Media

Twitter Leads Social Media in Anti-Semitic Posts

Douglas A. McIntyre

Published: March 26, 2017 8:16 am

Last Updated: January 12, 2020 1:37 pm

During a period when hate messages have swept onto social media, a new study shows that the leader in the anti-Semitic category of posts on social media sites Twitter is (NYSE: TWTR). And its lead over other social media is considerable. Twitter has become a hot bed of political comments, and a battleground among a large number of religious and political groups, many of them extreme.

The World Jewish Congress

…has found that more than 382,000 anti-Semitic posts were posted to social media platforms over the course of 2016 – an average of more than 43.6 posts per hour, or one post every 83 seconds.

The report added:

The WJC research analyzed tens of millions of posts in 20 languages on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, blogs and other forums. After Twitter, the highest number of anti-Semitic posts online can be found on blogs, at 16 percent. Eleven percent of anti-Semitic content online was posted to Facebook, followed by Instagram with 6 percent, YouTube with 2 percent, and 2 percent on other forums.

Facebook (NASDAQ: FB) is the largest social media company in the world with 1.9 billion users. Twitter has just over 300,000.

Social media companies have tried to screen for and remove a wide array of objectionable comments, many of them hate based. However, the process is complex and difficult to implement as Alphabet’s (NASDAQ: GOOGL) YouTube video operations has found. Many large advertisers have quit the site because their messages are placed next to controversial videos.

Methodology:

The criteria used to determine whether a post was anti-Semitic was based on International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA)’s May 2016 definition that “anti-Semitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of anti-Semitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”