It’s time to #endthehate

The Mayor of London was due to give a speech at SXSW urging tech companies to take responsibility for hate speech online. The message needed to land with impact. Not just with tech companies but with the wider public.

I knew we had to create a piece of content that didn’t just explain why hate speech was bad, but demonstrated it first hand and shocked our audience into action.

Cue an unexpected video in the style of Jimmy Kimmel’s famous ‘Mean Tweets’. Whilst the parody began in an amusing way it took a shocking turn as Sadiq Khan flicked through his twitter feed from trivial banter to serious racist and anti-Muslim abuse.

The video received global press coverage and over 1,000,000 views in 2 days. Most importantly, it had real-world impact as the far right group, Britain First, were kicked off Facebook.