Calls for civil war exploded online day after Trump assassination attempt: analysis

Calls for civil war and political violence spiked the day after the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, according to a new analysis.

Moonshot, a data analysis institution that monitors violent extremism online, found a sudden rise in calls for civil war – 1,599 posts, a 633 percent increase over the day before – across a range of platforms, including 4Chan and Reddit, as well as YouTube and newer sites oriented toward right-wing extremists, CBS News reported Tuesday.

"The uptick in online calls is fairly typical of online discourse in spaces that glorify violence," said Moonshot chief strategy officer Elizabeth Neumann. "The fact is, there is an online ecosystem out there working day in, day out to encourage violence of all kinds, from political civil war to mindless school shootings."

Gunman Thomas Crooks, 20, stunned the nation when he fired an AR-style rifle at a rally in Butler, Pa., killing firefighter Corey Comperatore and leaving Trump and two attendees wounded.

But experts say the reaction followed a common pattern as other mass shootings or targeted violence, and point to Crooks' reported prior posts about violence.

Moonshot found 2,051 specific threats or encouragements to violence the day after the shooting, more than double the typical amount.

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The group also found Google searches were the gateway to platforms that hosted the troubling discussions, while actual calls for carrying out violence came from a smaller subset of individuals.

John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety, which partnered with Moonshot to produce a new report on the chatter, told CBS he wished such platforms would do more to prevent the spread of such content.

"In the aftermath of mass shootings, we often learn that the shooter was radicalized with help from vile content he found on sites like YouTube," Feinblatt said, "yet the leaders of these platforms consistently refuse to crack down on users who violate their own policies."

A representative for YouTube said the platform explicitly prohibits content that glorifies or promotes violent tragedies and removed 2.1 million videos in the first quarter of this year for violating those policies, and a spokesperson for Reddit said its policies also banned content that incites or glorifies violence and rapidly monitored that content and removed it.

Feinblatt argued more needs to be done, saying, "We call on these companies to put public safety ahead of traffic numbers, and proactively moderate spaces that are breeding grounds for hate and violence."