A new study by the Israeli Internet Association - published in Israel Hayom - reveals the dimensions of violent discourse on social media.
According to the study, about one in five Israelis (22 percent) has experienced stalking or harassment on social media in the past year, while a similar segment (18 percent) was exposed to curses and insults directed against them online during the same period.
Likewise, about one in ten Israelis (9 percent) has been a victim of embarrassing photos of themselves being distributed without their permission.
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According to the study, Facebook is the most problematic social network - no less than 82 percent of Israelis who were exposed to offensive discourse cited the social network as the platform where the harm occurred.
Following Facebook by a wide margin are WhatsApp (26 percent), Instagram (24 percent), Twitter (17 percent), TikTok (16 percent), YouTube (9 percent) and Telegram (9 percent).
The study also shows that over half of respondents (52 percent) claimed that the discourse in the online space is "violent to a large extent or to a very large extent"; more than a quarter (27 percent) claimed that the discourse is "moderately violent"; while only 15 percent believe that the discourse is not violent at all.
Women experience the online space as more violent: 58 percent of those surveyed admitted that it is violent "to a great extent or to a very great extent.".
According to Israelis, the social groups most attacked online are Arab society and Haredi society (33 percent combined), women and girls (27.5 percent), and the LGBT community (23.7 percent).
The groups of immigrants from Russia and the CIS, the Ethiopian community, refugees, and migrant workers experience about 6.5 "assault rates" each.
Other interesting data: The majority of the public (55 percent) does not trust platforms to remove violent content, and therefore refrains from reporting it. 40 percent said they rarely use the reporting mechanisms on social media to report abusive content and accounts, and 38 percent said they do not use these mechanisms at all.
In other words, only about 22 percent of the public regularly uses the reporting mechanisms.
