On 12 November 2025, I contributed to the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre for Algorithmic Transparency (ECAT) Research Workshop 2025, which focused on social media and the systemic risks it poses to the mental and physical health of minors. Specifically, I took part in the panel “Online influence on young people: Gender-based challenges and inequalities” with a presentation that addressed the topic of mainstreaming anti-feminism. In this blog post, I am sharing my presentation.
Online influence on young people: Gender-based challenges and inequalities
Certain popular accounts on major online platforms are associated with communities that share toxic and discriminatory content against women. Their impact on young people has drawn increasing attention, following for instance, the Netflix series ‘Adolescence’ which portrayed a case where a young boy committed murder after exposure to communities expressing hostility toward women.
This panel will explore what research reveals about these online spaces: how they build audiences, which young people are most susceptible to their messaging, and what effects they may have on users, their communities and on society.
Good afternoon. It is a pleasure to be here to address the pressing issue of gender-based challenges in the online sphere.
There’s little doubt that the backlash against gender equality—and more generally, against acceptance of diversity—is no longer a fringe issue. It has become mainstream. To understand this, we need to see it in a bigger picture: a crisis in liberal democratic values, growing economic insecurity, and the loss of traditional male roles.
Let’s dive in. One common factor behind the backlash against feminism is the sense of male victimization—where men see themselves as oppressed minorities. I recently ran a survey in Italy, and the results show that this idea is already mainstream. While extreme views are rare, 45% of all respondents—and 51% of men—feel, to some degree, that men’s rights are being sacrificed in favor of women and other minorities.
Shared resentments grow into online and social media communities. In a study of the Facebook “manosphere” in Italy, we looked at networks of anti-feminist pages and groups. These spaces focus on the social oppression of men, the perceived violation of fathers’ rights in favor of mothers, and instances of violence against men, aiming to counterbalance a narrative that is seen as focusing solely on men’s violence against women. Some comments in these groups were alarming, using derogatory and violent language toward women. We’ve seen this kind of content spread on mainstream platforms with little moderation.
Looking back at the survey and focusing on age groups, it’s striking that almost half—47%—of the youngest cohort, those aged 18 to 24, and 58% of young men, feel that men’s rights are being hindered by women and minorities. This shows that these attitudes are far from marginal among young people.
Given these pre-existing views, young people may be more receptive to online content about men’s rights or so-called female privileges, which allows these ideas to take root and spread. At the same time, some of the results we see here may already be influenced, at least in part, by exposure to that content.
Anti-feminist content is clearly popular online. This chart compares YouTube searches for Jordan Peterson and the even more controversial Andrew Tate—banned multiple times for violent misogyny—showing both far outrank a young progressive leader like Greta Thunberg. Their influence spreads further as imitators copy their formula in the hope of achieving similar fame.
But it’s not only manosphere influencers who bring this content into the mainstream—politicians and political parties play a role as well…
…and they exploit internet culture and anti-feminist sentiment to push their agendas. For example, this post from Germany’s climate-skeptical party, AfD, depicts Greta Thunberg using the familiar stereotype of the “angry, irrational, easily triggered” feminist—a trope that’s widely spread in popular internet memes.
One recent study we conducted shows that content spreads more widely when it evokes anger, depending on the political community. There’s also a clear algorithmic and network effect: content that gets shared more tends to spread even further. This means that resentment-filled, self-victimizing, or otherwise toxic material within certain communities gets amplified even more.
Exploiting this algorithmic and network amplification is a key goal of social media coordination strategies. Those who use this approach deploy networks of accounts to reach the widest audience, increasing impact and triggering algorithms that further boost views, engagement, and sharing.
These networks can also be coordinated or fed with content by advocacy organizations with a traditionalist agenda, combining anti-feminism with support for pro-life, anti-abortion policies, and the promotion of traditional family and gender roles. Some operate across borders and may be linked to offline networks, including religious fundamentalist groups, which act as both sources and channels of influence.
So, to recap, we’ve seen key sources of anti-feminist sentiment: “alpha-male” influencers, the diverse communities of the manosphere, politicians and parties, and ultraconservative advocacy channels—all leveraging social media and their algorithms to maximize their impact through the best strategies.
An important question remains: how can we estimate the impact of this content? This is a difficult and multifaceted question. Perhaps we can start with a simpler version: how many users does it actually reach?
To illustrate, I collected about 400 YouTube URLs shared on Facebook that relate to manosphere content. Even this tiny fraction of what’s circulating online reached roughly 200 million views and 12 million clicks.
This exposure data is essential to understand the phenomenon, yet only recently have some platforms started sharing it—and even then, it’s still not enough to assess the societal impact, especially on young people. To fill the gap, we need basic, anonymized data on who sees and engages with this content, and where.
Ideally, we would have detailed information on the content being shared to track emerging topics and see how popular they are, both in real time and historically. Unfortunately, many social media platforms don’t provide this level of access.
We should also be able to distinguish who is viewing and interacting with the content, using broad demographic categories like age and gender. Most platforms don’t offer this, but some datasets, such as Meta’s URL Share Dataset, show that it is in fact possible.
Since the web is borderless, we also need to know where users are located, so we can track trends at least at the national level, spot early signs of societal risks, and link what we observe to social interventions.
We need this kind of data from both large and small platforms. New fringe spaces that promise “uncensored” discussion can host high-risk content that later spills into mainstream culture, yet researchers rarely have access to them.
Last but not least: platform algorithms shape what circulates online, but their workings remain secret. Platforms should disclose at least basic details about how these systems work.
If platforms open the door to meaningful data access, we’ll be able to better understand online dynamics around these important issues, assess their impact on society—and help build online spaces that are safer, fairer, and truly inclusive.
