Mexico City Hub’s Ruíz at Davos: If We Start Permitting Hate Speech Against LGBT People on Social Media, It Will Increase Violence in Real World

RUIZ: “Sure. Well hello everyone, thank you for having me here. You know, I have been working on AI for more than 5 years. I have the pleasure of being honor member from Women in AI for Mexico City. And well, when it comes to talk about social media, it’s very concerning because I have been growing up with this digital space where I used to be — or where I used to feel safe, and nowadays it has become some strange place for us. We are facing new regulations, or maybe let’s say new algorithms, that are creating this hostile environment for us.”
FAJZULLIN: “How is that happening? What’s changing with the algorithm right now?”
RUIZ: “OK. Well let’s say that for the past years we have had this kind of algorithms that reduces the hate speech, but nowadays that kind of regulation on hate speech, it’s not here anymore. We are changing the way we interact with each other. We are facing a lot of hate through bots, and also this is concerning because the way we face the world, the way we interact with each other, it’s not only in the physical world, it’s also in the digital one. So we have to feel safe in these spaces because, for example, in my country we have been facing a lot of violence. The first non-binary people that came into politics, they were murdered in November 2023.”
FAJZULLIN: “Wow.”
RUIZ: “So it’s not just about hearing hate speech, it — it’s also about violence.”
FAJZULLIN: “Mm-hmm.”
RUIZ: “I was telling backstage that we are having and facing this problem about feminism, that — that women are being killed as well, and one in three women in Mexico that are being killed are trans women. So this is something important. I was dubbed in to bring this statistic because it’s very alarming, but I think this is important because if we start permitting this hate speech on social media, it could increase also hate crimes on the physical world. So that’s why social media is also important for us.”