Instagram failed to act on 93% of abusive comments aimed at female politicians, study says
Women in politics
Instagram failed to remove 93% of abusive comments directed at female politicians out of 1,000 examples flagged to the app for most likely violating its rules, according to a report Wednesday from the nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate.
The center said it collected the abusive comments this summer from the Instagram accounts of 10 female officeholders — five Republicans and five Democrats. It said it reported the comments through the app and then checked back a week later to find the vast majority of them still online.
Many of the abusive replies Instagram left up were sexually degrading or included violent threats likely to be in violation of Instagram’s community guidelines, according to the center. Some comments included explicit language about rape, injury or death in connection with the female politicians, and Instagram left them up, the center said.
It’s not clear in the 93% of examples whether Instagram took action short of removal, for example by ranking abusive comments lower down in discussions so fewer people see them.
Meta, Instagram’s parent company, said it hadn’t seen the report before its release but would review the examples collected by the center. It said it would remove anything that violates the rules but added that not all offensive comments are violations.
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