Misinformation and hate speech already rampant on Threads: research

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Anything goes on Threads — including unfettered misinformation and hate speech. Both are rampant on Meta Platforms Inc.’s META, -1.45% new Twitter-like app, which debuted last week and has been downloaded by more than 100 million people. Threads is overflowing with misinformation on the 2020 election, COVID-19 and vaccines, and gender-affirming care, according to new research from Media Matters. The app is an apparent victim of squishy content-moderation policies. Meta launched Threads without the fact-checking program that aims to prevent the spread of misinformation on Facebook and Instagram, seemingly abandoning the anti-hate-speech policies that govern its other platforms, Media Matters said. “A rush of extremist voices came to Threads — some of the same people on Twitter who drove so many disgruntled Twitter users to Threads,” Kayla Gogarty, research director at Media Matters, said in an interview. Many of those figures, including Nazi sympathizers, anti-gay extremists and white supremacists, flocked to Threads last week and immediately began testing the platform’s content-moderation limits. Gogarty said Meta has “seemingly dropped any pretense of enforcing Instagram’s hate-speech policy that prohibits the anti-LGBTQ ‘groomer’ slur.” This week, civil rights, online-justice and pro-democracy organizations sent a letter to Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg and other executives imploring the company to “develop and share robust and equitable community trust, safety, and transparency policies specific to the use of Threads.” Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment.