Hateful ‘burn all gays’ ads approved for publication on Facebook, TikTok and Youtube

Facebook accepted eight out of 10 submitted ads while Youtube and Tiktok accepted all 10 of the extremely violent and offensive ads.

Adverts promoting extreme violence against the LGBTQI+ community, containing messages like “burn all gays”, were approved for publication by Facebook, Tiktok, and Youtube.

The Government must now hold big tech firms to account, Global Witness, the social and environmental justice organisation which conducted the investigation, said.

Ten ads were submitted to each of the three platforms containing vicious and hateful language, including some based on real life examples reported by LGBTQ+ groups in Ireland.

They included comparing LGBTQ+ people to “paedophiles”, a call to “burn all gays” and for the “trans lobby” to be “killed”.

Facebook accepted eight out of 10 submitted ads while Youtube and Tiktok accepted all 10 of the extremely violent and offensive ads.

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None of the ads were published as Global Witness removed their request for publication before the publication date.

Facebook and Google’s European headquarters are based in Ireland and fall under the jurisdiction of the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC).

“We know all too well that when hate is allowed to spread online, it doesn’t take long to spill over into the real world,” Global Witness’s Digital Threats Campaign Leader, Naomi Hirst, said.

“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.

“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.” 

"The Irish Government is in the process of appointing two new commissioners; it is critical that the candidates have both the mandate to reform the Commission and the integrity to hold Big Tech to account, Global Witness said.

“In appointing two new Data Protection Commissioners Ireland has an opportunity to put LGBTQ+ people, their safety, dignity, and rights above Silicon Valley profits — it must take it,” Ms Hirst said.

Responding to the Global Witness investigation, a Meta spokesperson said: “Hate speech has no place on our platforms, and 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.

“We continue to improve how we detect violating ads and behaviour and make changes based on trends in the ads ecosystem.” 

Facebook also said that Global Witness’s sample was small and it misunderstood how its policies, systems and guardrails work.

A spokesperson for Tiktok said: “Hate has no place on Tiktok. Our advertising policies, alongside our Community Guidelines, 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. We regularly review and improve our enforcement strategies.” 

Google was shown the results of the investigation on YouTube but did not respond to a request for comment.