A new study has found that Asian Americans and Black Americans faced a major rise in online hate in the Covid stricken past year.
Despite recent steps taken by the social media to address cyber bullying, serious incidents of online hate and harassment against Asian and Black Americans during COVID pandemic continue to happen.
According to a survey published on Wednesday by the Anti-Defamation League, Asian Americans faced the largest single increase in extreme online abuse and violence in 2020 relative to other races. Among them 17% experienced sexual harassment, stalking, violent assaults, swatting, doxing, or sustained harassment, up from 11% last year.
Most of them said the harassment was prompted by their race or ethnicity, blaming them for the coronavirus pandemic spread over the past year. Approximately, 21% of Asian-American respondents said they were harassed online.
Even there is a spike in real-world crime against the Asian American community. Last week six Asian women workers from massage parlors in Georgia was killed in a mass shooting and a 75-year-old Hong Kong man died after being robbed and assaulted by a man. Police claimed the man had a history of attacking elderly Asian people.
In 2020, Stop AAPI Hate, a non-profit group devoted to monitoring crimes against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, reported 3,800 hate-related events against Asian Americans.
The study also found an increase in hate speech directed towards other minority groups, such as African Americans and LGBTQ+. The hate crime against African American has increased to 59% this year from 42% last year. America’s anti-Black racism came at the forefront again as the protests against the killing of Black Americans, prompted by the deaths of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and others in 2020, increased.
LGBTQ+ respondents also reported higher rates of harassment with 64% faced online bullying due to their identities.
“It has become increasingly clear that on their own, technology companies are not effectively preventing hate and extremism from proliferating online,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, the chief executive officer of the Anti-Defamation League.
Victims of online hate reported that they experienced the most harassment on Facebook (75%), followed by Twitter (24%), Instagram (24%) and YouTube (21%).
The research arrives as leading tech executives, including those from Google, Facebook, and Twitter, prepare to appear before Congress to address the issue of increased hate speech and misinformation on their sites.
