The FCJE publishes the report, Silence in the face of antisemitism prepared by Jonathan Bar Shuali and Benno Herzog on antisemitic acts on the main social networks.
Hate speech represents one of the most significant threats to open, diverse and tolerant societies. To spread this phenomenon, social networks have become a new highly relevant public space. Digital applications are a core tool that is also used by individuals who share discriminatory attitudes.
Among the different types of hate speech, antisemitism is exposed as one of the most difficult to deal with due to its historical versatility, that is, the ability to adapt to different historical events, and its presence in multiple social groups. This study not only analyzes antisemitism in the networks, it also includes the reaction and response of the platforms to the denunciations of antisemitic hate messages.
The objective of this research is to publicize and understand the reactions of the different internet platforms to the complaints of various types of antisemitism. This includes describing the responses of the platforms, or the lack thereof, and analyzing possible patterns in their absence.
Taking as reference the community standards of the different platforms, as well as the definition of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) and consulting the experience of four experts on the subject of antisemitism, various typologies have been reported to the platforms. of antisemitic hate mail. This project analyzes the profile of these messages, in addition to the reactions to these incidents by companies. Through keyword tracking, a total of 400 antisemitic hate messages have been detected and reported between November 2022 and May 2023 on the main social networks: Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and YouTube.
Of 400 publications on the different platforms that have been studied, 206 incidents received a negative resolution, 116 did not obtain any reaction from the platforms on the closing date of the project, 76 were positive and 2 were deleted by the project author itself.
The presence of antisemitic hate on Twitter stands out, a platform already known for its political and controversial content. The total of the antisemitic tweets received more than 10 million views. The more than 1.5 million antisemitic hate visits on TikTok are worrying, a platform that is especially consulted by a young audience and whose speed in generating new content makes it difficult to critically reflect.
In total, the most deleted messages by the platforms (in 22% of cases) have been those that used Nazi symbology. On the other hand, the posts that resorted to the old Christian anti-Judaism were not removed in any of the cases. It is necessary to point out the fact that, as a consequence of the few studied incidents of antisemitic hate on all platforms except Twitter, the results presented in this investigation must be interpreted with great caution. In this sense, the figures and rates provided may vary depending on the social and political context in which they are collected, as well as the period of time devoted to their search.
Across all platforms, the proprietary companies failed to protect users in more than three out of four cases of outright antisemitism.
