Instagram is facing criticism for its failure to remove hate speech directed at female politicians as the 2024 election approaches, according to a report released by the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) and reported by CNBC.
The report, published on Wednesday, August 14, revealed that Instagram did not take sufficient action against harmful comments targeting Vice President Kamala Harris and other prominent women politicians. The CCDH’s research analyzed 560,000 comments on Instagram posts from ten female politicians—five Republicans and five Democrats—who have high levels of engagement on the platform.
Toxic Comments Target Leading Women Politicians
The analysis focused on comments made between January 1 and June 7, 2024. Using Google’s Perspective AI content moderation tool, the CCDH identified more than 20,000 comments as “toxic.”
Following this automated detection, CCDH researchers manually reviewed the content and found that 1,000 of these comments clearly breached Instagram’s terms of service. These politicians included Vice President Kamala Harris, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), and Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) from the Democratic Party, as well as Republican House members Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.).
The report highlighted several disturbing examples of toxic comments, including:
- Racist and misogynistic remarks Harris’s racial background.
- Statements like “make rape legal” and “we don’t want blacks around us no matter who they are.”
- Calls for Harris’s sexual assault by President Joe Biden.
Despite these clear violations, when CCDH researchers reported the 1,000 offensive comments through Instagram’s content reporting tools, the platform failed to take action against 926 of them, equivalent to a 93% inaction rate, according to the report.
CCDH Criticizes Instagram’s Inaction
Imran Ahmed, CEO of CCDH, criticized Instagram during a media briefing on Tuesday, August 13, emphasizing that the platform must enforce its policies designed to protect women in public life. He argued that organizations should be better equipped to support female candidates who experience online abuse and should offer best practices for dealing with such harassment.
Ahmed pointed out that much of the current public scrutiny is focused on Elon Musk’s platform, X (formerly Twitter), which has shifted attention away from Instagram. He warned that this perception of safety on Instagram may not be accurate, as the platform continues to host harmful content without adequate enforcement.
Meta, Instagram’s parent company, has been under fire from lawmakers for its repeated failures to address the spread of hate speech and harmful content across its platforms.
In response to the CCDH report, Meta issued a statement acknowledging that it would review the examples highlighted by the CCDH and remove comments that violate company policies. However, Meta also noted that some content might be offensive but not in violation of its rules, adding that the Google AI tool used by CCDH for part of its analysis is not always accurate.
Cindy Southworth, Meta’s head of women’s safety, defended the company’s efforts by highlighting the tools available to users to control their experience on the platform. These tools include:
- Options to control who can comment on their posts.
- Automatic filters to remove offensive comments, phrases, or emojis.
- Automatic hiding of comments from people who don’t follow them.
Southworth stated that Meta works with hundreds of safety partners worldwide to improve its policies, tools, detection, and enforcement continually. She confirmed that the company would review the CCDH report and take appropriate action on any content that violates its policies.
Increased Scrutiny Across Social Media Platforms
The CCDH report also touched on the broader context of social media platforms and their role in political discourse. The organization’s focus on Instagram comes after a California federal judge dismissed a lawsuit against CCDH by Elon Musk’s X, which was filed after the group published research showing an increase in hate speech on the platform following Musk’s acquisition. Ahmed suggested that Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, has strategically kept a low profile while X has become the focal point of public anger regarding the toxicity in public life and political discourse.
In one specific instance mentioned in the CCDH report, a researcher received a notification from Instagram stating that a racist comment directed at Harris did not violate the platform’s community guidelines. The report also found that more than one-fifth of the 1,000 offensive comments flagged by researchers were posted by repeat offenders, individuals who had previously posted abusive content on the platform.
Featured Image courtesy of ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images
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