Marianna Spring, the BBC's first specialist disinformation reporter, created a persona of "Barry" on the five most popular sites for the Panorama programme.

       It was based on accounts that sent her abuse, including threats of horrific sexual acts.

       "Barry" followed anti-women content, posting some abuse so algorithms could see that the account had used such language.

       Within days, the top recommended pages to follow on Facebook and Instagram almost all had hate topics, Marianna said, adding: "Barry was pushed more and more antiwomen content by these sites."

       Chloe Colliver, of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, said: "If this profile were a real person, it would have been brought into a hateful community full of misogynistic content very, very quickly."

       Facebook, which also owns Instagram, said it want to "remove abuse more quickly".

       The Daily Express is calling for changes in our Unmask The Online Trolls crusade.