Photo Credit: shutterstock
Anywhere you go on social media these days, it seems, the comments section has become extremely toxic. If you’re a content creator, good luck posting anything without getting a firehose of negative commentary in return. And if you’re a highly public figure with millions of followers, the situation is even worse. Threats of injury or death are not out of the question these days.
With that in mind, it’s clear that social media companies need to do a much better job of cleaning up their online platforms. It’s getting to the point where rational, civil discourse is impossible. And to the point where the best and brightest might decide to forgo a life in public service entirely, if this is the type of abuse that they are subject to on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis.
The Instagram “ digital hate” experiment
Case in point: the Center for Countering Digital Hate recently published a new study about the current situation regarding political content on Instagram, and quite frankly, it’s horrifying. The study looked at the comments left on the Instagram accounts of 10 prominent female politicians, including current Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Of these 10 politicians, half were Republicans, and half were Democrats. But political affiliation really didn’t matter here. Of the over 420,000 comments studied, nearly 1 in 25 turned out to be toxic. And I mean really toxic. As in, there were threats of rape, physical injury, and death. And a good number of these hateful comments – nearly 20% – were coming from repeat offenders. In other words, from the sorts of online trolls who stay up all night, leaving behind hateful comments on social media.
And that was just the start of this “digital hate” experiment. The Center for Countering Digital Hate then reached out to Instagram, warning them of all this toxic sludge, and asking them to take it all down. But guess what? Instagram failed to act on 93% of these requests. One week later, the Center for Countering Digital Hate went back to Instagram, to see what had been scrubbed. And the answer was almost nothing. It’s safe to say that much of that toxic sludge is still there, if you dare to look.
Is Instagram to blame?
Of course, Instagram had plenty to say in its defense. For one, it said that it couldn’t possibly be held responsible for all of this content, given all the bots and trolls out there. That was followed by platitudes about how seriously it took the problem, as well as details about all the tools out there for content creators, to prevent this from happening in the first place. And they emphasized that they continued to work with safety partners to eliminate as much of this hate speech as possible.
Some of this may just be empty words. But in all fairness, you really can’t hold Instagram responsible for everything millions of people are posting on social media these days. There will always be bad apples, and that means there will always be a certain amount of toxic content out there. As long as we live in a highly partisan political environment, this is just a fact of life.
The 93% statistic
But, let’s face it, there is something jarring about that 93% statistic. It’s simply incredible that Instagram failed to act on 93% of the offending comments, especially when some of them mentioned physical abuse, rape, and death. That seems like an impossibly high number, and Instagram should be ashamed of this. Come on Instagram, you can do better than this!
