By Anti-Defamation League Center for Technology and Society

How safe are social media platforms now? Throughout 2020 and early 2021, major technology companies announced that they were taking unprecedented action against the hate speech, harassment, misinformation and conspiracy theories that had long flourished on their platforms. According to the latest results from ADL’s annual survey of hate and harassment on social media, despite the seeming blitz of self-regulation from technology companies, the level of online hate and harassment reported by users barely shifted when compared to reports from a year ago. This is the third consecutive year ADL has conducted its nationally representative survey. Forty-one percent of Americans said they had experienced online harassment over the past year, comparable to the 44% reported in last year’s “Online Hate and Harassment” report. Severe online harassment comprising sexual harassment, stalking, physical threats, swatting, doxing and sustained harassment also remained relatively constant compared to the prior year, experienced by 27% of respondents, not a significant change from the 28% reported in the previous survey. ● LGBTQ+ respondents reported higher rates of overall harassment than all other demographics for the third consecutive year, at 64%. ● 36% of Jewish respondents experienced online harassment, comparable to 33% the previous year. ● Asian-American respondents have experienced the largest single year-over-year rise in severe online harassment in comparison to other groups, with 17% reporting it this year compared to 11% last year. This year, fewer respondents who experienced physical threats reported them to social media platforms than was the case the year before; these users also reported that platforms were doing less to address their safety. ● 41% of respondents who experienced a physical threat stated that the platform took no action on a threatening post, ● comparable to the 38% who had reported a similar lack of action the year before. ● 38% said they did not flag the threatening post to the platform, no statistically significant change from 33% the prior year. ● Only 14% of those who experienced a physical threat said the platform deleted the threatening content, a significant drop from 22% the prior year. ● Just 17% of those who experienced a physical threat stated that the platform blocked the perpetrator who posted the content, a sharp decrease from the prior year’s 28%.

New York: ADL, 2021. 46p.

By U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Massachusetts Advisory Committee

Hate crimes and harassment targeting Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders surged during the pandemic, demanding action, and on May 21, 2021, President Biden signed the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act. Memorializing the women murdered in attacks on Atlanta massage parlors, the Act focuses partly on improving reporting, data collection, and prevention and education at the federal and state level. Its strong bi-partisan support was a welcome acknowledgment of the dangers confronted daily by Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. As press reports have made clear, a recent spate of violent attacks have made some people, especially the elderly, fearful of venturing outside. How distressing, if not dangerous, is daily life for them? Harassment and hate-fueled acts are difficult to count, even when they might constitute crimes or civil offenses, since accurate data requires self-reporting. Still the numbers indicate a worrisome trend: Between March 2020 and March 2021, Stop AAPI Hate compiled some 6600 reports of hate incidents; the Public Policy Institute of California survey found that one in eight Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders reported being targeted by hate incidents in 2020, amounting to about 2 million people. But AntiAsian hate incidents in Massachusetts were increasing disproportionately before the pandemic, starting in 2015. For many people in the AAPI community, hate crimes and harassment are inescapable parts of daily life. In addition to being targeted by racist taunting and slurs, people report being threatened, assaulted, and having garbage thrown at them. In Massachusetts, AAPI identifies residents numbering over 450,000. People of Chinese descent constitute the largest sub-group, followed by refugees -- Vietnamese, Cambodian, Thai, and Hmong. Many are underserved and vulnerable to hate crimes and harassment. Current data shows a 47 percent increase in anti-AAPI hate crimes in Massachusetts between 2015 and 2020, while total hate crimes have increased only 2 percent over the same period.

Washington, DC: The Commission, 2021. 23p.

Edited by Sundari Anitha and Ruth Lewis.

Policy, prevention and educational initiatives. “This collection comes in the midst of some promising and challenging times for activists, students and academics in the UK and beyond who have been researching and campaigning on the issue of gender based violence (GBV) in university communities. In the context of emerging research evidence and in the face of increasing public awareness of and media attention on this problem, these are indeed the first steps towards acknowledging and addressing it in countries including the UK and Australia.”

Policy Press (2018) 282p.