Yesterday Amnesty International launched an urgent research campaign into the rise in hate speech Yesterday the UN High Comissioner urged Britain to urgently stop hate crimes
People need to call it out when they see hate speech on mn. There has been plenty recently. It can take courage when so many supporters then pile on though, but you don't need to get into an argument. A simple statement rejecting what they say, without quoting them, is enough. Just simply not saying anything then waiting several hours for mn to delete it adds power to their voice. People always need to report things to mn.
I am concerned that mn are not dealing with things quickly enough at the moment. They must be swamped with reports. I think that an option to report for hate speech should be an explicit available reason and those reports should be red flagged as urgent. The more hate speech that is seen, the more that it tacitly gives others the go ahead to say the same.
I've seen examples of a post being deleted, but the poster not being banned - despite them having said something that is so irrefutably xenophobic, that nobody could interpret it otherwise - and this concerns me. All that teaches them to do is to learn to moderate their language, so that they can get their messages across more subtly. This allows an insiduous tolerance of hate speech to creep across the boards.
It is important to allow freedom of discussion. It is wrong to allow xenophobia, racism and hate to proliferate. It's a difficult one to reconcile, but the balance needs to shift.
MN you could also help by cooperating with amnesty international in recording and reporting incidents to them.