To mark the UN designated International Day for Countering Hate Speech, respond to rising antisemitism and anti-Muslim hate since October 2023, and help address the breakdown in social cohesion, a group of civil society organisations created the “United Against Hate” campaign.
The campaign invites elected representatives and officials from a number of countries to come together in reporting both anti-Muslim hate and antisemitism on three social media platforms: Instagram, X (Twitter), and YouTube. Each person reported both antisemitism and anti-Muslim hate on each of the platfroms. Each person was given a different set of content to report, each contributing their part to the overall effort.
The campaign
- Raised awareness of online hate and its nature by showing the elected representatives and officials current examples of hate that is online today.
- Strengthened social cohesion addressing both antisemitism and anti-Muslim hate online. The normalisation of hate online is a shared problem to address together.
- Shone sunlight on the problem, making public the poor response rates by the platforms after the content was reported.
The coordinators messages
“At a time when online hate is rising due to increased tension in the Middle East this campaign highlights the urgent need for more to be done. It empowers elected representatives and officials with both data and experiences to guide their future work in addressing this problem.”United Against Hate” must be more than a campaign, we must create a new network of people, ready to work together to tackle online hate.” – Eliyahou Roth, CEO of the Brussels based Online Hate Task Force
“In 2025 we’re seeing efforts to tackle online hate going backwards. Improvements to AI are being abused to generate more engaging hate speech. This rapidly created synthetic content is often disposable and makes anti-hate technologies, like digital fingerprinting, largely obsolete. Rather than rising to the technical challenges, we see companies pulling back, reducing trust and safety efforts, and seeking growth over safety. Today, the International Day for Countering Hate Speech, is a day to take notice of this harm and the threat it poses to social cohesion and public safety. It is a day to renew our commitments to change that.” – Dr Andre Oboler, CEO of the Australian based Online Hate Prevention Institute