Antisemitism increased, unprecedentedly, on every Spanish-language social media platform in 2024, most notably on X/Twitter, settling a new ‘base level’ for internet Jew-hatred, the Latin American initiative Web Observatory revealed.
These findings were published in the organization’s annual “Internet Antisemitism Report” for 2024.
Web Observatory is the joint initiative of the Latin American Jewish Congress (CJL), the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AIMA), and the Delegation of Argentine Jewish Associations (DAIA).
In order to carry out the research, Web Observatory analyzed seven platforms and over 126 million posts, using both AI tools and human reviews.
X saw a threefold increase in antisemitic messages, not just in terms of a nominal rise in the number of messages, but also a percentage increase in relation to total posts, and a significant rise in potential impressions (the number of users reached by a message). This indicates not just an increased quantity of antisemitic posts, but also an escalated proliferation.
A total percentage of 19.64% of Spanish-language X messages were deemed antisemitic, marking an increase of 6.81 percentage points compared to 2023. Spain had the highest level of antisemitic X content, followed by Mexico, Colombia, and Argentina, with Uruguay being the lowest.
On Facebook, 11.52% of posts were deemed to be antisemitic. The majority of Facebook antisemitism related to anti-Zionist discourse (82.11%), followed by religious hatred, Holocaust inversion, and traditional antisemitism. On both X and Facebook, there was also a decrease in positive content relating to Jews.
In total, YouTube antisemitism increased to 6.93%, however, this was lower than the levels seen between 2018 and 2022.
Web Observatory found a discrepancy between the levels of antisemitism in YouTube videos and the comments on the videos, with the level of antisemitism in the comments being significantly higher than the audiovisual content itself.
This was the first time that the research extended to Spanish-language comments. It found that 11.22% of the 2.52 million comments analyzed were antisemitic.
Some of the common antisemitic comments revolved around either claims of a Gaza genocide being perpetrated by ‘the Jews’ or comparisons between Zionism and Nazism.
Across all digital portal platforms, antisemitism accounted for 16.86% of all posts.
Uruguay had the highest level of antisemitism on digital news platforms for the fourth consecutive year. Web Observatory found that a third of the comments on the Montevideo Portal site were antisemitic in nature.
Google’s search engine reported an increase in antisemitism of nearly two percentage points, reaching 17.08%. Web Observatory also noted that searches on the topic of the Holocaust looked to find a correlation between it and the State of Israel’s policies.
In terms of trends, the report also noted that one of the particular developments since the start of the Israel-Hamas War is the use of the term ‘Zionist’ as a substitute for Jew. The use of the substitute word allows users to somewhat circumvent content moderation.
