Madam Chair and members of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, thank you for the invitation to speak with you all today.
My name is Imran Ahmed. I'm the founder and chief executive of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, CCDH.
CCDH researches disinformation and hate speech on social media platforms. Our research has shown time and time again that social media platforms and search engines are irresponsible managers of our digital information ecosystem, because their business models have systemic problems that affect the prevalence of Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, misogyny, anti-LGBTQ+ and other forms of identity-based hate.
No investigation of the current crisis of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia can be conducted without examination of these platforms' roles. Dealing with one form of hate alone, whether anti-Semitism or Islamophobia, fails to recognize that the systems underpinning the common problem—the rules of these platforms and the poor way in which they're enforced, and their algorithms and their platform design decisions—give advantage to hateful content.
My statement and the accompanying submission is drawn from CCDH's extensive research into Islamophobia and other forms of hate on social media [Technical difficulty—Editor]. One, it finds that social media algorithms promote and spread identity-based hate and Islamophobia. Two, it finds that financial [Technical difficulty—Editor]. Three, it finds that that social media companies fail [Technical difficulty—Editor] hateful—