There has been a huge shift in focus for the UK’s Counter Terrorism Unit, focusing more heavily on whether hateful and extreme content online breaches anti-terror legislation.
Since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7 and following the ongoing conflict, the team has received more than 2,700 referrals from the public.
The UK Counter Terror team has seen a spike in hate that is leaving young people in the UK increasingly exposed to radicalisation by algorithm.
Counter Terror Policing Boss, Matt Jukes, fears there is a failure by social media companies to deal with the “overall climate” of hate, created by these algorithms.
Matt Jukes, told the BBC: “The people who in the past needed to seek this material out are getting it pushed to them. [Before] you had to go to a place or sites and forums and now material which certainly might meet a definition of hateful extremism is being driven to them.”
Algorithms promote new user content to a user based on posts they engage with.
The UK’s Counter Terrorism Internet Referral Unit is looking for terrorism-related content that could lead to violence online or risk radicalising other people into terror ideologies.
In the news outlet’s investigation, an officer in the department told the BBC: “The platforms people are using are X, Instagram and TikTok. A lot of the posts are text-based. Posts are often reckless, reactive and emotional – made by youngsters very comfortable using these social media sites.”
The team says unsuspecting people are becoming “swept up” in sharing “naked antisemitism”.
BBC Disinformation and Social Media correspondent, Marianna Spring, writes how she has spotted both antisemitic abuse and Islamophobic posts on social media, along with a general rise in hate on social media.
The officers say that TikTok, X and Meta, which owns Instagram and Facebook, have been cooperative and quick to remove the most extreme content they flag. However, they say it’s been trickier with some posts, where it’s unclear whether they are in breach of the social media sites’ guidelines.
Social media platform, TikTok, has stated how it stands firmly against hate speech and continues to “invest in new ways to diversify recommendations and interrupt repetitive patterns”.
The biggest question remains over how to deal with algorithms that stand accused of effectively pushing people toward hate.
