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By mid-2016, violence on social media had become normalized. Twitter was a battleground (and let’s admit, X didn’t improve much either). We aimed to shed light on the spiraling hatred we were engaging in—not necessarily with the charitable mission of changing behavior, but to highlight the sociological dangers of escalating violence, regardless of the medium. This affected both online and offline dynamics.
We launched an ambitious multi-part initiative.
First, we identified the day’s most hateful tweets and displayed them on the campaign’s website, reframing them in a different context. Alongside this, we introduced the “Hate Meter,” a tool powered by a complex algorithm that measured the level of violence on social media by identifying the most aggressive words of the day. The collected data fed into reports that mapped the most hateful locations, the most aggressive cities, and the most commonly used offensive words. This led to the creation of “HDP” (“Hora de Parar”), inspired by the most-used insult on social media at the time.
HDP not only addressed the issue of social media aggression but also tackled the broader problem of general hostility. For weeks, the campaign sparked reactions not only in Chile but also abroad. Most importantly, the study on social media violence set the agenda across Latin America.
