ADL: 4.2 million anti-Semitic tweets in 2017

WASHINGTON — Twitter users lashed out with an estimated 4.2 million English-language anti-Semitic tweets in 2017, the Anti-Defamation League says, adding fresh concerns that digital platforms have become a haven for expressions of Jew-hatred.

In a report by the ADL’s Center for Extremism, researchers found that 4.2 million tweets were sent from roughly three million Twitter handles from January 2017 to January 2018. The average number of anti-Semitic tweets per week was 81,400.

The report does not search for non-textual expressions of anti-Semitism, like anti-Jewish memes or videos, but in many cases, they became part of the study when they were posted in conjunction with anti-Semitic text.The ADL’s study on the subject is its second in recent years, and notes a dramatic increase in anti-Semitic language.

The Jewish civil rights group last released a similar examination in October 2016, which found a total of 2.6 million tweets containing language posted between August 2015 and July 2016.

“This new data shows that even with the steps Twitter has taken to remove hate speech and to deal with those accounts disseminating it, users are still spreading a shocking amount of anti-Semitism and using Twitter as a megaphone to harass and intimidate Jews,” says the group’s CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt.

— Eric Cortellessa