Report: Instagram disregarded 93% of derogatory remarks directed against female politicians

Instagram ignored 926 out of 1,000 abusive comments targeting American female politicians after they were flagged to the app, according to a new report.

The British non-profit Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) flagged comments users left on the accounts of 10 politicians, including Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, that it said violated parent company Meta Platforms' standards.

Most remained online a week later, including sexist and racist comments like, "Make rape legal," "death to her and her supporters," and "we don't want Blacks around us no matter who they are."

Instagram's community guidelines claim the app removes "content that contains credible threats or hate speech" and "content that targets private individuals to degrade or shame them."

But CCDH CEO Imran Ahmed says Instagram is not enforcing these guidelines.

Platforms have 'no incentive' to clean up hate: CCDH

"This is a systemic problem with the incentive structures for social media platforms. They have no incentive for cleaning up their platforms," Ahmed told CBC.

Hate and disinformation maximize engagement by getting people to argue online, which drives ad money, he says. Cleaning up comment sections, on the other hand, takes money and resources. This gives social media platforms a "double disincentive" to take action, he said.

"That is sending a message to young women: 'If you succeed, this is what will happen to you, so why bother?' And that is a terrible, terrible message and a terrible way to think about your content enforcement policy," Ahmed said.

The report makes three recommendations: that Instagram transparently enforce its community guidelines against gender-based abuse and violent threats, that organizations helping women run for office provide support for those facing harassment, and that lawmakers act to hold social media companies accountable for failing to address abuse.

Instagram's guidelines suggest its rules may be more relaxed when it comes to politicians, celebrities and other public figures, stating, "We do generally allow stronger conversation around people who are featured in the news or have a large public audience due to their profession or chosen activities."

Meta declined an interview, but a representative told CBC in a email it will review the examples in the report.

Meta, said the app uses artificial intelligence (AI) technology to proactively remove hate speech before it's reported, and that users can apply their own filters to prevent abusive language on their accounts.

"We provide tools so that anyone can control who can comment on their posts, automatically filter out offensive comments, phrases or emojis, and automatically hide comments from people who don't follow them," Cindy Southworth, Meta's Head of Women's Safety, said in the email.

Hateful comments, harassment go beyond the internet

The CCDH says its report is a snapshot of how social media platforms fail to step up to protect women and public officials.

Its researchers chose five Republican and five Democratic female incumbents running for office in 2024 and collected more than 560,000 comments from 877 Instagram posts posted by the candidates from Jan. 1 to June 7. Of those, one in 25 comments were identified as likely to be "toxic" by Google's Perspective API tool.

From that pool, human researchers flagged 1,000 that they say clearly violated Meta's own guidelines.

Among those included, "Get raped by your president Biden," targeting Harris, and "Hope someoen [sic] leaves you for a dead in a ditch," targeting Republican senator Marsha Blackburn. One commenter wrote to Democrat Nancy Pelosi, "hope whoever attacked your husband has more people ... so they can finish the job."

The CCDH analysis found more than one-fifth of the comments it reported to Instagram were posted by repeat offenders.

Studies have shown that online hate has real-world impacts for politicians.

A survey released in January by the Brennan Center for Justice found 43 per cent of U.S. state legislators have experienced threats or abuse and 40 per cent said they were unwilling to seek reelection or higher office due to abuse.

About one in five state officials — and twice as many local officials — said harassment has made them less willing to work on controversial policies like gun regulation or reproductive rights.

Meta 'granddaddy of disinformation and hate'
Ahmed says while attention lately has been turned to other social media platforms like TikTok and X (formerly Twitter), Meta — which owns Instagram and Facebook — remains "the granddaddy of disinformation and hate."

"They're the ones who wrote the playbook on how to deny there's a problem, deflect it and blame society, and then delay taking action while they throw dollars and spin PR and lobbying to try and avoid being held liable for the harm that they cause," he said.

Just last week, Meta shut down CrowdTangle, a tool it bought in 2016 that was widely used by researchers, watchdog organizations and journalists to monitor social media posts and track how misinformation spreads on the company's platforms.

Andrea Gunraj, vice president of public engagement with the Canadian Women's Foundation, says she found the study results disappointing, but not surprising.

"This seems to be a constant theme of women and gender diverse people, and particularly racialized women [and] 2SLGBTQIA+ people getting additionally targeted, especially if they have a public platform," she said.

A recent report from the Canadian Women's Foundation found one in five women experience online harassment in Canada, 44 per cent of women and gender-diverse people aged 16 to 30 are personally targeted by online hate speech and 30 per cent of Indigenous women experience unwanted behaviour online.

Gunraj says this type of online harassment of women, if allowed to continue, will ultimately push more women out of politics because they will feel it is not safe enough, they are not going to be cared for, and their lives will be at risk.

"It creates less equality, less justice, less capacity for diverse people to represent us. And you can think about all of the harmful things that happen when we don't have diverse leaders in our politics and in our workplaces and communities," she said.