Top social media platforms fail to act on reported antisemitism, study finds

Social media platforms are mostly not acting against antisemitic content even when it is flagged by users, according to a new report.

The Center for Countering Digital Hate, a UK and US nonprofit organisation, said that over a six-week period earlier this year it used official complaint systems to report hundreds of incidents of anti-Jewish hatred it found on the Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok platforms, but 84 percent of the time nothing was done about it.

The findings show a “serious and systematic failure to tackle antisemitism,” the Center for Countering Digital Hate said in a statement accompanying its Failure to Protect report, which was released Friday.

“No one has a fundamental right to have an account on a social media platform to bully Jews or to spread hatred that we know can end in serious offline harm,” he said.
From May 18 to June 29 this year the CCDH flagged 714 posts. However, only in less than one in six cases the accounts were deleted or the content removed.

Combined, those posts had some 73 million impressions.

Facebook acted on just 14 out of 129 reports of antisemitic posts (10.9%); Twitter only took action on 15 out of 137 (11%); TikTok took action against 22 out of 119 (18.5%); Instagram acted against 52 out of 277 incidents (18.8%.); and YouTube took action on 11 of the 52 reports of offensive content (21.2%).

The five social media platforms failed to act against 80% of reported posts containing Holocaust denial, 74% alleging blood libel, 70% with racist caricatures of Jewish people, and 70% of neo-Nazi posts.

 

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