Twitter, Facebook And Other Platforms Fail To Remove 9 Out Of 10 Anti-Muslim Posts: Report

Social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube have failed to remove 90 percent of Islamophobic content on their platforms, according to a report published on Thursday.

A report by the Centre for Countering the Digital Hate CCDH found a total of 530 islamophobic posts between February and March this year. This accounts for 90% of the anti-Muslim content these sites failed to remove.

“All the posts contain examples of dehumanising content, such as racist caricatures, conspiracy theories and false claims”. The report also says each post has been viewed at least 25 million times.

The posts included images likening Islam to “cancer” and conspiracy theories promoting narratives that Muslims are “taking over Europe”.

It also carried images in which the Muslims were depicted as pigs and other inhuman caricatures.

Several posts that remained unattended and not removed were then shared by the Hindu nationalists, propagating hate narratives against Muslims.

The report, citing the perks of hashtags on Twitter, Tiktok and Instagram, says that the anti-Muslim content spread received at least 1.3 million impressions.

Facebook and Instagram failed to remove or restrict Islamophobic content on 94 and 89 per cent of reported posts.

However, Tiktok was unable to deduct 64 per cent of reported Islamophobic videos.

Further, the report also found that social media failed to remove 14 out of 20 posts that glorified the horrific Christchurch mosque massacre in 2019 in New Zealand, including the footage of the shootings, in which 51 were killed.

“Islamophobic Facebook groups, with names such as “Proud Aussies Against Halal Meat” and “Stop the Islamization of America”, were found to have thousands of followers, says the report.

The report concluded that YouTube and Twitter were the worst platforms for removing Islamophobic content, with the video-sharing platform failing to delete any of its videos and the micro-blogging site failing to take action on 97 per cent of anti-Muslim hatred reported to them.