Hate speech is on the rise in Malaysia

Do you know what hate speech is?

It’s the portrayal of words, speech or pictures or other forms in which the speaker deliberately intends to incite hatred or discrimination towards a person or group on the bases or race, ethnicity, religion, disability, gender or nationality.

This has become a toxic problem the plagues social media.

Unfortunately, over the past three months, there has been an increase in hostile tweets, according to #TrackerBenci, an AI-driven prototype used to detect and analyse hateful tweets.

The AI programme was introduced as a microsite, developed by The Centre, a think tank driven by research and advocacy of progress and pragmatic policy ideas in collaboration with the Content Forum, an independent self-regulatory industry organisation under the Malaysian Communications Multimedia Commissions (MCMC).

The initiative is highly crucial to keep hate speech in check for countries like Malaysia where it’s home to a mix of races and cultures.

This is where The Centre hopes to counter hate speech effectively.

In March, #TrackerBenci recorded 2,740 tweets identified as hateful and this figure rose to 3,088 in April and went down slightly to 3,004 in May.

About 34 per cent of the terms and phrases recorded by the tracker system have been identified as potentially hateful.

"Through #TrackerBenci, we have developed a resource centre through which members of the public can learn about current online hate speech trends in Malaysia.

"It forms part of our effort to initiate a holistic societal response to better address hate speech in the country, from policy-making to the grassroots levels,” said The Centre chief executive officer, Dr Khairil Izamin Ahmad.

"Today, anyone and everyone can be keyboard warriors on social media platforms.

"Social media phenomenon like "cancel culture" and "hate clicks" make things worse because it cultivates a habit of constant outrage.

"Together with The Centre, we hope to not only raise awareness, but encourage more people to practice self-regulation while creating content and in their digital interactions,” said Content Forum executive director Mediha Mahmood.

What’s more interesting is, The Centre also offers a Benci Calculator (Hate Calculator) where content creators can check if a phrase is potentially hateful or not.

For more information on this visit www.contentforum.my or www.centre.my/trackerbenci.