When Anti-Migrant Hate Becomes Profitable Online
South Africa needs an honest debate about immigration, but digital platforms must also answer a harder question: are systems built to reward attention turning hostility toward migrants into a source of income?
South Africa is approaching a tense period in which calls for undocumented foreign nationals to leave the country have been amplified across social media. What begins as a political slogan can quickly become a practical threat when posts identify supposed targets, circulate rumours, and encourage communities to act against people perceived as outsiders. The danger is not only that false information spreads quickly, but that it can create an atmosphere in which harassment and violence appear normal. In this environment, online platforms cannot be treated as neutral spaces that merely reflect public opinion.
The central issue is the way social media turns attention into money through monetisation (geldmaking), virality (viraliteit) and public outrage (verontwaardiging). Creators can earn through advertising revenue, paid promotions, subscriptions, virtual gifts, brand partnerships, and other commercial tools linked to audience size and engagement. Content that provokes anger or fear can often travel further than careful reporting because it encourages replies, reposts, arguments, and emotional reactions. When these responses increase visibility, the platform’s economic design may reward the very material that makes public life more dangerous.
The line between online rhetoric and real-world harm can become thinner when public tension is already high. A hostile post may begin with a claim about border control or jobs, but it can develop into language that treats migrants as criminals, invaders, or less than human. This shift may involve incitement (aanhitsing), dehumanisation (ontmensliking) and social volatility (wisselvalligheid). Once people are repeatedly exposed to this language, they may become less sensitive to threats, intimidation, or calls for collective punishment against people who have done nothing wrong.
For too long, discussions about platform responsibility have focused almost entirely on whether a specific post should be removed. Content removal matters, especially when a post threatens violence or spreads harmful lies, but it is only one part of the problem. The deeper question concerns the platform’s architecture (argitektuur), commercial incentives (aansporings) and mechanisms of amplification (versterking). A platform can delete some extreme posts while still rewarding divisive content through recommendation systems, payment schemes, and algorithms designed to maximise attention.
Digital platforms are now creator economies rather than simple noticeboards. They offer users many ways to transform followers into income, including subscriptions (intekeninge), revenue-sharing (inkomstedeling) and direct remuneration (vergoeding) for content that attracts viewers. These systems can help artists, educators, journalists, and small businesses build livelihoods, and they are not inherently harmful. The problem emerges when the same systems provide financial rewards to people who build audiences by inflaming hostility toward vulnerable groups. A business model that values engagement above all else may struggle to distinguish between genuinely useful public debate and content engineered to provoke conflict.
Algorithms do not need to agree with a message in order to help it spread. They only need to detect that a post is creating strong reactions, repeated viewing, shares, comments, or arguments. In this sense, online conflict becomes a source of engagement (betrokkenheid), political salience (opvallendheid) and social polarisation (polarisasie). The more people argue under a post, the more visible it may become, even when many of those comments condemn the message. This creates a troubling paradox in which opposition to hateful material can sometimes contribute to its circulation.
South Africans have legitimate questions about immigration policy, border administration, employment, crime, and the capacity of public institutions. These issues should be debated openly and seriously, but they cannot be solved through harassment, misinformation, or threats against people because of their nationality. A democratic response requires deliberation (beraadslaging), rejection of scapegoating (sondebokmaking) and resistance to xenophobia (vreemdelingehaat). Blaming migrants for every failure of the state may feel emotionally satisfying, but it does not create jobs, repair public services, reduce corruption, or improve the protection of communities.
The demand for transparency is therefore not an argument for blanket censorship. It is a request for platforms to explain how they enforce their own rules when creators may be earning money from content that targets migrants or fuels hostility. This requires accountability (aanspreeklikheid), meaningful disclosure (openbaarmaking) and practical auditability (ouditeerbaarheid). The public should be able to understand whether a platform identifies hateful content before it becomes profitable, whether it removes creators from monetisation programmes, and whether enforcement changes when there is a heightened risk of real-world violence.
These questions are not technically impossible to answer. In the European Union, the Digital Services Act has pushed very large platforms to report more openly on systemic risks, content moderation, and the steps they take to reduce harms. The relevant principles include systemic (sistemiese) risk assessment, institutional transparency (deursigtigheid) and credible enforcement (afdwinging). South African users deserve to know why similar levels of explanation should be available in one region but not necessarily in another, particularly when online campaigns may contribute to intimidation, displacement, and social conflict.
A more transparent system would not require a platform to reveal private user information or expose every internal decision. It would require aggregated information about how many accounts were reviewed, how many were demonetised, what policies were applied, and whether enforcement decisions were appealed. Such a framework could be guided by proportionality (proporsionaliteit), fair due process (behoorlike regsproses) and accessible recourse (regsmiddel). Users should be protected from arbitrary decisions, but communities should also be protected from systems that reward hostility while hiding behind vague moderation policies.
Advertisers and payment partners also have a role to play. A creator who earns through promotional posts, commercial sponsorships, or advertising revenue is operating within a wider economy that includes brands, agencies, payment systems, and platform partnerships. This raises questions of brand safety (handelsmerkveiligheid), commercial sponsorship (borgskap) and financial traceability (naspeurbaarheid). Companies that pay for exposure should know whether their money is helping to support a creator whose public influence depends on misinformation, intimidation, or hatred toward migrants.
The response cannot depend on technology companies alone. Schools, community organisations, journalists, unions, religious groups, and civil society organisations can all help people recognise manipulation and verify claims before sharing them. Stronger public awareness depends on verification (verifikasie), information provenance (herkoms) and civic resilience (veerkragtigheid). People need practical habits: checking whether a video is old, asking who created a list, questioning whether a statistic has a source, and refusing to share material that encourages violence or humiliation.
This does not mean pretending that public anger has no basis. Many South Africans are experiencing unemployment, financial stress, poor services, unsafe neighbourhoods, and frustration with ineffective institutions. But a society under pressure becomes even more vulnerable when influential online figures turn fear into entertainment or profit. The answer is not silence, but a more honest public conversation that separates policy failures from prejudice and evidence from conspiracy. Digital platforms should support this distinction rather than financially rewarding people who erase it.
The most important question is ultimately moral as well as commercial. Platforms may host harmful content, but the public needs to know whether they also reward it with advertising revenue, gifts, subscriptions, or paid reach. South Africa needs coexistence (saambestaan), equal dignity (waardigheid) and constant public vigilance (waaksaamheid) if it is to resist the normalisation of anti-migrant hatred. An immigration debate can be firm, lawful, and democratic, but it cannot remain humane when fear is converted into a profitable commodity.
Key Afrikaans Vocabulary
geldmaking monetisation
viraliteit virality
verontwaardiging outrage
aanhitsing incitement
ontmensliking dehumanisation
wisselvalligheid volatility
argitektuur architecture
aansporings incentives
versterking amplification
intekeninge subscriptions
inkomstedeling revenue-sharing
vergoeding remuneration
betrokkenheid engagement
opvallendheid salience
polarisasie polarisation
beraadslaging deliberation
sondebokmaking scapegoating
vreemdelingehaat xenophobia
aanspreeklikheid accountability
openbaarmaking disclosure
ouditeerbaarheid auditability
sistemiese systemic
deursigtigheid transparency
afdwinging enforcement
proporsionaliteit proportionality
behoorlike regsproses due process
regsmiddel recourse
handelsmerkveiligheid brand safety
borgskap sponsorship
naspeurbaarheid traceability
verifikasie verification
herkoms provenance
veerkragtigheid resilience
saambestaan coexistence
waardigheid dignity
waaksaamheid vigilance
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