How Platforms Rate on Hate Measuring Antisemitism and Adequacy of Enforcement Across Reddit and Twitter

Key Findings:

How much hate exists online, and how large is its reach? Is it possible to independently evaluate the claims tech companies make about the amount of hate on their platforms and how effectively they are addressing it?

The ADL Online Hate Index and this investigation represent (to the best of their knowledge) the first cross-platform measurement of the prevalence of antisemitic content on social media undertaken by an independent civil society organization utilizing an AI tool that is meticulously trained by experts in antisemitism and volunteers from the targeted community. This enables the first ever independent, AI-assisted, community-based measurement of identity-based hate across an entire platform.

Extrapolating from the late-August 2021 Twitter and Reddit representative samples, ADL estimate: 

-The potential reach of antisemitic tweets in that one week alone was 130 million people on Twitter. An equivalent estimate of the reach of antisemitic content on Reddit is not available. 

-That extraordinary reach was made possible by the 27,400 antisemitic tweets our machine learning tool enabled us to calculate were posted on Twitter that week; we found 1,980 antisemitic comments on Reddit. 

-The rate of antisemitic content on Twitter was 25% higher than it was on Reddit during that week. 

After ADL’s review of company enforcement against the antisemitic content found, the researchers noted that the great majority of the antisemitic content had remained on the platforms for months, in clear violation of company guidelines on hate content, revealing the continuing inadequacy of the companies’ content moderation. Moreover, even after ADL eventually reported the content that had remained posted online for more than two months after the initial discovery, the companies failed to remove more than half of that original antisemitic content. 

Specifically: 

-ADL returned to the antisemitic content about a month after the initial discovery to see if the platforms had removed it, but little had changed. On Twitter, 79% of the original antisemitic tweets remained, and on Reddit, 74% of the antisemitic comments remained. 

-ADL returned again more than two months after the initial discovery and found that at least 70% of the anti-Jewish content was still on the platforms. 

-Finally, on November 10, 2021, more than two months after the initial discovery, ADL contacted the platforms directly to report the antisemitic content from our samples that remained online. 

-One week after that notification, ADL returned to the representative samples and found that 56% of the antisemitic Reddit comments and 57% of the antisemitic tweets were still online. 

The ability to independently measure hate content at scale, and compare results between and among different platforms, is crucial to understanding how much hate exists online. It makes possible a better understanding of what internal or external triggers may increase or decrease the amount of hate online. It is also essential for independently determining if companies’ anti-hate policies, practices, and product changes work and if their claims on that score can be verified. This work also provides a model for other civil society organizations rooted in targeted and marginalized groups who wish to take active roles in training similar classifiers to identify the specific types of online hate that target their communities.