Teach students about what gossip and rumors are and the impact they have on others, especially those identity groups which may be more vulnerable to and marginalized by rumors and gossip.
ADL’s analysis found Meta has accepted large sums of money for ads on hateful topics such as antisemitism and transphobia. In some cases, Meta even accepted money for ads that violated its hate speech policy.
Major Platforms’ Midterm Election Policies: Are They Enough?
Article
Summary
The United States midterm electoral campaigns are in full force as candidates prepare advertisements and voter outreach. Social media is an integral part of their campaigning as more than half of all Americans get news from a social media platform.
But false or misleading information (including misinformation, spread without malice or coordination, and disinformation, purposely created to manipulate or cause harm) runs rampant on platforms, subverting democracy and leading…
Remarks by Jonathan Greenblatt to the Inter-Parliamentary Task Force to Combat Online Antisemitism
News
Good evening and thank you for being a part of this important gathering of the Inter-Parliamentary Task Force to Combat Online Antisemitism.
I’m delighted to see so many friends in this room tonight. I want to particularly thank Task Force co-chairs U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Canadian Member of Parliament Anthony Housefather for organizing this critically important summit that challenges us to ask hard questions about the evolution and proliferation of online antisemitism…
How A Texas Teen Turned Bias and Body-Shaming into Advocacy and Action
Article
Olivia Julianna (who uses only her first and middle name publicly to protect her privacy) has been an activist for several years, advocating voting rights and reproductive-health care. Like many in her generation, she found the political side of TikTok where young people post about important issues facing them. Olivia is involved with Gen-Z for Change, a nonprofit organization leveraging social media to promote civil discourse and political action on a variety of topics including…
Table Talk: Family Conversations About Current EventsWhen there are periods of heightened violence and war in the news, oftentimes one or more marginalized identity groups can become the focus of attention, anger, hostility and bias even far removed from the location of the conflict. In the wake of Hamas’ attack on Israel in October 2023, ADL has tracked an uptick in antisemitic attacks in the U.S. and around the globe, and there have also been incidents of anti-Muslim attacks. As the…
Swatting is the deliberate and malicious act of reporting a false crime or emergency to evoke an aggressive response (often a SWAT team) from a law enforcement agency to a target's residence or place of work to harass and intimidate them.
Alarmingly, swatting appears to be on the rise. Kevin Kolbye, a former FBI agent with expertise in swatting, estimates incidents have jumped from 400 cases in 2011 to over 1,000 in 2019. Unfortunately, the actual number is unknown because the FBI does not…
Twitter’s Failure to Enforce Its Policy Against Antisemitism
Article
An investigation from ADL’s Center for Technology and Society (CTS) found Twitter did not remove over 200 blatantly antisemitic tweets accusing Jewish people of pedophilia, invoking Holocaust denial, and sharing oft-repeated conspiracy theories. To test Twitter’s enforcement of its policies on antisemitism, CTS reported 225 strongly antisemitic tweets over nine weeks through ongoing communications with the platform. Of the reported tweets, Twitter only removed 11, or 5% of the…
Repeat Liars: Falsehoods Around Buffalo Shooting and the 2020 Election
Article
Whether it is about a global pandemic, the 2020 presidential election, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, or the latest mass shooting, lies continue to thrive on social media platforms. According to a 2021 poll by the Pew Research Center, nearly half of Americans get their news from social media. While many people feel confident in their media literacy, YouGov found that only 4% of those surveyed could correctly distinguish false news stories from true ones.
In order to assess platforms…
Deplatform Tucker Carlson and the "Great Replacement" Theory
Article
In the wake of the horrific racist massacre in Buffalo, NY, Stop Hate for Profit is calling on mainstream social media platforms Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Twitch, Discord, and Reddit to immediately stop the spread of hateful white supremacist rhetoric that has incited acts of violence by permanently banning repeat perpetrators like Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham and others from their platforms and enforcing their own hate speech policies with regard to the Great Replacement theory and white supremacy. This article describes the forms that the Great Replacement Theory takes on these platforms and the platform policies they are violating.
9 Ideas for Teaching Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month
Lesson Plan
Use these activities to bring the history, culture and experience of the AAPI (Asian American Pacific Islander) people and community to your classroom.
Agnostic About Extremism: Tech Companies' Roles in Spreading Dangerous Content from the Buffalo Shooting
Article
On May 14, 2022, an alleged extremist streamed video footage online as he murdered 10 people and injured three more inside a Tops supermarket in Buffalo, New York. The shooter livestreamed his rampage on the social media platform Twitch, which Amazon owns. Preceding the murders, the shooter allegedly plotted his attack on the chat platform Discord and spread white supremacist dogma on fringe websites such as 4chan and Kiwi Farms.
After the shooting, a video…
Elon Musk Plans to Buy Twitter. Right-wing Extremists Rejoice.
Article
Right-wing extremists cheered the announcement; they believe Musk will usher in a new era on the social media platform, free from “left-wing” censorship.
Use the short evocative videos and films in this lesson plan to engage young people in conversations about identity, diversity, bias and social justice.
ADL Finds Facebook Posts Linking to Problematic Sites at Alarming Rates
Article
April 11, 2022 Over a hundred million American adults read news on social media, but in the wake of the crisis in Ukraine, antisemitism, hate speech, and disinformation have spread widely on Facebook. ADL researchers found evidence of the continued presence of problematic posts on the platform, the most popular site for getting news, as well as the prevalence of external links directing users to alternative platforms and sites popular among extremists. Roughly 61% of these posts included links…
ADL Launches Online Hate Index to Detect Antisemitism on Social Media Platforms
Press Release
Both Reddit and Twitter failed to remove over 70 percent of the antisemitic content ADL uncovered with first-ever independent artificial intelligence tool New York, NY, February 28, 2022 … The ADL (Anti-Defamation League) Center for Technology and Society today announced the launch of the first version of its Online Hate Index, a machine-learning system that detects hate targeting marginalized groups on online platforms. The Online Hate Index represents the first independent,…
February 02, 2022 Spotify is in hot water for its support of controversial podcaster Joe Rogan. In January 2022, a group of 270 medical professionals wrote an open letter to the company accusing Rogan of spreading misinformation about the Covid-19 pandemic, calling him “a menace to public health.” Soon after, legendary rocker Neil Young demanded that the company either remove his music or stop airing the podcast because it promotes false information about Covid-19 vaccines. The…