According to WaPost staff, in 2018, online hate spiraled into an unavoidable force in American life. A staggering wave of threats, bigotry and rage came out of the dark and onto the apps and websites we use every day. It transformed the Internet’s great power to connect into a weapon.
Hateful content has for years corroded the Internet’s standing as a place for conversation and community. But only in 2018 did the largest Internet companies begin to measure and disclose how toxic it could be – and how little of the damage they’d truly addressed. Facebook removed nearly 3 million pieces of hate speech between July and September, a 15 percent increase from the start of the year – and admitted how much it fails to detect. In September alone, YouTube removed 25,000 videos that broke its rules against harassment, cyberbullying, and “hateful or abusive” content.
Viciousness is emboldened by the anonymity, or at least the distance, offered by the Internet. It spreads through online services where the most outrageous post often gets the most attention. It flourishes in a polarized climate where stating a political opinion makes anyone open to personal attack.
Before the fatal shootings at a Pittsburgh synagogue that marked the worst anti-Semitic assault in U.S. history, suspect Robert Bowers used his account on social network Gab to link to YouTube videos of neo-Nazi propaganda, clips depicting black people as violent thugs and videos calling Jewish people “satanic.” The growth in online hate also paralleled what the FBI is calling a multiyear rise in reported hate crimes nationwide.
anyone else who read that shit with a jew accent? i'm sure NOONE, and certainly NOT US, could use the term "depict" with malicious intent. let's talk about jewish depiction of crematory ovens.
That tends to happen when you widen what you define as hate crimes to anything that made someone get mad on the internet.
James Anderson
Just more fear mongering and playing the victim in order to find excuses for more and more censorship so that only MSM approved propaganda will be allowed.
if these 2 really got their act together and removed 90% of the offensive things, they would lose money
Jaxon Jackson
would expect/bezos
Levi Garcia
The fuck is a piece of hate speech?
Jack Baker
Or be triggered and need to hit the coloring book and puppy room. Things can still go either way.
Samuel Harris
I hate you Washington post for making me read this. If this is how it’s gonna be for the rest of 2019, than just fuckit, I quit the internet and find a new way to learn about the world. Maybe I even get a gf.
Remember to report every instance of people saying straight white males as hate speech. Maybe they wont remove it, but it will stay on the record somewhere that they did nothing.
