• A unified national effort is essential to combat hate speech in cyberspace, says the head of the Cybersecurity Laboratory at the IPN’s Center for Computing Research (CIC)
• One of the major challenges is to design AI-driven applications capable of identifying and filtering harmful content
In response to the growing spread of hate speech and hostile narratives on social media and across the digital ecosystem, Mexico must take steps toward creating its first Digital Observatory Against Online Hate. This initiative would enable the analysis and mitigation of a phenomenon that is expanding rapidly and impacting all sectors of society.
This proposal was put forward by Dr. Gina Gallegos García, a researcher at the Instituto Politécnico Nacional (IPN) and head of the Cybersecurity Laboratory at the Center for Computing Research (CIC). She emphasized that several developed European countries have already established observatories to monitor social media platforms, identify root causes, promote countermeasures, and coordinate efforts to regulate harmful online discourse.
Dr. Gallegos García, who holds a PhD in Communications and Electronics from the IPN’s Escuela Superior de Ingeniería Mecánica y Eléctrica (ESIME), Culhuacán campus, noted that one of the Observatory’s key challenges would be the development and implementation of AI-powered applications to detect, flag, and remove hate speech from digital platforms.
Citing data from the European Parliament in Spain, she highlighted that 50% of youth between the ages of 15 and 29 have encountered hate speech online within the past year.
The report further reveals that the harm caused by online hate extends beyond social media, leading to psychological consequences such as stress, anxiety, and depression. This underscores the need for a collective response to address the structural causes affecting vulnerable segments of the population.
Dr. Gallegos' proposal aligns with national efforts to foster values such as respect and to create safe digital environments, as promoted by the Government of Mexico under President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo and the Ministry of Public Education (SEP), led by Mario Delgado Carrillo.
She also referenced data from the Spanish Observatory on Racism and Xenophobia, which indicates that social media platforms remove only 28.43% of reported hate content targeting individuals based on religion, race, or other characteristics.
Dr. Gallegos emphasized that socio-political and economic polarization significantly fuels the rise of online hate, a space still largely unregulated where those who spread such narratives are often labeled as haters or trolls.
A Level I member of the National System of Researchers under the Secretariat of Science, Humanities, Technology, and Innovation (SECIHTI), Dr. Gallegos acknowledged the ongoing efforts of tech companies to integrate detection and content moderation tools into their platforms but stressed the need for coordinated academic and institutional support to advance the fight against digital hate.
For more information, visit www.ipn.mx
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