How to make SELMA work for social media providers

This “How to?” manual provides guidance to social media providers who would like to draw upon the SELMA Toolkit to develop their own education or awareness-raising programmes or campaigns against online hate, while exploring strategies to scope and build – in dialogue with young people – education, reporting, or counselling tools to be integrated into their platforms or services.

In our philosophy, social media providers have a responsibility to more actively involve children and young people in shaping the platforms and services they provide. This is relevant for established social media companies like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube or Twitter, but also for smaller businesses and start-ups who may lack the relevant know-how and experience for developing online safety policies and practices. One additional target group is game companies who are increasingly faced with online hate on the within-game communication channels they provide.

We first present a range of hands-on activities from the SELMA Toolkit which can help children and young people – and their educators, parents and carers – to engage in a meaningful dialogue with social media providers, as well as with other public and private stakeholders who have an interest to prevent or remediate online hate.

Based on the experience of SELMA project partners organising a “Hacking Hate” hackathon, in December 2018, at the Facebook Digital Learning Centre in Berlin, we then provide more concrete guidelines for developers on how to make online platforms and services less prone to hate.