The Internet has become a more hostile place amid lax regulations,
increased political division, and the rolling back of antidiscrimination laws.
A new report from the AntiDefamation League found that more than half,
more than half of all Americans adults as well as teens,
have experienced online harassment.
So each year, the ADL conducts an online Hate and Harassment report,
which is a survey they conduct of 2000 adults and 500 teenage respondents.
So let's get into what they found in this year's report.
From Mashable, the survey polled respondents on a variety of
abusive online behaviors, including being called offensive names, intentional
embarrassment, and forms of severe harassment, such as physical threats,
prolonged harassment, stalking, sexual harassment, doxxing and swatting.
In total,
more than half of American adults reported being harassed online in their lifetime,
the highest number reported in four years, increasing from 40% to 52%.
A third of adults reported being harassed within the past twelve months,
a 10% jump from 2022's numbers.
Now, the ADL also included ,in its report,
a graph to show the significant increase in online harassment over time.
You can see here how much it increased.
That's a huge increase just from last year to this year.
The study also examined what platforms have the highest reported harassment,
and it shouldn't surprise you at all that Facebook is topping the charts.
The only social media site that decreased was Snapchat, which has a lot to do
with the decrease in using Snapchat, and then the Telegram is explained by
the fact that they didn't account for Telegram when they asked them last year.
Now, hate towards marginalized groups continues to be a massive issue on social
media platforms,
with the trans community facing the highest level of online harassment.
And if you are a social media user, this number,
it's still a shocking number to hear.
But it won't surprise you to find out that 76% of trans respondents
reported that they were subject to online harassment during their lifetime,
with a similar percentage reporting that they were facing real life harassment.
Now, the ADL also included, in their report, a call to action for
both these social media companies where the harassment is happening, but also for
legislators.
From their report, they suggested to enforce hate and harassment policies
transparently, equitably, and at scale on social media platforms,
including limiting high profile user exceptions and
other loopholes that make policies less effective.
Adopt the ADL's recommended tools and
anti hate by design principles to support targets of harassment, and
mandate transparency reporting, outlaw doxing at a federal level, and
increased consumer protection efforts to disincentivize harmful business practices.
Now, honestly, Cenk, I think it's a little bit incidental that right before I was
producing the story today, I checked my Instagram for
the first time in like a million years and
I realized that someone has been commenting, do you want kids?
And will you have my babies on all of my Instagram pictures for, like,
the past year and I just never noticed?
I think harassment is something that all of us in this space are pretty familiar
with, and it can be really serious.
So, to see this increase is really shocking and horrifying.
>> Yeah, I think this is a giant problem for the whole country.
It's definitely left versus right in a lot of ways, but also bigger than that.
So, first of all, I just wanna say I'm actually shocked that
only 76% of transgender people have been harassed online.
I'm genuinely surprised that the other 24% weren't.
And I feel like, how could you go on social media and not get attacked?
Period.
Let alone if you're trans with all of the hate and
vitriol by the right wing put out 24/7, right?
And you could see the media affects people's minds, right?
It influences them.
That's the whole point.
And so, the more the right wing media kept talking about,
the trans people are the problem, the drag queens are the problem,
gay people are the problem, all these things.
All of a sudden, by the way, the numbers, polling numbers,
on gay marriage are going down for the first time.
So they'd been on a steady rise up, over 70% of Americans now think
the gay marriage should be legal, and all of a sudden, they started going backwards.
Because there's all this propaganda to hate people in the LGBTQ community.
And so, since we're involved in politics,
these are like stats on if you've ever been harassed.
Whereas there's no stat on, have you been harassed 10 million times, right?
[LAUGH] So that's why I can't believe that there are people in these
communities that are being attacked so harshly in the political realm,
that apparently have not been attacked in other realms.
I'm stunned by it.
So that 76% number is awful, and is still, lower than I expected.
And so now to the to the bigger trend, as a country,
we're literally driving each other crazy.
We're just nonstop attacking each other, anonymity and platforms like
Twitter is a disaster, coz it allows you to basically hide behind a mask.
And anytime you hide behind a mask, you're gonna do terrible things.
And so, I don't know how this stops.
Because all anybody's doing is attacking one another,
criticizing one another, shaming one another.
The right does it, honestly, the left does it.
Non political factors do it.
And guys, the human mind is not set up to process this much shame,
this much psychological attacks.
It's one thing when we're in the fight, right?
All of us here are in the arena, so we're used to it.
And I've literally had it happen millions of times to me, so
it bounces right off of me.
But if you're an average person and you're not used to it, this will mess you up.
And we're doing it to each other at a grand scale.
>> Yeah, listen, I would say,Cenk,
probably the 24% of those who have not been harassed or
didn't report that they were harassed may not be out, right?
Folk might not know that they're trans, and
I would say if that was part of the survey and that was released,
I bet you would see that a high number of the folk that have not been directly
harassed probably are not out, or folk don't know that they're trans.
We live in a disgusting climate time moment right now.
To even call ourselves human is unbelievable.
I see the lack of humanity in any post.
People, kids getting shot on the Internet, and the comment sections are nuts.
People stating how they feel about something, the comment sections are nuts.
So I am completely baffled at why we can't get policing online in check.
Partly because you have owners like Elon Musk who trivialize what it means to be
harassed, and now making words like cisgender a hate term on Twitter is
absolutely disgusting and it trivializes all the harm.
Coz what people forget is, what happens online has an effect
of people's life and psychological being offline.
And that is a health risk.
And that in itself is enough for us to do something.
And we know what happens to young women in general, but
specifically young women of color online, and that the harassment is unmatched, man.
>> Yeah, I think you make an excellent point, Mondale,
that it's just existing that sets them off.
Look at Dylan Mulvaney, who did one brand deal, one video of her drinking Bud Light,
and conservatives have been on a multi month campaign of harassment and
death threats against her, and it's an absolute nightmare.