8 ms·

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

56 points by shivbhatt 5y ago

D9t7r5wLZD9dYc 5y ago
"Center for Countering Digital Hatred" Is this another jewish funded censorship organisation that wants to destroy the right to Freedom of Speech?
nailer 5y 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/ https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMdbHft64/
- liorben-david 5y 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-head-antisemitic-blog-post-2021-6 https://www.businessinsider.com/kamau-bobb-google-diversity-...
rvz 5y 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 https://www.counterhate.com/failuretoprotect
liorben-david 5y ago
I'm curious about the success rate for other forms of hate speech
- D9t7r5wLZD9dYc 5y ago
  Hate speech doesn't exist, they made up the term to shut you up.
  - twiclo 5y ago
    He's right
    - liorben-david 5y ago
      What was the flagged comment?
      - D9t7r5wLZD9dYc 5y ago
        > Hate speech doesn't exist, they made up the term to shut you up.
      - dnzkw 5y ago
        You can go to your profile options and enable showdead to be able to read censored comments.
      - rvz 5y ago
        Allow me to revive the destroyed comment for the sake of the argument: > > Hate speech doesn't exist, they made up the term to shut you up. Sort of, it is difficult to draw the line somewhere because some people will disagree on the 'rules' and definition of what 'hate speech' is. > Comment was of course flagged. Because this website (like most of the internet), is controlled by the far left. Which seem to sympathize with censorship for whatever reason. I don't know about that one. But even when I present strong evidence to my claims, follow the guidelines, I still get downvoted without reason or any response as to why. As for censorship, you know that there are some HNers here who would do anything to defend their companies name; even if it means flagging and downvoting you right?
        opsecweather 5y ago
bpodgursky 5y 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.
- duxup 5y ago
  I think we're just more mindful of moderation due to the size of sites now. It has always existed.
- LightG 5y ago
  Adding "offensive" to your sentence is a bit disingenuous.
  - billytetrud 5y ago
    ? Why?
    - LightG 5y ago
      Without getting into the debate at all, the main focus of recent moderation attempts have been to target "abuse"/"hate speech", however you want to define that. Adding "offensive" widens the scope enormously and unfairly and suddenly we're into the realms of restricting the freedom of speech for normal everyday situations.
      - bpodgursky 5y ago
        This is extremely fuzzy line and pretty much nobody agrees where offense stops and hate starts. It's dishonest to try to distinguish a line between the two because it will inevitably move over time at the whims of the moderators.
        LightG 5y ago
        I understand what you're saying, but I don't think the line is as extremely fuzzy as you say, otherwise there'd be relative anarchy. There are some generally accepted "yes" and "no's", and then, yes, there's a few things at the edge that might give me cause to think twice. If defining that line is "extremely fuzzy" to you, then you're already way too far down the rabbit hole (in my opinion) and I won't be following you down there.
cultofmetatron 5y ago
I know this is probably going to cost me some downvotes on here but here goes... I've personally stopped listening or caring about this dog whistle after seeing it used constantly to squash any discussion of the Palestinian apartheid.
- duxup 5y ago
  The article seemed to specify the type of posts they were talking about, I'm not sure those are the same you're thinking of.
- MattGaiser 5y 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/ugd/f4d9b9_9383f90cb66f423dbb5aa0a3dd03cb64.pdf https://252f2edd-1c8b-49f5-9bb2-cb57bb47e4ba.filesusr.com/ug...
- hobs 5y ago
  You can hold multiple things in your mind at once. "The Jews" are not Israel. The idea that anti-semitism is somehow intrinsically tied to Palestine is historically and obviously false. While there's plenty of reasons to hate Israel for its actions on Palestine the history of pogroms, blood libel, genocide, expulsions, etc goes on centuries before there was ever a nation to hate in the first place.
  - cultofmetatron 5y ago
    so first of all, I'm going to say that I agree with you in that antisemetism is a problem that predates the creation of Israel. While I disagree with the motivations for its founding, I understand why it happened given the sheer impact of the atrocity of the holocaust. It should never happen again. I personally feel that should apply to everyone. No group of people should have to bear with an occupation and genocide. With that, Its a bit disingenuous when I see how israel treats the palestinian people. Here we are talking about internet memes that are antisemetic. I agree its a serious problem but at the same time, we have mainstream media which dehumanizes palestinians. Its close to career suicide to advocate for their rights if you're in the media. These people live completely annexed to an open air prison. For them a 9/11 type event is a tuesday. You can hold two ideas in your head of course. But when it comes to what I focus my attention on. One side has funding and an active branch advocating for their humanity. The other is being systematically oppressed RIGHT NOW by an active miltary force.
SpicyLemonZest 5y 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.
- sbilstein 5y 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 https://www.instagram.com/jewish.contributions/?hl=en
  - liorben-david 5y 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 5y ago
    It's very well-made, which makes it even more scary.
  - MattGaiser 5y 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.
    - sbilstein 5y ago
      Yea I agree... the winky face emojis and comment sections tell you the audience knows exactly what they're looking at though.
duxup 5y 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 5y 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 5y ago
Are the George Soros ones actually anti-semitic? I'm sure some are, but it seems most are just anti George Soros.
- hobs 5y 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_spring 5y ago
    Exactly this. It's a dogwhistle for extreme anti-semites, whether the people sharing it know it or not.
    - dahfizz 5y ago
      Assuming you are correct, does that mean it should be impossible to criticize Soros? A group of radicals dislike him, therefore he is beyond reproach?
      - seattle_spring 5y ago
        There's a pretty big gulf between disliking someone and spreading inane anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. Most of the "criticisms" I see of him are very much the latter, verging on Pizzagate territory.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- raxxorrax 5y 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.
djohnston 5y 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?
- duxup 5y ago
  The article doesn't mention anything like that and gives a good idea of the examples. Did anyone even read the article?
  - djohnston 5y 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!
    - duxup 5y ago
      None of their examples included 'criticism of isreal'. And there's a link to the actual report in the story.
    - MattGaiser 5y ago
      https://252f2edd-1c8b-49f5-9bb2-cb57bb47e4ba.filesusr.com/ugd/f4d9b9_9383f90cb66f423dbb5aa0a3dd03cb64.pdf https://252f2edd-1c8b-49f5-9bb2-cb57bb47e4ba.filesusr.com/ug...
  - jjoonathan 5y 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?
    - duxup 5y ago
      Are you asking why would you need to read the article that is up for discussion?
slibhb 5y 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 5y 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/2015/05/07/no-theres-no-hate-speech-exception-to-the-first-amendment/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201...
afpx 5y 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 5y 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.
  - deleted 5y ago
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  - deleted 5y ago
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- deleted 5y ago
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- FinanceAnon 5y 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?
  - nailer 5y ago
    It sounds like you don’t completely support freedom on speech.
    - FinanceAnon 5y ago
      I think it depends on your definition of freedom of speech. I don't support providing a platform for harmful lies to spread e.g. QAnon In my opinion, internet and social media changed the game. Freedom of speech now is not the same as freedom of speech 200 years ago. The spread of information now is massive and instanteneous, and people are up against ML models which are being trained to grab their attention. For example, Cambridge Analytica - were their actions an exercise of freedom of speech or exploitation of social media?
hirundo 5y 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 5y ago
  The problem is that this type of content spreads like a virus faster than it can be combated with sanity and reason.
  - slibhb 5y 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-david 5y 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.
  - rvz 5y 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.
Ozzie_osman 5y 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-socialmedia-idUSL8N2MU624 https://www.reuters.com/article/israel-palestinians-socialme...
- pydry 5y 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.
billytetrud 5y 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.
- duxup 5y 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.
  - billytetrud 5y 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.
seattle_spring 5y ago
This doesn't surprise me at all. Anecdotally, even amongst my own acquaintances / ex-friends: even folks that regularly post gender equity and anti-racism stuff to FB have called me a "fucking Jew" for being more successful than them.
- dnzkw 5y ago
  Do you think you may have been in a position of privilege during your career for being Jewish?
criticaltinker 5y 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?
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  Depends on how you define "cannot be censored." Governments? Companies? APIs you are reading from?
connorgutman 5y 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.
- cryptica 5y 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.
sbilstein 5y 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 5y ago
  If people can't criticize Israel's actions as a country without being labeled anti-Semitic, then nothing is going to get solved.
  - fennecfoxen 5y 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.
    - caeril 5y ago
      This reasoning is great. When black churches are being shot up, that is not an appropriate time to criticize Uganda's action as a country. When South Americans are being detained in cages at the border, that is not an appropriate time to criticize Venezuela's action as a country. When Muslims are experiencing intense Islamophobia, that is not an appropriate time to criticize Syria's action as a country. I love this absolutely brilliant smokescreen. I'm going to use it. Thank you.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - sbilstein 5y ago
morpheos137 5y 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.

56 points by shivbhatt 5y ago

"Center for Countering Digital Hatred" Is this another jewish funded censorship organisation that wants to destroy the right to Freedom of Speech?

nailer 5y 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/ https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMdbHft64/

liorben-david 5y 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-head-antisemitic-blog-post-2021-6 https://www.businessinsider.com/kamau-bobb-google-diversity-...

rvz 5y 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 https://www.counterhate.com/failuretoprotect

liorben-david 5y ago

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

D9t7r5wLZD9dYc 5y ago
Hate speech doesn't exist, they made up the term to shut you up.
- twiclo 5y ago
  He's right
  - liorben-david 5y ago
    What was the flagged comment?
    - D9t7r5wLZD9dYc 5y ago
      > Hate speech doesn't exist, they made up the term to shut you up.
    - dnzkw 5y ago
      You can go to your profile options and enable showdead to be able to read censored comments.
    - rvz 5y ago
      Allow me to revive the destroyed comment for the sake of the argument: > > Hate speech doesn't exist, they made up the term to shut you up. Sort of, it is difficult to draw the line somewhere because some people will disagree on the 'rules' and definition of what 'hate speech' is. > Comment was of course flagged. Because this website (like most of the internet), is controlled by the far left. Which seem to sympathize with censorship for whatever reason. I don't know about that one. But even when I present strong evidence to my claims, follow the guidelines, I still get downvoted without reason or any response as to why. As for censorship, you know that there are some HNers here who would do anything to defend their companies name; even if it means flagging and downvoting you right?
      - opsecweather 5y ago

bpodgursky 5y 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.

duxup 5y ago
I think we're just more mindful of moderation due to the size of sites now. It has always existed.
LightG 5y ago
Adding "offensive" to your sentence is a bit disingenuous.
- billytetrud 5y ago
  ? Why?
  - LightG 5y ago
    Without getting into the debate at all, the main focus of recent moderation attempts have been to target "abuse"/"hate speech", however you want to define that. Adding "offensive" widens the scope enormously and unfairly and suddenly we're into the realms of restricting the freedom of speech for normal everyday situations.
    - bpodgursky 5y ago
      This is extremely fuzzy line and pretty much nobody agrees where offense stops and hate starts. It's dishonest to try to distinguish a line between the two because it will inevitably move over time at the whims of the moderators.
      - LightG 5y ago
        I understand what you're saying, but I don't think the line is as extremely fuzzy as you say, otherwise there'd be relative anarchy. There are some generally accepted "yes" and "no's", and then, yes, there's a few things at the edge that might give me cause to think twice. If defining that line is "extremely fuzzy" to you, then you're already way too far down the rabbit hole (in my opinion) and I won't be following you down there.

cultofmetatron 5y ago

I know this is probably going to cost me some downvotes on here but here goes... I've personally stopped listening or caring about this dog whistle after seeing it used constantly to squash any discussion of the Palestinian apartheid.

duxup 5y ago
The article seemed to specify the type of posts they were talking about, I'm not sure those are the same you're thinking of.
MattGaiser 5y 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/ugd/f4d9b9_9383f90cb66f423dbb5aa0a3dd03cb64.pdf https://252f2edd-1c8b-49f5-9bb2-cb57bb47e4ba.filesusr.com/ug...
hobs 5y ago
You can hold multiple things in your mind at once. "The Jews" are not Israel. The idea that anti-semitism is somehow intrinsically tied to Palestine is historically and obviously false. While there's plenty of reasons to hate Israel for its actions on Palestine the history of pogroms, blood libel, genocide, expulsions, etc goes on centuries before there was ever a nation to hate in the first place.
- cultofmetatron 5y ago
  so first of all, I'm going to say that I agree with you in that antisemetism is a problem that predates the creation of Israel. While I disagree with the motivations for its founding, I understand why it happened given the sheer impact of the atrocity of the holocaust. It should never happen again. I personally feel that should apply to everyone. No group of people should have to bear with an occupation and genocide. With that, Its a bit disingenuous when I see how israel treats the palestinian people. Here we are talking about internet memes that are antisemetic. I agree its a serious problem but at the same time, we have mainstream media which dehumanizes palestinians. Its close to career suicide to advocate for their rights if you're in the media. These people live completely annexed to an open air prison. For them a 9/11 type event is a tuesday. You can hold two ideas in your head of course. But when it comes to what I focus my attention on. One side has funding and an active branch advocating for their humanity. The other is being systematically oppressed RIGHT NOW by an active miltary force.

SpicyLemonZest 5y 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.

sbilstein 5y 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 https://www.instagram.com/jewish.contributions/?hl=en
- liorben-david 5y 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 5y ago
  It's very well-made, which makes it even more scary.
- MattGaiser 5y 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.
  - sbilstein 5y ago
    Yea I agree... the winky face emojis and comment sections tell you the audience knows exactly what they're looking at though.

duxup 5y 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 5y 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 5y ago

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

hobs 5y 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_spring 5y ago
  Exactly this. It's a dogwhistle for extreme anti-semites, whether the people sharing it know it or not.
  - dahfizz 5y ago
    Assuming you are correct, does that mean it should be impossible to criticize Soros? A group of radicals dislike him, therefore he is beyond reproach?
    - seattle_spring 5y ago
      There's a pretty big gulf between disliking someone and spreading inane anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. Most of the "criticisms" I see of him are very much the latter, verging on Pizzagate territory.
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raxxorrax 5y 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.

djohnston 5y 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?

duxup 5y ago
The article doesn't mention anything like that and gives a good idea of the examples. Did anyone even read the article?
- djohnston 5y 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!
  - duxup 5y ago
    None of their examples included 'criticism of isreal'. And there's a link to the actual report in the story.
  - MattGaiser 5y ago
    https://252f2edd-1c8b-49f5-9bb2-cb57bb47e4ba.filesusr.com/ugd/f4d9b9_9383f90cb66f423dbb5aa0a3dd03cb64.pdf https://252f2edd-1c8b-49f5-9bb2-cb57bb47e4ba.filesusr.com/ug...
- jjoonathan 5y 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?
  - duxup 5y ago
    Are you asking why would you need to read the article that is up for discussion?

slibhb 5y 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 5y 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/2015/05/07/no-theres-no-hate-speech-exception-to-the-first-amendment/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201...

afpx 5y 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 5y 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.
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FinanceAnon 5y 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?
- nailer 5y ago
  It sounds like you don’t completely support freedom on speech.
  - FinanceAnon 5y ago
    I think it depends on your definition of freedom of speech. I don't support providing a platform for harmful lies to spread e.g. QAnon In my opinion, internet and social media changed the game. Freedom of speech now is not the same as freedom of speech 200 years ago. The spread of information now is massive and instanteneous, and people are up against ML models which are being trained to grab their attention. For example, Cambridge Analytica - were their actions an exercise of freedom of speech or exploitation of social media?

hirundo 5y 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 5y ago
The problem is that this type of content spreads like a virus faster than it can be combated with sanity and reason.
- slibhb 5y 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-david 5y 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.
- rvz 5y 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.

Ozzie_osman 5y 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-socialmedia-idUSL8N2MU624 https://www.reuters.com/article/israel-palestinians-socialme...

pydry 5y 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.

billytetrud 5y 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.

duxup 5y 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.
- billytetrud 5y 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.

seattle_spring 5y ago

This doesn't surprise me at all. Anecdotally, even amongst my own acquaintances / ex-friends: even folks that regularly post gender equity and anti-racism stuff to FB have called me a "fucking Jew" for being more successful than them.

dnzkw 5y ago
Do you think you may have been in a position of privilege during your career for being Jewish?

criticaltinker 5y 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?

MattGaiser 5y ago
Depends on how you define "cannot be censored." Governments? Companies? APIs you are reading from?

connorgutman 5y 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.

cryptica 5y 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.

sbilstein 5y 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 5y ago
If people can't criticize Israel's actions as a country without being labeled anti-Semitic, then nothing is going to get solved.
- fennecfoxen 5y 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.
  - caeril 5y ago
    This reasoning is great. When black churches are being shot up, that is not an appropriate time to criticize Uganda's action as a country. When South Americans are being detained in cages at the border, that is not an appropriate time to criticize Venezuela's action as a country. When Muslims are experiencing intense Islamophobia, that is not an appropriate time to criticize Syria's action as a country. I love this absolutely brilliant smokescreen. I'm going to use it. Thank you.
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morpheos137 5y 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.