Anti-Semitic social posts 'not taken down' in 80% of cases

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-58058428

by shivbhatt • 5 years ago

56 86 5 years ago

nailer2• 5 years ago

Anti semitism is unique amongst other forms of racism in that there’s generally little or no action taken, even for blatant displays: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMdbHft64/

liorben-david4• 5 years ago

Even more nuts is that Google didn't even fire him, they just moved him from the diversity department to a research role: https://www.businessinsider.com/kamau-bobb-google-diversity-...

rvz2• 5 years ago

Actual source: [0]

Also from [0]

Our researchers reported hundreds of racist anti-Jewish posts to social media firms using their user reporting tools. 84% were not acted upon.

The same social media cartel still housing 'hate' on their platforms with 84% of anti-semitism posts still on their sites! That's not good enough. Even Khomeini is still there violating the 'sloppy Twitter guidelines'.

Do better.

[0] https://www.counterhate.com/failuretoprotect

liorben-david4• 5 years ago

I'm curious about the success rate for other forms of hate speech

bpodgursky2• 5 years ago

It's pretty... interesting, that the new expected norm is that all hateful / offensive posts are taken down on the internet. 10 years ago, this would be a very confusing headline to read.

duxup6• 5 years ago

I think we're just more mindful of moderation due to the size of sites now.

It has always existed.

LightG3• 5 years ago

Adding "offensive" to your sentence is a bit disingenuous.

billytetrud3• 5 years ago

? Why?

afavour• 5 years ago

I don’t know about ten years ago, twenty maybe. But the internet of today is not the internet of then.

Back then someone could have created an offensive blog and it wouldn’t have been taken down. But people would have to link to it, seek it out. Now we have social media sites algorithmically pushing content in our faces, IMO it’s only fair that they’re asked to consider what they’re pushing when they do it.

ticviking2• 5 years ago

It seems to me that suggests that maybe we should evaluate a model where we pull, and share content ourselves.

The issue I've seen is that tends to make it hard to sneak ads into the feed without it being really obvious to everyone what is being done.

SpicyLemonZest3• 5 years ago

I'm skeptical of this kind of analysis without concrete examples of the kind of content that wasn't removed. Even if you trust the researchers (I personally am not familiar with them), there are legitimate reasons why they might not categorize things the same way as social media platforms.

e: Turns out that the researchers' full report actually does contain concrete examples, which seem to be legitimately bad and take-down-able.

sbilstein4• 5 years ago

I've reported this page countless times that purports to be about 'jewish contributions to society' but is clear as day dog whistling.

https://www.instagram.com/jewish.contributions/?hl=en

liorben-david4• 5 years ago

Thanks for sharing this. Read the first two posts and I was like "oh that's a cool page". Then I kept going and realized what was going on

arkitaip• 5 years ago

It's very well-made, which makes it even more scary.

MattGaiser5• 5 years ago

but is clear as day dog whistling.

I think it is dog whistling, but if you aren't familiar with anti-Semitic arguments and angles of attack, I don't think it is clear at all, which is probably the point.

On the surface it just seems like a list of facts and some are even seemingly laudatory, such as helping to end apartheid. The bad stuff is subtle or lower down the page.

If I were a moderator and just doing a quick check, I probably wouldn't spot anything wrong with the page.

fighterpilot4• 5 years ago

Did you read the report? They did give many concrete examples.

SpicyLemonZest3• 5 years ago

I had not. Thanks for the tip - the article didn't mention it.

duxup6• 5 years ago

It said they included Holocaust denial, and conspiracy theories with false claims about Jews "controlling" governments and banks, or orchestrating world events.

It said that those it tagged as Holocaust denial remained online 80% of the time, while for neo-Nazi content it was 71%.

I'm glad to see they were somewhat specific on the content. On the internet things get muddy and I've been on a forum that was tied to a specific location that was connected to an American politician. For a short while we were inundated with some new accounts there arriving to tell us how outraged they were about this antisemitic politician who as far as I could tell had just criticized Israeli government actions / policies.

It's unfortunate that my first thought was "What what are we talking about exactly here?"

_alxk• 5 years ago

Sadly, I had to ask myself the same question.

A report came out in the UK claiming widespread anti-semitism on University campuses and made the headlines. They had failed to distinguish between criticism of Israel and anti-semitism in the report, which was very disappointing. There certainly was some clear cases of anti-semitism, but they bundled criticism of Israel and accusations of Israel running an apartheid regime as "anti-semitism".

As you point out, this is not the case here.

Miner49er• 5 years ago

Are the George Soros ones actually anti-semitic? I'm sure some are, but it seems most are just anti George Soros.

hobs• 5 years ago

Yes, the evolution of the GS conspiracies are just putting a name to the "Jews are running the world" conspiracies, giving him god like powers to manipulate and control.

seattle_spring2• 5 years ago

Exactly this. It's a dogwhistle for extreme anti-semites, whether the people sharing it know it or not.

raxxorrax4• 5 years ago

As with antisemitism itself there might be some overlap, but I think most people basically criticise foreign NGOs meddling in domestic politics and feel passed over. Money in politics is not ideal, although there are far worse players than Soros in my opinion and I don't know of a single case where he didn't just support people to take part in democracy.

cryptica3• 5 years ago

I've witnessed this kind of mislabeling on many occasions. Once I was on a forum chatting about how the reserve banks are controlling everything and also distorting culture and then some random person told me I was "anti-semitic" but I hadn't mentioned Jewish people even once. Religion hadn't even occurred to me as being a factor in my discussion. I told the person that they're the ones who are anti-Semitic for inferring that there is a connection between reserve banking and Judaism.

I've witnessed this behavior in other places and on social media. I don't know what the goal is of this false labeling.

djohnston2• 5 years ago

Does this include all the legitimate criticisms of Israel that people try to lazily deflect with accusations of antisemitism? Who is doing the counting?

duxup6• 5 years ago

The article doesn't mention anything like that and gives a good idea of the examples.

Did anyone even read the article?

djohnston2• 5 years ago

I mean they give some high level examples but it's mostly non-specific and at the discretion of a group whose missions is to report this stuff... In other words... show me the data!

jjoonathan2• 5 years ago

Why would I need TFA to mention it when I've seen with my own eyes three or four Netanyahu UN hissy fits? You know, the ones where someone curtails military aid and he stands up and compares it to the holocaust?

MattGaiser5• 5 years ago

The report seems to steer clear of anything regarding Palestine and Israel. It is solidly about traditional Jewish conspiracy theories.

https://252f2edd-1c8b-49f5-9bb2-cb57bb47e4ba.filesusr.com/ug...

mattigames3• 5 years ago

That report doesn't explicitly states omitting criticism against Israel, any report about anti-semitism that isnt explicitly stating when are Israel/Palestinian conflict comments considered anti-semitism (and when are not) is lacking depth.

fennecfoxen3• 5 years ago

The problem with banging the drum about "legitimate criticisms of Israel" is that they're co-occurent with illegitimate criticisms and anti-semitism.

There's also a very special kind of monomania. Some big account will post on Twitter or Facebook lamenting violence. "This synagogue in London got vandalized!" for instance, or perhaps "this US citizen living in the state of New York was beaten and there's security camera footage." Then about 500 people will immediately jump in to post, "Israel is bad!!"

Here, for instance, is Chelsea Football Club tweeting this past May, about a week after a Norwich synagogue was graffiti'd with a Swastika:

https://twitter.com/ChelseaFC/status/1396189477173923853 "Chelsea FC stands with the UK's Jewish community, and Jewish communities across the world, in the face of rising antisemitism. This hatred and intimidation towards the Jewish community is unacceptable and must stop."

Here's a blue check reply (accompanied by dozens of random Tweeters with the same sentiment):

"Condemning Israel attacks is not antisemitism, Supporting Palestine and against settlers is not antisemitism, Anti-Zionism is not Antisemitism". https://twitter.com/ManarSarhan/status/1396207673473970190

Consider replacing this with any other race. "Discrimination against African-Americans is bad!" posts the NFL, as someone has burned a cross in front of a Black church. But the Twitter replies stridently call out: "Look at the violence in Africa! Look at the dictatorships! Look at all those schoolgirls who were kidnapped in Zimbabwe!" Would you really tolerate that kind of reply for a second longer than it took you to overcome your disbelief?

mattigames3• 5 years ago

Ok, true for replies on unrelated subjects, but stand-alone posts with criticism against Israel also attract that kind of people so then what is the solution, to not post criticism against Israel because it attracts antisemitic people? To not create groups on FB about it for the same reason?

mikeblackson• 5 years ago

African schoolgirls being kidnapped is very different than an apartheid state where the colonizers regularly oppress and murder the indigenous. In May 2021, when that tweet was posted, Palestinian homes were being stolen by what is considered an illegitimate state. Those anti-Israeli posts didn't come out of nowhere.

raxxorrax4• 5 years ago

No.

slibhb2• 5 years ago

A common argument is that allegations of anti-semitism are used to shut down criticism of Israel. That's clearly true. It's also true that a lot of the criticism of Israel is based on anti-semitism. Good luck sorting that out with internet censorship!

Hasz• 5 years ago

As a reminder, hate speech is not against the law in the United States [1].

However, it is against the law in plenty of other countries, and likely against the TOS of most sites.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201...

afpx• 5 years ago

Unless people are inciting violence or organizing systematic discrimination, I think people should be free to say whatever they want. I understand why some people want to ban such speech, and there will always be those people, and there will always be ignorance and bigotry. It’s a slippery slope to give a subset of people control over what is allowed to be said. Maybe someone will point out my ignorance, too.

nickthegreek• 5 years ago

People are free to say what they want. People are not free to say whatever they want on another person's infrastructure. Those people are free to limit what they want to host.

FinanceAnon2• 5 years ago

I completely support freedom of speech. But what if there are people or companies who are making money from spreading complete lies which are very harmful to the society? I am happy for them to say what they want to small groups of people, but should they be allowed access to public platforms with millions of people?

nailer2• 5 years ago

It sounds like you don’t completely support freedom on speech.

fighterpilot4• 5 years ago

It’s a slippery slope to give a subset of people control over what is allowed to be said.

Hate speech is also a slippery slope, as the Rwandan genocide and many other genocides/massacres attest to.

For those arguing for unfettered speech on social media, if you're going to convince me of your argument, you at least need to acknowledge that this history exists. If you're focused only on the risks associated with clamping down on free speech (which I agree are very real risks) and ignore the flip side of that coin, then it's hard to take the argument seriously.

The best I've heard from people making your argument is hand-wavy sloganeering of tired, unoriginal memes like "the best disinfectant is sunlight" or "the solution to bad speech is more speech", with at most one small anecdote provided in support of this idea.

salawat2• 5 years ago

The Rwandan genocide happened in 1994. What makes you think the Internet or unconstrained speech on the Web had anything to do with it? Social Media wasn't even a thing by that point. You're still in pervasive dial-up and chatroom territory.

If you're talking one of the more recent ones, (last decade or so) that Facebook shoulders some of the blame for, you'd literally have to surveill Every. Last. Communique. Which everyone with any sense should recognize as an Orwellian Dystopian nightmare, and a fruitless moving target, because as soon as groups of interest realize they are being monitored, arms races and coded communique come into play.

So it isn't moving goalposts. It's a simple statement that the individual's desire for a hate-speech free Internet is not so great it warrants laying the technical foundation and infrastructure which in the wrong hands will absolutely be abused. Certainty factor of 1.

Technology empowers everyone equally, especially those already in a position of power that we really don't want to make exercising control practical for. That's the people problem that no application of technology can fundamentally solve for.

NaturalPhallacy• 5 years ago

Unless people are inciting violence or organizing systematic discrimination,

The whole purpose of the first and second amendments are so that - when, not if - our own government becomes tyrannical we can organize, and violently overthrow it.

Inciting violence (particularly against the government) is literally the whole point of the first two.

The US government is not supposed to rule, it's supposed to serve. A lot of people seem to have forgotten that. It's not only our right, specifically protected by the Bill of Rights, it's our duty and we can't even begin to do that if "inciting violence" is prohibited speech.

It’s a slippery slope to give a subset of people control over what is allowed to be said.

The issue isn't even control, it's that there exists no person or organization that can be trusted with this power.

hirundo• 5 years ago

I'm a Jew, a Zionist, and a knee-jerk supporter of Israel. That makes me the type of person many of these posts are hating on. But I don't think that they should be taken down. I would rather that the hatred of me and my tribe remain public and visible, so that we can see it and respond appropriately. Hiding it does not remove the sentiment or the danger. Words spoken against such hate, convincing people that it is not justified, are triggered by such posts too, yet those are also suppressed when the hate message is suppressed.

I want to know who hates me and why. Protecting me from that endangers me more.

Dobbs• 5 years ago

The problem is that this type of content spreads like a virus faster than it can be combated with sanity and reason.

slibhb2• 5 years ago

I think supressing it makes it spread. Nothing confirms the beliefs of people who see a Global Jewsh Conspiracy like having their posts deleted.

liorben-david4• 5 years ago

I'm with you, it's more just telling that these companies say they want to take down hateful speech, but anti-semetism always seems to be the exception. If I was setting their content policy I would allow it to, but something is off about claiming to be stop hatred but turning a blind eye to jews.

rvz2• 5 years ago

I would allow it to, but something is off about claiming to be stop hatred but turning a blind eye to jews.

If they are true to enforcing their guidelines equally, then I should not be seeing 84% of anti-semitic posts still spreading around on these social media websites.

Either it is open season on 'hateful content' so that we can see who posted what and why, or everything gets banned entirely and every post is policed with 'guideline checks' everywhere.

raxxorrax4• 5 years ago

Completely agree with that. Sounds cynical, but if people didn't have some unsoclicited opinions on Jews, something would be wrong and it would be time to keep an eye out for real danger.

It also is the safer bet against censorship.

Ozzie_osman• 5 years ago

This is sad because they were apparently better at taking down non anti-semitic pro-palestinian posts. https://www.reuters.com/article/israel-palestinians-socialme...

pydry2• 5 years ago

This is probably what Israeli advocacy groups that lobby against antisemitism would prefer.

They are typically happy to forgo criticism of anti semitism from, say, pro zionist southern baptist groups or hungary's orban.

They are usually much more concerned with completely nonracist criticism of Israel from the likes of UK's jeremy corbyn.

State comes first.

billytetrud3• 5 years ago

It's really weird that people think it's the responsibility of these platforms to police their users. Those of you that think it's easy to do, you're very very wrong. Censorship is also a problem and we should be supporting the right of idiots to voice their stupid thoughts so that we have the opportunity to voice our thoughts when others would rather not hear them. That's the whole point of freedom of speech.

duxup6• 5 years ago

It's really weird that people think it's the responsibility of these platforms to police their users

Is that the situation here tho?

Were the platforms just going to let anything go and someone made them do it?

I don't buy into that idea here.

I doubt any of the platforms are happy to host it either.

billytetrud3• 5 years ago

??? What idea aren't you buying into? That platforms can't feasibly police their users and that its unreasonable for us to expect them to? Yes, they can get the worst of the worst. They can comply with court orders. But expecting them to censor everything people think is objectionable is not reasonable. Do you want facebook to be the arbiter of what you can and can't say? Because that seems to be what you're asking for. As much as you think what to censor is "obvious", it is very much not obvious.

criticaltinker• 5 years ago

Is it even tenable to build an app or product centered around a social feed anymore? Manual moderation is cost prohibitive and does not scale. Algorithmic moderation gives some hope but there is a certain dystopian future that seems unavoidable in that direction.

How would I go about building an accessible social feed that cannot be censored? Is there any country and/or technology in the world that is viable now and in the long term?

MattGaiser5• 5 years ago

Depends on how you define "cannot be censored." Governments? Companies? APIs you are reading from?

connorgutman• 5 years ago

Jew here,

Being Jewish != supporting Israel. I have never been to Israel, I do not identify as Israeli, nor do I support Israel. I fully support a free and independent Palestinian state and believe Israel is commiting genocide. Only 30% of Jews live in Israel and the rest are scattered across the world. Much of the Antisemitism discussed in this article is occuring in America and across Europe. I challenge everyone to seperate these two issues, as public apathy is what fuels further attacks by extremists online and in real life.

cryptica3• 5 years ago

I think the real problem here is the tendency that people have to label and categorize everyone and everything.

It's completely wrong to assume that there is a box and everyone in that box shares the exact same attributes. Society even tries to convince and manipulate people into adopting behaviors and values which are not their own; just so that they could 'fit in' (in the box). This is the root of 'peer pressure' which I take is a big problem in the US school system (go figure).

Maybe this agenda serves social media and advertising companies (and corporations overall)? It's convenient for advertisers if people in any given category share exactly the same attributes. It seems to be an extension to the goals of the factory model of education; to produce people who are optimized for participating in society whilst questioning things as little as possible.

sbilstein4• 5 years ago

Frankly when us Jews call out anti-Semitism, the whole room stands up to tell us what is and is not anti-Semitism. Imagine doing that to LGBT folks or other minorities. I'm not even much of an Israel supporter but it is exhausting to hear a bunch of white progressives who have never set foot in the Middle East tell me I am wrong about the criticism I hear.

Recently, folks at Rutgers have been criticizing Campus Hillel as a Zionist organization. The place where your average secular Jewish college students gets Challah bread once a semester. Yet saying "that is anti-semitic" invites a whole bunch of people to whitesplain to you why it isn't.

JohnWhigham• 5 years ago

If people can't criticize Israel's actions as a country without being labeled anti-Semitic, then nothing is going to get solved.

fennecfoxen3• 5 years ago

When synagogues in the UK are being vandalized with swastikas, when residents of New York and US citizens are getting beaten on Fifth Avenue, and people lament these things on social media, that is not an appropriate time to criticize Israel's action as a country. Yet this is the norm.

sbilstein4• 5 years ago

I think you missed the point of my message.

Of course plenty of criticism of Israel is valid and not anti-Semitic.

It is also true that plenty of anti-Semites love to criticize Israel.

fennecfoxen3• 5 years ago

I have posted elsewhere in this thread about the reply of "anti-Zionism" which you will find whenever someone complains about anti-Semitic attacks and prejudice in places which are very much not Zion. If it's not anti-Semitic in intent, it's monomaniacal and inappropriate to the point where it's anti-Semitic in practice.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28037722

cryptica3• 5 years ago

As a low-middle class white person who struggles to be heard, I find the term 'whitesplain' to be offensive. For the same reason that I find the term 'mansplaining' offensive when applied to some shy guy trying to express their opinion for the first time.

A more appropriate term would be 'richsplaining'; when a rich person tries to explain to a poor person how the world is. It's not about race, it's about wealth. It's still not 100% correlation, but it's closer.

Race is not the root.

morpheos137• 5 years ago

I think if you take down these sorts of posts you may create a Streisand effect where it actually makes the problem worse.

In general though I don't think social media platforms should be taking down content that does not violate the law or that the law should be expanded to cover "hate speech." In the USA at least free speech has worked pretty well so far.

Anti-Semitic social posts 'not taken down' in 80% of cases

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