14 DAY TRIAL // Google has intervened and banned a Chrome extension that added three pairs of parentheses, called (((echoes))), around names of Jewish origin.
The extension came to light after Mic reporter Cooper Fleishman discovered the secret (((echoes))) code used by neo-Nazis and white supremacists on Twitter to highlight and label persons of Jewish descent.
These hate groups would mark individuals with the echoes sign as a way to coordinate hate speech and personal attacks on social media against their targets.
Someone spent a lot of time compiling the list of Jewish terms
Investigating these attacks, Fleishman discovered a Google Chrome extension named Coincidence Detector that was automating this process. The extension would scan a page when it was loaded, and using an internal list of Jewish terms, it would add the echoes sign around all words on that page.
Coincidence Detector would even provide an "echo factor" rating for each page, depending on the number of highlighted terms.
The extension would regularly retrieve and update a list of terms that needed to be highlighted. Someone would spend time updating the list with new names and terms.
The add-on would add the echoes sign to the names of reporters and media personalities who supported the Jewish cause and were considered "anti-whites."
Somehow, Donald Trump's name also comes up
Following the Mic exposé, people of Jewish descent and those supporting equal rights have started a campaign to reclaim the echoes sign back from the neo-Nazis groups and began adding it to their names on Twitter, Facebook, personal sites, and other online profiles.
Google didn't stand idle for long, and two days later, it intervened and removed the Coincidence Detecter from its Chrome Web Store, saying it broke its Terms and Conditions that forbade hate speech.
At the time it was removed, the extension had around 2,500 users and a rating of 5 out of 5. The extension's creator is a user named altrightmedia, a play of words on Alt-right, the name of a right-wing political movement unified in support for Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump.
