Since the start of the Israel-Hamas war last month, Jews worldwide have reported a spike in antisemitic comments and attacks. Now, a new analysis by the U.K.-based advocacy group Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) shows that online activity mirrors what’s happening offline—including on YouTube and more than 20 other niche apps and services.
Using a bespoke speech classifier that was initially employed to analyze antisemitic content on X after Elon Musk took over the platform, ISD pored through five million YouTube comments posted on 11,000 videos in the aftermath of the October 7 attack, comparing it to those posted before Hamas launched its incursion into Israel.
The researchers found that antisemitic comments on YouTube—the world’s second-biggest video-sharing platform—spiked 51-fold in the week after the Hamas attack, resulting in 15,270 comments. The average daily proportion of antisemitic comments on these videos also increased, by 242% after the attack compared to before.
Any content that promotes violence or hatred against Jews is a violation of YouTube policy, a company spokesperson tells Fast Company, and more than three million comments have been removed since the Hamas attacks, alongside thousands of videos and hundreds of channels. “Our teams remain vigilant and are ready to quickly take action if needed,” the spokesperson added.
The war erupted on October 7 when Hamas terrorists attacked Israel, killing more than 1,400 people, according to Israeli government figures. Israel has retaliated with a weeks-long military campaign that’s killed over 8,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
“We know that every time there is a spike in the conflict between Israel and Palestine, there is a kind of knock-on effect for Jewish communities globally,” says Hannah Rose, an analyst in hate and extremism at the ISD, who conducted the research with colleagues. “What we saw is a spike immediately after the attack on October 7, and then in the week or two afterwards, a sustained increase in antisemitic language.”
Platforms have struggled to keep on top of that spike in hate-fueled speech, the analysis shows. The ISD looked at YouTube alongside 21 other alternative tech platforms, including 4chan, Counter Social, Rumble, and Truth Social. Gab and 4chan saw significant spikes in antisemitic comments in the immediate aftermath of the Hamas attack.
The rise of antisemitism is “almost a perfect storm of contributing factors, that sadly, really explains the numbers we are seeing here,” says Liam McLoughlin, an academic specializing in content moderation at Liverpool John Moores University in the U.K., who was not involved in the research. According to McLoughlin, hate speech often spikes after real-world incidents because attention is drawn to those incidents. “Due to the events we have seen, we would expect a large rise in hate based on the pre-existing divisions that exist online,” he says. At the same time, content moderation teams remain woefully underfunded, he says, leaving platforms exposed.
ISD’s Rose adds that antisemitic rhetoric is often marked by doublespeak, making it more difficult for computer algorithms to decipher dog whistles. “Antisemitism can be quite difficult to spot because of its more covert nature,” she says.
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