social media

Our columnist reflects on five issues for the wider internet environment raised by Elon Musk’s planned acquisition of Twitter, including for human rights, freedom of expression and corporate accountability.

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.

This report addresses the role of social media in the production and dissemination of hate speech and anti-rights discourse in Brazil. The researchers analysed the impact of this hostile climate on feminists, LGBTIQ people and their allies, as well as their individual and collective responses.

APC and other organisations believe the draft regulations are inconsistent with the international human rights framework, imperil people’s freedom of expression and right to privacy, and could put journalists, dissidents, activists and vulnerable communities, in particular, at greater risk.

In 2020, Facebook (now Meta) commissioned the law firm Foley Hoag to conduct a Human Rights Impact Assessment (HRIA) to evaluate its role in spreading hate speech and incitement to violence on its services in India. A year and a half later, the HRIA has not yet been released.

The seventh annual report “Hashtag Palestine” illuminates the digital rights violations of Palestinians and pro-Palestinian advocates online, at the hands of the three authorities as well as different social media companies in relation to the escalations and developments on the ground.

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.

Facebook-Meta's metaverse might be less Toy Story and more like The Matrix. Either way, here are five reasons we need to be cautious about the ethics of such virtual visions.