Social Media a ‘Megaphone’ for Hate Speech, ‘Normalizing’ Antisemitism, Nonprofit Chief Warns

Shiryn Ghermezian

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Two young women sitting alone at a cafe looking at their cell phones without looking at or talking to each other. Photo: Xose Bouzas / Hans Lucas via Reuters Connect

Social media is acting as a “megaphone” for antisemitism and other forms of hate speech to thrive, with teenagers falling prey to lies and hatred on various online platforms, according to the head of a nonprofit group confronting Big Tech firms directly.

“Between [the ages of] 14 and 24, that’s this incredibly Lord of the Flies period in our development where we’re being socialized by peers,” Imran Ahmed, CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), told The Algemeiner in an interview this week. “And social media [tries] to tell us what our peers feel, but actually what they’re doing is giving a megaphone to hate and lies. The more that those lies are able to spread without consequences and pushback, the more these ideas become lethal.

CCDH — which is currently being sued by X Corp, the parent company of the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, for its public criticism of the tech giant — released a new poll last week revealing 49 percent of Americans agree with at least four statements that promote common conspiracy theories related to white supremacy, antisemitism, vaccines and climate change.

This belief in conspiracy theories was even more common among 13-17 year olds (60 percent), and higher among teenagers who are “heavy social media users” (69 percent) — meaning that they spend four or more hours a day on any single social media platform.

According to the poll, 43 percent of teens agreed with the statement, “Jewish people have a disproportionate amount of control over the media, politics, and the economy.” The number rose to 54 percent among teens who are heavy social media users.

To conduct the poll, over 1,000 adults and 1,000 13-17 year olds were surveyed across the US in March 2023.

TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram are known to be the most popular platforms among teens, according to Ahmed, who noted that for all major social media platforms, the results shown in CCDH’s recent poll are “bad for their businesses, so the best thing they can do from their perspective is pray that no one reads this.”

However, he added, it’s important for the public to know how teens are being influenced online.

“These platforms have an economic interest in allowing the spread of hate and disinformation because this to them is prime content — it’s engaging, it gets people arguing, it keeps them on the platform,” Ahmed explained. “These platforms reward engagement with amplification. Hate speech and disinformation have a unique advantage in this kind of environment because they induce an emotionally, super-charged reaction, and that engagement leads to further amplification … it’s increasing the visibility and the popularity of these sorts of ideas.”

Ahmed added that what these platforms have done is “normalize antisemitic ideas and hate among billions of people,” noting those most affected are people who are vulnerable and spend the most time on these platforms.

“They have the least resistance because they know less — kids know less than adults,” he said.

For social media companies, their priorities have shifted and they care more about visibility and engagement than safety, Ahmed said. He noted that due to regulatory legislation — or lack thereof — currently in place, “its the fiduciary duty of those executives to maximize value to their shareholders but keeping these platforms as sticky as possible and not having [enough] safety in place. Platforms essentially have a ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card for any consequences of the content on their platforms, and that has made them incredibly lazy and cynical in the way that they behave.”

Transparency and accountability

CCDH’s poll last week also revealed that 68 percent of adults and 83 percent of 13-17-year-olds acknowledge that harmful content online has consequences in the real world  — like antisemitic terrorist attacks and the January 2021 Capitol Hill riot. The American public also wants reform, with 74 percent agreeing that safety should be a core principle in products created by social media platforms.

In May 2022, CCDH hosted a summit in Washington, DC, in which it developed with legislators from the United States, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and the European Union a framework for social media regulation called STAR, which is based on four principles: safety by design, transparency, accountability, and responsibility.

The STAR model’s goal is to create requirements that would have social media giants still maintain freedom of speech while also ensuring that their companies face consequences and economic penalties for allowing harmful content to flourish online.

Ahmed added that the guiding principle of social media at its onset was to unite humanity — “break down barriers, bring people together, create a richer dialogue between people” — but that core value has been neglected over time.

“What it’s actually done in the way that it’s been implemented by a very small number of executives  — four companies in San Francisco and Beijing that have put these platforms together — is to actually drive people apart,” he said. “To make our countries more brittle, more angry, more polarized. To harm our children’s mental health and their self-image … We’re actually weakening their grip on reality and facts and making them more confused and hateful. This experience we’ve done of unleashing and unregulating social media on our children because we’ve been told, ‘This is the future, this is going to help us,’ has failed. What we now need to do is start thinking about how we can make sure these amazing technologies serve humanity and not just the people who own them.”

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