IN PICTURES: Loyalist/republican terror goods still on sale via Redbubble

Back in November this paper had noted that you could buy everything from an LVF duvet cover to an IRA-branded coronavirus facemask at the firm’s online store.

But despite saying at the time that “any content found to violate our community guidelines, such as those that promote or celebrate violence, will be removed”,

as of yesterday a wide range of items with paramilitary branding were available to Redbubble customers.

Redbubble works by allowing users to upload artistic designs which customers can then have printed on t-shirts, mugs, masks, and more.

Redbubble bans “threatening, harmful, or inflammatory” designs, but also acknowledges that it doesn’t manually screen all of the images before they are put online.

Typing the letters ‘UDA’ into the Redbubble website this week brought up 185 designs, of which 55 were explicitly paramilitary in nature – things like men with balaclavas and assault rifles.

Typing in ‘IRA’ brought up no fewer than 1,143 results – too many to even sort through.

But out the first 100 of those results, 22 of the designs related explicitly to modern-day republican terrorism.

The designs also include examples of fringe groups which operate outside the paramilitary “mainstream” – it is possible for example to buy a Real IRA t-shirt, or one honouring the South East Antrim wing of the UDA (a renegade faction of the group which remains active and has distanced itself from the movement’s south Belfast headquarters).

Under the 2006 Terrorism Act, any statement which “glorifies the commission or preparation (whether in the past, in the future or generally)” is an offence.

However, whilst Redbubble says the designs which it sells are not manually screened, it appears to be impossible to buy pro-Nazi or pro-Ku Klux Klan apparel via the site; searches for these terms bring up no such results.

This could indicate that there is some kind of algorithm at work, with a computerised system raising red flags for staff every time a design is posted online containing those key words.

But if so, the system is not set up to include any of the proscribed organisations which contributed to the deaths of over 3,500 people during the Troubles.

Redbubble last night told the News Letter: “Since your last query, Redbubble has removed more than 500 related designs that are in violation of our guidelines prohibiting the promotion of hatred and violence.

“We continue to use both technology and human review to monitor and moderate this type of content each day.”

Read more from this reporter:

Click here: Fancy an LVF duvet or an INLA shower curtain? Multinational retailer Redbubble has what you want

Click here: ‘Banishing Covid restrictions completely may take years – it could become an annual winter virus’

Click here: Twenty-five NI groups sign letter to Robin Swann about ‘women and pregnant people’

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