Social media giants provide a ‘safe space for racists’
JVL Introduction
A new report about online antisemitism has been issued by Researchers from the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a UK/US non-profit organisation.
It finds that Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok failed to act on 84% of posts spreading anti-Jewish hatred and propaganda reported via the platforms’ official complaints system.
In this survey researchers recorded and reported 714 antisemitic posts seen up to 7.3 million times.
The stuff they report is real, virulent antisemitism including:
- antisemitic conspiracy theories about 9/11, the Covid pandemic (Jews “created the coronavirus)” and Jewish control of world affairs
- handles like “#JewWorldOrder”, #rothschild, #fakejews and #killthejews
- posts containing Holocaust denial, the blood libel, and racist
caricatures of Jewish people, and neo-Nazism (including e.g. claims that Anne Frank’s diaries are fabricated) - the great replacement theory: Jews are orchestrating “a silent race war against the white race and Christianity.”
It is classic right-wing antisemitic rhetoric, sometimes updated to encompass contemporary political developments (e.g. 9/11, covid-19).
The laxity of all these online platforms – in direct contravention of their own established rules – is deeply worrying to us all.
This is the antisemitism that threatens us today. People speaking about Zionism simply do not figure in it.
This article was originally published by The Guardian on Mon 2 Aug 2021. Read the original here.
A ‘safe space for racists’: antisemitism report criticises social media giants
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok failing to act on most reported anti-Jewish posts, says study
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I think we should be very careful what we wish for.
Maya Wolfe-Robinson is writing in the Guardian.
I am very critical of the fundamental legitimacy of the State of Israel. I try to express myself in the most moderate and considered language and I always avoid inflammatory language, but if I question the legitimacy of Zionism or Israel, the Guardian will censor my comments every time.
Facebook on the other hand has never censored any of my many anti Zionist comments.
Yes we are all horrified by genuine anti Semitism but once you say that such posts are unacceptable, you have to appoint someone to decide what is acceptable and what is not.
I guarantee you not only will abhorrent anti Semitism be removed but also most of what JVL thinks. This is already happening in the Labour Party which has recently be targeting anti Zionist Jews and the grounds that what they say “causes deep offence to the Jewish Community”.
Come on now Comrades ! We have to be braver and develop thicker skins. Holocaust denial is deeply offensive and even frightening if you are Jewish but we can easily prove that it is rubbish by reference to the mountain of historical evidence and personal testimony.
None of us in JVL will like to live in a World in which “professional” journalists decide what we are allowed to know.
Please just compare what the BBC tells us with what we know is happening in the occupied territories and how do we know ? Via a largely uncensored social media.
Truth is on our side, we have nothing at all to fear from open debate.
If you don’t trust ordinary people, why would you trust time to vote ? And if it is government by an unelected elite, you can absolutely guarantee that it won’t be the elite that we would choose.
As Winston Churchill pointed out democracy and open debate are deeply flawed until you consider the alternatives.
Everyone wants to eliminate hate speech from social media, but who decides what hate speech is?
Two omissions from the CCDH report are so glaring that they cannot be accidental: their combined effect is to turn the report into a piece of subtle propaganda.
Firstly the report does not discuss what criteria are used to diagnose antisemitic hate speech; it evades the question by presenting examples which mostly seem uncontroversial, and by cleverly replacing the word “antisemitic” by “anti-Jewish”. Secondly Palestinians are nowhere mentioned in the report, and even Israel hardly figures. Before we applaud this apparent outbreak of honesty concerning what constitutes real antisemitism, let us examine these two lacunae more closely.
Facebook routinely suppresses the accounts of Palestinians and others by falsely accusing them of “antisemitic hate speech”, So any pressure on Facebook to clamp down on “bigots” without addressing the criteria to be used is just playing into the hands the right.
https://jewishvoiceforliberation.org.uk/article/big-tech-censors-palestinian-advocacy-facilitates-far-right-israeli-violence/
One of the only three examples of a public Facebook group referenced by the report is called (oddly) “ISRAEL LIES AND DECEITS version española”. The group states that it “is not about Religions, Hate or Ethnicity” but is about “denouncing and publishing the facts about Palestine and the zionist criminal illegal annexation”.
On a cursory examination the posts of this group appear to be as claimed. There may be examples which would fail the infamous IHRA test, but promoting antisemitism does not seem to be the group’s purpose. In any event the CCDH report’s authors appear disingenuous not to mention that this site is primarily concerned about Israel’s crimes.
The CCDH was founded in 2018 by its director Imran Ahmed, a former adviser to Hilary Benn. It has done some good work in countering genuine hate speech. However the record suggests the organisation will avoid any challenge to the pro-Israel lobby. Ahmed was an invited speaker at a US government conference on internet antisemitism in October 2021 at which Mike Pompeo, Benjamin Netanyahu, Michael Gove, and Lord Mann were keynote speakers.
I think the JVL introduction should carry a health warning.
David Hawkins and George Wilmers.
I just so agree with your views.
I recall Starmer suggesting that Facebook etc. should be fined if they permit comments critical of vaccination. Whilst I do not regard myself as an “Anti-Vaxxer”, with all that that implies, I do think that there is a serious – and honourable – debate that is worth having. Holding social media platforms responsible for posted content becomes simply a means to close down debate of any sort and on any contentious subject.
I would also guarantee that any such form of regulation would do little or nothing to close down the most egregious types of abusive or misleading comment. Whilst those with more considered views can often represent soft targets for censorship, the true villains will simply post regardless – and Facebook, Twitter etc. will just pay the fines; always assuming they are ever even imposed.
The issue should NOT be
1:”who has the right to ban ‘hate speech?’
or 2:’who has the right to define hate speech?
but 3:’how can real or so-called hate speech best be rebutted and hopefully refuted?’
Starmer and David Evans may prance and posture re 1 and 2, but does anybody think they have anything to offer under 3? Obviously THEY don’t thin they have!