German word for Jew] group”. The comments section of said target group show that neo-Nazi and antisemitic comments were consistently posted in the group just two minutes after the instruction had been posted in the extremist group, highlighting the swiftness with which racially motivated harassment can be directed online.</i><br><br>Threat actors used social groups on Steam to organise harassment of targets (T0152.009: Software Delivery Platform, T0151.002: Online Community Group, T0049.005: Conduct Swarming, T0048: Harass). |
