The Heartbreak Machine: Nazis in the Echo Chamber

WhiteDate is a platform of white supremacists aimed at racists and anti-Semites – and is based on outdated infrastructure. What the 8,000 members didn't know was that some of the Nazis flirted with realistic-looking chatbots this year - and even fell in love with them. Using a combination of automated conversation analysis, web scraping, and classic OSINT methods, we tracked public traces and identified the people behind the page. This talk will show how AI personas and investigative thinking uncover extremist networks and how algorithms can be used against extremism. For months, Martha immersed herself in the hidden world of WhiteDate, WhiteChild and WhiteDeal, three platforms run by a right-wing extremist from Germany. She believes in the conspiracy of white supremacy and a "racially pure" white community. What started as curiosity quickly evolved into an experiment on human behavior, technology, and absurdity. Martha infiltrated the portal with "realistic" AI chatbots. The bots were so convincing that they bypassed the checks and were even verified as "white". By talking and researching digital traces of this community, which believed itself to be safe, she was able to identify users. Together with reporters from "Die Zeit", we were able to unmask the person behind the platform and trace her radicalization from a successful pianist to a scene entrepreneur. She has built a network of websites around her dating portal that markets love, loyalty and tradition to its users. WhiteDate promises romantic relationships, WhiteChild propagates family and ancestry ideals, and WhiteDeal enables professional networking and "mutual support" under a racist worldview. Together, they show how ideology and loneliness can be interwoven in bizarre ways. After months of observation, classic OSINT research, automated conversation analysis and web scraping, we have found out who is behind these platforms and how their infrastructure works. In the process, we exposed the contradictions and absurdities of extremist communities, highlighted their vulnerability to technological intervention, and even made the odd Nazi cry. This lecture tells of observation, pranks and insights into the digital world of extremist groups. He shows how algorithms, AI personas and investigative thinking can expose hate, question its narratives and break open its echo chambers. We show how technology can be used in the fight against extremism. Licensed to the public under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0

LicenseCreative Commons Attribution