Maldita.es and Fad launch an app for adolescents and young people to learn to detect and combat hate speech

Social networks are here to stay. And more and more they are becoming a space for adolescents and young people to interact. However, taking advantage of anonymity or certain legal loopholes as parapets, the online space has also become a scene of discrimination and harassment. A phenomenon that 38% of young Spaniards claim to have detected .

So that they can identify hate speech and internalize the keys to combat it, Fad and Maldita.es – thanks to the support of Google.org – launch the app “No more haters. Break the chain of hate!” . The objective is to promote reflection and prevent manifestations of hatred and intolerance among adolescents and young people between 14 and 29 years old. That they can become active subjects in the search for solutions and in the fight against hatred; promoting processes that facilitate identifying hate speech, overcoming prejudices and stereotypes, promoting intercultural dialogue, and providing critical judgment tools for online interactions .

“No more haters. Break the chain of hate!” is a responsive web-app , in Spanish and English aimed at adolescents and young people between 14 and 29 years old. The web-app includes games for users to identify and react to hate situations and score points if they get it right. The games consist of guessing words related to hate, identifying misinformation and being protagonists of hate situations as a victim or witness, to find out how they react. A ranking of points and a hoax search engine are also included so that they can consult the misinformation that reaches them.

The web-app can be downloaded on the main platforms such as Google Play and App Store and can also be played from the web at https://play.nomorehaters.es/ It also includes the option to play in class mode and for that it has been designed a support teaching guide for teachers that includes teaching objectives, offline and online exercises and evaluation criteria. The teaching guide and all the information about the project can be consulted on the website: https://www.nomorehaters.es/

Hate speech on networks

Fad and Maldita.es – thanks to the support of Google.org – launched last October the project “No more haters. Break the chain of hate!” , an initiative to analyze and prevent hate speech on networks among Spanish adolescents and young people aged 14 to 29.

In addition to the app for young people, the project includes carrying out sociological research to understand the attitudes and positions of young people regarding hate speech on the Internet and an awareness campaign on networks for young people that will be presented in March.

The co-founder of Maldita.es, Clara Jiménez Cruz, has pointed out:

“Disinformation drives hate messages in a very dangerous way and has found social networks the ideal channel to reach the youngest people. These types of messages are contrary to a plural, diverse education based on the respect that we must achieve as a society. With this project we hope that young people and adolescents develop a critical spirit and know how to identify this type of content.»

For the general director of Fad, Beatriz Martín Padura :

“One of the big problems regarding hate speech is that many young people do not know how to identify it. They may not be aware that by sharing a meme that stigmatizes a group, for example, they are contributing to hate speech. It is important that we train them to identify and combat it because they live with these manifestations of hate every day.”

What the data says

In Spain, data from the Ministry of the Interior show that in recent years there has been an upward annual evolution in the number of known incidents of hate crimes, including online hate speech . In 2017, the number of known hate crime incidents stood at 1,419; This number grows by 12.6% to reach 1,598 in 2018 and in 2019 it reached 1,706 cases, with an increase of 6.8%.

This last year, the majority of incidents have an ideological origin (34.9%); followed by events linked to racism and xenophobia (30.2%), sexual orientation or gender identity (16.3%) . To a lesser extent, less than 4.5%, crimes of discrimination based on sex or gender occur, associated with religious beliefs, disability, due to illness, aporophobia, antigypsyism or antisemitism. Taking into account the type of crime, the majority is due to threats (20.5%).

On the other hand, in a study developed by the Reina Sofía Center on Adolescence and Youth of Fad , based on a survey of 1,400 young people between 14 and 24 years old, 34% claim to have suffered some type of abuse on the Internet or social networks (“ personal jokes that they do not like, acts of exclusion, insults, threats…) , 9.2% acknowledge that he or she was the person who has carried out this type of abuse, and a significant 38.1% indicate that they have seen, in the last year, “pages where people publish messages that attack certain individuals or groups.”