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Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted a video to Facebook in January 2025 announcing dramatic changes to the company’s content moderation policies. In the clip, the 40-year-old executive shared his commitment to restoring free expression and to making sure that “people can share their beliefs and experiences” on Meta platforms. In reality, our research has shown that these policy changes have resulted in a dramatic increase of antisemitism and extremism on Meta’s…
This report analyzes whether deplatforming websites—removing infrastructure services they need to operate, such as payment processing—can reduce the spread and reach of extremism and hate online.
Ninety-seven million Americans play online multiplayer games. While virtually all players surveyed in ADL’s third annual report on experiences1 in online games appreciated the social connectivity of gaming, an alarmingly large majority continue to encounter a firehose of hate and harassment. ADL’s survey explores the social interactions, experiences, attitudes, and behaviors of online multiplayer gamers nationwide. This year’s survey again asked about the experiences of a…
Video games have been popular in the United States for at least three decades, but the lockdowns and quarantines brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic kicked their growth as vital social spaces into overdrive.1 [i] Over 200 million people, 64 percent of American adults, regularly play video games- which include both online and offline games.[ii] A $159 billion industry, annual revenue from video games increased 9.3 percent this year, whereas revenue reported by traditional media such as movies…
By
Mark Kumleben and Samuel Woolley
Propaganda Research Team
Center for Media Engagement
University of Texas at Austin
Maggie Engler
Global Disinformation Index Much of online speech today occurs on social media platforms like Facebook where a few companies have attained an outsized influence on what is permitted discussion on the internet. The rules and enforcement of the rules around speech on social platforms have far-reaching societal implications -- they can determine…
Executive Summary
This report explores the social interactions and experiences of video game players across America and details their attitudes and behaviors in a rapidly growing social space. Globally, video games are a $152 billion industry. Fifty-three percent of the total population of the US and 64 percent of the online population of the US plays video games.1 Video games have functioned as social platforms over the past three decades, with players around the world interacting with…
The second in a series of reports co-authored by the Network Contagion Research Institute and ADL’s Center on Extremism New analysis of online behavior suggests similar ideological motivations and radicalization methods when comparing the perpetrators of the Pittsburgh and Christchurch massacres. Both killers announced in their preferred internet forums that they were about to commit violence and seemed to identify their fellow forum participants as community members who might…
New York, NY, July 21, 2025 … The ADL (Anti-Defamation League) Center for Technology and Society (CTS) and JLens, an ADL affiliate, announced today that Electronic Arts (NASDAQ: EA) and Take-Two Interactive (NASDAQ: TTWO), two of the world’s most prominent video game publishers, have made significant strides in strengthening their community standards by adopting updated policies explicitly addressing extremism and terrorism. These changes follow a series of engagements with JLens…
Episode 4.5: “Create Just Worlds": Can We Break Extremism's Hold on Gaming?Video games are supposed to be fun and provide players with safe, supportive communities. Unfortunately and unsurprisingly, extremists are ruining gaming for everyone. On this month’s episode of extremely, Oren Segal and Jessica Reaves talk to Mariana Olaizola Rosenblat, Policy Advisor on technology and law at the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights. Rosenblat studies the societal impact of…
New York, NY, November 14, 2024, … More than 1.8 million unique pieces of extremist or hateful content, including explicitly antisemitic, neo-Nazi and Islamist terrorist material, were identified on Steam, the world’s largest and most popular online gaming marketplace, new research from ADL (Anti-Defamation League) finds. In an unprecedented platform-wide capture of all publicly available profiles, groups and comments (as of July 2024), the ADL Center on Extremism (COE)…
ADL and TTP examines whether four major social media platforms are potentially profiting from ad placements alongside searches for hate groups and extremists.
Whether it is about a global pandemic, the 2020 presidential election, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, or the latest mass shooting, lies continue to thrive on social media platforms. According to a 2021 poll by the Pew Research Center, nearly half of Americans get their news from social media. While many people feel confident in their media literacy, YouGov found that only 4% of those surveyed could correctly distinguish false news stories from true ones.
In order to assess platforms…
In the wake of the horrific racist massacre in Buffalo, NY, Stop Hate for Profit is calling on mainstream social media platforms Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Twitch, Discord, and Reddit to immediately stop the spread of hateful white supremacist rhetoric that has incited acts of violence by permanently banning repeat perpetrators like Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham and others from their platforms and enforcing their own hate speech policies with regard to the Great Replacement theory and white supremacy. This article describes the forms that the Great Replacement Theory takes on these platforms and the platform policies they are violating.
Right-wing extremists cheered the announcement; they believe Musk will usher in a new era on the social media platform, free from “left-wing” censorship.
December 01, 2021 UPDATE: As of December 9, 2021, Facebook has removed all nine posts reported on the platform in conjunction with our research.
October 2021 marked one year since Facebook banned Holocaust denial from its platform and officially classified Holocaust denial as hate speech instead of misinformation. On the first anniversary of this policy’s enactment on Facebook properties, analysts in ADL’s Center on Extremism (COE) sought to determine whether the…
September 27, 2021 The recent blockbuster series of five articles from The Wall Street Journal exposing Facebook’s complicity in spreading toxic content underscores that it is far past time to recognize the harm caused by Facebook. Yet the company and other social media platforms continue to enjoy free rein despite playing outsized and destabilizing roles in determining what content is served up to billions of individuals worldwide.
The “Facebook Files” were based on…
August 25, 2021 In a letter to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, ADL raised concern about a gap in Twitter’s enforcement of its stated policies toward accounts linked to U.S.-designated terrorist groups. August 24, 2021
Jack Dorsey
Chief Executive Officer
Twitter
355 Market Street, Suite 900
San Francisco, CA 94103
Dear Mr. Dorsey,
I write to you today to raise concern about a gap in Twitter’s enforcement of its stated policies toward accounts linked to U.S…
May 07, 2021 THE WEEK’S BIG 3
Four months after his ouster from Facebook and Instagram, the suspension of former president Donald Trump was upheld by the Facebook Oversight Board. A former leader in a violent neo-Nazi group was sentenced Tuesday to 41 months in prison for harassing journalists who reported on his activities and others. Police arrested a 29-year-old man on hate crime charges in connection with the vandalization of several Bronx synagogues, which included the…
March 19, 2021 By David Andrew Weinberg
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is the Supreme Leader of Iran and an active presence on various social media platforms in multiple languages. And although he uses these accounts to spread hatred, violence, and dangerous disinformation – let alone his calls to destroy the State of Israel – these platforms allow him to keep doing so in seeming violation of their own policies.
This is in purported deference to his status as a political…