The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) has warned that members of incel groups are glorifying violence and now pose a “serious threat to children”.

Incels, short for involuntarily celibate, refer to men who are part of an online community which holds hostile and misogynistic views against women.

The CCDH carried out an in-depth study into 'Incel Forum', the largest and “most influential” incel site on the internet. The website receives 2.6 million monthly visits on average and has 17,000 members.

It found there was a 59 per cent increase in the use of terms and codewords relating to acts of mass violence.

Rape was mentioned on average every 29 minutes, with 89 per cent of posters in relevant discussions supportive of sexual violence against women.

During its investigation, the Forum's rules changed to permit the sexualisation of pubescent minors. Analysis of discussions of paedophilia on the forum show that 53 per cent of posters are supportive of sexual violence against children.

One in five posts on the Forum features misogynistic, racist, antisemitic, or anti-LGBTQ+ language.

Data scientists at the centre analysed nearly 1.2 million posts made over an 18 month period.

“Incels are not lone wolves or socially isolated," said Imran Ahmed, chief executive of the CCDH. "They are in fact enmeshed in highly active communities with a coherent, evolving ideology that has radicalised further in the past eighteen months.

"They are egging each other on to commit mass violence, normalising sexual violence against women and even codified their approval of sexualising children."

“BigTech companies, like YouTube, Twitter and Cloudflare, have enabled this community," said Imran Ahmed, chief executive, CCDH. "They know about the problem but have failed to act. They are voluntarily providing a platform and monetising content that encourages atrocities against women and girls."

Ahmed called for new legislation to force BigTech companies to protect women, girls, and the young men being drawn into the ideology.

The CCDH has also urged YouTube to remove incel channels identified in its report.

It said that Google should de-rank incel websites in search results for terms connected with "inceldom, body image, suicide, and unemployment" and that CloudFare should stop providing services to the ‘Incel Forum’ and feeder sites.

Twitter should close down the Incel Forum's’ official Twitter account, it added.

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