Failure to Protect
Social media companies are failing to act on antisemitism
Our latest report on anti-Jewish hatred shows they fail to enforce their own community guidelines against antisemitic content. Our researchers reported hundreds of racist anti-Jewish posts to social media firms using their user reporting tools. 84% were not acted upon. Tech companies are consciously giving a free pass to anti-Jewish hatred and the increasing threat to the Jewish community. Social media companies must do better. Platforms must support, hire and train moderators to remove this hate and those platforms must be held accountable if they fail to remove this hate.
About
Evidence that social media firms fail to act on user reports of antisemitism
Failure To Protect” Finds that social media platforms took no action on 84% of posts containing antisemitic conspiracies, extremism and abuse reported to them using their own tools for reporting malignant content, despite promises to crack down on anti-Jewish hatred.
Key Findings
- CCDH researchers collected and reported 714 posts containing anti-Jewish hatred. Collectively, they had been viewed at least 7.3 million times. Posts were collected from Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter & YouTube between May-June.
- 84% of posts containing anti-Jewish hatred were not acted upon by social media companies. Facebook performed worst, failing to act on 89%, despite announcing new rules to tackle the problem.
- Platforms fail to act on 89% of antisemitic conspiracy theories about 9/11, the Covid pandemic and Jewish control of world affairs.
- Extremist anti-Jewish hate is not acted on: platforms failed to act on 80% of posts containing Holocaust denial, 74% of posts alleging the blood libel, 70% of racist caricatures of Jewish people and 70% of neo-Nazi posts.
- Instagram, TikTok and Twitter allow hashtags used for antisemitic content such as #rothschild, #fakejews and #killthejews that were used in posts identified by our report that gained over 3.3 million impressions.
- TikTok removes just 5% of accounts that directly racially abuse Jewish users, for example by sending them messages denying the Holocaust.
- Earlier reports by CCDH show platforms have similarly failed to act on dangerous Covid and vaccine misinformation reported by users.
Recommendations
- Introduce financial penalties to incentivize proper moderation. Platforms have profited from the proliferation of hate and misinformation on their platforms. Financial incentives will ensure they no longer invest the bare minimum in content moderation.
- Hire, train and support moderators to remove hate. Current efforts by tech companies to moderate their platforms are clearly inadequate.
- Remove groups dedicated to antisemitism. CCDH identified groups dedicated to sharing antisemitism with a total of 38,000 members.
- Instagram, Tiktok and Twitter must act on antisemitic hashtags that their own analytics show have been used for content viewed millions of times.
- Ban accounts that send racist abuse directly to Jewish users.