A report prepared by the research agency 40dB for the State Federation of Lesbians, Gays, Trans, Bisexuals, Intersex and more (FELGTBI) reveals that a significant part of the hate speech against this group on the social network X (formerly Twitter) comes from potentially fake accounts.
The study shows that “these are organized strategies to stigmatize and humiliate LGTBI people that, in addition, Twitter allows with total impunity. As of today, there is no type of bot control tool on this social network, which leaves people belonging to vulnerable groups completely exposed and defenseless against possible targeting campaigns,” denounces Ignacio Paredero, secretary of Organization of the LGTBI State Federation.
According to the analysis of the conversation on Twitter during the period from June 17 to July 20, coinciding with the general elections and Pride, it reflects broad support for the group. In the study of the identified communities, two main groups have been distinguished: a majority group made up of accounts in favor of Pride (86%) and a smaller one made up of accounts against Pride (14%).
Focusing on that last group, the opposites, the study detects two subcommunities: that of trans-exclusionary feminism and that of the extreme right, “both presenting signs of containing significant amounts of fraudulent accounts.”
Accounts belonging to the “trans-exclusionary feminism” or “TERF” subcommunity tend to use terms such as “feminist”, “woman” and “human” in the description of their profiles. With this, they seek to contrast their essentialist notion of “sex” (a biological reality) with the concept of “gender”, which they describe as a social construct to be abolished. Along these lines, expressions such as “human female” or “radical feminism” are also common in the biographies of the users of this subgroup.
Regarding the far-right subcommunity, we can see that some of the most repeated words in the descriptions of their profiles are “god”, “life”, “family”, “freedom” and “Spain”. These are central concepts in the discourse of the most traditional Spanish right, defender of a conservative worldview that clashes, precisely, with the demand for diversity championed by Pride, this work points out.
The analysis of user names helps to identify potentially fraudulent accounts in a community, which tend to present fictitious profile names (not registered with the INE). In this case, the number of accounts that do not present real profile names is greater in both anti-Pride subcommunities than in the random sample of 100,000 Twitter accounts used as a comparison reference. “This could indicate that in these groups there is a higher proportion of fraudulent profiles than normal,” says the study.
On the other hand, taking the accounts identified with real names, it is observed that the TERF community has a high prevalence of women, while the sex composition of the extreme right is much more equitable.
Examining the number of registered accounts (those that have not changed the “screen name” that Twitter randomly gave them when they were created) is also useful to approximate the number of fake users in a community. “When comparing the prevalence of these profiles in each study group with that of the random sample, it has been proven that both the extreme right community (7.4%) and the trans-exclusionary feminist community (4.6%) present a proportion of registration accounts – potentially fraudulent – significantly higher than what is usual on Twitter (1.9%)”, indicates this work.
Furthermore, comparing the age of the accounts belonging to each subcommunity with that of the accounts from the random reference sample, it can be seen that it is in 2021 when far-right users and trans-exclusionary feminists land on Twitter at a much higher rate. to the creation of accounts in the common social network. “The recent creation of many of these profiles may be an additional indication of a significant presence of professional accounts, bots and, ultimately, of some type of targeted campaign,” the investigation states.
With these data, the president of the LGTBI State Federation, Uge Sangil, urgently demands “a State Pact against Hate Speeches towards vulnerable groups that includes measures for the prevention and eradication of hate on social networks.” ”.
“We cannot allow hatred to continue being poured out against vulnerable groups on social networks, which today have become a fundamental tool of socialization. This hatred is suffered by real people, with names and surnames, who pay the consequences daily in the form of discrimination and violence at work, on the street and even, sometimes, in their family. Hate speeches are the origin of hate crimes, let’s take action now,” says Sangil.
