Social Media Companies Receive “Mediocre Grades” in ADL Report Card on Handling Antisemitism

Social media companies received overall “mediocre grades” in the Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) report card on handling antisemitism.

Twitter and YouTube received the highest grades on the report card, each earning a “B-.” Twitch and Reddit each received “C” grades; TikTok, Facebook/Instagram and Discord all earned “C-” grades; and the gaming platform Roblox received a “D-,” the lowest grade.

The ADL praised Twitter for their “broad anti-hate policies” and for responding “quickly to content flagging,” but criticized Twitter for not providing “information on why it took action,” although no other platform did either. Similarly, YouTube has “robust hate policies” and generally took action against reported content, but usually took more than 72 hours to do so. YouTube also doesn’t provide the same level of access to their data that Twitter and Reddit do.

Reddit and Twitch both “have strong policies around hate that include explicit protections for protected groups”; Reddit’s “community moderation” helped eradicate the antisemitism on its platform, although the site did not act against the content reported by the ADL. Twitch responded to reported content faster than Reddit did, but their “trusted flagger program” isn’t up to the ADL’s standards.

Facebook/Instagram, TikTok and Discord all “have robust hate policies yet did not provide any information behind their enforcement decisions when responding to reported content. Nor did any of these four platforms take any action against the content ADL reported through ordinary user flagging,” according to the report. The report also stated that “TikTok is at the very bottom of the platforms reviewed in terms of data access.” Roblox received the worst grade because of “data accessibility” and because they failed to respond and take action against reported content.

The ADL recommended that these platforms better enforce their policies, provide more transparency and allow experts to review their training manuals for content moderation.

“These companies keep corrosive content on their platforms because it’s good for their bottom line, even if it contributes to antisemitism, disinformation, hate, racism, and harassment,” ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement. “It’s past time for tech companies to step up and invest more of their millions in profit to protect the vulnerable communities harmed on their platforms. Platforms have to start putting people over profit.”

The ADL report comes around the same time as a report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate NGO report finding that Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and YouTube failed to act on 84% of reported antisemitic content from May 28-June 29. Spokespeople for Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and TikTok all said in separate statements to The Guardian that they denounce antisemitism and have made progress in removing antisemitic posts from their platforms, but are continuing to improve their efforts to do so.