John, we want you to be informed about a new investigation by the ADL Center for Technology and Society (CTS) testing Twitter’s enforcement of its own policies on antisemitism. The report reveals that Twitter failed to remove blatantly antisemitic tweets accusing Jewish people of pedophilia, invoking Holocaust denial and sharing oft-repeated conspiracy theories after ADL reported them.

One of the antisemitic tweets reported by ADL.

Twitter only removed 5% of the undeniably hateful content we reported to them. Some additional posts have been taken down, presumably by the user, yet most of the postings initially reported to Twitter remain active on the platform.

WHY IS TWITTER LEAVING ANTISEMITISM ONLINE?

In some cases, Twitter’s staff said that while they would not remove the post, they would make it harder to discover or share. In others, Twitter told ADL that the content did not meet their threshold of hateful content because a posting only made a single antisemitic statement rather than multiple hateful ones.

It is not enough to de-amplify antisemitic content or stand idle while waiting for hate to rise to a certain level. If a swastika was painted on a public building, we would not tell a community to put up a sign in front of it telling passersby to avert their eyes or wait to take action until there were a few additional swastikas painted on the same building.

DEMAND A STRONGER RESPONSE

This report on Twitter’s alarming inaction urges tech companies to enforce their policies equitably and at scale. ADL calls for legislation that requires transparency on how these influential platforms define hate speech, moderate harmful content and report on the efficacy of their policy enforcement.

We encourage you to learn more about this investigation, and to be an advocate against online hate by reporting antisemitism and other problematic content when you see it on social platforms, online games and other social spaces on the internet. You can use ADL’s Cyber-Safety Action Guide to find out how to report hate on a variety of platforms.

Thank you for using your voice to speak out against online hate with ADL.

Sincerely,

Adam Neufeld

Chief Impact Officer

ADL