U.S. Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris speaks during a campaign event in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, U.
S., August 7, 2024. Erica Dischino | Reuters Instagram has failed to remove toxic comments directed at Vice President Kamala Harris and other leading female politicians from its app as the 2024 election nears, according to research from the Center for Countering Digital Hate.
The non-profit advocacy is analyzing large internet platforms to see if they're properly monitoring their sites for hate speech. The report on Wednesday was based on an analysis of 560,000 comments on Instagram posts from five Republican and five Democratic women politicians with high levels of engagement. The politicians the group tracked included Harris, who's now the Democratic nominee for president, Rep.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) as well as Republican House members Marjorie Taylor Greene from Georgia and Lauren Boebert from Colorado. Of the comments posted between Jan.
1 and June 7, the researchers identified over 20,000 that were deemed to be "toxic" by Google's Perspective AI content moderation tool. The researchers then conducted a manual analysis and discovered 1,000 comments that "clearly breached the terms of Instagram," said CCDH CEO Imran Ahmed during a media briefing on Tuesday. "Our recommendations can be summarized quite simply as Instagram must enforce its policies designed to protect women in public life," Ahmed said .