Hate Speech Against Politicians Surges Threefold Following Meta Policy Rollback

Researchers deployed an AI system trained to detect comments likely violating Meta’s current policies across three categories: violence and incitement, hateful conduct, and bullying and harassment.

Comments breaching violent threat policies quadrupled, rising from 1,800 in the six months preceding the changes to 7,600 in the six months following. Hate speech violations also quadrupled, climbing from 6,900 to 30,000. Content violating bullying and harassment rules doubled, increasing from 15,700 to 39,900.

“We regularly issue public reports tracking violating content on our platforms, and the prevalence of hateful conduct did not increase throughout 2025,” a Meta spokesperson told WIRED, adding the company could not address the report’s specific claims without reviewing the full research. WIRED provided a list of abusive comments cited in the report, but Meta declined to comment on them. Hours before publication, many of the cited examples were removed from Facebook.

“When companies reduce oversight in areas like violence, hate, and harassment, it should not be any surprise to see those harms increase,” Senator John Curtis, a Republican from Utah and member of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, stated to CCDH.

CCDH’s findings align with Meta’s own 2025 transparency reports, which show the company slashed proactive content moderation enforcement by roughly half in the months following its policy changes. “The surge in abuse and the collapse in enforcement track one another almost exactly,” the report’s authors write.

Source link