A new study by the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) found that Instagram failed to take action against 93% of abusive comments thrown at female politicians.
As part of the study, the CCDH collated 1,000 abusive comments concerning ten female politicians: five Republican, and five Democrat. Despite flagging these comments to Instagram, 926 of them remained online a week later.
Many of these comments violated Instagram’s Community Guidelines, and they involved rape threats, threats of violence, and racial abuse.
“They are seeking to send a message to women more generally: that you do not have a place in public life,” Imran Ahmed, CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, told NBC. “Abuse of women can dissuade some from deciding that politics is the right career for them.”
To find these abusive comments, the CCDH used Google’s Perspective, a machine learning API tool. This model had been trained to detect “toxic language,” which was defined as “a rude, disrespectful, or unreasonable comment.”
The CCDH found that more than 1 in 25 comments directed at female politicians were “toxic.”
One of the politicians featured in the investigation was Kamala Harris — the Democrat presidential nominee. The CCDH found that 92% of abusive comments directed at her were ignored by Instagram.
In an emailed statement to NBC, Cindy Southworth, Meta’s head of women’s safety, said: “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.”
She went on to add that Meta works “with hundreds of safety partners around the world,” claiming that they would read the report and “take action” where necessary.
