2 in 3 People Often Encounter Hate Speech Online.

Dot.@feddit.org to Technology@lemmy.world – 224 points –
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The bar chart might be more useful if they weighted the source with its number of users. Facebook isn't 7 times more hateful than Telegram. It has around 3.5 times as many users - but also the two are used very differently. I use Telegram, but only as a free messaging platform for automated alerts.

Then there's the algorithms, which tend to feed you what you engage with and from those connections you've made on it. The exception recently is X which has a very strong political bias and has turned into something that pushes hate very strongly.

This is the same problem often encountered when reporting crime statistics. New York City, which has almost 9,000,000 residents, has a lot of reported crimes. However, when measured against the number of people who live there, it is, statistically, one of the safest cities in the country.

As usual, a statistic is made much more useful when looking at as per capita.

I’m glad that I learned basic statistical analysis in high school. Most people never get any education in statistics whatsoever. It’s responsible for a massive amount of misinformation and misunderstandings.

I have to use Facebook daily because of family, and I don't think Zucc cares about hate speech anymore. But call a right wing chud a sadistic psychopath, you get a 3 day ban for bullying.

UPDATE: It seems that Facebook puts more effort into hiding comments that could be potentially be used to reveal bots as bots through well known LLM jailbreak methods, than into curbing hate speech. Zucc really wants that extra tax lowering and curbing of union-rights, even if Project2025 would likely make a lot of stuff on Facebook illegal to host in the US, since republicans want broaden the definition of pornography to include almost everything.

They forgot Reddit. Reddit is full of open racism all the time.

Yeah also 4chan

The worst place I've seen racism is the YouTube comment section of police bodycam videos. I swear the >50% of the videos will be of white people but whenever it isn't the comments are filled with racist stuff.
Infact I went to a bodycam YouTube channel and clicked on the first one from an African American male and picked out some comments sorting by newest. Here are some examples:
"always the same breed" (11hr ago)
"Pew Pew. just saying."(13hr ago)
"Bet they got an OR bond cause of "racism" "(51 minutes ago)

This video is 2 months old.

And this comedy:
"Your Sargent don't want you arresting [censored n-word]

Because the crime stats shows how they ruin and destroy your country USA [fist emoji] [American flag emoji]

Government don't want Americans to realise how immigrants come to America [American flag emoji] to commit crime"

which... isn't even true, Immigrants have been about equal or even lower with the White US-Born population


source

Anyways, what I find the most disturbing about the YouTube comments is that it's so surface level compared to something like 4chan or other obscure forums. they're shouting their racism to everyone who will listen

Racial slurs and epithets seem to be fine, talk about killing rich people though and you get banned real fast.

The regime knows what can happen ever since the french and soviet revolutions.

So regime whores will censor the sentiment.

You can always check who rules with this one simp trick!

I got banned from Reddit for saying some Taliban in a video should die. Not in some frothing for violence way either.

TIL 1/3 of people don't have Internet access

I don’t know, I’m online quite a bit and wouldn’t say I see hate speech “often” at all. Then again, all of my socials are on the fediverse except for snapchat (yeah I know snap is a shit company - I use it to send pictures of food to a couple close friends), so there’s probably a bit of curation on my part.

I'm firmly in the "not very often" camp, and I think it's because I don't use any of the services mentioned, and I generally avoid the comment sections of most websites.

If you're seeing a lot of hate speech, maybe consider not visiting sites where you see hate speech? Ideally we'd solve the root problem, but I'm worried a lot of people are just feeding the trolls, which creates a positive hate speech feedback loop.

It really is about values and boundary setting. If you experience hate or toxicity irl or online you leave. If you choose to stay then your priority isn’t your well being.

"Seeing lots of hate speech? Have you tried not using the most popular websites where all your friends are?"

asking such an open ended question doesn't mean much when nowadays, more and more people consider "anything I don't agree with" to be hate speech.

Ah yes, the classic.

"Could I have terrible bigoted opinions? No, it's the children who are just too sensitive nowadays. :^("

Great list of websites to never visit 👍

I get enough hate-speech during on-line video games. By not using any of those apps, I successfully save myself from multitudes more, while also foregoing any potentially addictive status-seeking site-based-compulsions. I used to play Clash of Clans on my phone because it was a good way to waste a couple minutes while taking a shit. I quit when I began to play too much. I feel like Facebook, twitter, instagram, they're all just sites to waste time on. Which begs the question, why waste time on them at all? Why waste time?

I know not every moment can be spent fruitfully, but when something you do to waste a bit of time in between/during mundane tasks becomes something that now demands attention outside of that, then it's time to stop wasting time on it.

Huh, I use zero of those websites, and haven't for something like 15 years. And as it turns out, I see very little hate speech. I wonder if those two things are related...

Ounce of prevention worth a pound of not being subjected to an endless stream of racist hate-filled trolls!

Yup. And it turns out, I still have contact w/ my friends and family that I actually care about, w/o the mental burden of a constant stream of nonsense from distant acquaintances.

Don't know how the question was phrased, but remember, many people find a comment that disagrees with them or presents a fact they don't like to be "hate".

I'm of the opinion that you should laugh at racists or people who you consider speak "hate" speech online. Someone calls you something, laugh at them. They're pathetic. Words don't hurt lmao. If they were a decent person, they would have never said anything like it. Block them, report them and move on. I have never understood why this is such a big issue and i get called slurs on a daily basis lmao

And that last 1/3rd person is the one actually spewing it.

And the other third is committing or just unaware of it. I encounter it several times a week and virtually no platform cares about most of it. Although I'm pleasantly surprised to almost never see it in my communities on Lemmy.

WhatsApp? Isn’t that just like, a messenger? Would think you’d want better friends if you’re encountering hate speech in your group chats haha

I experience hate speech any time i see teevee...

They hate working people and yet, nobody cover this hate speech 🤡

I feel like Instagram should be higher I see a lot of shit talk on there

This amount actually seems low.

If the survey is reflective of real world percentages. Women are close to half of all people. White men are 31% of the US population. Assuming some of them aren’t straight men or have disabilities, thats a pretty large possibilities of options that someone can fling hate at.

To be clear, straight white men can also experience hate. I don’t want to discredit them. It just seems to me that most of the hate is directed at other identity groups, so I’m using it to make a point.