Hate speech online: Study: Anti-Semitism on all social media platforms

Hate speech on the net
Study: Anti-Semitism on all social media platforms

Emmanuel Macron speaks via video link during the International Forum on Holocaust Remembrance and Anti-Semitism. Photo: Jonas Ekstromer / TT News Agency / AP / dpa

© dpa-infocom GmbH

Without education, without background knowledge, it is not uncommon for young people to come into contact with conspiracy ideologies and anti-Semitism online. A problem that a study now sheds light on.

According to a recent study, anti-Semitism is widespread and easily accessible on the Internet.

“Every conceivable form of anti-Semitism can be found on all social networks without much effort,” said the Amadeu Antonio Foundation on the occasion of an international forum to commemorate the Holocaust and the fight against anti-Semitism in the southern Swedish city of Malmö. It is particularly worrying that young people only come into contact with conspiracy ideologies and anti-Semitism via networks such as Tiktok and Instagram without having been informed about these phenomena beforehand.

Hashtags with terms under which conspiracy narratives were spread showed millions of posts spreading anti-Semitic prejudice and devaluation with one click. More explicit anti-Semitic hashtags should also be used on Instagram, for example, according to the joint study published on Wednesday by the Amadeu Antonio Foundation and the Swedish Expo Foundation and the British organization Hope not Hate. The authors demanded a clear commitment from the Internet companies to ban anti-Semitism from their platforms.

“It’s actually unbelievable that despite ten years of trying to eradicate hate speech, we were able to find anti-Semitism on every social media platform we examined,” said Joe Mulhall of Hope not Hate. A new generation got to know anti-Semitic ideas online with which they would otherwise hardly have come into contact.

At the Malmö Forum at the invitation of the Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven, representatives of governments, organizations, science and civil society wanted to talk about how the memory of the Nazi murder of around six million Jews can be kept alive and hostility against Jews can be better combated. European Minister of State Michael Roth (SPD) is there from Germany.

dpa

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