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The missing part of this article: are the requests valid? Are they actually incitements to terrorism and violence or is it just a clamp down on criticism? The h

The missing part of this article: are the requests valid? Are they actually incitements to terrorism and violence or is it just a clamp down on criticism? The headline of the article implies the latter but the body does not provide any evidence for that. Like there is a war going on, a pretty nasty one at that. I would expect there to be quite a lot of incitement to violence related to that. I would expect the israeli government to be mostly concerned with incitements of violence against its citizens. In the context of this conflict i would expect such incitements to be mostly be made by the demographics cited in the article due to the nature of the conflict. The article seems like it could be entirely consistent with take downs being used appropriately. It needs more then this to prove its headline. Heck, from this post we dont even know relative numbers. How does this compare against take down requests from other groups?

janalsncm 2y ago
If you have valid rules but in practice only enforce them against a single group, then in some sense you are asking the wrong question. In other words, for people who assume rule enforcement is supposed to be fair, they see unfair enforcement as hypocrisy. However, if you just see enforcement as another tool to wield against enemies, hypocrisy is irrelevant. What matters is power. It’s my basketball, I make the rules.
- bawolff 2y ago
  > If you have valid rules but in practice only enforce them against a single group I'd agree. Is there any evidence that that is happening here? The article reports on israeli take down requests but does not report on take down requests from other groups. Meta could very well be using the same rules against pro-israel groups, we just dont know because the leak didn't include that information.
  - MasterIdiot 2y ago
    anecdotally Meta has pretty lax moderation against anti-palestinian in Hebrew, allowing tons of extremely racist/violent speech.
    - xg15 2y ago
      Yeah, probably because it's Hebrew and no one outside Israel will read it anyway.
  - xg15 2y ago
    Read the article again. According to the whistleblowers, governments in general get privileged access vs regular users and Israel gets privileged access vs other governments: > Governments and organizations, on the other hand, have privileged channels to trigger content review. Reports submitted through these channels receive higher priority and are almost always reviewed by human moderators rather than AI. Once reviewed by humans, the reviews are fed back into Meta’s AI system to help it better assess similar content in the future. While everyday users can also file TDRs, they are rarely acted upon. Government-submitted TDRs are far more likely to result in content removal. Meta has overwhelmingly complied with Israel’s requests, making an exception for the government account by taking down posts without human reviews, according to the whistleblowers, while still feeding that data back into Meta’s AI.
garbagewoman 2y ago
What would you define as “valid”
- bawolff 2y ago
  I guess as "violating facebook terms of use". At some point i don't think what the standard is matters that much as long as its equally enforced against everyone. Generally though i do think its legit for facebook to take down posts advocating for violence and terrorism. Devil is in the details.
- elihu 2y ago
  I would think that anyone advocating for or cheering the death of civilians would be valid reason for removal. Criticizing Israeli policy, being supportive of Palestinians in general, or contradicting Netanyahu's talking points: not a valid reason for removal.
  - Teever 2y ago
    How do you feel about posts supporting the bombing of Dresden, Tokyo, or the use of atomic weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
    - elihu 2y ago
      Those aren't great either, but a mitigating factor is that those things happened a long time ago in conflicts that have already ended and few of the people involved are even alive anymore. It's not like the United States is seriously considering firebombing Desden or Tokyo or using nuclear weapons against Japan again in 2025. (At least, not yet as far as we know.) Having opinions about history is different than having opinions about an ongoing war. There's also a difference between people who say that those attacks were a least-bad option to win the war from a utilitarian ethics point of view versus people (presumably a minority) who simply see no down-side at all to deliberately killing large numbers of German or Japanese civilians.
elihu 2y ago
The article does mention it, but I agree that the story is incomplete without a clearer idea (including examples) of what is being censored. > "A Human Rights Watch (HRW) report investigating Meta’s moderation of pro-Palestine content post-October 7th found that, of 1,050 posts HRW documented as taken-down or suppressed on Facebook or Instagram, 1,049 involved peaceful content in support of Palestine, while just one post was content in support of Israel."
- bawolff 2y ago
  However that study is using a different data set afaik. There is no indication that the things being requested taken down by Israel are the same as those being studied by HRW. Its also really difficult to draw any conclusions from the HRW study due to selection bias issues. The sample was sent in by users instead of being chosen randomly from censored posts. Even assuming you agree with HRW's assesment that the posts were peaceful, there is no way to tell from the study if this represents the 0.00001% most "peaceful" of all censored posts or if its the average censored post, and i think that makes a big difference when evaluating this situation. The experimental design of the HRW study is just rather poor, and i think you could use such a design to come to basically any conclusion you want.
tbrownaw 2y ago
[flagged]
- whatshisface 2y ago
  Israel has an extensive defense industry, in some sense it has absorbed most of that country's economy. The role of the US is as a guarantor against the rest of the world.
- bawolff 2y ago
  > Public opinion is a strategic asset. Imagine if the electorate of their arms dealer turned against them. I'm not saying there aren't other possible motivations. Indeed, i'm sure Israel would love all its PR problems to go away. My point is, that if we assume for the sake of argument that Israel isn't doing anything sketchy, i would still expect the stuff in the article to be true. Therefor it is very bad evidence of Israel doing sketchy stuff, since the article contents would probably be true either way. My argument is not that Israel is pure of heart or anything, only that we should judge based on publicly available evidence, and the evidence in this article is extremely weak.
  - whatshisface 2y ago
    Presumably, every country in the world can ask US companies nicely to imprint their foreign policy on domestic moderation. Even I could ask; but why would Meta agree to do it?
    - bawolff 2y ago
      Presumably because violent content really does decrease the value of their site, and meta is in this to make $$$. Broadly speaking people don't like content inciting violence, and will go elsewhere if there is too much of it. Just look at what happened to twitter.
      - whatshisface 2y ago
        >of 1,050 posts HRW documented as taken-down or suppressed on Facebook or Instagram, 1,049 involved peaceful content The issue is that we are not talking about posts which would normally be taken down by Facebook.
WhyNotHugo 2y ago
> The missing part of this article: are the requests valid? They are enforced with neither human nor AI review, so the reality is that we don't know. They are enforced by virtue of who submits them, with no question on whether they are valid or not. Having heard from friends the kind of censorship they face on the topic on Facebook and Instagram when discussing the topics at hand, I know of plenty of situations where people were censored without breaking any rules. They're a small sample of course.
michaelsshaw 2y ago
Defending yourself from genocide is not terrorism
- reissbaker 2y ago
  When do you think the supposed genocide started?
  - michaelsshaw 2y ago
    1948
    - reissbaker 2y ago
      Interesting! And in this supposed 77 year long genocide, did the population size of Palestinians decrease?
      - michaelsshaw 2y ago
        Not a determining factor. Genocide is the commission of one of the five prohibited acts with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, any national, ethnical, racial or religious group.
        reissbaker 2y ago
        A bit hard to show "intent to destroy" if for 77 years of rule, they haven't actually done it, though. I mean, in what other "genocide" did the population grow, year over year, for 77 years? Can you name a single one where the population grew for even five years of "genocide"?
        michaelsshaw 2y ago
        [dead]
        2y ago
buyucu 2y ago
[flagged]
xg15 2y ago
Depends what you consider "incitement". The IL government seems to go by "whoever is not for us is against us" logic: > A Human Rights Watch (HRW) report investigating Meta’s moderation of pro-Palestine content post-October 7th found that, of 1,050 posts HRW documented as taken-down or suppressed on Facebook or Instagram, 1,049 involved peaceful content in support of Palestine, while just one post was content in support of Israel. > Like there is a war going on, a pretty nasty one at that. Sorry, but this is already part if the narrative. (Or rather the implication is that this would justify everything because wars seemingly have different rules. But if course only for one side) It's a "war" were one side inflicts 100 times as many casualties on one side than the other and still has no intention of stopping.
sgregnt 2y ago
From the lost of countries and knowing how rampant antisemitism is in these countries I suspect majority of the request are valid and express support and urge for terrorism.
aprilthird2021 2y ago
Ask anyone who works at Meta if they are valid, and they themselves will tell you, they don't really know. That should let you know how easy it would be for Israel to wield this tool in their favor. If they actually are doing it unfairly or not, we can never know since these posts are automatically taken down without human review.

janalsncm 2y ago

If you have valid rules but in practice only enforce them against a single group, then in some sense you are asking the wrong question. In other words, for people who assume rule enforcement is supposed to be fair, they see unfair enforcement as hypocrisy. However, if you just see enforcement as another tool to wield against enemies, hypocrisy is irrelevant. What matters is power. It’s my basketball, I make the rules.

bawolff 2y ago
> If you have valid rules but in practice only enforce them against a single group I'd agree. Is there any evidence that that is happening here? The article reports on israeli take down requests but does not report on take down requests from other groups. Meta could very well be using the same rules against pro-israel groups, we just dont know because the leak didn't include that information.
- MasterIdiot 2y ago
  anecdotally Meta has pretty lax moderation against anti-palestinian in Hebrew, allowing tons of extremely racist/violent speech.
  - xg15 2y ago
    Yeah, probably because it's Hebrew and no one outside Israel will read it anyway.
- xg15 2y ago
  Read the article again. According to the whistleblowers, governments in general get privileged access vs regular users and Israel gets privileged access vs other governments: > Governments and organizations, on the other hand, have privileged channels to trigger content review. Reports submitted through these channels receive higher priority and are almost always reviewed by human moderators rather than AI. Once reviewed by humans, the reviews are fed back into Meta’s AI system to help it better assess similar content in the future. While everyday users can also file TDRs, they are rarely acted upon. Government-submitted TDRs are far more likely to result in content removal. Meta has overwhelmingly complied with Israel’s requests, making an exception for the government account by taking down posts without human reviews, according to the whistleblowers, while still feeding that data back into Meta’s AI.

garbagewoman 2y ago

What would you define as “valid”

bawolff 2y ago
I guess as "violating facebook terms of use". At some point i don't think what the standard is matters that much as long as its equally enforced against everyone. Generally though i do think its legit for facebook to take down posts advocating for violence and terrorism. Devil is in the details.
elihu 2y ago
I would think that anyone advocating for or cheering the death of civilians would be valid reason for removal. Criticizing Israeli policy, being supportive of Palestinians in general, or contradicting Netanyahu's talking points: not a valid reason for removal.
- Teever 2y ago
  How do you feel about posts supporting the bombing of Dresden, Tokyo, or the use of atomic weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
  - elihu 2y ago
    Those aren't great either, but a mitigating factor is that those things happened a long time ago in conflicts that have already ended and few of the people involved are even alive anymore. It's not like the United States is seriously considering firebombing Desden or Tokyo or using nuclear weapons against Japan again in 2025. (At least, not yet as far as we know.) Having opinions about history is different than having opinions about an ongoing war. There's also a difference between people who say that those attacks were a least-bad option to win the war from a utilitarian ethics point of view versus people (presumably a minority) who simply see no down-side at all to deliberately killing large numbers of German or Japanese civilians.

elihu 2y ago

The article does mention it, but I agree that the story is incomplete without a clearer idea (including examples) of what is being censored. > "A Human Rights Watch (HRW) report investigating Meta’s moderation of pro-Palestine content post-October 7th found that, of 1,050 posts HRW documented as taken-down or suppressed on Facebook or Instagram, 1,049 involved peaceful content in support of Palestine, while just one post was content in support of Israel."

bawolff 2y ago
However that study is using a different data set afaik. There is no indication that the things being requested taken down by Israel are the same as those being studied by HRW. Its also really difficult to draw any conclusions from the HRW study due to selection bias issues. The sample was sent in by users instead of being chosen randomly from censored posts. Even assuming you agree with HRW's assesment that the posts were peaceful, there is no way to tell from the study if this represents the 0.00001% most "peaceful" of all censored posts or if its the average censored post, and i think that makes a big difference when evaluating this situation. The experimental design of the HRW study is just rather poor, and i think you could use such a design to come to basically any conclusion you want.

tbrownaw 2y ago

[flagged]

whatshisface 2y ago
Israel has an extensive defense industry, in some sense it has absorbed most of that country's economy. The role of the US is as a guarantor against the rest of the world.
bawolff 2y ago
> Public opinion is a strategic asset. Imagine if the electorate of their arms dealer turned against them. I'm not saying there aren't other possible motivations. Indeed, i'm sure Israel would love all its PR problems to go away. My point is, that if we assume for the sake of argument that Israel isn't doing anything sketchy, i would still expect the stuff in the article to be true. Therefor it is very bad evidence of Israel doing sketchy stuff, since the article contents would probably be true either way. My argument is not that Israel is pure of heart or anything, only that we should judge based on publicly available evidence, and the evidence in this article is extremely weak.
- whatshisface 2y ago
  Presumably, every country in the world can ask US companies nicely to imprint their foreign policy on domestic moderation. Even I could ask; but why would Meta agree to do it?
  - bawolff 2y ago
    Presumably because violent content really does decrease the value of their site, and meta is in this to make $$$. Broadly speaking people don't like content inciting violence, and will go elsewhere if there is too much of it. Just look at what happened to twitter.
    - whatshisface 2y ago
      >of 1,050 posts HRW documented as taken-down or suppressed on Facebook or Instagram, 1,049 involved peaceful content The issue is that we are not talking about posts which would normally be taken down by Facebook.

WhyNotHugo 2y ago

> The missing part of this article: are the requests valid? They are enforced with neither human nor AI review, so the reality is that we don't know. They are enforced by virtue of who submits them, with no question on whether they are valid or not. Having heard from friends the kind of censorship they face on the topic on Facebook and Instagram when discussing the topics at hand, I know of plenty of situations where people were censored without breaking any rules. They're a small sample of course.

michaelsshaw 2y ago

Defending yourself from genocide is not terrorism

reissbaker 2y ago
When do you think the supposed genocide started?
- michaelsshaw 2y ago
  1948
  - reissbaker 2y ago
    Interesting! And in this supposed 77 year long genocide, did the population size of Palestinians decrease?
    - michaelsshaw 2y ago
      Not a determining factor. Genocide is the commission of one of the five prohibited acts with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, any national, ethnical, racial or religious group.
      - reissbaker 2y ago
        A bit hard to show "intent to destroy" if for 77 years of rule, they haven't actually done it, though. I mean, in what other "genocide" did the population grow, year over year, for 77 years? Can you name a single one where the population grew for even five years of "genocide"?
        michaelsshaw 2y ago
        [dead]
        2y ago

buyucu 2y ago

[flagged]

xg15 2y ago

Depends what you consider "incitement". The IL government seems to go by "whoever is not for us is against us" logic: > A Human Rights Watch (HRW) report investigating Meta’s moderation of pro-Palestine content post-October 7th found that, of 1,050 posts HRW documented as taken-down or suppressed on Facebook or Instagram, 1,049 involved peaceful content in support of Palestine, while just one post was content in support of Israel. > Like there is a war going on, a pretty nasty one at that. Sorry, but this is already part if the narrative. (Or rather the implication is that this would justify everything because wars seemingly have different rules. But if course only for one side) It's a "war" were one side inflicts 100 times as many casualties on one side than the other and still has no intention of stopping.

sgregnt 2y ago

From the lost of countries and knowing how rampant antisemitism is in these countries I suspect majority of the request are valid and express support and urge for terrorism.

aprilthird2021 2y ago

Ask anyone who works at Meta if they are valid, and they themselves will tell you, they don't really know. That should let you know how easy it would be for Israel to wield this tool in their favor. If they actually are doing it unfairly or not, we can never know since these posts are automatically taken down without human review.