A report from a UK-based anti-hate watchdog showed that social media giants Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and even the short-video sharing platform Tiktok, failed to respond to almost 90% of Islamophobic content.
The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a non-profit organization headquartered in London, UK, published a summary of the report on April 28. CCDH's goal is to "study and disrupt the spread of digital hate and misinformation."
The CCDH's report called Failure to Protect examines digital platforms, their reporting policies and mechanics, and their effectiveness against hate speech.
In its recent release, the Failure to Protect criticized Twitter, Google, and Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, for their failure to implement their policies against online hate.
CCDH claimed that the tech companies promised to be "resolute in our commitment to ensure we do all we can to fight the hatred and extremism that lead to terrorist violence."
However, CCDH's recent report showed that the social media companies have "failed to act on 89% of posts containing anti-Muslim hatred and Islamophobic content reported to them."
The report claimed that the social media companies' failure to take action online creates a "significant threat of offline harm."
"Anti-Muslim hate seeks to dehumanize and marginalize communities of people who have historically been the subject of violent threats, attacks, discrimination, and hostility," the report added.
Kemi Badenoch, the minister for communities and equalities in the UK, welcomed CCDH's report, emphasizing the "unacceptable abuse many Muslims receive online every day." "Social media companies have to do more to take meaningful action against all forms of hatred and abuse their users experience online," she added.
According to the CCDH, their researchers examined and reported posts from February to March 2022. The researchers used the platforms' "own functionality for reporting hate speech" to flag the contents.
The contents and messages examined by CCDH included offensive opinions, caricatures, false claims, and conspiracy theories. There were also Instagram posts that depicted Muslims as pigs and called for their removal from Europe.
Twitter failed to take action against 97% of the reported content, while Youtube could not censor 23 videos on its platform that had anti-Muslim content.
Instagram, Tiktok, and Twitter hosted anti-Muslim hashtags without any consequences for the content makers.
The report also showed that contents "glorifying the Christchurch terrorists" are still being hosted online.
Imran Ahmed, the CEO of CCDH, said he does not understand how "billionaires who own these platforms sleep at night when they know they could do so, so much more."
