More than 4m antisemitic tweets sent in one year, report finds

More than 4m antisemitic messages were shared on Twitter in the span of a single year, according to a leading Jewish civil rights organisation.

A new study from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) analysed the prevalence of anti-Jewish sentiment on the popular social media site. Using a complex coding system, the researchers discovered that users had shared at least 4.2m anti-Semitic tweets or retweets between 29 January 2017 and 28 January 2018.

The average was more than 80,000 such tweets per week.

“This new data shows that even with the steps Twitter has taken to remove hate speech and to deal with those accounts disseminating it, users are still spreading a shocking amount of anti-Semitism and using Twitter as a megaphone to harass and intimidate Jews,” said ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt in a statement.

The ADL researchers labelled tweets as antisemitic if they contained common Jewish stereotypes; praise for anti-Semitic personalities; or derogatory words, codes, or symbols for Jewish people.

The number of these tweets varied significantly per week, from a low of 36,800 in the last week of July 2017 to a high of 181,700 in the first week of December 2017.

This variation was often driven by the week's news, the researchers said. After multiple women made accusations of sexual assault against film producer Harvey Weinstein, for example, thousands of Twitter users jumped at the chance to decry Jewish sexual perversion and control of the media. Mr Weinstein has denied all allegations of sexual assault.

Comments by President Donald Trump and members of his administration also had an effect on the number of anti-Semitic tweets. The highest number of such tweets, for instance, was recorded in the same week Mr Trump recognised Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

In another example. the number of tweets denying the Holocaust skyrocketed after former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer falsely claimed Adolf Hitler did not use poisonous gas on his enemies. Mr Spicer later apologised for the comments, calling them “inappropriate and insensitive”.

Twitter has previously come under fire for the amount of anti-Semitic, racist, and misogynistic speech allowed on its platform. The company only recently removed the “verified” symbol from noted white supremacists like Richard Spencer and Jason Kessler.

In a statement to the ADL, Twitter noted that is had recently made several changes to how it handles hate speech, including making affiliation with violent extremist groups a violation of its terms of service, and labelling hateful imagery as “sensitive content”.

“In the last 16 months, Twitter has made more than 30 individual changes to its product, policies, and operations, all with the goal of making Twitter safer, and improving information quality,” the company said.