Abusing Women in Politics: How Instagram is failing women
Instagram failed to act on 93% of reported abusive comments (including death/rape threats) targeting US women politicians.
Executive summary
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The Center for Countering Digital Hate collected roughly 560,000 comments on Instagram posts from ten female US politicians running for office in 2024 (five Republicans, five Democrats), used Google's Perspective API to flag toxic language, and then reported 1,000 of the most severe comments — including sexist, racist, and threatening content — to Instagram for review.
About one in 25 of the collected comments, more than 20,000 in total, were flagged as toxic; after Instagram had a week to review the 1,000 reported comments, 93% (926) remained on the platform with no enforcement action taken.
The report concludes that Instagram's moderation systems largely fail to act on reported abuse directed at women in politics, including death and rape threats, and argues this failure enables sustained online harassment that can discourage women's political participation; it calls on Instagram to enforce its existing policies and work with organizations specializing in gender-based violence.
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