Adverts submitted to Facebook, TikTok and YouTube containing violent hate speech against the LGBTQ+ community in Ireland were almost all approved for publication by the platforms, according to a new investigation by NGO Global Witness.
The group submitted ten ads to each of the three platforms but withdrew them before they could be published.
Global Witness said that both YouTube and TikTok approved for publication every single one of the ten ads, whilst Facebook rejected two.
"Ireland prides itself on its open and inclusive attitudes but it urgently needs to get a grip on the dark underbelly of hatred that flourishes online," said Naomi Hirst, Digital Threats Campaign Leader at Global Witness.
"With big tech firms like Facebook and Google basing their European HQs in Dublin, Ireland has a unique responsibility to hold platforms that are failing to stem the spread of hate accountable," Ms Hirst said.
In response to the Global Witness investigation, a spokesperson for Meta, Facebook's parent company, said that hate speech has no place on its platforms and that these types of ads should not be approved.
"That said, these ads never went live, and our ads review process has several layers of analysis and detection, both before and after an ad goes live," Meta said.
"We continue to improve how we detect violating ads and behaviour and make changes based on trends in the ads ecosystem," the spokesperson added.
A spokesperson for TikTok told Global Witness that hate has no place on its platform and that its policies prohibit ad content that contains hate speech or hateful behaviour.
"Ad content passes through multiple levels of verification before receiving approval, and we remove violative content," TikTok said.
"We regularly review and improve our enforcement strategies," the spokesperson added.
Global Witness said it showed Google the results of its investigation in relation to YouTube but that the company did not respond to a request for comment.
