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The report analyzed over half a million comments on Instagram
posts by five Democratic and five Republican women politicians,
including Senator Elizabeth Warren, former House Speaker Nancy
Pelosi, Vice President and presidential candidate Kamala Harris,
Senator Marsha Blackburn and Representative Marjorie Taylor
Greene.
CCDH flagged over 20,000 comments as "toxic," with 1,000 of
these comments containing sexist and racist abuse, as well as
death and rape threats. Instagram left up 93% of the harmful
comments even after breaching the platform's standards.
In response to the report, Meta said it has tools in place for
users to control comments on their posts, including filtering
out offensive comments, phrases or emojis.
"We will review the CCDH report and take action on any content
that violates our policies," said Cindy Southworth, head of
women's safety at Meta.
In its analysis of the 2020 U.S. election, the CCDH report found
that women of color were more likely to be targets of sexist and
racist abuse.
The rise of online abuse against women politicians has drawn
criticism from advocacy groups.
It also highlighted how social media algorithms that prioritize
emotional content and engagement can inadvertently amplify this
abuse, a feature that politicians often leverage to boost their
engagement rates.
This underscores the role social media platforms and their
algorithms play in the propagation of online abuse, a problem
that extends beyond the political sphere and affects millions of
users worldwide.
The report urged social media platforms to enforce their safety
guidelines more effectively and take decisive action against
targeted online abuse.
(Reporting by Priyanka.G and Akash Sriram in Bengaluru; editing
by Alan Barona)
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