Improving Hateful Meme Detection through Retrieval-Guided Contrastive Learning
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Abstract (arXiv)
Hateful memes have emerged as a significant concern on the Internet. Detecting hateful memes requires the system to jointly understand the visual and textual modalities. Our investigation reveals that the embedding space of existing CLIP-based systems lacks sensitivity to subtle differences in memes that are vital for correct hatefulness classification. We propose constructing a hatefulness-aware embedding space through retrieval-guided contrastive training. Our approach achieves state-of-the-art performance on the HatefulMemes dataset with an AUROC of 87.0, outperforming much larger fine-tuned large multimodal models. We demonstrate a retrieval-based hateful memes detection system, which is capable of identifying hatefulness based on data unseen in training. This allows developers to update the hateful memes detection system by simply adding new examples without retraining, a desirable feature for real services in the constantly evolving landscape of hateful memes on the Internet.
Key facts. Cited by 20 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 29 of its 53 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 14 Nov 2023.
Builds on
29 of 53 references.
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Citing papers per year: 2025: 8; 2026: 12.
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- 2025Are Vision-Language Models Safe in the Wild? A Meme-Based Benchmark Studycited by 12
- 2025Robust Adaptation of Large Multimodal Models for Retrieval Augmented Hateful Meme Detectioncited by 11
- 2025ExPO-HM: Learning to Explain-then-Detect for Hateful Meme Detectioncited by 6
- 2026MemeLens: Multilingual Multitask VLMs for Memescited by 5
- 2025From Recognition to Reasoning: Advancing Multimodal Harmful Meme Detection via Chain-of-Thought Alignmentcited by 3
- 2025Representation Decomposition for Learning Similarity and Contrastness Across Modalities for Affective Computingcited by 2
- 2025Multi-Agent VLMs Guided Self-Training with PNU Loss for Low-Resource Offensive Content Detectioncited by 2
- 2025Ideology-Based LLMs for Content Moderationcited by 1
- 2026KID: Knowledge-Injected Dual-Head Learning for Knowledge-Grounded Harmful Meme Detectioncited by 1
- 2026Innocent Panels, Hateful Stories: Evaluating and Detecting Hateful Intent in Multi-Turn Visual Story Generationcited by 1
- 2026Small Cues, Big Consequences: Learning Pivotal Cues for Multimodal Meme Classificationcited by 1
- 2025Unpacking Hateful Memes: Presupposed Context and False Claimscited by 0
8 more
- 2026Fine-grained Verbal Attack Detection via a Hierarchical Divide-and-Conquer Frameworkcited by 0
- 2026ExDR: Explanation-driven Dynamic Retrieval Enhancement for Multimodal Fake News Detectioncited by 0
- 2026More Than Sum of Its Parts: Deciphering Intent Shifts in Multimodal Hate Speech Detectioncited by 0
- 2026Computational Humor with Multimodal LLMs: Methods, Datasets, Evaluation, and Challengescited by 0
- 2026ZeroR@CHiPSAL 2026: Two-Stage Vision-Language Adaptation with Contrastive Learning for Nepali Meme Classificationcited by 0
- 2026SyRHM: Symbolic-Language-Enhanced Reasoning with Associative Retrieval for Zero-shot Harmful Meme Detectioncited by 0
- 2026Decodable but Misrouted: Sparse Features Uncover a Readout Gap in Vision-Language Models for Harmful Meme Detectioncited by 0
- 2026Learn Before You Judge: Progressive Knowledge-to-Decision Alignment for Explainable Hateful Meme Detectioncited by 0
- 2026Small Cues, Big Consequences: Learning Pivotal Cues for Multimodal Meme Classification22 Sep 2026
- 2026Learn Before You Judge: Progressive Knowledge-to-Decision Alignment for Explainable Hateful Meme Detection17 Sep 2026
- 2026Decodable but Misrouted: Sparse Features Uncover a Readout Gap in Vision-Language Models for Harmful Meme Detection16 Sep 2026
- 2026SyRHM: Symbolic-Language-Enhanced Reasoning with Associative Retrieval for Zero-shot Harmful Meme Detection12 Sep 2026
- 2026Innocent Panels, Hateful Stories: Evaluating and Detecting Hateful Intent in Multi-Turn Visual Story Generation5 Aug 2026
- 2026Computational Humor with Multimodal LLMs: Methods, Datasets, Evaluation, and Challenges21 Jul 2026
- 2026ZeroR@CHiPSAL 2026: Two-Stage Vision-Language Adaptation with Contrastive Learning for Nepali Meme Classification19 May 2026
- 2026More Than Sum of Its Parts: Deciphering Intent Shifts in Multimodal Hate Speech Detection22 Mar 2026
- 2026KID: Knowledge-Injected Dual-Head Learning for Knowledge-Grounded Harmful Meme Detection29 Jan 2026
- 2026ExDR: Explanation-driven Dynamic Retrieval Enhancement for Multimodal Fake News Detection22 Jan 2026
- 2026MemeLens: Multilingual Multitask VLMs for Memes18 Jan 2026
- 2026Fine-grained Verbal Attack Detection via a Hierarchical Divide-and-Conquer Framework11 Jan 2026
8 more
- 2025Multi-Agent VLMs Guided Self-Training with PNU Loss for Low-Resource Offensive Content Detection14 Nov 2025
- 2025Ideology-Based LLMs for Content Moderation29 Oct 2025
- 2025Unpacking Hateful Memes: Presupposed Context and False Claims11 Oct 2025
- 2025ExPO-HM: Learning to Explain-then-Detect for Hateful Meme Detection8 Oct 2025
- 2025From Recognition to Reasoning: Advancing Multimodal Harmful Meme Detection via Chain-of-Thought Alignment15 Jun 2025
- 2025Representation Decomposition for Learning Similarity and Contrastness Across Modalities for Affective Computing8 Jun 2025
- 2025Are Vision-Language Models Safe in the Wild? A Meme-Based Benchmark Study21 May 2025
- 2025Robust Adaptation of Large Multimodal Models for Retrieval Augmented Hateful Meme Detection18 Feb 2025
- 2025Are Vision-Language Models Safe in the Wild? A Meme-Based Benchmark Studycited by 12
- 2025Robust Adaptation of Large Multimodal Models for Retrieval Augmented Hateful Meme Detectioncited by 11
- 2026Computational Humor with Multimodal LLMs: Methods, Datasets, Evaluation, and Challengescited by 0
- 2026ZeroR@CHiPSAL 2026: Two-Stage Vision-Language Adaptation with Contrastive Learning for Nepali Meme Classificationcited by 0
- 2026Decodable but Misrouted: Sparse Features Uncover a Readout Gap in Vision-Language Models for Harmful Meme Detectioncited by 0
- 2026Decodable but Misrouted: Sparse Features Uncover a Readout Gap in Vision-Language Models for Harmful Meme Detection16 Sep 2026
- 2026Computational Humor with Multimodal LLMs: Methods, Datasets, Evaluation, and Challenges21 Jul 2026
- 2026ZeroR@CHiPSAL 2026: Two-Stage Vision-Language Adaptation with Contrastive Learning for Nepali Meme Classification19 May 2026
- 2025Are Vision-Language Models Safe in the Wild? A Meme-Based Benchmark Study21 May 2025
- 2025Robust Adaptation of Large Multimodal Models for Retrieval Augmented Hateful Meme Detection18 Feb 2025
- 2026MemeLens: Multilingual Multitask VLMs for Memescited by 5
- 2025Representation Decomposition for Learning Similarity and Contrastness Across Modalities for Affective Computingcited by 2
- 2025Ideology-Based LLMs for Content Moderationcited by 1
- 2026KID: Knowledge-Injected Dual-Head Learning for Knowledge-Grounded Harmful Meme Detectioncited by 1
- 2026Innocent Panels, Hateful Stories: Evaluating and Detecting Hateful Intent in Multi-Turn Visual Story Generationcited by 1
- 2026Small Cues, Big Consequences: Learning Pivotal Cues for Multimodal Meme Classificationcited by 1
- 2025Unpacking Hateful Memes: Presupposed Context and False Claimscited by 0
- 2026Fine-grained Verbal Attack Detection via a Hierarchical Divide-and-Conquer Frameworkcited by 0
- 2026More Than Sum of Its Parts: Deciphering Intent Shifts in Multimodal Hate Speech Detectioncited by 0
- 2026SyRHM: Symbolic-Language-Enhanced Reasoning with Associative Retrieval for Zero-shot Harmful Meme Detectioncited by 0
- 2026Learn Before You Judge: Progressive Knowledge-to-Decision Alignment for Explainable Hateful Meme Detectioncited by 0
- 2026Small Cues, Big Consequences: Learning Pivotal Cues for Multimodal Meme Classification22 Sep 2026
- 2026Learn Before You Judge: Progressive Knowledge-to-Decision Alignment for Explainable Hateful Meme Detection17 Sep 2026
- 2026SyRHM: Symbolic-Language-Enhanced Reasoning with Associative Retrieval for Zero-shot Harmful Meme Detection12 Sep 2026
- 2026Innocent Panels, Hateful Stories: Evaluating and Detecting Hateful Intent in Multi-Turn Visual Story Generation5 Aug 2026
- 2026More Than Sum of Its Parts: Deciphering Intent Shifts in Multimodal Hate Speech Detection22 Mar 2026
- 2026KID: Knowledge-Injected Dual-Head Learning for Knowledge-Grounded Harmful Meme Detection29 Jan 2026
- 2026MemeLens: Multilingual Multitask VLMs for Memes18 Jan 2026
- 2026Fine-grained Verbal Attack Detection via a Hierarchical Divide-and-Conquer Framework11 Jan 2026
- 2025Ideology-Based LLMs for Content Moderation29 Oct 2025
- 2025Unpacking Hateful Memes: Presupposed Context and False Claims11 Oct 2025
- 2025Representation Decomposition for Learning Similarity and Contrastness Across Modalities for Affective Computing8 Jun 2025
Similar, not cited
Close in wording, no citation either way
- 2024HateSieve: A Contrastive Learning Framework for Detecting and Segmenting Hateful Content in Multimodal Memes
- 2023Mapping Memes to Words for Multimodal Hateful Meme Classification
- 2025Detecting and Understanding Hateful Contents in Memes Through Captioning and Visual Question-Answering
- 2025Demystifying Hateful Content: Leveraging Large Multimodal Models for Hateful Meme Detection with Explainable Decisions
- 2025Improving Multimodal Hateful Meme Detection Exploiting LMM-Generated Knowledge
- 2026GatedCLIP: Gated Multimodal Fusion for Hateful Memes Detection
- 2025Detecting and Mitigating Hateful Content in Multimodal Memes with Vision-Language Models
- 2021Caption Enriched Samples for Improving Hateful Memes Detection