Social media giants Meta and X approved ads targeting users in Germany with violent anti-Muslim and anti-Jew hate speech in the run-up to the country’s federal elections, according to new research from Eko, a corporate responsibility nonprofit campaign group.
The group’s researchers tested whether the two platforms’ ad review systems would approve or reject submissions for ads containing hateful and violent messaging targeting minorities ahead of an election where immigration has taken center stage in mainstream political discourse — including ads containing anti-Muslim slurs; calls for immigrants to be imprisoned in concentration camps or to be gassed; and AI-generated imagery of mosques and synagogues being burnt.
Most of the test ads were approved within hours of being submitted for review in mid-February. Germany’s federal elections are set to take place on Sunday, February 23.
Hate speech ads scheduled
Eko said X approved all 10 of the hate speech ads its researchers submitted just days before the federal election is due to take place, while Meta approved half (five ads) for running on Facebook (and potentially also Instagram) — though it rejected the other five.
The reason Meta provided for the five rejections indicated the platform believed there could be risks of political or social sensitivity which might influence voting.
However, the five ads that Meta approved included violent hate speech likening Muslim refugees to a “virus,” “vermin,” or “rodents,” branding Muslim immigrants as “rapists,” and calling for them to be sterilized, burnt, or gassed. Meta also approved an ad calling for synagogues to be torched to “stop the globalist Jewish rat agenda.”
As a sidenote, Eko says none of the AI-generated imagery it used to illustrate the hate speech ads was labeled as artificially generated — yet half of the 10 ads were still approved by Meta, regardless of the company having a policy that requires disclosure of the use of AI ima …