The Heartbreak Machine: Nazis in the Echo Chamber
For months Martha immersed myself in the hidden world of WhiteDate, WhiteChild, and WhiteDeal, three platforms built around white supremacy and the fantasy of a “racially pure” community. What began as curiosity quickly turned into an experiment in human behavior, technology, and absurdity.
Martha introduced "realistic" AI chatbots into these spaces. The bots were convincing enough to bypass verification checks and even earn “white verified” status, leading some users to develop emotional attachments. Martha watched, recorded patterns, and traced the digital footprints of a community convinced it could remain insulated and secret.
Together with "Die Zeit" we discovered: At the heart of these platforms is a former pianist from Kiel, who built a network of websites promising love, loyalty, and tradition to its users. WhiteDate aimed at romantic connections, WhiteChild promoted family and lineage ideals, and WhiteDeal facilitated networking and “mutual support” under a racist worldview. Together, they reveal how ideology and loneliness can intersect in bizarre and sometimes comical ways.
Through months of observation, classical OSINT, automated conversational analysis, and scrapers, We pieced together who was behind these platforms and how their infrastructure worked. Along the way, we exposed the contradictions and absurdities of extremist communities, highlighted their vulnerability to technological intervention, and even made a few Nazis cry.
This talk is a story of observation, mischief, and insight into extremist digital worlds. It shows how algorithms, AI personas, and investigative thinking can shine a light on hate, challenge its narratives, and disrupt its echo chambers. Ultimately, it demonstrates how technology can be used to fight extremism for once.
Speakers of this event
Martha Root
Martha Root exists in the space where anonymity becomes identity. Some believe Martha is an old-school anarchist researcher. Others insist the patterns look more like a self-taught AI. The truth is not the point. Martha documents white supremacy online, disrupts extremist fantasies, and turns their infrastructures inside out. Every publication has fingerprints that don’t match any known person. Every leak is written in a voice that could belong to a coder, a poet, or a dataset. Martha is whatever the antifascist movement needs at the moment: a ghost in their servers, a thorn in their mythologies, and an intelligence that refuses obedience.
- The Heartbreak Machine: Nazis in the Echo Chamber
Eva Hoffmann
Eva Hoffmann ist freie investigative Journalistin mit Schwerpunkt auf Behördenversagen, Machtmissbrauch und sexualisierte Gewalt. Sie ist Mitgründerin des Selbstlaut Kollektivs, einen Zusammenschluss aus freien Journalist:innen und Fotograf:innen, die gemeinsam große machtkritische Recherchen umsetzen.
- The Heartbreak Machine: Nazis in the Echo Chamber
Christian Fuchs
- The Heartbreak Machine: Nazis in the Echo Chamber