New Study Reveals Meta Failed to Remove Abusive Comments Against Women Politicians

A new report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) revealed that Meta has failed to remove abusive comments towards women on Instagram during the presidential campaign in the United States.

The study, published this Wednesday, analyzed over 500 million comments on 10 women politicians on the social media platform and noted that Instagram failed to remove or act on 93% of the abusive comments.

The research considered comments addressed to five women from the Democratic Party and five women from the Republican Party—including presidential candidate Kamala Harris and Senators Elizabeth Warren and Marsha Blackburn and flagged over 20,000 comments labeled “toxic” by Google’s Perspective AI tool.

The abusive comments included rape and death threats, as well as sexist and racist interactions.

According to Reuters, Meta claims to have tools to filter offensive comments, emojis, and phrases, but the CCDH’s research considered the company’s efforts insufficient.

“We will review the CCDH report and take action on any content that violates our policies,” Cindy Southworth, head of women’s safety at Meta, told Reuters.

Multiple organizations have addressed the increasingly abusive comments and actions. In this case, the report explains that the purpose of these comments is to push women out of the political sphere.

The researchers urge social media platform companies to be more transparent and take more action against hate speech as these platforms contribute to spreading abusive comments.

“The resulting normalization of abuse, violent threats, and hate speech directed against women in public life has serious consequences to destabilize our democracies,” states the article shared by the CCDH.