Facebook’s Metaverse
One incident of abuse and harassment every 7 minutes
VR Chat—the most reviewed social app in Facebook’s VR Metaverse—is rife with abuse, harassment, racism and pornographic content.
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Research + Policy
Here you will find all of CCDH's research papers and investigations into online hate and misinformation. As well as our policy ideas about how we can tackle the systems and bad actors who spread hate and misinformation.
Testimony before the U.S. Congress
Energy and Commerce Committee on 'Legislation to Build a Safer Internet'
"Keeping people agitated, angered, emotional, enthralled and addicted to their ad-profit-pumping platforms yields enormous profits for social media companies." - Imran Ahmed, CEO Center for Countering Digital Hate
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The Toxic Ten
The Toxic Ten How 10 fringe publishers fuel 69% of digital climate change denial
The science is undeniable - human activity is warming our planet at an ever-accelerating rate and leading to catastrophic climate change. Yet, ten publishers - The Toxic Ten - are spreading baseless, unscientific climate denial on their own websites and across social media. They are responsible for 69% of all interactions with climate denial content on Facebook. It's a climate denial propaganda machine funded in part by Google via ad revenue, and spread across the world via social media, in particular Facebook, who allow them to pay to promote their denial. We are calling on Facebook and Google to stop promoting and funding climate denial, start labelling it as misinformation, and stop giving the advantages of their enormous platforms to lies and misinformation.
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Testimony before the California State Senate
Our CEO Imran Ahmed speaks Judiciary Committee on the 'State of Social Media Regulation - Misinformation, Exploitation, Harassment and Radicalization.
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Endangering Women for Profit
Facebook and Google sell ad space for dangerous medical misinformation
Facebook and Google are selling ad space promoting so-called abortion "reversal" - a dangerous and unproven procedure. The only clinical trial for so-called abortion “reversals” was abandoned after some participants were hospitalized with “severe hemorrhaging”. Yet, Facebook and Google are selling ads for profit promoting this procedure, in some cases to minors as young as 13 years old
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UK Parliament & the Online Safety Bill
CCDH delivers testimony before the UK Parliament
A handful of companies run by a small elite dominate the Internet economy. They own the platforms and technology on which 4.5 billion people share information, form and maintain relationships and transact business. The communities on these online platforms, the behaviours and beliefs, the values emerging from those spaces increasingly touch every aspect of offline society too.
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Failure to Protect
Social media companies are failing to act on antisemitism
Our latest report on anti-Jewish hatred shows they fail to enforce their own community guidelines against antisemitic content. Our researchers reported hundreds of racist anti-Jewish posts to social media firms using their user reporting tools. 84% were not acted upon. Tech companies are consciously giving a free pass to anti-Jewish hatred and the increasing threat to the Jewish community. Social media companies must do better. Platforms must support, hire and train moderators to remove this hate and those platforms must be held accountable if they fail to remove this hate.
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Euro ’21 Final, racism and Instagram
Instagram fails to remove 94% of accounts targeting footballers with vile racist abuse
New research conducted by the Center for Countering Digital Hate shows that Instagram failed to act on their promise to ban users who use racist abuse against footballers, even when posts were reported to their moderation teams using the platform’s own reporting tools.
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Gateway Pundit generated up to $1.5 million from election misinformation
Gateway Pundit, a misinformation site instrumental in spreading misinformation about a “stolen” election, generated up to $1.5 million in Google Ad revenue according to a new analysis from the Center for Countering Digital Hate based on figures published by Google.
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Pandemic Profiteers
The business of anti-vaxx
Our report on the pandemic profiteers; the dozen leading anti-vaxxers who have enriched themselves by spreading misinformation. The Anti-Vaxx industry boasts annual revenues of at least $36 million and is worth up to $1.1 billion to Big Tech with 62 million followers across their platforms. Through government PPP loans, affiliate marketing schemes and social media empires, these anti-vaxx businesses have been able to generate profits by spreading misinformation. ACT by signing our petition demanding big tech companies remove anti-vaxx profiteers from their platforms.
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The Disinformation Dozen: The Sequel
How Big Tech is failing to act on leading anti‑vaxxers despite bipartisan calls from Congress
Appearing before Congress in March, tech CEOs promised to act on twelve anti-vaxxers who are responsible for almost two-thirds of anti-vaccine content circulating on social media. One month on, our report shows that Big Tech has failed to act, allowing the spread of vaccine disinformation that has been viewed up to 29 million times.
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The Disinformation Dozen
Why platforms must act on twelve leading online anti-vaxxers
Just twelve anti-vaxxers are responsible for almost two-thirds of anti‑vaccine content circulating on social media platforms. This new analysis of content posted or shared to social media over 812,000 times between February and March uncovers how a tiny group of determined anti-vaxxers is responsible for a tidal wave of disinformation—and shows how platforms can fix it by enforcing their standards.
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