LOCAL INITIATIVES VITALWhile the impact of hate speech online has already been documented in several Asian countries in recent years, analysts say that tech firms have not ramped up resources to improve content moderation, particularly in local languages. In Indonesia, “significant hate speech” online targets religious and racial minority groups, as well as LGBTQ+ people, with bots and paid trolls spreading disinformation aimed at deepening divisions, a report from Article 19 found in June. It is accessed via WhatsApp and has about 37,000 users -- a sliver of the nation’s more than 80 million WhatsApp users. Tattle’s team crowdsourced a list of offensive words and phrases that are used commonly online, that the tool then blurs on users’ timelines. “We’ve seen the harm that hate speech can cause.
