Hate speech has soared online since George Floyd's death

Details: States with heavy protests experienced the highest levels of hate speech online.

Minnesota, Washington D.C., Delaware, New York, Connecticut, Vermont, Washington, Oregon, Colorado, and Virginia saw the highest spikes, per DoubleVerify. Each state has experienced at least a 2.2 times increase in its own average rate for hate speech online.

Real-world events tend to cause spikes in hate speech on the internet. Race-related controversies or violence, hate crimes and political events all tend to elicit more hate speech, DoubleVerify’s VP of marketing Heather McKim tells Axios.

“This year, several primaries and debates saw spikes in hate speech,” says McKim. For example, DoubleVerify found that fake news spiked in response to Iowa’s botched Democratic caucus earlier this year.