Recently, we published a report about online anti-Muslim hate and racism against Palestinians and Arabs in conjunction with the Online Hate Task Force. Researchers monitored ten social media platforms between October 2023 and February 2024. We collected data containing anti-Muslim hate, anti-Palestinian racism, and anti-Arab racism (or a combination of two or more of these types of hate).
In this briefing, we summarise our findings of anti-Muslim, anti-Palestinian, and anti-Arab hate on Facebook.
Examples of anti-Muslim hate on Facebook
Over the five-month monitoring period, researchers collected 1169 items, of which 9% (109) came from Facebook. 49% of the items represented Muslims as a cultural threat, and 39% of the items involved demonisation or dehumanisation.
This post is from a public group with multiple hate speech posts targeting Muslims and others. This particular post uses a news article about a specific group of criminals and pairs it with the comment “The true face of Islam”. This seeks to hold all Muslims accountable or suggest all Muslims are similar.
In this example from Facebook we see the characterisation of inciting anti-Muslim violence. The post contains two largely irrelevant images, including a selfie of the poster. The text of the post includes the text: “Death to all GoatFuckers!”, two American flag emojis and an army helmet emoji and the hashtags: #killemall #usa #trump2024 #fuckliberals. Goatfuckers is a derogatory and racist term for Muslims/Arabs. So the post calls for the death of all Muslims/Arabs. The poster is most likely a white nationalist given the ‘patriotic’ emojis and hashtags. This post would also be categorised as demonising/dehumanising Muslims, Socially excluding Muslims, anti-Arab racism and Muslims as a cultural threat.
This post was shared in a Facebook group called: “Degenerates like you belong on a cross”, where edgy, provocative and hateful memes are posted. This post contains an image of five Muslim men looking lustfully at a goat which has a love-heart above its head. The image has text asking “what is wrong with this image” and says that Muslims nurture goats and distribute the meat to the needy as part of “Eid-ul-Zuha also called Bakrid”. Eid-ul-Zuha is a Muslim festival, sometimes called Bakrid due to the tradition of sacrificing a goat (bakr). The post is made by a profile with a muslim sounding name, and has the image of a Muslim man. The image plays into the stereotype of Muslim men having sexual intercourse with goats. The post is “written” from the perspective of a Muslim man, who is “clueless” about the aforementioned stereotype, whilst at the same time promoting the stereotype with the selected image. The use of correct terminology and descriptions of Muslim cultural and religious practice, as well as the selected profile name and display picture re-enforces the hate, making it appear genuine. It is designed to cause doubt in a moderator if reported.
Facebook’s response to anti-Muslim, anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian hate
As of 18 June 2024, Facebook had removed 50% of the online hate targetting Muslims, Arabs and Palestinians. Facebook performed second best when it came to platform removal rates. Surprisingly, Bitchute had a better removal rate than Facebook, having removed 54%. The worst-performing platform was YouTube, which removed just 15% of the hate content.
Conclusion
While Facebook performed relatively well in terms of its removal of anti-Muslim, anti-Palestinian and anti-Arab hate, there is still more work that needs to be done to correctly identify and remove this sort of hate from the platform.
As Facebook is a large, mainstream social media platform that is used by 66% of the adult population in Australia, it is concerning that Facebook ranked fourth when it came to the amount of anti-Muslim, anti-Palestinian and anti-Arab hate collected, following X (formerly Twitter), Gab, and Telegram.
You can see the full report here.