08:53 AM EDT, 08/14/2024 (MT Newswires) -- Meta Platforms' ( META ) Instagram failed to act on 93% of abusive comments directed at prominent women politicians in the US, including Vice President Kamala Harris, the advocacy group Center for Countering Digital Hate said Wednesday.

The group said its new research shows that Instagram didn't act on 926 of the 1,000 abusive comments it had reported using the app's own reporting tools.

The comments contained sexist and racist abuse, and death and rape threats, according to the group.

The group said that for the report, researchers chose five Democrats, including Harris, and five Republicans and gathered 560,000 comments on their recent Instagram posts.

The group called on Instagram to transparently enforce its community guidelines against gender-based abuse and urged lawmakers to hold social media companies accountable for failure to address abuse.

"We provide tools so that anyone can control who can comment on their posts, automatically filter out offensive comments, phrases or emojis, and automatically hide comments from people who don't follow them," Cindy Southworth, head of women's safety at Meta, told MT Newswires.

Southworth said Meta will review the group's report and act on any content that violates its policies.

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