Meta deletes Al Jazeera presenter’s profile after show criticising Israel

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/9/10/meta-deletes-al-jazeera-presenters-profile-after-show-criticising-israel

by kbk • 3 years ago

172 179 3 years ago

aerodog• 3 years ago

X's spat with the ADL revealed how substantial their lobby power is. That ad revenue plunged 60% due to their prejudices (against Elon and his management) testifies to a strong hold they have on media of all types. I don't trust Meta to reverse their behaviors like this, which they have likely done many, many times.

notahacker2• 3 years ago

Not gonna lie, I'm not struggling to think of reasons why Twitter's ad revenue dropped that don't involve the ADL...

Ygg24• 3 years ago

Would it explain why it fell in US and EU, but not Asia?

camillomiller• 3 years ago

Did you just really take Elon Musk's completely random figure of ads revenue drop as fact?

drexlspivey• 3 years ago

I'm sure you are a better authority to report on the company's revenue than the owner

blueflow6• 3 years ago

Do you have sources on the X - ADL connection? I thought that was just a conspiracy theory.

tmpX7dMeXU4• 3 years ago

It is. Computer nerds undeniably buy into anti-Semitic conspiracies more than other conspiracies because of the amount of peddling they get in silly 4chan et al culture.

mschuster91• 3 years ago

X's spat with the ADL revealed how substantial their lobby power is.

Lol what? Advertisers literally pulled out because their ads showed up to actual Nazi, holocaust denying content. The ADL didn't (have to) do anything, the brands' brand safety teams did.

tohnjitor2• 3 years ago

This opinion piece, written by an attorney who worked as an intern at ADL in the 1980s, agrees with Musk.

https://www.newsweek.com/adl-has-lost-its-way-elon-musk-righ...

formerly_proven• 3 years ago

Few things are more emblematic of Musk’s descent into madness than tweeting to dozens of millions of his acolytes that the (((jews))) are engineering his failures.

rfrey• 3 years ago

I must be mistaken, but your comment really sounds like you're blaming Twitter's revenue problems -- easily explained by mismanagement -- on an all powerful cabal of Jews.

NotSuspicious• 3 years ago

More like an institution that defames organizations, took until 2007 to recognize the Armenian Genocide and is propped up by an Apartheid State. Admittedly, their point is an oversimplification (X has many problems), but it's dishonest to equate criticism of the ADL to "the Jews run the world".

sek3• 3 years ago

You are totally right, the whole statement is ironically antisemitism here on Hacker News: Facebook/Mark Zuckerberg and Israel.... what is the connection. It's clear the poster is on X/Twitter and you can see what Elons behaviour perpetuates.

Elon Musk doesn't know how the advertising business works, get's rid of moderation and let's banned people back. Which obviously leads to an increase of antisemitism on Twitter and the ADL justly fights against it.

Now after the lawsuit this guy thinks: Elon is a genius, it must be the jews who control the media who have prejudices against Elon and his management.

twen_ty• 3 years ago

I'm sorry but under Elon X has become a platform where racists, xenophobes, conspiracy theorists, antisemites, islamophobes etc. have thrived - the ADL blame game from Elon smells of deflection from the reality that advertisers don't want to be associated with a platform that mainstreams unhinged content.

msegal• 3 years ago

By lumping ADL and Meta together, and saying "they" have a strong hold on media of all types, this post crosses the line.

Z7YCx5ieof4Std• 3 years ago

And now the Streisand effect will come into play. Where can I find this documentary with English subtitles

belter2• 3 years ago

https://youtu.be/cnj0rmnsAdI

_aaed• 3 years ago

This has no English subtitles

actuator5• 3 years ago

Not that it justifies the deletion, I wonder how a state sponsored propaganda outlet came to be regarded well among global audiences. It would be interesting to read up on what they have done to garner that image.

helboi42• 3 years ago

Wow I have heard so much that Al Jazeera is pretty reliable, never did I realise until I read your comment that they are owned by Qatari monarchy. Qatar, the country everyone was practically calling us to boycott in the 2022 World Cup. Not suitable to hold the World Cup but suitable for us to get news from apparently. They do generally seem to have a high quality of journalism though so I am suprised at how they maintain at least a decent amount of integrity.

tmpX7dMeXU4• 3 years ago

It is what it is. AJ’s bias really comes into play when talking about Qatar. Otherwise, their record speaks for itself.

Takennickname• 3 years ago

Your source that aljazeera is a propaganda outlet is no better or even worse than aljazeera itself

lucideer• 3 years ago

At the end of the day it's really just a matter of which state propaganda outlet you distrust the least, by which metric they seem to score pretty well. Beyond obvious biases one would expect to see, I also find them a little UK-influenced but otherwise I struggle to find a better state sponsored propaganda outlet.

tmpX7dMeXU4• 3 years ago

I am assuming that this is American bias talking? Plenty of other cultures are more trusting of government than the US’s is.

The main State-sponsored media outlet in my country is considered to be of a pretty high quality. It has some international recognition.

I’d say a fair chunk of those that actually care about media outlet trustworthiness (and aren’t just sharing whatever articles come their way barring a few outlets that are in their person blocklist) are aware of the nuances of AJ’s authority and trustworthiness. The reality is that they have built this reputation by doing heaps and heaps of good reporting, not even in spite of being state-sponsored, but really because of it. There are certain topics that you shouldn’t listen to AJ regarding. Otherwise? They do a good job.

actuator5• 3 years ago

Well, I did write state sponsored propaganda outlet, not state sponsored media outlet as I think the journalistic freedom an organisation like BBC gets is different. They can criticise policies of UK government, something Al Jazeera can't.

I would argue that they just have more polish to their presentation rather than having more integrity, and the coverage in local language is quite different from the one in English

Neil44• 3 years ago

Are you referring to Meta or Al Jazeera?

shmde• 3 years ago

So funny to see *unbiased HN users take up pitchfork in support of a literally Monarchy(House of Thani) + State(Qatar) owned propaganda machine news outlet which constantly writes in favour of their Middle East Masters and silently prefers not to tell the truth in their reporting.

_xivi2• 3 years ago

Any examples for incredibility and misleading reporting by them?

Angostura3• 3 years ago

Here's their front page. https://www.aljazeera.com Since you say they "constantly write in favour of Quatar, it shouldn't be hard for your find examples.

Certainly there's very negative coverage of Quatar's many faults, but that's not the same as constantly pushing a positive agenda. In other areas the reporting seems sound.

A starter for you https://www.aljazeera.com/search/quatar?sort=date

BiteCode_dev• 3 years ago

They are pretty much the equivalent to the BBC or CNN: a lot of it is alright, but they are still tools for their own gov propaganda.

Because they are different govs, with different agendas, each of them see the propaganda of others as evil, but it's still all very much propaganda.

Remember CNN diffused many bits on how WMD were in Irak to justify the war the UN voted against. The USA went to war anyway, and we learned there were no WMD.

Al Jazeera does the same, but for their side.

It is, nevertheless, quite qualitative content for many topics, and give you another points of on the world events than our own medias outlet.

actuator5• 3 years ago

They are pretty much the equivalent to the BBC

I am sorry, but they aren't. This is just false equivalence, you can just go read BBC's coverage of UK politics and you will see criticism of their government

_xivi2• 3 years ago

If I had to guess, it's because they have actual reporters on the ground getting shot at and killed, unlike many other media outlets who count on heresay and statements.

You realize that all media/press is backed by something, right?

Do you prefer click-baity ridden press looking for ad revenue instead? Or media as a business where they avoid reporting anything controversial that would hurt their business/image/relationships/backers.

thiago_fm• 3 years ago

Al Jazeera is really reliable, much more than American media companies. People should first do research on this, before they start spreading those BS ideas.

Since 9/11 Americans can't trust anything with an "arabic background", they are constantly bombarded by the media, so they can't ever discover that the middle east is much more than a place with oil or "weapons of mass destruction".

Al Jazeera hires top journalists, they are well-funded. They are just very concerned when talking about Qatar, which in a geopolitical sense, doesn't matter, all other news are typically very unbiased.

Only a few news outlets from Europe are similar in quality.

Americans rarely want to see the truth anyways, so they stick with those republican/democrat-leaning media outlets, eating Mc Donalds, going bankrupt on a hospital emergency and believing in the American dream: you need to be asleep to believe on it.

bigDinosaur• 3 years ago

Allegedly Al Jazeera English is much more reasonable and balanced than Arabic Al Jazeera. Unfortunately that's a claim that basically relies on trust - i.e. an Arabic speaker with cultural knowledge willing to be unbiased in their analysis. I suspect it is true though, Qatar is not a pleasant country and certainly not a democracy.

weatherlite12• 3 years ago

They are just very concerned when talking about Qatar,

Doesn't seem like the sign of a good news org if you can't say a word of criticism about the country you're headquartered at. Makes me wonder what else is rotten in there, how can we know the rules of the country aren't dictating a bunch of other stuff to the news? News should be as independent as possible.

Angostura3• 3 years ago

I wonder how a state sponsored propaganda outlet came to be regarded well among global audiences.

Speaking personally, as an ex-journalist I found their English-language coverage generally to be pretty well-balanced and well reported - so that's probably why. And I came to them with a pretty sceptical eye. I've heard that their arabic language stories are rather different - but I don't have a way of checking that for myself.

kingwill101• 3 years ago

I always find it strange that Aljazeera gets so much hate. Their English coverage over the years IMO has been mostly unbiased and really stellar.

jacooper2• 3 years ago

Its one of the highest rated news agencies in the world.

Just because it doesn't adopt you worldview doesn't mean its a propaganda outlet.

throwaway914• 3 years ago

I know I'm naive: I don't understand why US companies are so sensitive to respecting Israel. I don't know why our gov is so sensitive to this either. Israel - like all countries - deserves criticism, no? This can't purely be about respecting the billions spent on US weapons to defend Israel, right? I genuinely do not understand, because I think they'd happily buy from the military anyway.

fsiefken• 3 years ago

From what I understand reading the article it's not about Meta respecting Israel, but Israel actively using the Meta rules to target criticism. This is also what I experienced as a moderator for interreligious dialogue. Certain groups were more aggressive in asserting their truth, not by using arguments, debate and dialogue, but using straw man tactics, meta communication and loopholes in the moderation rules to get their way.

gwd2• 3 years ago

Indeed; it's possible to love a person or a country, and yet still grieve their faults and wish them to be better. I'd argue that's the only real way to love anyone or anything.

On the flip side, human nature being what it is, giving any person or set of people unconditional approval is creating conditions where evil can thrive.

bad_user3• 3 years ago

The criticism of Israel, coming from the left, is usually Anti-Zionism, which questions Israel's existence.

weatherlite12• 3 years ago

Yes everyone is always so respectful of Israel, I only read good things about Israel on the media /s

ta2234234242• 3 years ago

Israel - like all countries - deserves criticism, no?

Maybe go look up Jonathan Pollard. If Israel is our close friend, why would they need to spy on us?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Pollard

https://www.military.com/history/jonathan-pollard-was-one-of...

unmole• 3 years ago

If Israel is our close friend, why would they need to spy on us?

The same reason why the US spies on the Bundeskanzler.

Paradigma11• 3 years ago

Same reason the US spies on all of its friends?

An actual reason I have heard is that it is as important to have independent information on your allies than it is on your enemies. Even if it is only for better coordination.

ralusek• 3 years ago

US spies on itself and everyone else.

SenAnder7• 3 years ago

Part of the answer is simply that a large fraction of the US government is Jewish. E.g. according to the White House, their staff (everything from stenographers and secretaries, to labor relations representatives and foreign policy experts) is 32% Jewish (2.4% of US population), 44% ethnic minority (about even with US), and 24% non-Jewish White (55% of US)

Sources: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36119693

stonogo3• 3 years ago

...you think that fifty-plus years of foreign policy is because there aren't "enough" non-Jewish white people in the White House at the moment?

ethanbond11• 3 years ago

Nope. It’s eschatological Christians who back Israel. Has nothing to do with protecting Jews and everything to do with evangelical Christians’ end times prophecy. The world’s largest military has made decades of foreign policy decisions in accordance with these people’s doomsday fetish.

pydry6• 3 years ago

The Israel lobby is incredibly powerful and well funded. They have a lot of money to throw around, much of which they throw at the US Government, which is consequently filled with their supporters. US companies know this and tread carefully.

They've weaponized anti-semitism against their detractors. And, who wants to be accused of racism? Even false accusations stain your reputation.

The irony is that it's probably one of the most racist countries I've ever seen in my entire life. They made a shrine to a terrorist (Baruch Goldstein). The president proudly called miscegenation "a tragedy". If you can imagine a white US president openly calling for whites and blacks to stop having babies - that's the level of racism this state's supporters endorse when weaponizing anti semitism.

weatherlite12• 3 years ago

They made a shrine to a terrorist (Baruch Goldstein)

Not sure what you're talking about here. Baruch Goldstein has no "shrine"* and besides fringe groups in Israel he is generally not accepted. Compare that with the monthly salaries Palestinian terrorists receive from the PLO and their rockstar status in Palestinian society.

* he has a grave, Israeli law can't really prevent that. The Israeli government has ruined most of the site of his grave despite his family's appeals.

stonogo3• 3 years ago

It's a deep political tie with a complex past. Here's decent book on the subject: https://academic.oup.com/book/7112 The Wikipedia article on "Christian Zionism" may also shed some light.

Basically, boosting Israel makes politicians popular with big swaths of their electorate. Pissing those electorates off makes things tough on a corporation, so they generally try not to.

29athrowaway2• 3 years ago

There are laws that limit how much you can criticize Israel at this moment

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-BDS_laws

tyingq• 3 years ago

I mean it boils down to oil and presence/influence in areas close to the oil.

colpabar• 3 years ago

It sucks that so many people will say that the US involvement in the middle east was mainly about oil but that logic never gets applied to israel's (illegal) expansion and the implicit US support for it. There is SO much oil there. Oh well, I guess it's more fun to blame the evangelicals and ignore the insane profit motive.

dheavy• 3 years ago

Lobbying?

As a secular Jew in Western Europe, I've distanced myself from my religious community due to its insistence on tying my identity to Israel. Where I live, it's less taboo to critique Israel than in the U.S., but still tricky.

Advocates of Israel's right-wing politics have blurred the line between criticizing Israel and anti-Semitism, an endeavor helped by actual anti-Semites. I've grown up with these supporters, but can't quite call them a "lobby" due to their loose organization and lesser influence here compared to the U.S.

Speaking out brings risks: being labeled a leftist extremist, clashing with fellow Jews, or unwittingly aiding anti-Semites. And that's if you are Jew.

This creates a pervasive, cautious silence that I imagine is even more stifling in countries with highly organized pro-Israel lobbying.

arp242• 3 years ago

I was once "reported to ADL" for my anti-Semitism.

My horrid crime that made me literally Hitler?

Disagreement if a tag should be named "jews" or "judaism" on the Politics Stack Exchange site. I made an off-hand comment that I renamed the tag from "jews" to "judaism" and the very first response was that I had been "reported to the ADL" (whether they actually did: who knows? Probably not).

That such an incredibly boring, banal, and benign disagreement exploded in accusations of anti-Semitism so quickly has made me rather distrustful of these accusations in general unless I can verify things. Anti-Semitism is real, but so are narcissistic people abusing it to "win the argument". If you need to defend yourself with "but I'm not anti-Semitic!" then you've already kind of lost the argument, right?

myth_drannon• 3 years ago

It's less about your Jewish identity tied to Israel and more about you and your identity not tied to the country you live. It's two sides of the same coin and the argument is much older than Israel. Your loyalty will be always questioned it's just that now it has more "Israeli flavor". Different people, same idea. Things didn't change much since the Dreyfus affair.

weatherlite12• 3 years ago

Where I live, it's less taboo to critique Israel than in the U.S., but still tricky.

Is it really so hard to "critique" Israel? I see daily calls for Israel to be abolished one way or the other (either violently with the help of Iran or with a Palestinian return). You can hear these opinions from politicians, on the news and social media, campuses and schools.

You might be labeled as a leftist as you said because this is generally a leftist stance, that's fair no? If I held a rightwing view I will probably be labeled as a right winger. Most Israelis I know think twice before they identify as Israelis in certain parts of Europe, they don't want a random cab driver to start lecturing them about apartheid (or do something worse). So I'm really intrigued why you think its such a taboo thing to criticize Israel or even openly call for its destruction.

trilbyglens• 3 years ago

There's also a lot of wacky christian folklore that is very popular in evangelical America that has to do with Israel being involved in the "end days". Some nutjobs feel that a strong Israeli state will hasten the rapture or some nonsense like that. There are a good number of those folk in elected positions, but also the evangelical crowd is inordinately influential in US politics, so it weasels it's way into many different facets of policy making. It's just one aspect of a complex picture though.

WeylandYutani• 3 years ago

Is it nonsense if half of Americans believe it?

I live in a post religious society and it's easy to forget that these things still matter for the rest of the planet.

tamimio2• 3 years ago

- A lot of the US senators have dual citizenship, US/Israelis.

- Strong lobby in both political parties.

- Boomers with their Judeo-Christians “values”.

- Israel intelligence agencies controlling/influencing ADL, ADL pressuring three letter agencies in US to further influence big tech.

- The usual tactics of infiltration into big corps especially ones that can influence public opinions, you can read a little about Roy Bollock case

The ADL operates as a private intelligence agency, sending spies, infiltrators, disruptors, and agents provocateurs into the camps — both Jewish and non-Jewish — of those who disagree with its view of Jewish interests. Also like an intelligence agency, it maintains a huge database containing personal information on politicians, writers, dissidents, activists, publishers, bloggers, and even unaffiliated private citizens so that — should any of these people “get out of line,” in the opinion of the ADL — they can be threatened, “exposed,” blackmailed, and thus silenced with maximum effectiveness. [1]

- And especially for Facebook with their shady business, they live on selling the users data to advertisers, the company won’t do anything to cut that money flow, take a look at twitter in the same case how ADL managed to cut around 60% of ads companies, it’s mostly about money and influence.

[1] redice.tv/news/the-adl-and-domestic-spying-roy-bullock-case-revisited

weregiraffe• 3 years ago

The Western world has a 2000+ years long history of antisemitism (starting back in the Hellenistic era when the Mediterranean polytheist majority was not amused by Jewish minority strict monotheism, and vice versa). Every criticism of Israel must be viewed in that light, because 95% of it is just the endlessly rehashed antisemitism.

blueflow6• 3 years ago

Every criticism of Israel must be viewed on a factual basis and whether its unfounded or not.

boomboomsubban• 3 years ago

I'm not defending the deletion, but couldn't the acts on the show have violated TOS in a variety of ways? Creating fake pages and conducting any kind of experiment secretly probably violate the terms in some kind of way.

Still wrong to target the host, but I could see how they could justify it.

daliz• 3 years ago

Classic Meta.

redox99• 3 years ago

Moderation really varies a lot depending both on the language and the group being criticized.

For example on twitch, Spanish streamers[1] say a lot of things that would get an English streamer canceled and/or banned for saying it. And for other languages I'm sure the gap is even bigger.

The same with the group being criticized. Criticism against Russians is not moderated the same way as criticism against Jewish people.

To be clear I'm not in favor of hate speech, I'm just pointing out that moderation isn't 100% equal.

[1] I mean the language of the stream, not the nationality of the streamer

zarzavat• 3 years ago

Criticism against Russians is not moderated the same way as criticism against Jewish people.

People are not criticizing ethnic Russians. They are criticizing citizens of the Russian state, which includes people who aren’t ethnically Russian but doesn’t include people who are ethnically Russian in e.g. Ukraine. It’s arguable how much responsibility Russian citizens have for the present situation but it’s more than zero.

Similarly while it’s fine to criticize Israelis for the actions of Israel, it’s not fine to criticize Jewish people in general for it.

yakireev• 3 years ago

People are not criticizing ethnic Russians.

Some do, and are rarely denounced for that. Alas.

edanm8• 3 years ago

Similarly while it’s fine to criticize Israelis for the actions of Israel, it’s not fine to criticize Jewish people in general for it.

I agree, kind of, but let's also please realize that it's similar to criticizing US citizens for the actions of the US state. I wouldn't criticize the average American for the actions of the CIA or for the war in Afghanistan, because the average American might or might not agree with those actions.

In other words, I think it's correct to criticize the country, but incorrect to criticize specific people unless they are personally doing bad things.

Simulacra• 3 years ago

I used to be a supporter of Israel, but our support of Israel causes way too many problems, both foreign and domestic, and I think it's time for America to separate from Israel permanently.

tamimio2• 3 years ago

So the journalist makes a documentary about how Facebook censors people, and a day later he gets censored, I think that just makes his documentary stronger!

Also, when the internet will ever learn, if you try to censor something you will just give it more exposure, I personally would never know about this documentary but now I will watch it.

bmicraft3• 3 years ago

The Streisand effect works when people try to hide information, I'm not so sure it will work against companies as big as Facebook

andrewinardeer• 3 years ago

I'm leaning towards the scenario where an organized group mass reported his profile after the show aired and Meta's Lord Algorithm nuked the page.

I'm also willing to bet that when it gets manually reviewed it will be reinstated.

stareatgoats4• 3 years ago

This makes me think that the reason I was thrown out of Facebook is because I followed some Palestinian pages there. Not because I necessarily a supporter of the whole "Palestinian cause", because I think the whole thing is honestly a mess perpetrated by forces with ulterior motives on both sides. But I like to keep informed.

I never got an explanation from fb at the time, but now when I try to log in it states a reason: I have broken community rules regarding "dangerous people and organizations". Which is really a laughable accusation regarding me, a convinced pacifist since 50 years back. But I'm honestly concerned that this might have further implications for me. Who else gets to know that I'm considered associated with "dangerous persons or organizations"?

Anyway, we are as a society still grappling for how to deal with the sudden and immense power over public opinion generation as well peoples most private lives that social media companies have acquired lately. I don't have a complete solution, but this is untenable.

29athrowaway2• 3 years ago

Coca-Cola is a dangerous organization, polluting with plastic bottles and giving people diabetes.

They have known this for a while they do nothing about it.

Should Coca-Cola and its followers also be banned?

Who decides where the line of "dangerous" is drawn?

Meta deletes Al Jazeera presenter’s profile after show criticising Israel

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