A recent report by the Center for the Study of Organized Hate (CSOH) on the role of social media platforms in the dissemination and amplification of verified in-person hate speech events in India in 2024 found that social media platforms - Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, YouTube, Telegram, and X (formerly Twitter) - were key instruments in enabling, amplifying, and mainstreaming hate speech and extremist ideologies in India and globally.
Shortly after a report by CSOH's India Hate Lab (IHL) project was released, Meta removed two Facebook groups and three Instagram accounts linked to BJP MLA T Raja Singh. The IHL report found 32 hate speeches by Singh, with 22 inciting violence, prompting Meta's latest crackdown. Singh had been banned from Meta’s platforms in 2020 under its policy on “dangerous individuals and organizations,” but he and his supporters found ways to go around the ban, continuing to share his speeches and event details through new groups and pages.
This followed when on January 7, 2025, Meta had announced many changes to its existing policies, including changes to fact-checking and its enforcement of policies on harmful content. The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) analyzed these changes and found: content enforcement could be halted in 97% of key areas including hate speech, bullying and harassment, and violence or incitement of violence; changes to hate speech policy would be implemented worldwide and immediately; other major policy changes currently impacting only users in the U.S., would eventually be expanded beyond the U.S.; and Meta has failed to adequately explain to its users why or how the changes will be implemented across their platforms.
In India, the CSOH report found that social media platforms were extensively utilized to articulate and spread Hindu nationalist ideology and anti-minority rhetoric. Of the 1,165 in-person hate speech events targeting Muslim and Christian minorities in 2024, 995 videos were traced back to their original sources on social media, where they were first uploaded/streamed. Facebook and YouTube were the major platforms for dissemination, with Facebook accounting for 495 hate speech videos, while 211 videos were exclusively shared on YouTube. 266 anti-minority hate speeches delivered by senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders - primarily during the April-June 2024 general elections - were simultaneously live streamed across YouTube, Facebook, and X through the official accounts of the party and the leaders.
Given the logic of virality, social media platforms facilitate the rapid and widespread circulation of hateful content while also elevating the most extreme instances of hate speech through algorithmic amplification. Despite their own community standards prohibiting hate speech, social media platforms failed to enforce their guidelines, allowing violative content to spread unchecked in the Indian context in 2024.
In short, hate speech content remains available even after removal due to re-uploading, repackaging into shorter clips, and dissemination across multiple platforms.
Read the February 10, 2025 CSOH report.
