Social media companies failed to remove 90% Islamophobic content: Report

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok have failed to act on nearly 90 percent of anti-Muslim and Islamophobic content on their platforms, a new report alleges.

Research from the Centre for Countering Digital Hate, published on Thursday, reported 530 posts, viewed 25 million times, that contained dehumanizing content of  Muslims via racist caricatures, conspiracies, and false claims.

This included Instagram posts that depicted Muslims as pigs and called for their expulsion from Europe, comparisons between Islam and cancer that should be “treated with radiation” on a photo of an atomic blast, tweets on Twitter that claimed Muslim migration was part of a plot to change the politics of other countries, and many more.

Many of these had offensive hashtags such as #deathtoislam, #islamiscancer and #raghead, which the CCDH used to identify posts to report.

The CCDH reported 125 posts to Facebook, with only seven acted on; 227 to Instagram, with only 32 acted on; 50 to TikTok with 18 acted on; 105 to Twitter with only three acted on; and 23 videos submitted to YouTube, none of which were reported on.

Facebook also hosted numerous groups dedicated to Islamophobia, with names such as “ISLAM means Terrorism”, “Stop Islamization of America”, and “Boycott Halal Certification in Australia”. Many of these groups have thousands of people in them, with 361,922 members counted in total, predominantly in the UK, US, and Australia. At time of writing, all these groups remained online despite being reported to Facebook.

Researchers also identified 20 posts featuring the Christchurch terrorist, of which just 6 were acted upon, despite Facebook, Instagram and Twitter making public commitments to removing terrorist and extremist content.

The shooter also published a 74-page manifesto that railed against Muslims and immigrants, which was quickly spread online.