hate speech
The Sri Lankan government has capitalised on the COVID-19 pandemic to further its authoritarian agenda, using digital technologies to reinforce a climate of fear and censorship.
Governments and technology companies profit politically and economically from the vitriol, violence and attention that hate speech attracts. So people, and especially women and LGBTIQ+ people, have evolved responses and ways of hacking hate, through various means and forms.
Through the #challengehateonline campaign around 18 June, APC aims to spark discussions on the impacts and consequences of online hate speech on vulnerable communities as well as highlight stories of resistance from across the global South.
This report captures the first results of a project aimed at creating generative processes and spaces for discussions in Bangladesh around free speech and hate speech and their implications which could continue beyond the scope and timeline of the project.
After the election of Jair Bolsonaro as president, Brazilian social media became an increasingly fertile ground for the exercise of public violence. This article focuses on two episodes that illustrate social media engagement with homophobic hate speech uttered by or attributed to Bolsonaro.
APC welcomes the Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief's focus on the use of hateful rhetoric in digital spaces to incite violence against religious minorities, which is of particular concern in India, where women especially are subjected to hate speech and threats online and offline.
This research report seeks to draw out the analytical category of "hated speech" by looking at experiences and observations of what it means to speak truth to power and receive hate as it is manifested through varying degrees of violence, across a variety of instances.
The ban on hijabs in classrooms and campuses, which has begun in Karnataka and threatens to spread to other states in India, is a hate crime. We unequivocally stand in solidarity with Muslim women, whether or not they wear hijabs, to be treated with respect and to enjoy the full gamut of rights.
This report presents insights into online caste-hate speech, combining qualitative accounts of the targets of such expression on social media platforms with an analysis of these platforms’ speech norms.
Recent revelations by a Facebook whistleblower about its decision to prioritise profit over user safety and human rights confirm concerns that civil society organisations have observed and raised over the years regarding Facebook’s operations and implementation of their community standards.

Association for Progressive Communications (APC) 2022
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