Racist comments targeting politicians tripled since Meta relaxed its rules
Racist comments targeting politicians tripled since Meta relaxed its rules
自 Meta 放宽规则以来，针对政客的种族主义评论增加了两倍
Last year, Meta radically overhauled the rules around what content it would allow on its platforms. The company claimed that its own efforts policing speech had gone too far and that it would relax the rules around what speech was allowed. “We have been over-enforcing our rules, limiting legitimate political debate and censoring too much trivial content and subjecting too many people to frustrating enforcement actions,” Joel Kaplan, Meta’s chief global affairs officer, wrote in a blog post at the time.
去年，Meta 对其平台允许发布的内容规则进行了彻底改革。该公司声称，其自身在监管言论方面的努力已经“矫枉过正”，因此将放宽对言论的限制。Meta 全球事务副总裁乔尔·卡普兰（Joel Kaplan）当时在一篇博文中写道：“我们一直在过度执行规则，限制了合法的政治辩论，审查了太多琐碎的内容，并让太多人遭受了令人沮丧的执法行动。”
Over a year later, new research from the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) shows the immediate impact of these changes. The researchers analyzed about 8 million Facebook comments and found that abusive and racist comments targeting both Republican and Democrat lawmakers tripled in the six months after the new rules were put in place. Some categories of abusive comments documented by the researchers saw even sharper rises, with violent threats and hate speech quadrupling during the same period.
一年多过去了，数字仇恨打击中心（CCDH）的最新研究显示了这些变化带来的直接影响。研究人员分析了约 800 万条 Facebook 评论，发现新规则实施后的六个月内，针对共和党和民主党议员的辱骂及种族主义评论增加了两倍。研究人员记录的某些类别的辱骂性评论增幅更为剧烈，其中暴力威胁和仇恨言论在同期内增加了三倍。
The report cites specific examples of gendered and racist abuse directed at lawmakers like US representatives Jasmine Crockett of Texas and Byron Donalds of Florida. These comments were not taken down by Meta. The CCDH researchers also found that threats against President Trump more than doubled in the six months after Meta overhauled its rules. Many of the comments, which included direct threats to his life, could have been classified as felony offenses, the researchers say.
该报告列举了针对德克萨斯州众议员贾斯敏·克罗克特（Jasmine Crockett）和佛罗里达州众议员拜伦·唐纳兹（Byron Donalds）等议员的性别歧视和种族主义辱骂的具体案例。这些评论并未被 Meta 删除。CCDH 的研究人员还发现，在 Meta 修改规则后的六个月内，针对特朗普总统的威胁增加了一倍多。研究人员表示，其中许多评论包含直接的生命威胁，本可被定性为重罪。
To assess the impact of these rule changes, CCDH’s researchers chose 100 members of the House of Representatives made up of the 50 Republicans and 50 Democrats with the most followers on Facebook. Then the researchers scraped nearly 8 million comments on Facebook posts made by those lawmakers in the six months before and after Meta’s policy changes. The researchers used an AI system trained to identify comments in the dataset that were likely to violate Meta’s current policies in three areas: violence and incitement, hateful conduct, or bullying and harassment.
为了评估这些规则变化的影响，CCDH 的研究人员选取了 100 名众议院议员，其中包括 Facebook 上粉丝最多的 50 名共和党人和 50 名民主党人。随后，研究人员抓取了这些议员在 Meta 政策变更前后六个月内 Facebook 帖子下的近 800 万条评论。研究人员使用了一个人工智能系统，旨在识别数据集中可能违反 Meta 当前政策的评论，涵盖三个领域：暴力与煽动、仇恨行为，以及欺凌与骚扰。
Comments that violated Meta’s policies around violent threats quadrupled, from 1,800 in the six months before the changes to 7,600 in the six months after. Hate speech comments also quadrupled, from 6,900 to 30,000. Comments that broke Meta’s rules on bullying and harassment doubled, from 15,700 to 39,900.
违反 Meta 暴力威胁政策的评论增加了三倍，从政策变更前六个月的 1,800 条增加到变更后六个月的 7,600 条。仇恨言论评论也增加了三倍，从 6,900 条增加到 30,000 条。违反 Meta 欺凌和骚扰规则的评论增加了一倍，从 15,700 条增加到 39,900 条。
“We regularly issue public reports tracking violating content on our platforms, and the prevalence of hateful conduct did not increase throughout 2025,” a Meta spokesperson tells WIRED, adding that the company could not address the report’s claims directly without seeing the research in its entirety. WIRED did provide a list of the abusive comments cited in the report, but Meta did not comment on these. Hours before the report was published, many of the examples were deleted from Facebook.
Meta 发言人告诉《连线》（WIRED）杂志：“我们定期发布公共报告，追踪我们平台上的违规内容，2025 年全年仇恨行为的普遍程度并未增加。”该发言人补充称，在未看到完整研究报告之前，公司无法直接回应报告中的指控。《连线》确实提供了报告中引用的辱骂性评论列表，但 Meta 并未对此发表评论。在报告发布前几小时，许多案例已从 Facebook 上被删除。
“When companies reduce oversight in areas like violence, hate, and harassment, it should not be any surprise to see those harms increase,” Senator John Curtis, a Republican from Utah and a member of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, said in a statement to CCDH.
犹他州共和党参议员、商务、科学和交通委员会成员约翰·柯蒂斯（John Curtis）在给 CCDH 的一份声明中表示：“当公司减少对暴力、仇恨和骚扰等领域的监管时，看到这些危害增加也就不足为奇了。”
The data collected by CCDH researchers is echoed in Meta’s own transparency reports from 2025, which show how the company cut its proactive content moderation enforcement by roughly half in the months following its policy changes. “The surge in abuse and the collapse in enforcement track one another almost exactly,” the report’s authors write.
CCDH 研究人员收集的数据与 Meta 2025 年的透明度报告相呼应，该报告显示，在政策变更后的几个月里，该公司将其主动内容审核的执行力度削减了约一半。报告作者写道：“滥用行为的激增与执法力度的崩溃几乎完全同步。”
While Meta claimed its decision to relax rules around abusive content was driven by free speech principles, experts say that extremist content like the comments covered in this report are the type of content that has been shown to be the most engaging on social media platforms. “Threats and abuse perform well, as do the responses to the threats and abuse,” says Nina Jankowicz, the CEO of the American Sunlight Project who briefly led the Disinformation Governance Board under President Joe Biden.
尽管 Meta 声称其放宽辱骂性内容规则的决定是出于言论自由原则，但专家指出，本报告中提到的这类极端内容已被证明是社交媒体平台上互动率最高的内容。曾短暂领导乔·拜登总统旗下“虚假信息治理委员会”的美国阳光项目（American Sunlight Project）首席执行官尼娜·扬科维奇（Nina Jankowicz）表示：“威胁和辱骂，以及对这些威胁和辱骂的回应，在平台上表现得非常‘活跃’。”
“They keep users scrolling and keep eyeballs on ads. By divesting from content moderation, platforms are amplifying abusive content, saving on the ‘expense’ of keeping their platform safe, and falling into political lockstep with an administration that claims content moderation is censorship.”
“它们让用户不断刷屏，并吸引眼球观看广告。通过削减内容审核投入，平台实际上是在放大辱骂性内容，节省了维护平台安全的‘成本’，并与那些声称内容审核即审查的政府保持政治步调一致。”
The rising threats against lawmakers have real-world implications. The Capitol Police cited increased threats to politicians in March when seeking a budget increase. Former US congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who was the lawmaker in the report who faced the most abusive comments, referenced threats to her life as one of the reasons she stepped away from public life.
针对议员的威胁升级已产生了现实影响。国会警察在 3 月份寻求增加预算时，就提到了针对政客的威胁有所增加。报告中面临辱骂评论最多的议员、前佐治亚州众议员玛乔丽·泰勒·格林（Marjorie Taylor Greene）曾提到，生命受到威胁是她退出公众生活的原因之一。
“We’ve seen a horrifying trend of political violence, from the latest attack on the president to the murder of Charlie Kirk to the assassination of Melissa Hortman and her husband,” Imran Ahmed, the CEO of Center for Countering Digital Hate, tells WIRED. “Lawmakers are canceling town halls; they’re moving them off online. Election officials are leaving the job. Representatives are saying in public the fear of being targeted shapes how they vote. I don’t see how publishing, amplifying, and failing to enforce your own rules against this kind of harassment, threats, and identity-based hate can in any way be portrayed as a moral act. I think it takes incredible levels of duplicity to claim that.”
数字仇恨打击中心首席执行官伊姆兰·艾哈迈德（Imran Ahmed）告诉《连线》：“我们目睹了政治暴力令人恐惧的趋势，从最近对总统的袭击，到查理·柯克（Charlie Kirk）的遇害，再到梅丽莎·霍特曼（Melissa Hortman）夫妇的遇刺。议员们正在取消市政厅会议，并将活动转移到线上。选举官员正在离职。众议员们公开表示，对成为目标的恐惧影响了他们的投票方式。我不明白，发布、放大并未能执行针对此类骚扰、威胁和基于身份的仇恨的规则，怎么能被描述为一种道德行为。我认为，声称这一点需要极高程度的虚伪。”