According to the Google Books Ngram Viewer, a service that has analyzed over 5.2 million books published between 1500 and 2008, the term “hate speech” was barely used in literature before 1987.
However, between 1987 and 1997, use of this broad and subjective term skyrocketed and in subsequent years, it has quickly become a major online censorship tool that is wielded by both governments and Big Tech platforms.
