Social-media companies fail largely to confront online hate, per report

Some of the lowest-performing platforms, which have about 3 billion active monthly users, are loosening content standards and dismantling safeguards that protect users, per the report card.

By Mike Wagenheim, JNS

Most major social-media platforms fail to respond to online hate, and extremism disinformation sponsored by foreign states, according to the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s annual report card on digital terror and hate.

The Los Angeles-based nonprofit scored popular digital platforms on 36 factors, based on “responsiveness to flagged hate speech, enforcement of content policies, transparency, cooperation with law enforcement and adherence to international standards, such as the IHRA working definition of antisemitism and the EU Digital Services Act,” the center stated.

Roblox, a gaming platform for children, was the only platform to get a grade better than a C. It got a B-plus.

Facebook (Instagram), Google (YouTube), TikTok, LinkedIn, Twitch, Spotify, and Amazon all received C or C-minus grades, while sites like X, Discord, Rumble and Truth Social barely passed, and Telegram and Gab received F grades.

Some of the lowest-performing platforms, which have about 3 billion active monthly users, are loosening content standards and dismantling safeguards that protect users, per the report card.

“It’s flashing red lights,” Rabbi Abraham Cooper, director of global social action for the Wiesenthal Center, told JNS. (He said the center has spent nearly three decades fighting online extremism.)

“We’re in touch with middle-level management in places like TikTok, where they removed probably millions of items,” he said. “But nobody seems to get the broader issue, which is that a lot of those folks go right back on.”

“The more pressing question that we have for all of the companies, including Meta, X, all of them, is that there’s no real tweaking of the algorithms,” Cooper told JNS. “There’s no real sort of sense of commitment.” (Meta is the Facebook parent company. X was formerly called Twitter.)

Cooper has offered to dispatch experts to meet with technical staff at the platforms to help them refine their algorithms and better root out hate from their sites and remove bad actors permanently, he told JNS.

“It’s not because there’s any law to comply with, but because that’s not why you’re in business. Frankly, there’s almost nobody home right now,” Cooper said. “The will of the big companies in social media, the sense of responsibility to the collective good, however they define it, it’s missing.”

“It’s just now business, and it seems to be that this stuff is baked in,” he said.

There is grave concern that social-media executives, many consumed by a political “us versus them” mentality, have come to accept hate and extremism on their sites if it aligns with their political leanings, according to Cooper.

“Is anyone thinking about the impact on your own kids, your own community? I don’t see anyone talking about it,” he said. “Maybe this will help ignite some soul-searching.”

The Wiesenthal Center is trying, with the annual report card and other means, to “use our bully pulpit to reignite conversations about ethical responsibilities,” Cooper said.

‘I think the companies would listen’

The rabbi was encouraged by the diversity of support he received from the New York City Council when he presented this year’s report card, as well as by the general level of support from politicians in Los Angeles. The center also presented a copy of the report card to the California state legislature this week.

“You have politicians who take a few minutes to step back from the political thing and respond as parents,” Cooper said. “If we can figure out a way to get American parents from different ethnic and religious groups to just focus on what they’re collectively getting clobbered with, I think the companies would listen.”

The Wiesenthal Center stated that it is urging social-media companies to take several steps, including reinstating and enforcing recently eliminated moderation policies, permanently banning terror-linked accounts, and implementing a strategy to identify and disrupt state-sponsored digital disinformation campaigns.

It also wants the companies to commit publicly to funding digital literacy initiatives and requiring platform transparency on algorithmic decision-making.