Twitter’s decision to reinstate influential banned accounts allowed CTS to examine how they act as nodes in broader networks and exploit inadequate policies
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ADL CTS highlights 6 questions for policymakers and industry concerning the advent of generative artificial intelligence such as Chat GPT and dall-e
Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) has dominated news headlines for its potential to transform how we work, write, and play. For example, OpenAI’s ChatGPT allows people to ask various questions, summarize a book or write a new song in the style of their favorite musical artist. AI-enhanced search tools return summaries of online content, rather than a list of links to different webpages. Other tools create realistic photos or pieces of artwork from a description. Some tools create…
Policy and enforcement developments since Elon Musk acquisition of Twitter and what they mean for enforcement of hate speech policies and protecting users.
Despite purported changes to its policy enforcement and the stated intent of its management, Twitter continues to host antisemitic threats and tropes.
False and misleading social media harms elections, undermines public trust, normalizes baseless challenges to elections, stokes harassment and incites violence.
An explanation of how harassment works on Twitter and how it is overlooked.
As Elon Musk moves into his new role as Twitter's CEO, here are the top five things ADL will be looking at closely in the short term.
ADL’s analysis found Meta has accepted large sums of money for ads on hateful topics such as antisemitism and transphobia. In some cases, Meta even accepted money for ads that violated its hate speech policy.
Summary
The United States midterm electoral campaigns are in full force as candidates prepare advertisements and voter outreach. Social media is an integral part of their campaigning as more than half of all Americans get news from a social media platform.
But false or misleading information (including misinformation, spread without malice or coordination, and disinformation, purposely created to manipulate or cause harm) runs rampant on platforms, subverting democracy and leading…
Olivia Julianna (who uses only her first and middle name publicly to protect her privacy) has been an activist for several years, advocating voting rights and reproductive-health care. Like many in her generation, she found the political side of TikTok where young people post about important issues facing them. Olivia is involved with Gen-Z for Change, a nonprofit organization leveraging social media to promote civil discourse and political action on a variety of topics including…
Swatting is the deliberate and malicious act of reporting a false crime or emergency to evoke an aggressive response (often a SWAT team) from a law enforcement agency to a target's residence or place of work to harass and intimidate them.
Alarmingly, swatting appears to be on the rise. Kevin Kolbye, a former FBI agent with expertise in swatting, estimates incidents have jumped from 400 cases in 2011 to over 1,000 in 2019. Unfortunately, the actual number is unknown because the FBI does not…
An investigation from ADL’s Center for Technology and Society (CTS) found Twitter did not remove over 200 blatantly antisemitic tweets accusing Jewish people of pedophilia, invoking Holocaust denial, and sharing oft-repeated conspiracy theories. To test Twitter’s enforcement of its policies on antisemitism, CTS reported 225 strongly antisemitic tweets over nine weeks through ongoing communications with the platform. Of the reported tweets, Twitter only removed 11, or 5% of the…
Whether it is about a global pandemic, the 2020 presidential election, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, or the latest mass shooting, lies continue to thrive on social media platforms. According to a 2021 poll by the Pew Research Center, nearly half of Americans get their news from social media. While many people feel confident in their media literacy, YouGov found that only 4% of those surveyed could correctly distinguish false news stories from true ones.
In order to assess platforms…
In the wake of the horrific racist massacre in Buffalo, NY, Stop Hate for Profit is calling on mainstream social media platforms Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Twitch, Discord, and Reddit to immediately stop the spread of hateful white supremacist rhetoric that has incited acts of violence by permanently banning repeat perpetrators like Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham and others from their platforms and enforcing their own hate speech policies with regard to the Great Replacement theory and white supremacy. This article describes the forms that the Great Replacement Theory takes on these platforms and the platform policies they are violating.
On May 14, 2022, an alleged extremist streamed video footage online as he murdered 10 people and injured three more inside a Tops supermarket in Buffalo, New York. The shooter livestreamed his rampage on the social media platform Twitch, which Amazon owns. Preceding the murders, the shooter allegedly plotted his attack on the chat platform Discord and spread white supremacist dogma on fringe websites such as 4chan and Kiwi Farms.
After the shooting, a video…
Right-wing extremists cheered the announcement; they believe Musk will usher in a new era on the social media platform, free from “left-wing” censorship.
April 11, 2022 Over a hundred million American adults read news on social media, but in the wake of the crisis in Ukraine, antisemitism, hate speech, and disinformation have spread widely on Facebook. ADL researchers found evidence of the continued presence of problematic posts on the platform, the most popular site for getting news, as well as the prevalence of external links directing users to alternative platforms and sites popular among extremists. Roughly 61% of these posts included links…
February 02, 2022 Spotify is in hot water for its support of controversial podcaster Joe Rogan. In January 2022, a group of 270 medical professionals wrote an open letter to the company accusing Rogan of spreading misinformation about the Covid-19 pandemic, calling him “a menace to public health.” Soon after, legendary rocker Neil Young demanded that the company either remove his music or stop airing the podcast because it promotes false information about Covid-19 vaccines. The…
December 01, 2021 UPDATE: As of December 9, 2021, Facebook has removed all nine posts reported on the platform in conjunction with our research.
October 2021 marked one year since Facebook banned Holocaust denial from its platform and officially classified Holocaust denial as hate speech instead of misinformation. On the first anniversary of this policy’s enactment on Facebook properties, analysts in ADL’s Center on Extremism (COE) sought to determine whether the…