The report analyzed more than half a million comments on Instagram posts by five Democrats and five Republicans. women politiciansincluding Sen. Elizabeth Warren, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Vice President and presidential candidate Kamala Harris, Sen. Marsha Blackburn, and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
The CCDH has flagged more than 20,000 comments as “toxic,” with 1,000 of them containing sexist and racist slurs, as well as death and rape threats. Instagram has left 93% of the harmful comments in place even after they violated the platform’s rules.
Meta did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for comment on the report.
In its analysis of the 2020 US election, the CCDH report found that women of colour were more likely to be victims of sexist and racist abuse.
The rise in online abuse against female politicians has drawn criticism from women’s rights groups.
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It also highlighted how social media algorithms that prioritise emotional content and engagement can inadvertently amplify this abuse – a feature that politicians often exploit to boost their engagement rates. This underlines the role that social media platforms and their algorithms play in spreading online abuse – a problem that extends beyond the political sphere and affects millions of users around the world.
The report calls on social media platforms to enforce their safety guidelines more effectively and take decisive action against targeted online abuse.
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