Members of fringe groups espousing anti-women rhetoric are migrating from milder online communities and becoming more toxic, data research suggests.

A recent study into the so-called "manosphere"—a network of Reddit pages, social network accounts, YouTube channels and message boards—used a machine learning tool from Google to help track the "toxicity" of user comments, and detailed a clear rise in hate speech over time.

These niche communities do not just shout into the void, their actions have previously sparked online harassment campaigns and violent outbursts.

The scattered collection of male supremacy groups is by no means limited to the involuntary celibate (Incel) community, which shot to the mainstream's attention in 2018 when a man killed 10 people in Toronto after using the term "Incel Rebellion" on social media.