page_title: Center for Countering Digital Hate
section_title: Campaign against Galloway and Hopkins
hierarchical_section_title: Center for Countering Digital Hate / Deplatforming campaigns / Campaign against Galloway and Hopkins
caption_attribution_description: English: Rachel Riley UK TV Presenter
context_page_description: The Center for Countering Digital Hate is a nonprofit limited company based in London. The organization dates its foundation to December 2017, although the current limited company was not incorporated until October 2018. Its founder and CEO is Imran Ahmed.
  The organisation lobbies American "big tech" firms such as YouTube, Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, Instagram and Apple to "deplatform" individuals so that they cannot present their views to the general public. The CCDH's most high-profile campaign so far has been against the British conspiracy theorist David Icke. Other CCDH campaigns have included the left-wing politician and broadcaster George Galloway and the right-wing media personality Katie Hopkins.
  From 4 May 2020, the Stop Funding Fake News campaign became a project of the CCDH.
context_section_description: The CCDH's first significant campaign began in January 2020; the targets for this campaign were Katie Hopkins, a right-wing commentator, and George Galloway, a veteran left-wing politician and broadcaster. The most prominent figure at the forefront of this was Rachel Riley, who directly lobbied "big tech" companies, along with the CCDH, to have these individuals removed from major social media platforms. Similar methods had already taken place in regards to American figures, such as conspiracy theorist Alex Jones in 2018, who was completely removed from all "big tech" platforms. According to media reports Riley and CCDH CEO Imran Ahmed had a "secret meeting" with Twitter's Soho, London based office, demanding the removal of Hopkins and Galloway from their platform. Riley, best known for co-hosting the game show Countdown, has an active Twitter account, coming to political prominence along with other UK-based celebrities such as David Baddiel, for advocacy in the debate over antisemitism in the UK Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn and claims to have been the victim of online trolling by pro-Palestinian left-wing Labour activists. Riley has herself courted controversy and accusations of online trolling by pro-Corbyn activists for content she has posted on Twitter. 
  At the meeting with Twitter representatives on 29 January 2020, Ahmed and Riley stated that their demand was to exclude "hate actors from public discourse". Hopkins, who first came to public prominence in the United Kingdom as a contestant on The Apprentice and had gone on to have a career as a controversial media commentator, supports right-wing populism in general, including advocacy on her Twitter account for Brexit and American president Donald Trump. George Galloway, a veteran left-wing activist, broadcaster and former Labour MP, was sacked from his job at Talkradio for posting an allegedly antisemitic tweet. Ahmed and Riley presented to Twitter a number of posts by Hopkins and Galloway which they claimed were in breach of Twitter's community guidelines, demanding that they stop their "ability to use the platform to spread hate" and deplatform them from Twitter to eliminate "hate actors from public discourse". Ultimately, the CCHD's attempt to remove Galloway from Twitter failed, but Hopkins had her account suspended for a week in February 2020, and eventually removed permanently in July 2020.
caption: Rachel Riley and the CCDH lobbied "big tech" companies to deplatform George Galloway and Katie Hopkins.
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