Rights group rips social media as forums for hate

Despite efforts from major social media companies to try to weed out hate groups using their platforms, the reality is they are still all over the networks, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Despite efforts from major social media companies to weed out hate groups that use their platforms, the reality is they are still all over the networks, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

“There is a direct correlation between the rise of hate groups on social media and the frequent attacks,” like the El Paso and Dayton weekend killings, says Keegan Hankes, a senior research analyst for the advocacy group.

In 2019, Facebook, Twitter and Google-owned YouTube have taken stands against conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones of InfoWars by booting them off the platforms. YouTube recently changed its policies to bring in more content moderators to enforce community guidelines. YouTube says it yanked nearly 90,000 videos in the first quarter that were promoting violence or extremism, and nearly 20,000 for violating YouTube’s hate speech policy.

But Hankes says one can find extremist content on YouTube “without searching very hard ... it does not take too much effort.”

Hankes is tougher on Twitter, President Donald Trump’s social media platform of choice, calling it an “absolute cesspool” of hate. “Twitter does one of the worst jobs of content moderation.”

Twitter had no comment.